Every workday while the set is new, Insight takes a quick look at a deck featuring the latest additions from Phyrexia: All Will Be One. We finally got a release where the most common creature type isn't Human. But which top Pioneer deck picked up the most cards from it? Monowhite Humans!
Monowhite has been the format's most successful beatdown color for a while. The deck usually runs about 34 creatures, all of them Humans, and a playset of as the only noncreature spell. At least, both of these statements used to be true, and they used to be true for months. Now it appears neither is anymore.
The first big news concerns the noncreature slot, which nowadays goes increasingly often to . Brave the Elements has the undeniable advantage of getting the whole team past blockers or to protect it against damage-based mass removal. However, Ossification is favored against a single blocker. No less, it is favored against a threat. The jury may yet arrive at a different verdict on appeal, but so far it looks like the white deck quite prefers the catch-all spot removal.
Meanwhile, when it comes to protection and evasion, there's another addition that can make up in part for the loss of Brave. is so powerful that it snuck into the deck as the sole non-Human even in spite of . In practice, it turns out that an alpha strike led by, for example, one made unblockable and blockable but numerous retinue works well enough. Prior to that, protecting a crucial creature from removal, for example , is an important feature. People might tell you that Brave can do both, but what they actually mean when they say so is that it can do either. Skrelv on the other hand can really do both, first one, then the other.
Takumi Matsuura went 7-2 through the Pioneer Swiss rounds at last weekend's Pro Tour playing exactly such an updated build. In the Top 8 he then beat one Lotus Field and only fell in the semifinals against Green-White Auras, another Skrelv deck he had also beaten earlier in the tournament.
| Monowhite Humans by Takumi Matsuura, Top 8 at Pro Tour Phyrexia, Pioneer |
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| Main Deck | Sideboard |
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