Mainboard Naturalize

I don’t usually metagame that much. I would much rather play a deck I like and hope its good than try to metagame and play a deck I don’t necessarily like as much and which will cost me a lot of money. However, there’s of course room to metagame within the decks.

Right now, I think one good metagame question is whether you should play [scryfall]Naturalize[/scryfall] mainboard.

You should note that [scryfall]Naturalize[/scryfall] is used as a generic stand-in for all effects that get rid of enchantments and/or artifacts. These include [scryfall]Unravel the Aether[/scryfall], [scryfall]Revoke Existence[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Destructive Revelry[/scryfall].

The real question here is whether there are enough question out there for these to answer. I think, yes.

Looking at the decks I see at my local FNM and on stream when I watch include Monoblack Devotion (sometimes with splash in any other color), Monoblue Devotion, UWx control, Rw Burn, Big Boros, a lot of variants of GR Monsters, Selesnya Aggro, and Jund Monsters. Of course there’s all sorts of brews out there. I myself currently play a Monoblack Aggro. There’s also been a resurgence of hexproof decks, this time in the form of Naya, and Dregde.

What question do these present?

Monoblack Devotion has [scryfall]Underworld Connections[/scryfall], which is kind of a key card for it. The deck is basically a control deck which exchanges cards for cards until it can bury the opponent in card advantage. Also, after boarding, it might have [scryfall]Erebos, God of the Dead[/scryfall].

Monoblue Devotion is largely relying on [scryfall]Thassa, God of the Sea[/scryfall], even though it probably finishes more games with [scryfall]Master of Waves[/scryfall] and often has [scryfall]Bident of Thassa[/scryfall].

UWx Control wouldn’t probably be even a playable deck without [scryfall]Detention Sphere[/scryfall] which is just very versatile and can sometimes make huge hits against cards like [scryfall]Pack Rat[/scryfall].

Big Boros usually has a mix of [scryfall]Heliod, God of the Sun[/scryfall]s and [scryfall]Purphoros, God of the Forge[/scryfall]s, as well as a [scryfall]Spear of Heliod[/scryfall] or two.

GR Monsters now has [scryfall]Xenagos, God of the Revels[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Courser of Kruphix[/scryfall], which happens to be an enchantment creature. Sometimes they’ll use a [scryfall]Nylea, God of the Hunt[/scryfall] to get their big monsters to go over random chump blockers.

Selesnya Aggro has [scryfall]Boon Satyr[/scryfall] and possibly [scryfall]Unflinching Courage[/scryfall], although I think that would force the deck into more of a midrange territory.

[scryfall]Jund Monsters[/scryfall] comes in a lot of different varieties, but seems to often include [scryfall]Courser of Kruphix[/scryfall] and/or [scryfall]Underworld Connections[/scryfall] for card advantage.

My Monoblack Aggro plays [scryfall]Underworld Herald[/scryfall].

Naya Hexproof of course plays plenty of enchantments, including [scryfall]Ethereal Armor[/scryfall], [scryfall]Unflinching Courage[/scryfall], [scryfall]Madcap Skills[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Gift of Orzhova[/scryfall].

Dredge plays [scryfall]Nighthowler[/scryfall], [scryfall]Whip of Erebos[/scryfall], and often [scryfall]Herald of Torment[/scryfall].

The only deck without an enchantment in it is probably the Rw Burn.

So, to me, if you are able to play enchantment removal, do so. It just has so many targets. Removing artifacts is much less important, because the major artifacts used (practically only the weapons) are also enchantments. Since there are plenty of gods out there, I’d rather use [scryfall]Revoke Existence[/scryfall] or [scryfall]Unravel the Aether[/scryfall] than bb greedy and hope for two damage from [scryfall]Destructive Revelry[/scryfall], although, you can still target the gods and it will still deal the damage even if the target isn’t actually destroyed.

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