Mono-Black Devotion or Esper?
Standard forum
Posted on May 11, 2014, 9:11 p.m. by BoromirOfGondor
At my last FNM, I played Mono-Black Devotion (to great success), but I have been pondering recently whether or not to invest in Esper, which seems slightly better positioned. Should I buy the Esper cards that I still need (i.e. Sphinx's Revelation ), or stick with MBD until rotation?
NerdPounder says... #3
Wait and see if Esper gets replaced by UWR, there were zero Esper decks at the last tourney I watched, and a UWR top-8'ed. Mono-black has a really good match with Esper, so you'll probably lose to your old deck a lot if you do make the switch, but Rev decks are a lot of fun. Even though Mono-black is the top deck of the format, people tend to pack a ton of sideboard hate for UWx control, because lets be honest, how on earth do you sideboard against Mono-black? Rev decks are susceptible to getting hated out, but MBD, and especially the new green splash versions are hard to sideboard against, so post-board you'll probably have good games if you make a decent sideboard.
May 11, 2014 9:17 p.m.
strateupjee says... #4
Honestly I feel like MBD is getting outclassed, but by itself... The B/W and B/G decks are so good and so much more versatile that they win the mirror and have even stronger match ups against control and what have you. So if you wanted to take your MBD somewhere without investing in Esper (which I agree is not all that good of an idea so late in the block) take it to white or green slightly. I personally love my B/W Mid-Range which is basically MBD featuring Blood Baron, Sin Collector, Obzedat, Banishing Light, and Elspeth haha.
May 11, 2014 11:14 p.m.
Rasta_Viking29 says... #5
Mono-Black Devotion >>>> Esper Control
Switching would be a bad decision economically and you'd end up with a worse deck.
May 12, 2014 5:23 p.m.
Andrew Tenjum's list from Cinci is a great start for any mono-B deck. I truthfully feel like Abrupt Decay makes that deck. I would try that.
kmcree says... #2
All of Esper's big money cards are all rotating. Right now is probably a terrible time to invest in them. Esper is the stronger deck in the current meta, and if you own most of the cards, you'll probably see more success running it. But if you don't own the cards, its not worth it to invest. Esper is one of the more expensive tier 1 decks (if you build it right), so you'll lose a lot of money with rotation.
May 11, 2014 9:14 p.m.