Since the Arena Championship, a major talking point with regards to Pioneer has been the sheer dominance of mono-red. The combination of efficient threats, Monstrous Rage, and anti-life gain cards makes the deck very tough to gameplan for.
However, with red decks making up such a huge percentage of recent Challenge events on Magic Online, we have seen some innovative archetypes pop up as metabreakers. For example, one player managed to win a Challenge on April 4 piloting a neat mono-black midrange shell.
This deck is well set up to fight the red menace, and the deck has quickly begun picking up steam as a result. If you’re tired of getting your teeth kicked in by Heartfire Hero and company, look no further.
Mono-Black in a Mono-Red World
The main idea behind playing mono-black midrange, according to the pilot of the Challenge winning decklist, is to have a similar gameplan to Rakdos without leaving yourself vulnerable to Sunspine Lynx. As bad as it may feel to give up Fable of the Mirror-Breaker in your midrange shell, in a format this heavily skewed towards mono-red, it makes a lot of sense to play a deck with a high density of basic lands.
From there, you’ll also notice some card choices that reflect the current state of Pioneer. At the top of that list, we have Gifted Aetherborn. Gifted Aetherborn is one reward for sticking to a mono-black manabase.
The 2/3 body means that it doesn’t die to an early Burst Lightning. The deathtouch means that it can trade for a large threat in the face of Monstrous Rage. Add lifelink to the mix, and you’ve got a card that’s solid in racing situations.
In the three-drop slot, Graveyard Trespasser is another threat that lines up well against the red decks. The incidental life gain adds up over time, so long as you can kill Sunspine Lynx and Screaming Nemesis on sight.
Luckily, between Fatal Push, Bitter Triumph, Murderous Rider, and Liliana of the Veil, this shouldn’t be a problem. Add Sheoldred, the Apocalypse as an elite piece of top end, and you’ve got a great gameplan against mono-red.
Winning Attrition Wars
What’s nice about the way this mono-black deck is constructed is that while there’s clearly a heavy focus on beating mono-red, the rest of the cards help you win grindy matchups. Even without Fable in the mix, you are certainly not cold to Rakdos midrange.
One of the more important tools versus Rakdos is Invoke Despair. Invoke Despair does a good job keeping Unholy Annex in check. It always generates value, regardless of what mishmash of permanents the opponent has in play.
Digging deeper on the card advantage side of things, you’ll also notice playsets of both Sign in Blood and Castle Locthwain. In matchups where your life total isn’t under constant duress, these cards are excellent.
Versus mono-red, Sign in Blood can be a liability, but you can always sideboard them out in favor of cards such as Extinction Event. Even in the mono-red matchup, Gifted Aetherborn and Sheoldred can circumvent the life loss.
Lastly, playing four copies of Thoughtseize is a no-brainer. Even in a format dominated by mono-red, Thoughtseize is essential at picking decks apart and paving the way for you to play Sheoldred or Invoke Despair unhindered.
Potential Metagame Shifts
Ultimately, mono-black midrange feels like a solid metacall in a Pioneer format that, for the time being, is ruled by just a handful of archetypes. Having a deck that lines up reasonably well versus both mono-red and Rakdos goes a long way in contributing to this deck’s sudden success.
That being said, the deck is definitely exploitable. In yesterday’s Pioneer Challenge, five mono-black players and seven mono-red players made top 32. None of the mono-red players made top eight, which heavily suggests that players are beginning to adapt their approaches to the format and gear their attention to mono-red (players swarming to mono-black is obviously a good example).
If mono-red begins to fall out of favor, not only will mono-black have fewer red decks to feast on, but there are a number of archetypes that these current iterations of mono-black midrange are weak to. Take Jund sacrifice, for instance, which won yesterday’s Pioneer Challenge. Mono-black midrange isn’t equipped to remove Witch’s Oven from the battlefield, which can singlehandedly sway a game in favor of Jund.
Rakdos midrange, on the other hand, has access to cards like Hidetsugu Consumes All that make the Jund matchup much easier. So, even though mono-black midrange and Rakdos midrange share similar gameplans, there are tradeoffs to playing each archetype.
Current iterations of mono-red are very resilient to hate, so don’t expect the deck to disappear by any stretch. Just watch out for metagame shifts if you’re looking to pick up mono-black midrange moving forward. If your local game store is riddled with mono-red, consider giving mono-black a whirl.