Orzhov Demons: How to Read and Adapt to a Changing Meta

Short Blurb before the article:

The Standard RCQs are done. The Standard RCs are done. So while this article is about Mono-Black Demons and Orzhov Demons, this article isn’t about Demons. By the time anyone is playing standard, an article about Demons would be irrelevant. 

 

This is an article about tournaments, deck selection, and how metagame evolution is constant. How original, I know, but hopefully this article offers useful insights with recent and potent examples. 

 

I would like to thank Caz, Jess, and Gavin for their time and thoughts as I interviewed and spoke with each of them for this piece. 

On May 18th, Gavin Meagher, a 21-year-old Magic player hailing from Texas, top 8d Regional Championship Hartford with Orzhov Demons. But this is the end of the story. To know how we got here, we need to start with Tarkir: Dragonstorm’s release and Cori-Steel Cutter. 

Cori-Steel Cutter is a card from Tarkir: Dragonstorm. Designed as a flurry payoff, the artifact sees significant competitive play in both Standard and Modern, as well as some impact in both Legacy and Vintage. 

Following its release, Izzet Prowess has become the dominant force in the Standard metagame. Initial iterations of the deck were built to kill incredibly quickly and utilized solely low damage removal spells and few to no bounce spells. 

Mono-Black Demons was built to exploit the deck's clear weakness: big creatures. Mono-Black Demons can be broken into effectively 3 parts: lands, disruption, and threats. The lands are all untapped and either basic swamps or colorless utility lands, a major boon. The disruption consists of hand attack and removal spells. The threats are all creatures that can win the game on their own through card advantage or just being big beaters. 

Against early iterations of Prowess, Mono-Black crushed the deck. With no way to effectively deal with cards like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, which would provide consistent lifegain and had high toughness, the deck would fold to 2-3 initial pieces of disruption and landing a single threat. 

On the weekend of May 3rd, Caz Rodriguez, having chosen Mono-Black Demons as his deck of choice, competed in the Minneapolis Regional Championship, the first of two US RCs. He played the deck for the reasons outlined above.

In his writings to me, he stated:

Leading to the RC, I brought mono black Demons and Izzet Cutter. In the last two weeks leading to the tournament, I played a lot of the two decks against each other and I was coming to a small pre-board win percentage in favor of Demons. I personally liked the options available post-board and having played a number of games of the matchup, paired with my assumption that Izzet Cutter would be the most played deck, I was happy with this matchup.

He further emphasized what he thought was the most important part of the matchup, “Qarsi Revenant is the biggest reason the deck exists. It’s an absolute powerhouse, I’m glad I played 3, and if again, I’d probably play 4.” 

In my own matches against Izzet leading up to Regional Championship Hartford, his words rang true as Qarsi Revenant carried countless games on its back, being a threat on its own or turning a Sheoldred or Archfiend into a massive lifelinker.

Caz Rodriguez was the sole Mono-Black demons pilot to top 32 the Minneapolis Regional Championship, winning $1,000 and an invite to Pro Tour Edge of Eternities. In making his deck selection, his philosophy hearkened back to an old Cedric Philips article neither he nor I could find but, as he relayed to me, “if you can better predict the metagame, select a deck that has bigger swings in win percentage. If you can stomp the top couple decks, but lose miserably to others, if you can get the right matchups, you’ll have a much easier path to winning a bigger tournament.” In his opinion, one which was proven correct by his tournament result, “Demons fit this description. I had comfortable matchups against the pixie, cutter, and red decks, so I was okay with bad matchups against things like domain and Omni because even then with those being bad, they weren’t entirely unwinnable.”

In his tournament, he lost the bad match-ups, once to Dimir Mid and twice to Zur Overlords, and he won the good matchups, beating Pixie twice, winning a match vs Mono-Red, and going a total of 8-0 vs Izzet Prowess. 

From this point, we transition from Caz to Gavin, Jess, and Quincy—a group of three very skilled players hailing from Texas. I was lucky enough to meet Jess during their top 8 of an NRG the week before the RC, as we both were playing Dimir Midrange, and they had a far better record than I.

After the Minneapolis Regional Championship, the three players were disillusioned by Jeskai Oculus. Jess stated, “But you know, everyone's kind of realized the deck [Jeskai Oculus] had a lot of variance issues with it. You know, when you were drawing well, you were unstoppable. But if you didn't draw well, you couldn't do anything about it.” Furthermore, Oculus experienced an often-unaddressed occurrence: a negative shift in the matchup. While Jess did not attend Minneapolis, from the results of their team members they commented, “the prowess matchup flipped from being positive in the European data to being negative after the prowess players adapted.” Then adding, “And that was something we hadn't thought about.” In the European RC, Oculus had a strong matchup against Prowess; however, between the European RC and the first US RC, Minneapolis, the matchup flipped from being good for Oculus to bad for Oculus. Izzet Prowess players had found successful sideboard strategies and popularized them. 

Going into the Hartford RC, Gavin kept this especially in mind when making his deck selection. Approaching the decision thoughtfully and carefully, not just a decision of what feels fun or strong. 

I'll start with the process for deck selection. Because that's something that a lot of people, I think, get wrong. Or they don't even try to do it right, which is difficult but necessary. A lot of people would just choose the deck that they think is strong without looking at all the options or they choose the deck they think is fun without looking at all the options, which is it's a fine way to go. But doing things right, just means doing them in a way that facilitates the highest possible win percentage regardless of preferences or biases. I think doing things right is important. And I learned that this time for sure, our process was pretty good. It was a good deck for the weekend.

For Gavin and co., being very intentional in considering options meant playing rogue decks, like Mono-Black Demons, and then innovating on them as well. 

By the weekend before RC Hartford, also the weekend of the Standard NRG in Mundelein, Gavin and Quincy were doing long and intense testing sessions with Orzhov Demons, having added a white splash for highly impactful sideboard cards, and Jess was competing in the NRG. Jess played Dimir Midrange to a top 8 finish, one of their two goals for the year, and left the tournament with a strong conclusion: Dimir Midrange’s Izzet Prowess matchup was too bad to seriously consider the deck for the Regional Championship the following weekend. 

In our interview, Gavin also pressed the importance of selectivity in testing partners, 

I mean, we have a lot of friends who play magic and even who play standard, but it's important to test with someone who is as invested as you. And someone you trust, just like, because if it's not someone you trust and they have opinions about the matchup, you've gotten nowhere because whether you think they're right or wrong, if you don't trust them their opinion doesn't mean enough to be helpful.

Having a testing partner that you trust means that you can both discuss and come to real conclusions. If you don’t trust them, then there is little to be gained. 

With Jess’s conclusion of Dimir Midrange’s unplayability and Quincy & Gavin’s extensive testing, the three had officially settled on a deck, Ozhov Demons, with one final question: What are the actual 75 cards to be registered? 

For this, the trio employed ‘The Elephant Method’, a deck construction theory written about in the 2013 SCG Article The Elephant Method: A Case Study by Zvi Mowshowitz. Jess elaborated, “So in the process of elephanting, when you're making your 75 for each matchup, you have to think about what matters in each matchup and what's your plan in each matchup, and how are you adapting to beat what your opponents plan is post-board in each matchup. So the act of making the deck construction right forces you to learn about the matchups and to learn the deck. It's really cool how you can really pack a lot of value into the maybe three, four hours we spent like when I think it was Wednesday night. Maybe it was Tuesday or Wednesday night that we made our 75.”

Gavin later added on to this idea by emphasizing the importance of this dedicated strategy in choosing sideboard cards. “Look at your mana cost and your mana curve as if your post-board deck was a main deck, which is really important because a lot of people will sideboard out two drops that are bad in a match up for four drops that are good in a match up. And by doing so, they ruin their mana curve. And a lot of win percentage is lost there.” Gavin emphasizes the importance of sideboarding not being a practice of taking out your worst cards and adding in your best cards, but rather building the best possible post-board configuration, which includes considering your mana curve and mana base. This is most characterized in the team’s lack of Temporary Lockdown in their 75. The 3 mana double white spell could not be supported by their mana base, allowing the three to choose other sideboard cards that may be less widely accepted, such as the two mana boardwipe that can not be Into the Floodmaw-ed, Pest Control.  

In my conversations with them, they remarked humorously regarding the way many of the cards they tested prior to using the elephant method were found. Gavin would scour the depths of Scryfall and sometimes timidly approach the others with outlandish proposals. Lord Skitter, Sewer King was one of these selections that turned out to be a great pick despite its low level of play. Lord Skitter was a great sideboard card for the weekend as graveyard hate that got around Clarion Conqueror, and a threat with incidental graveyard hate and trades well vs Domain leaving an army of 1/1s behind. Another option considered but the group decided against was Elenda, Saint of Dusk believing that Scorching shot would be a more prominent sideboard card than it ended up being. 

Finally, the crew ended up with a 75 that they felt confident in. The three ranged in their level of success, as any group of magic players, even great ones, will. Quincy hit some bad matchups and was out quickly, Jess Day 2d and unfortunately matched up against Gavin, losing the 75-card mirror round 1 of day 2. They ended 9-6 and met their 2 goals for their year early: Day 2ing an RC and top 8ing and NRG. Gavin went all the way and top 8d with the brew. 

Finally, I asked the three highly skilled players what they thought of banning cards out of Izzet Prowess given its prominence and heard a resounding no. These interviews were conducted about a month ago, so their opinions may have changed given the recent Pro Tour top 8 of 4 Mono-red players and 4 Izzet Prowess players. 

Jess stated that in their opinion, the deck was simply overplayed and expressed frustration with the state of the format. “Having a 40% metagame isn't fun. There's not a lot of variety. It forces decks to live or die by their prowess matchup. I think that there's a lot of rhetoric and magic that is very much like, oh, it's big, it's bad, we should ban it.” Concluding that nothing was worth a ban but it didn’t mean the format was in a great place. 

Caz added a similar sentiment but further elaborated on playing all decks to better understand their weaknesses. “Banning Cori-Steel Cutter? Just git gud nerd. But seriously, I don’t think any ban is needed on that card. Overall, the only card in standard I wouldn’t cry about seeing it go would be Monstrous Rage. But even then, I’m fine with it in. Adapt, don’t complain. Also, play with the broken cards. You may actually find you’re a good player, you were just unnecessarily handicapping yourself! Even then, playing the cards allows you to better see their weaknesses and play style so you can adapt your own game and play accordingly.”

Lastly, Gavin stated that while the deck was strong it was beatable. “Most people think it's really, really strong. And it is. But I do think that it's exceedingly beatable. The problem is that like, once, once prowess is at this point, is it, is that 30% meta share or whatever, they start to worry about beating the mirror. Like, if the versions that are tech for the mirror are really bad at being locked down and that kind of thing, you know. So I do think that it is, doesn't need a ban, at least not right now.”