Monoblack Presence Devotion (Nicknamed Paint It Black)
Black in pauper lack the presence it once had. The format is filled with U Delver Variants and Stompy and Burn
Most of these decks make use of greedy mana bases with low CMC curves to generate tempo advantage. They can even keep 1 landers!!
In order to punish the greed in the format, I must bring black back, may the opponents want it or not.
Since it's not a well known deck most of my opponents rarely care for having a 2 or 3 lander hand, making this deck even more effective.
All of the land enchantments generate devotion, making the merchant even better
It's very common to have opponents not playing any spells without the color of mana necessary and just discarding to hand size
Weaknesses:
Artifact Based Decks:
These decks have natural defenses agains this lock since they generate colored mana using their artifacts
Minor Weakness against bounce lands
Bounce lands can save other lands from the presences, but it's a minor weakness because most decks only use 4 of them,
and if you can wait to use the presence on a bounce land, it's less effective to return it to their hand. Making it "like" a timewalk
Monoblack decks:
They already know what's good. No lock for them.
So what do you do when the lock doesn't work?
You use a transformative sideboard!
Presences out:
Enter 6 of any combination of these that weren't in the main board: Gurmag, street wraith, blistergrug,
and 6 of any other sideboards depending on the opponents deck:
Duress
,
Shrivel
,
Wrench Mind
,
Tendrils of Corruption
,
Dead Weight
