The core of this deck has remained the same for the time it has enjoyed it’s lions share of the spotlight. As it has been mentioned countlessly an opening sequence of
Thoughtseize then
Pack Rat is often doom for an opponent who will be left crossing their fingers praying for a lucky topdeck to swing the game back in their favour. Once you are able to start cluttering the board with rats you’ve often pulled so far ahead that victory becomes inevitable. To compliment the
Pack Rat you also find in this build four
Mutavault which also double as rats themselves pushing the power of your army even further. Then we have the remaining creature suite on curve with
Nightveil Specter into
Desecration Demon into
Gray Merchant of Asphodel. As long as you are able to build a board presence even if you are starting to lag behind the
Gray Merchant often will be enough to swing a game back around into your favor. There is the full set of
Thoughtseize and an additional singleton of
Duress which are all key in assuring that any hard to deal with threat is eliminated before it sees play. Then the requisite set of
Underworld Connections not only works to maintain your position in the card advantage game but also provide very important and difficult to remove devotion for your
Gray Merchant or
Erebos out of the sideboard. The rest of the deck is comprised of a rather robust removal package containing a trio of
Hero’s Downfall and a set of
Devour Flesh complimented by singletons of
Pharika’s Cure and
Ratchet Bomb, the latter very adept at removing both
Soldier or
Elemental tokens very handily.
Given the sheer power level of this deck there’s no doubt in my mind that it will continue to find a place in the new meta moving forward. Of the new cards from
Born of the Gods I am certain that
Bile Blight is the one that will impact this deck the most. Not only will it certainly occupy some slots in the decks removal package it also needs to be accounted for as an efficient way to clear your
Specter and even
Pack Rat before they grow too large. Another interesting removal spell is
Drown in Sorrow which in a pinch is another great way to clear out an army of tokens and other smaller creatures. I would like to see if Pain Seer is able to break through as a viable draw engine but would have to find a role that is somehow complimentary to
Underworld Connections. Finally with the printing of
Temple of Malice it will be interesting to see if there is a red splash added to this devotion deck, and if so is
Mogis, God of Slaughter one of the cards that will find a way into that build. Well, only time will tell and we have just a couple weeks to go before the new face of Standard starts to reveal.
