Single(color) Minded Decks

Hello there once again, today there really isn't any new groundbreaking spoilers, but instead some expansions upon what we already knew. Well, there is one spoiler, it's not too exciting, but I do have some food for thought about it, so let's take a look:

The Dredge-Uh-Vine deck loses Extractor Demon as a very powerful target to bring up and do insane damage with alongside its Doppleganger. While much less powerful, this Pheonix has the graveyard recursion ability, which doesn't even require you to play red. Vengivine doesn't require you to play green (although you should anyways because of Fauna Shaman) so theoretically you could play a mono-blue deck and bring back up Vengivine and Kuldotha Pheonix from the grave.

With that in mind, I want to point out how dramatically the core of decks is shifting from a few years back. In the time of Lorwyn-Shards standard, there was no such thing as a mono-colored deck that was good (except mono-red because it's a deck that will never die) and one of the best decks was 5-color control. Yes, all 5 colors! That was because there was the vivid lands in lorwyn that could tap for a mana of any color, all the lands in shadowmoore/eventide that could create crazy color combinations with whatever mana you provide (put an island into Cascade Bluffs and get back RR), and Reflecting Pool from Shadowmoore. On top of that, there was the shard-lands from Shards of Alara, the pain lands from the core set, and the tribal lands from Lorwyn/Morningtide. All in all, it was WAY too easy to mana fix, and being multi-colored was very easy and convenient. Many decks didn't even bother with such primitive tools called basic lands. That was 2008. Flash forward to a couple weeks from now where Shards will rotate out of standard, and multi-colored will be much more of a rarity.

Zendikar block has a overwhelming total of 3 multi-colored cards. Novablast Wurm has never seen play, and probably never will because that's the kind of ability you want in your UW Control deck more than a GW Beatdown deck. Wrexial I think is a fine card, but the meta has all been about creatures so crazy spells to steal from your opponent's graveyeard consisted of utility stuff and that's about it (unless you're against pyromancer ascension, but by the time you can attack with Wrexial, they should be taking infinite turns and burning you to death). And finally we have Sarkhan the Mad, who is aggressive and very difficult to use. He showed up in Jund decks, but has never really found a home. Unfortunately, his aggressive abilities are held back by the whole card advantage thing and the fact that to make him have good card advantage you have to pull more strings than it's worth.

Then in M11 we had no multi-colored cards, as goes with the WotC policy of not having overly complicated things like multi-colored cards in core sets (no I'm not lying... They think multi-colored is too dificult of a concept for new players.... BOO!!!!). And the next set coming out is artifact based, and only has 1 multi-colored card so far, and a third of the set has been previewed. That being said, the only multi-colored card is the weakest of the 3 planeswalkers and a very awkward one at that. If your opponent plays a Day of Judgement, he justs chills and does absolutely nothing. Yes, he can save a select creature of yours from a Day of Judgement, but that's about as good as it gets when it comes to that key piece of the UW strategy.

So basically from those 4 multicolored cards, theres no reason to play a multi-colored deck unless you acually feel the need to go to another color for synergy or to expand on your strategy. Ex: UW Control will still be a deck because blue and white go so well together to make a nice control deck. However, all shards will be gone from being decks. It is possible to support them, but it will become more difficult. There are plenty of viable mono-colored strategies, and many decks could be so artifact heavy that they are technically mono-colored, but hardly use cards of that color. An example of that would be a mono-white deck whose only white cards are things like Tempered Steel to give your whole team a huge pump. With the mainly colorless dekc though, it becomes amazingly easier to splash, because it's almost impossible to get color skrewed when 3/4 of your deck doesn't have color requirements. With that in mind, splashing blue for the likes of Trinket Mage is easy, and probably encouraged.

I'm going to go around the wheel and discuss mono-colored deck possibilities in each color:
White - Equipment deck with Kor and Leonin getting pumps for being equipped
Blue - Utilize Grand Architect to pump out all the insane, expensive artifacts. Run both Platinum cards (Angel/Emporion) without any worries of them costing too much for their effect and slow roll the victory
Black - Vampires with backup from Geth to provide a dominating undead army and run the board
Red - Mono red aggro with Koth adding more mid-range firepower
Green - Ramp up to casting Eldrazi using the likes of Primeval Titan

Some other decks that will likely be viable:
Life-gain
UW Control
UB Infect/Proliferate
GW Tokens
Artifacts

Artifacts are solid in the Esper colors (isn't that weird how that works?) thanks to the likes of Tempered Steel, Trinket Mage, and Phylacatory Lich. An artifact deck that I think will actually be relevent will be a Myr tribal deck. There are 41 cards with Myr on them in Scars of Mirroden according to the Orb of Insight. Compare that to the entire Mirroden block, where there were 22 Myr Cards! I initially said Myr Battlesphere was a janky card, but the more Myrs are released, the more I see it as a viable win condition. In both of the articles today on the mothership, we got cards that make Myr much better. The first let us get a quick army or Myr and gain card advantage by having every single artifact card effectively gain Kicker: 1. If you paid the kicker cost, put a 1/1 Myr artifact token creature into play. Then if getting more for your cards isn't enough, if your Myr die, you can just bring them back to the Reservoir and play them again (and then use the Myrsmith's ability again and get more Myr!). The Myrsmith costs 1W, which isn't a drawback at all, because as Jacob Van Lunen explained, we could just use white for removal and Tempered Steel (yeah this is like the 5th time I have mentioned him so far, get it as soon as you can!).

Let's say your little Myr can't get through, that's where the Myr Battlesphere comes in! With 7 toughness, there isn't much that can kill it, and whenever you attack, even if they have a wall or chump blocker in the way, you can just make all your Myr become pingers for a moment and still nail your opponent for lots of damage each turn. You're playing white anyways, so why not tap all your Myr, incite a counter-attack and hit them with Safe Passage before taking the turn back and swinging for insane damage and ultimate victory.

Mono-white Myr is essentially a deck that is completely contained within Scars of Mirroden, so I look forward to cracking some packs and putting the whole thing together. Right now I am not sure whether Steel Overseer will have a place in the deck or not, but I hope he does because I just traded for a full playset of Overseers!

Well, that is all for now. And just remember, if you see sketchy oil chasing you some day, don't touch it, it will make you Phyrexian! And you know what they say, "Once you go black Phyrexian you never go back"