Cantrips in Pioneer Devotion
Mono Green Devotion has a long history with powerful cantrips. From some of the format’s first bans – Oath of Nissa and Once Upon a Time – to newer printings like Invasion of Ixalan and the new Up the Beanstalk, the deck has used card selection to maintain the consistency needed to remain in the upper tiers throughout Pioneer’s history.
Cantrips generally fill two purposes in Devotion. First, they dig towards your powerful engines and payoffs such as Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx or Karn, the Great Creator. Second, they stay on the battlefield to add to your devotion count.
My Mono Green list following the release of Wilds of Eldraine looks like this:
Oath of Nissa
Up the Beanstalk might be the new card, but let’s start with the cards it could be replacing. Oath is the classic Mono Green cantrip, printed all the way back in 2016 and having been used in Pioneer Devotion through most of its history, with the exception of a brief period in which it was banned.
For most of its history, Oath didn’t really have much competition. Other green cantrips included cards like Adventurous Impulse, which is more limited in what it finds and doesn’t provide devotion, or Nylea’s Presence, which – while it’s an all star in Enigmatic Incarnation decks – is wildly inefficient in Mono Green and doesn’t dig enough to be worth it. Up until the printing of March of the Machine, Oath of Nissa was essentially the only viable choice.
Oath’s main advantage over the other options is that it is only one mana instead of two. It’s very easy to find a moment when you have an extra mana open. Oath of Nissa fits into your curve where you couldn’t fit Invasion of Ixalan or Up the Beanstalk in.
Oath being one mana enables you to keep some risky hands–for instance, a hand with a single land, two mana dorks, and an Oath of Nissa is a pretty common occurrence, and Oath being able to find a land on turn two enables you to keep it without too much fear of a Fatal Push or similar effect removing your elf and crippling your mana development.
Oath of Nissa also digs deeper than Up the Beanstalk, at least at the baseline of only counting Up the Beanstalk’s enters-the-battlefield trigger. Compared to Invasion of Ixalan, it sees fewer cards, but does see more per mana spent (which I don’t think is the most relevant advantage, but is worth keeping in mind).
Oath is a legendary enchantment. Being legendary is primarily a downside, as it slightly hurts your devotion counts. There are rare situations where Oath of Nissa being legendary and easy to put in the graveyard does benefit you.
I remember a game, for instance, where I won by casting Cityscape Leveler, using its cast trigger to destroy my own Cavalier of Thorns and put Oath back on top of my deck, then drawing it off of a Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner trigger and using it to dig deeper and find a Karn. Those situations are pretty niche, however, and reducing our devotion count is enough of a downside that I’m going to consider Oath being legendary a con.
It’s also worth mentioning the additional text on Oath of Nissa, which essentially acts as Chromatic Lantern for planeswalkers specifically. This is something that Green Devotion has taken advantage of in the past, playing off-color spells like Teferi, Who Slows the Sunset or Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God. The deck has mostly moved away from these kinds of spells, but Oath fixing your mana is at least worth keeping in mind for certain builds of Devotion.
Invasion of Ixalan
I’ve personally been pretty happy with a split of Invasion and Oath of Nissa over the past few months. The biggest advantage that Invasion has is digging five cards deep, which makes it pretty hard to miss with. Oath of Nissa in comparison will very rarely whiff entirely, but will occasionally only find some combination of lands, dorks, and cards such as Wolfwillow Haven or Storm the Festival which can’t be chosen.
(Click to see backside)
This possibility makes it a bit less flexible compared to Invasion of Ixalan, as Invasion can be cast later in the game without much fear of finding only mana. Additionally, multiple Invasions can sit in play at once, contributing to your devotion count and giving it another edge over Oath of Nissa.
Another major advantage of Invasion of Ixalan over Oath of Nissa is the flip side. Belligerent Regisaur is a 4/3 with trample, and gains indestructible when you cast a spell. In fair matchups, flipping Invasion can be surprisingly relevant, as it’s a decent two-for-one in these situations.
Invasion being a battle also allows for some other tricks. Against control, attacking Invasion for four or more damage serves two purposes. First, it allows you to gain information. If a control player allows the attack to go through, it’s more likely that they have either a counterspell they are holding up or a wrath effect like Supreme Verdict to answer the Regisaur, and you can adjust your play patterns accordingly. Meanwhile, if they destroy your creature in response, you can intuit that they are unlikely to have a wrath.
Second, although counterspells are still a possibility, forcing a control opponent to tap down their lands to prevent Invasion from flipping gives you an opportunity to force through a powerful threat, especially if you can cast two in one turn. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx in particular makes this play pattern common, allowing you to resolve threats such as Old-Growth Troll or Karn, the Great Creator.
Green Devotion is a deck that makes a lot of mana, but the one extra mana to cast Invasion of Ixalan is a pretty real cost. In particular, Invasion is a lot worse in the first couple of turns when you likely don’t have enough mana yet to cast Invasion alongside another spell.
In addition to the earlier example of a one land hand being helped out by Oath of Nissa, the extra mana means you can’t play if off of Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner untapping a land if you play her on turn two off a mana dork (or if you play her on turn three without accelerants).
It also means it costs three mana to play Invasion of Ixalan into a dork – at which point the benefits of playing additional elves are beginning to fall off. For this reason, I’ve generally stuck to a split of two Invasion and two or three Oath of Nissa, which has played very well for me over the past few months.
Up the Beanstalk
With the release of Wilds of Eldraine, Green Devotion has received its newest cantrip option in Up the Beanstalk. This is a card that has justifiably seen a lot of hype for Modern, but I think it’s flown a bit under the radar in Pioneer, where I think it is still one of the best cards in the set – if not the best.
Surprisingly, I found it to have largely been ignored even for Mono Green, all while other cards which I think are completely unplayable have been controversial topics of debate as to whether Green wants them. I’m pretty confident in Up the Beanstalk, though.
So why do I think Up the Beanstalk is so good? Going back to the two purposes I’ve described for cantrips in Pioneer, it fills them both (digging and providing devotion), but does a much worse job at digging, guaranteeing only one card seen vs three from Oath of Nissa or five from Invasion of Ixalan.
Two mana to draw one card, at random, and at sorcery speed, is not a good rate. It requires a lot of extra upside to be playable, but Up the Beanstalk has more than enough.
The main reason I’m excited for Up the Beanstalk comes down to matchups. In unfair matchups, such as Greasefang and Lotus Combo, I’m willing to accept that it’s worse than the other two cantrip options. Is it playable if these are the decks you’re expecting to face most often? I’m not sure. Personally, I suspect that a slight downgrade in your cantrip won’t swing those matchups too much, but I could be wrong.
Where I am excited for it, though, is in fair matchups such as RB Midrange or Sac, and especially against non-Lotus Field based UW Control lists (and any other Blue-based fair decks that may spring up in the future).
In my opinion, Green Devotion’s most important strength is its flexibility. When many people imagine the deck, I think they think of it comboing off, or casting a Cityscape Leveler from its sideboard, but in many fair matchups you win simply by casting multiple two-for-ones.
Storm the Festival, Old-Growth Troll, and Cavalier of Thorns can all be difficult to answer at card parity, and that’s without getting into Karn, the Great Creator and its various wish targets. I’ve won many games against RB Midrange not because I had a combo kill on turn five or cast a turn four Cityscape Leveler, but simply because I had a Karn that they couldn’t quite answer on time and the game spiraled out of control for them.
In fairer matchups – and especially against blue control decks with countermagic – card quality is very important, but card quantity is king. This is a big part of why I’ve liked Invasion of Ixalan in the past, but I think Up the Beanstalk is far better at out-grinding opponents.
In my experience, the best way to beat control decks with Mono Green has typically been to sneak Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner under countermagic, usually by casting her turn two off a turn one mana dork. Kiora makes all of your larger threats replace themselves when they enter the battlefield, which greatly taxes control’s counterspells and gives you an easy path to win the resource battle.
Up the Beanstalk is even better at this, and becomes Mono Green’s best card in control matchups. Although you have fewer cards which trigger it compared to Kiora, the card is cheaper and therefore easier to sneak under counterspells, it replaces itself, and it triggers on cast rather than when a creature enters the battlefield, meaning your draw is nearly guaranteed.
It is vulnerable to Farewell, which Invasion of Ixalan is not, but outside of that scenario Up the Beanstalk is generally going to be much better at giving you value over time than either of your other cantrips – and in all honesty, if Farewell resolves, Invasion of Ixalan is not likely to be the difference between winning and losing. In a typical game against UW Control or another fair deck, though, Up the Beanstalk very easily could be that difference.
Conclusion
So, what cantrip is the best? I think I wouldn’t leave home without at least three Oath of Nissa, but I don’t want the full set due to its legendary status. I generally like to play four to five cantrips in my green decks, with Invasion and Up the Beanstalk competing for a spot. As of now, I think I’m more confident in Up the Beanstalk.
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