Mono Black

General Plan#

The matchup against Mono Black is very interesting because it isn’t played just on combo speed: it’s mostly played on the ability to identify which plan has the highest chance of going all the way.

Mono Black is a midrange deck with a very solid base: discard, removal, creatures that apply pressure, and post-board several types of hate. It isn’t a deck that kills you immediately like Sligh or Goblins, but it’s very good at dismantling your plan piece by piece.

The hard part of the matchup is figuring out whether the game should be played through:

• Survival of the Fittest;
• Hermit Druid;
• or a grindier plan.

Your opening hand often contains multiple possible plans. In most cases the opponent chooses for you: if they open Swamp, Duress and strip your Survival, the plan automatically becomes Hermit Druid. Other times, though, the opponent may open with a less informative play, like land-go or Cabal Therapy without knowing what to name, and then it’s up to you to decide which threat to present.

The general rule is:

Against Mono Black, you have to follow the plan that wins by going through the fewest possible opponent interactions.

The fastest plan isn’t always the best. The most powerful plan isn’t always the safest. You have to figure out, game by game, which axis is least exposed.

Game 1#

Survival vs Hermit Druid#

In Game 1, Survival of the Fittest is often the best plan. The reason is that Survival lets you play a more flexible game. You can tutor different creatures, adapt to the board, build a less fragile line, and not depend entirely on a single Hermit Druid activation.

Hermit Druid can still be excellent, but its lines are often more complex and more exposed. Mono Black can interact in several ways:

• removal & edict effects;
• discard spells;
• graveyard hate, especially Withered Wretch;
• board pressure that shrinks your available time.

The main problem is exactly Withered Wretch. It’s a card that can make it very hard to rely on clean graveyard lines, because it threatens to remove the key pieces right when you try to assemble the combo.

When Hermit Druid Is the Right Plan#

Hermit Druid is still a very strong plan, especially when you can activate it in a way that makes the opponent’s removal less relevant.

One of the reasons Hermit can be good is that, once activated, you can build a line that goes over many traditional removal spells. If you use Krosan Reclamation to put Animate Dead back into the library and then sacrifice the creatures you have on board with Cabal Therapy, you make cards like the following less effective:

• Smother;
• Vendetta;
• Chainer’s Edict;
• Funeral Charm,…

This way, the opponent may have interaction in hand but can’t always use it effectively against your position.

The point is that Hermit Druid shouldn’t be treated as just “I play it, if it untaps I win.” Against Mono Black you have to ask:

After the activation, which interaction can still stop me?

If the answer is “few” or “none,” then the Hermit plan is great. If instead the line loses to Wretch, to a removal spell, to an edict, or to something already in play, it’s better to look for another axis.

Post-Sideboard#

Game 2 and Game 3 change a lot.

Mono Black tends to increase the amount of hate, especially against the graveyard. It may sound strange, but post-board the deck often has even more tools to interact with your lines: Phyrexian Furnace, Withered Wretch, Tormod’s Crypt or similar effects.

For this reason, post-board you should slow down and slightly change the way you keep hands.

What to Cut#

In general, post-board you can consider cutting:

• some discard spells;
• often one Hermit Druid;
• a number of Birds of Paradise, if you’re bringing in Pyroclasm.

The reason for cutting some discard is that against Mono Black you don’t necessarily want to play a symmetric resource war. They’re built better than you for that kind of game. Your discard spells can be useful, but they aren’t always the best way to win.

Cutting one Hermit Druid makes sense because post-board the Hermit plan is more exposed to graveyard hate. It doesn’t mean abandoning it completely, but reducing dependence on that line.

When Pyroclasm comes in, you should cut a number of Birds of Paradise, because you don’t want to increase the risk of killing your own acceleration on the turns when you need to clear the board.

What to Bring In#

Post-board you want to increase the density of cards that let you play a more robust game.

The cards to consider are:

• Enlightened Tutor, as an additional Survival;
• Pyroclasm, Githu Slinger and Swords to Plowshares, to handle the creature package;
• Naturalize and Ray of Revelation;
• Monk Realist and Uktabi Orangutan.

Enlightened Tutor is very important because it works almost like a fifth Survival. Against a deck full of discard, increasing the virtual number of copies of your key cards is fundamental.

Naturalize, Ray of Revelation, and the respective creatures are mainly there to handle cards like Dystopia, Engineered Plague or Masticore (if you saw it game one), which all can be problematic sideboard cards.

Mulligans and Post-Board Hand Selection#

Post-board you should significantly change the way you evaluate hands.

With hFEB you’re often used to mulliganing until you find a combo piece, like Survival or Hermit Druid. Against Mono Black, though, this approach can be very risky.

If you mulligan to five looking for a hand with Survival, and then the opponent Duresses away that very Survival, the game can be practically over.

For this reason, against Mono Black it’s often better to keep playable hands, even if they don’t have an immediate combo piece. Hands like:

Four lands and three spells.

Or, more generally, hands with a good distribution of lands and removals, can be better than explosive but fragile hands.

The idea is to accept that the game can come down to the top of the deck. It isn’t the kind of game you always want to play, but against Mono Black it can be one of the best ways to avoid losing immediately to the first discard.

The Midrange Plan#

Against Mono Black, especially post-board, you should remember that your deck can also win by playing a midrange plan.

It isn’t the main plan, but it exists.

You can hardcast creatures like:

• Triskelion;
• Karmic Guide;
• even Akroma, Angel of Wrath, in very long games.

Likewise, you can win with simpler lines: resolve Volrath’s Shapeshifter, discard a relevant creature, and either attack or build a threat that’s hard to deal with.

Your creatures cost a lot, but they’re more powerful than Mono Black’s average creatures. If you can resolve them, they can often win the game on their own.

This is important because it lets you not always depend on the pure combo. Sometimes all you need is to survive, reach enough mana, and turn a single strong card into a decisive threat.

Problem Cards#

Withered Wretch#

Withered Wretch is probably the most important card to respect.

It interacts directly with your graveyard and can break many of the cleanest lines. Against Wretch you can’t take for granted that the graveyard stays intact, nor that a Survival or Hermit sequence is automatically safe.

It has to be removed, worked around, or forced into spending mana inefficiently. If it stays on the board too long, every graveyard-based line becomes much more complicated.

Dystopia#

Dystopia is one of the most dangerous post-board cards.

It hits many of your most important permanents, including Survival of the Fittest, and can force you to sacrifice fundamental resources turn after turn.

For this reason, when you have Survival in play, try whenever possible to also have another green or white permanent to sacrifice. It isn’t always easy, and sometimes it requires unintuitive plays: not blocking, taking damage, or not pitching Elvish Spirit Guide but paying three mana to play it as a creature.

These plays can look inefficient, but they often save Survival.

A typical example:

You have Survival in play. The opponent resolves Dystopia. You have another green or white creature to sacrifice. You keep Survival. You use Survival to tutor Monk Realist. You remove Dystopia. From there you can win the game.

This line is very important. Protecting Survival for just one more turn can be all it takes to turn a difficult position into a win.

Discard and Pressure Creatures#

Mono Black also runs the classic package of discard and creatures that apply pressure.

Cards like Duress, Cabal Therapy, Hypnotic Specter and Ravenous Rats, and other similar threats can create games where you progressively lose access to your resources.

Hypnotic Specter is particularly annoying because it combines pressure and random discard. If it starts connecting, it can dismantle both the combo plans and the midrange plans.

For this reason, post-board removal and Pyroclasm aren’t just there to handle Withered Wretch: they’re also there to prevent the opponent’s creatures from turning the game into a value spiral.

Playing Off the Top#

One of the most distinctive parts of the matchup is that you often have to accept playing off the top.

It isn’t an ideal situation, and personally it isn’t the most fun way to play the deck, but against Mono Black it can be correct.

The reason is simple: if both players trade resources in the early turns, you have many draws that can flip the game immediately. A Survival, an Enlightened Tutor, a Shapeshifter, a key creature, or a recursion line can turn an apparently empty game into a sudden win.

Mono Black is very good at stripping resources from the hand, but it isn’t always equally good at beating a single high-impact draw, especially if the board is under control.

So don’t be afraid of keeping more solid, less explosive hands if they let you reach a stage of the game where every strong draw of yours is live.