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Mono-Color Decks for Midnight Hunt Standard

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Hello everyone. As preview season for Innistrad: Crimson Vow chugs along, I continue to search for fun and innovative decks for you to play at your local Friday Night Magic events or against your friends. This week, I have five mono-colored decks for you to try out. Let's get started.

Mono-Blue

The first deck I have for you this week is Mono-Blue. If you're looking for a deck that walks the line between being a control deck and being a midrange deck, you might want to give this one a shot. Let's take a look at it.


Concerted Defense
As I mentioned before the decklist, this deck has a lot of tools that your typical control deck has. Both Jwari Disruption // Jwari Ruins and Concerted Defense are soft counters that can work well in the early stages of the game, but they lose their effectiveness as the game progresses. Reject is another soft counter, but it can often be difficult for your opponent to pay the three-mana required to block this spell, plus if it does counter something, that spell is exiled rather than going to the graveyard. This is especially useful against creatures your opponent cast that have disturb abilities.

This deck has more creatures than you'll typically see in a standard control deck. Delver of Secrets is a throwback to our original visit to Innistrad. By transforming him, you'll create a 3/2 flying threat that might be able to finish off your opponent. Suspicious Stowaway // Seafaring Werewolf can also whittle down your opponent's life total, albeit slowly. Since it can't be blocked in either it's daybound or nightbound forms, your opponent will need to find some means of removing it from play before they lose too much of their health. It's also a great source of card looting for you as well.

Mono-Black

Moving around the color wheel, we move to our Mono-Black deck. This deck isn't afraid of sacrificing its own creatures for value. Let's take a look at it.


The Meathook Massacre
The Meathook Massacre is the most expensive card from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, but it is worth every penny, in my opinion. For a mere two Black mana, you get a legendary enchantment that causes life loss for your opponent whenever you have a creature die. It also gains you life whenever one of your opponent's creatures dies. By adding additional mana when you cast The Meathook Massacre, you have a removal spell that can deal with any threat. Since it provides -X/-X to each creature, no creature is safe from this effect. This includes creatures that are indestructible. Plus, this effect doesn't target, so those with ward or hexproof aren't immune either.

To maximize the amount of life your opponent will lose to The Meathook Massacre, this deck includes a variety of creatures with a low toughness. That makes your creatures perfect for chump blocking with. This deck also includes playsets of creatures like Eyetwitch and Shambling Ghast that have effects that will happen upon their death, making you want to chump block with them even more. All of these creatures dying also help pump up the loyalty of Lolth, Spider Queen. This can offer you the chance to use her -8 loyalty ability to create an emblem that guarantees that a minimum of eight points of damage will be taken by your opponent if any of your creatures go unblocked during combat. That extra damage ends games quickly.

Mono-Red

Next, I have a Mono-Red Goblin deck that looks to be a lot of fun. Let's check it out.


Battle Cry Goblin
It's no secret, I love fast, aggressive decks. Based on that statement, it won't be a shock that I'm looking forward to trying this deck out on Magic Arena. Thanks to the activated ability of Battle Cry Goblin, every creature in this deck has the potential to have haste. That can make things difficult for your opponent, as they won't know when it is safe to attack with everything or when they'll need to hold some creatures back as blockers.

Battle Cry Goblin also provides all of your Goblins a +1/+0 boost when you activate it, which you can do multiple times in a turn. That's not the only bonus your Goblins can get, though. Hobgoblin Bandit Lord provides all other Goblins you control with a +1/+1 bonus. Since this Goblin Rogue isn't legendary, you can have multiple copies of it on the battlefield, each providing their own bonus. You can also gain a temporary bonus by casting You See a Pair of Goblins. This instant can either create two 1/1 Goblin creature tokens for you, or it can give all of your creatures a +2/+0 bonus until the end of the turn. This can be a great spell to cast when making a huge alpha strike.

Mono-Green

Up next is Mono-Green. This deck has seen a lot of play on Magic Arena and elsewhere, and you may have encountered it in the past. Let's take a look at the deck.


Wrenn and Seven
The two-card combo of Wrenn and Seven and Esika's Chariot can wreak havoc on an unprepared opponent. The best way to optimize this is to play Esika's Chariot on turn four. One the following turn, play Wrenn and Seven. Next, use Wrenn and Seven's -3 loyalty ability to create a Treefolk creature token whose power and toughness are equal to the number of lands you control. This should be at least four, which allows the newly created token to crew Esika's Chariot. When you attack with Esika's Chariot, you get to create a token that's a copy of a token you control. Ideally, you'll make a copy of the Treefolk token. Repeat this as often as you can and you'll soon have an army of massive Treefolk tokens.

While this combo can be an effective way to win, there are plenty of other beefy creatures in this deck to help you get a victory. Werewolf Pack Leader is a 3/3 for two mana. It also has a way to gain a couple of points of power in addition to trample for the turn. Kazandu Mammoth // Kazandu Valley will often be a 5/5, assuming you achieve landfall for the turn. Old-Growth Troll is a 4/4 with trample for three mana. When it dies, you gain an enchantment that allows you to create additional mana and can be sacrificed to create a 4/4 Troll Warrior creature token with trample. Finally, you have Lair of the Hydra, which can become a huge Hydra creature, depending on the amount of mana you pump into it. As you can see, this deck has numerous routes to victory, and all are difficult to deal with.

Mono-White

The final deck I have for you this week is Mono-White. This creature-heavy deck has multiple ways of gaining +1/+1 counters and has multiple ways of dealing with an opponent's threats. Let's take a look at it.


Luminarch Aspirant
As I mentioned before, this deck is rolling in +1/+1 counters. Early on, Luminarch Aspirant will give a creature you control a +1/+1 counter at the beginning of your combat. Star Pupil enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter that it will give (along with any other counters it has acquired along the way) to another creature you control. Codespell Cleric gives any creature you control a +1/+1 counter if it is the second spell you've cast during your turn. Similarly, Monk of the Open Hand rewards you with a +1/+1 counter for itself when you cast your second spell each turn. Finally, Homestead Courage can be cast twice for a single White mana (each time) to provide a creature you control a +1/+1 counter and vigilance for the turn.

This deck also has a few ways to deal with problematic spells your opponent might cast. Elite Spellbinder allows you to increase the mana value of a spell in your opponent's hand by two mana. Even though this is just a temporary solution, it can be a quite effective means of slowing down your opponent, since they'll be overpaying for that spell. Skyclave Apparition exiles a nontoken permanent with a mana value of four or less when it enters play. While your opponent will get an Illusion creature token when Skyclave Apparition leaves the battlefield, they'll no longer have access to the exiled card. Finally, Brutal Cathar // Moonrage Brute will exile any of your opponent's creatures until Brutal Cathar leaves the battlefield. While this works only against creatures, there's no mana value it doesn't work against, and your opponent will get that creature back if Brutal Cathar should die.

Wrapping Up

I love mono-colored decks because you never have to worry about not having mana of a color you need. These decks provide a lot of stability and are perfect to use on Magic Arena to meet the requirements of your daily tasks. These will also be good decks to use right after Innistrad: Crimson Vow releases, while you're still hunting down the specific cards you need for your new brews.

What do you think of these decks? Do you have any suggestions for improvements? Let me know by leaving a comment below. Also, feel free to share this article with your friends anywhere on social media. And be sure to join me here again next week as I continue my search for innovative decks in Standard. I'll see you then!

-Mike Likes

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