Given that the only card with the word “devotion” was actually in the sideboard, G Devotion is a bit of a misnomer, it is really more of a ramp deck. Red Slogger is a weird, slow, ramping direct damage deck. What it wants to do is prolong the game until Pulse of the Forge can start doing ridiculous amount of damage. We weren’t sure how this would play out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
G1: I was playing Slogger and this was a game I may have mis-piloted. It was a slow game. Devotion had Courser of Kruphix and was getting lots of lands from it. Slogger just kept ramping and ramping. I burned away a Whisperwood Elemental, and this may have been incorrect. Or possibly I should’ve killed the Courser because of the lifegain and extra lands. Anyway, on the 2nd to last turn I was at 4 life and Devotion was at 24. I was facing certain death but during end step I could play Pulse of the Forge 3 times to do 12 damage, untap, and then if only I was at 3 life I could’ve won with 3 more Pulse of the Forge hits. But I was at 4 life, big difference. So just to prove the point I did 22 damage to my opponent and put him at 2 (5 pulses and a Magma Jet), then lost. After losing, in retrospect I wondered if there might have been a way to take 1 additional damage. There probably was, so… regrets. G Devotion 1-0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
G2: G Devotion stumbled on mana this game, and after dealing some damage I had him at 14 life and I was able to win by using Pulse of the Forge twice and Slogger’s ability 3 times (leaving me with only 2 cards in my library). 1-1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
G3: I decided to allow Devotion to untap with Polukranos and go Monstrous, even though I had 2 playable Shrapnel Blasts in hand, and it was probably a mistake, as I drew blanks and got overrun by threats. My plan was to surprise him with tons of direct damage and keep block Polukranos a couple times once I was low on life but it didn’t work out. Devotion 2-1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
G4: I couldn’t quite get my mana ramp working this game, and Nylea’s Disciple from the sideboard gained him 13 life. He had 9 creatures in play when I lost. Devotion 3-1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We played a G5 for funsies and Slogger lost again. I guess it’s just too mana hungry and slow, but I think I could improve at playing this deck, so I might invite it again next year and see if I can do a little better. It’s always tricky to pilot a deck that WANTS to lose life. But really, it’s not the kind of deck I would expect could compete with the all-time greats. Interesting deck, though!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Given that the only card with the word “devotion” was actually in the sideboard, G Devotion is a bit of a misnomer, it is really more of a ramp deck. Red Slogger is a weird, slow, ramping direct damage deck. What it wants to do is prolong the game until Pulse of the Forge can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brandonpatton.com\/magic\/ultimatestandard\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brandonpatton.com\/magic\/ultimatestandard\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brandonpatton.com\/magic\/ultimatestandard\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brandonpatton.com\/magic\/ultimatestandard\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brandonpatton.com\/magic\/ultimatestandard\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/brandonpatton.com\/magic\/ultimatestandard\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":426,"href":"http:\/\/brandonpatton.com\/magic\/ultimatestandard\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions\/426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brandonpatton.com\/magic\/ultimatestandard\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brandonpatton.com\/magic\/ultimatestandard\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brandonpatton.com\/magic\/ultimatestandard\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}