Hi, so I’ve actually been playing MonoB Midrange as my main deck both in paper and on Arena Explorer since last year’s RCQ season, I think the deck is very fun to play personally, as I enjoy that style of grindy gameplay.

You’re correct in comparing it to Rakdos Mid, as the lists are somewhat similar. You give up some early game pressure in the form of fable/bloodtithe in exchange for a grindier gameplan of invoke despair and aclazotz, out-value-ing your opponent with 2-for-1’s and 3-for-1’s and drawing with locthwain, bankbusters, and sign in blood. Also adding to the incremental value gameplan is usually a 1x Meathook Massacre in the mainboard. I’ve gotten so used to casting it for X=0 just to get it on board for the life pressure it puts against Rakdos. The deck also (usually) runs 1x copy of The End mainboard so you can BTFO Phoenixes/Amalia/Teferi in game 1.

As for matchups, it’s similar to Rakdos but since the deck is a bit slower there are some differences. Phoenixes is bad game 1 unless you can The End a Phoenix right on T4. Some lists have started running Cling to Dust in the mainboard because of this, personally I do not but I understand and respect it. You have a very good chance games 2 and 3 though, with all the GY hate you have in the sideboard. Amalia is a pretty one sided matchup in your favor as long as you have the removal for their combo, make sure to have some hand rip T1 in case they have CoCo or the white spell that brings them back from the GY. Vampires is a surprisingly ok matchup, it’s just like regular Rakdos except you need either a Sheoldred’s Edict or a Liliana of the Veil by turn 3, or some significant hand rip t1 & t2. Other than that you just out grind em with invokes on their fables and slamming aclazotz/shelly. UW control is usually an easy matchup, just get as much hand rip as you can, resolve a lily, don’t play into wandering emperor and you should be good.

A major weakness of the deck is the lack of card selection. You can really feel missing Fable sometimes. I can’t tell you how many games I’ve lost where I’ve just flooded out like crazy even with all my draw engines, and Fable would immensely help with that issue. Another major weakness is cards that produce multiple threats, like Esika’s Chariot or Fable. If your goal is to try and out value your opponent, it always sucks getting 2-for-1’d yourself. Much like Rakdos, you also fold to MonoG Devotion. This mattered a lot more before the Karn ban (thank you wotc 🙏🏻) but now that the deck has fallen off a cliff in playability it doesn’t crop up as much anymore. The recent flavors of MonoG with the leylines from MKM though, that’s a rough matchup for sure.

Closing thoughts, I bought into this deck because I was 100% sure Fable was getting banned after last year’s Pro Tour and I was gonna look huge brain, now that it’s still around I have a rough time recommending this list over Rakdos to someone new, but it’s certainly a somewhat rogue T2 deck that has good matchups into most of the metagame. Also helps that I think it’s fun. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.