From mono- + brown, from the brown border formerly used for artifact cards.
mono-brown (comparative more mono-brown, superlative most mono-brown)
- (Magic: The Gathering) Featuring or using mostly artifact cards.
1999 March 6, Michael Wong, “the new combo deck for April 1st”, in rec.games.trading-cards.magic.misc[1] (Usenet):I was thinking that you could use the same engine to put Atogs and big artifact creatures in, similar to the mono-brown deck with a splash of blue.
1999 May 17, Nathan Murata, “help against darwins....”, in rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy[2] (Usenet):This seems to be a common problem I have been encountering against mono-brown decks, oath of ghouls, living death decks.
2001 September 18, Howling Fang [username], “Token ownership”, in rec.games.trading-cards.magic.rules[3] (Usenet):The situation that came up was me playing my control critters deck vs. a mono-brown deck and some others.
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:mono-brown.