Ok, so after playing heroic based decks for the last few weeks, I grew tired of always going 2-2 at FNM and decided to play something more competitive. I knew I wanted to play something with nykthos, because that is my favorite card at the moment, but couldn't afford all the stormbreath dragons and hydras for the red-green devotion deck i wanted to play. So after thinking about my local metagame, I decided on mono red devotion.
The idea behind this build was haste, haste, and more haste. my local meta is full of control strategies and mono-black decks full of spot removal. My thinking was that cards like ash zealot, shred-freak, and phoenix could get in at least one attack before the spot removal claimed them, thus lessening the blow so to speak.
After getting my opponent's life down, I would use devotion to finish them. mogis and purphoros were my finishers, while burning-tree set up for the kill. burning-tree emissary and nykthos are amazing together. I like to hold onto my emissaries untill i'm going in for the kill. Here are a few ways I was able to finish games with them:
1) haste creatures have opponent low on life. have two land, and a nykthos on field. multiple burning-trees, and a mogis in hand. tap the two lands to drop a burning-tree and use the mana they give to drop the other trees. then i use the mana from the last tree to tap nykthos for enough red mana to drop mogis for the win.
2) simular to #1 except have a purphoros on board. now my opponent takes an extra two damage for each tree and mogis i drop. pluss, now the devotion is there to let purphoros become a creature and attack.
I ended up finishing the FNM tournament 3-1, with my one lost being do to only drawing 2 land game two and having to mulligan to 4 game 3 do to drawing no land opening hand. so I might need to add more lands. idk.
Card I was surprised by: Purphoros. I originally just put him in the deck because I had him and wanted to play him, but I wasn't expecting him to be that much of a factor. Boy was I surprised. He won me at least one game in each of my matches. His burn ability really puts in work when dropping multiple creatures in a single turn with burning-tree. and his second ability is a nice mana sink, using the plethora of mana provided by nykthos to pump up all my attackers.
Card I was disappointed with: Firedrinker Satyr. Not having hast is bad enough, but the drawback of taking any damage he receives to the face makes enemy lightning strikes and helixes feel soul crushing.
