Locking It In

Star City Regionals isn't the hugest tournament in the world, but it's pretty big, it's local, and it's Modern, so it's what I've had my sights on for a little while now. I also was pretty happy with my results in the two instances of this tournament last year, finishing in 4th and 9th with almost identical Bitterblossom Jund lists. A lot has changed since November of last year in Modern, but running it back seems to be a pretty good bet. I'm excited.

This is the 75 that I'm going to play at Regionals.

4 Tarmogoyf

3 Scavenging Ooze

2 Courser of Kruphix

2 Huntmaster of the Fells

3 Bitterblossom

1 Grim Lavamancer

4 Inquisition of Kozilek

3 Thoughtseize

2 Fatal Push

3 Lightning Bolt

2 Dreadbore

1 Terminate

4 Liliana of the Veil

3 Kolaghan's Command

4 Verdant Catacombs

4 Bloodstained Mire

1 Wooded Foothills

1 Blood Crypt

2 Overgrown Tomb

1 Stomping Ground

1 Blackcleave Cliffs

2 Blooming Marsh

2 Raging Ravine

1 Hissing Quagmire

2 Swamp

1 Forest

1 Mountain

Sideboard:

2 Duress

2 Blightning

2 Obstinate Baloth

1 Murderous Cut

1 Kitchen Finks

1 Jund Charm

1 Pyroclasm

1 Engineered Explosives

2 Nihil Spellbomb

2 Damping Sphere

You can follow my progression with this deck over at my Youtube channel.

We've been over why we have Bitterblossom, and why we have no Bloodbraid Elf, I'll focus on some of the more interesting card choices. Also, check out this list from this weekend's Star City Open. 15 creatures, none of which are Bloodbraid Elf or Dark Confidant. Maybe we are actually on to something here.

Pyroclasm and Jund Charm are some interesting ones. Between these two, Radiant Flames, Anger of the Gods, you have a lot of cards that do similar things and are pretty interchangeable, so it's nice to have some diversity to play around Meddling Mage. The idea is that you pick off small creatures with the sweepers and use the rest of your removal to hit the big ones like Mantis Riders, overgrown Champions of the Parish, etc. Pyroclasm costing 2 mana is a huge selling point, since most of the decks it's good against have creatures that grow over time. Killing a 2-toughness creature before it gets to 3-toughness is equally as good as killing a 3-toughness creature. Jund Charm is another one that I'm excited about, it being an instant turns it into a Plague Wind that also counters Collected Company (in my fantasy dreamworld). The fact that Jund Charm is the stone cold against Storm is also nice, since it counters Past in Flames and wipes up Empty the Warrens tokens.

I have been in love with Damping Sphere lately. It is a somewhat narrow card, but it just so happens that the decks it is good against are the ones where you need lots of help, and also that it punishes those decks hard. Some decks like Storm or Amulet are just stopped in their tracks.

I've been a proponent of a three-of Kolaghan's Command for a while, ever since I saw Joe Bernal top 8 an Invitational with four in his Jund deck. I found four to be a little clunky, but Kolaghan's Command is the closest thing to Liliana of the Veil five-through-seven as we're going to get. It's disruptive, it's card advantage, and can even be tempo advantage when you two-for-one two cards on the board against something like Affinity or Hollow One. I have extra copies where other lists I've seen have Maelstrom Pulse or Liliana the Last Hope. These are fine cards, and noteworthy for their versatility, but I've found them to be even less versatile than Kolaghan's Command. Some cards are consistent and "never your best card but always okay," where Kolaghan's Command is "Often your best card and still always okay."

Ooze is not my favorite threat to back up Tarmogoyf, but I've seen a steady increase in decks that use the graveyard. Not just Dredge, but Hollow One, Griselbrand, Storm, and others have made me put away my Grim Flayers and run the Oozes. Also, Ooze plays pretty good cleanup duty against Humans, which is enemy number one right now. It's a card that I'm willing to variate from stock lists with, but I think right now is a good time for Ooze.

I recently had three Obstinate Baloths in the sideboard, but switched one out for a Kitchen Finks. Finks is good in a lot of matchups, most notably it's somewhere between okay and good against the new Jeskai Control deck. Since we have Courser of Kruphix in the deck, the 1GG mana cost isn't as much of a negative as it otherwise would have been, since you're still fetching with getting double-green in mind. I still really just want to live the Obstinate Baloth dream, though, and get that thing into play via Burning Inquiry. I've found that the matchup there is pretty favorable, so I'm willing to shave a Baloth for some help elsewhere, especially when Finks serves a lot of the same purposes. 

I'm on a 2-1 Dreadbore/Terminate split at the moment. Dreadbore is a little bit clunky, so I don't think I want too many of them, and the effect is good enough to warrant the Terminate. However, I'm a little scared of Teferi, and there are other targets where Dreadbore is quite a lot better as well, including Karn, Ugin, Lilianas, Gideons, etc. Terminate is clearly better in the face of Mantis Rider and creature-lands, but Terminate is a near dead card in lots of matchups where Dreadbore has a lot of utility, and it's not true the other way around.

Hissing Quagmire and Blooming Marsh are a couple of lands that are new and are usually overshadowed, but they've been pretty solid for me. Without any double-red cards in the deck, a single fetchland should let you cast everything in the deck.

Always play one Mountain.

One of the reasons I like the Bloodbraid-less list is that it makes your discard spells much better, or rather, you can play more discard spells without worrying about powering down your Bloodbraids. After the unbanning, lists often had just three or four discard spells, but I really don't like that. The hand disruption is one of the best things about playing a deck like this in the first place. It's also a pretty sweet spot where you have enough cards to bring in to replace them in the mirror, and also not so many Thoughtseizes that you can't replace those when your life total matters. You'll note the Duresses in the sideboard that are there when I want even more of this effect, and I've been pleased.

When Fatal Push was printed, I was a 4-Bolt 4-Push guy and loved it. The metagame has adjusted quite a bit, and good Fatal Push targets are few and far between. The only matchup these days where Bolt is worse than Push is the mirror match, but having a few of each is good for Meddling Mage concerns. Replacing one of the cheap removal slots for Grim Lavamancer has been pretty solid as well, as it gives the deck another proactive one-mana play on turn one.

So that's where I'm at. Thanks for reading, wish me luck, and stay tuned. After this weekend, I'll write about my experiences at Regionals. I might be setting myself up for disappointment, but I feel pretty good.