Jund has a simple game plan against aggressive decks. You use removal to keep your life total high, then you play your more powerful stuff and turn the corner. It's easy in theory but it's hard in practice, mostly because not every deck you face is an aggressive deck. I can't just jam 20 Fatal Push and 14 Thragtusks and call it a day, because that's 20 dead cards against a pretty significant portion of the field. Choosing your removal suite is a delicate balancing act between efficiency and versatility. If you have all Maelstrom Pulses and Vraska's Contempts, you'll lose to fast aggro draws. If you have all Fatal Pushes and Heartless Acts, you'll lose to any resolved Planeswalker. You should be willing to change up what you have going on based on what you expect out of your opponents.
This is why I like Bloodchief's Thirst so much. You can't make this thing any cheaper as a way to pick off cheap creatures and make sure you don't get tempo'd out of the game. But, you also have a lot of flexibility later on to get rid of big creatures and planeswalkers. There's honestly not much else to say. I would currently say that Thoughtseize is the best card in the deck, but Bloodchief's Thirst might be a close second. It's hard to tell. They're all good cards.
Fatal Push is another card that's extremely efficient and has a lot of flexibility. I think I should go over some reason why I don't play it.
I would consider this deck and Sultai to be both midrange decks, but they attack their matchups differently. Against aggro decks, they both play cheap removal and turn the corner with powerful threats. That looks a little different between the two decks, but it's basically the same. Against control decks however, Jund seeks to answer their threats and try to keep its own threats on the board, which is basically what the control deck is trying to do as well. Sultai's plan is simpler, they try to establish their threats and then their threats win the game, because Sultai's creatures and planeswalkers are just too powerful. That means that Sultai can afford to just be okay with having a few dead cards in their hand because Hydroid Krasis will win the game by itself. I think it's also important to note that Sultai plays Fabled Passage and Uro, both of which turn on Revolt pretty easily.
Fatal Push is an incredibly good card. As the metagame and the rest of the makeup of Historic Jund Midrange looks at the moment, I don't think it has a place in this deck, but that could change. In fact, I'm going to make a prediction right now that Mono Blue Tempo is going to make a resurgence after Kaldheim. Fatal Push is the perfect card to fight that deck, so I'm thinking that I'll be adding a couple to the main deck. Push is also a great sideboard card if you're expecting a wide range of quick aggro decks and you need to lower your average mana cost.
This card reminds me a lot of Fatal Push. It's instant speed, kills creatures for extremely cheap, and has the ability to hit some bigger stuff if you jump through some hoops. The ability to hit a Zhur Taa Goblin or Robber of the Rich before it hits you is huge, and you can do the same thing with Questing Beast with this same card. 2 damage instead of converted mana cost 2 or less is better against Goblins with their Chieftains and Warchiefs, but worse against stuff like Dreadhorde Arcanist and Knight of the Ebon Legion. But still, you can't get any cheaper, and it's got quite a bit of versatility, but might not be better than Fatal Push and Bloodchief's Thirst. Before those two were printed, this was a go-to 4-of in my board at all times. You can certainly do worse.
I guess I should talk about why I like cheap removal spells in the sideboard. Usually you're going to find stuff like Witch's Vengeance or Languish as anti-creature sideboard slots. The problem I find myself facing against most creature decks is not that I need to gain card advantage by sweeping up multiple creatures with one card, but that I need to have enough time for my powerful cards to come online. We don't need to get card advantage from our removal spells because when we have stuff like Castle Locthwain, Planeswalkers, Chevill, and Scavenging Ooze we have a lot of real or virtual card advantage baked into our decklist just by having the game go longer. If you and your opponent are both in topdeck mode but you have a Castle Locthwain, you're gaining an advantage every turn, not to mention that your deck contains bigger hits.
This is one of the reasons why I like value lands in a deck like this. You don't have to actually pull ahead by that much to seal the game, you just have to keep pace. I'll talk about it more in a future post, but this is why I'm really interested in Gnottvold Slumbermound from Kaldheim.
In a world before Planeswalkers became a thing, I'd say that these would be maindeckable cards. And they certainly are perfectly maindeckable in the right deck, but I'm not sure I want them in this deck. There are more versatile options that not only hit non-creatures, but also hit all creatures. Something like Terminate or Go for the Throat would definitely be worth looking at, though.
I probably only like this card because I'm old, but it does a lot of work in the right format. Ideally you would be playing against decks where the extra value matters and there aren't very many token generators. Cards like Young Pyromancer, Woe Strider, and Wily Goblin make Edict look pretty bad, but in a world where Gruul or White Weenie are played more, this starts to look good. This is not the right format right now, though.
Angrath's Rampage is a card that I feel is probably worse than it looks but also sees less play than it should. It's very useful, but its baseline ability to remove creatures doesn't really stack up, even given the versatility. Again, in a world where there aren't lots of token generators, this starts to look good, especially given that it answers Teferi and The Great Henge and stuff for just two mana.
This card is very good. I liked it when there were more copies of three-mana planeswalkers around, but haven't played it in a little while. It kind of occupies the same space as Abrade in my mind, and Abrade seems like it's better than this out of the sideboard, which is where I've got this right now. If another really good three-mana planeswalker gets printed (like Liliana the Last Hope from a Remastered set) or more people start playing stuff like Narset, Gideon Blackblade, Gideon of the Trials, or big green animals like Yorvo and Steel Leaf Champion, Eliminate might deserve a slot in the main deck again. I also think that Eliminate does a lot of the same work as Fatal Push as far as making us less vulnerable to some of the things Kaldheim might present us with, like Mono-Blue decks and Faceless Haven.
This one is probably just a pet card, but a Flame Slash for two mana isn't the worst rate as is, and the upside is appreciated in a deck like this. A deck like this is always seeking to reduce an opponent's options, so a copy of Ribbons in the graveyard removes their option to absorb damage down to 6 life or so. Ribbons can turn a game around without you even having to cast it. I think that if Heartless Act or Cast Down ever become viable, then Cut/Ribbons is the pure anti-creature card I would go for first.
Abrade has been a go-to sideboard card for a while. It's great because it's solid enough against stuff like Paradox Engine and Forsaken Monument while still being a Doom Blade against most of the format, or at least the decks where you'd bring it in. It also hits the two most important permanents out of Jund Sacrifice, which are Witch's Oven and Mayhem Devil, and for pretty cheap. Having said that, Abrade might have even more value after the release of Kaldheim, since there are a few Gods that have artifacts as their flip side, and it kills Faceless Haven.
Similarly to what I said about three mana creatures in an earlier post, Pulse is our go-to three mana removal spell, and versatility, not power, is what we get out of it. It hits everything from Skirk Prospector to Ugin, and all of it needs to die. But its hidden power is that every once in a while, you can randomly completely destroy an opponent. Triple Burning Tree Emmissary draws are often times unbeatable, but with Pulse in your deck, you're almost hoping they have it. The same is true with double Witch's Oven. Really not much to say about Maelstrom Pulse, other than that a three mana sorcery isn't always going to cut it, so it's not like this is an automatic 4-of every time.
I've talked a lot about this card already, but I just want to mention how tailor-made this card is for Historic. Not only does the Mind Rot effect come up, because we're playing games on narrow margins and each card matters, but Historic is at a place speed-wise where four mana creatures aren't too common. You can't really afford to put seven mana bombs in your deck, but you also can expect games to get to the point where you have seven mana in play and are looking to do something powerful. In Standard, Inscription looks a lot worse when it's fighting Questing Beasts and Yorions, it's a less powerful play than something like Garruk Cursed Huntsman at the top end, and Mind Rot looks pretty bad when they are playing Into the Story and Dream Trawler. Similarly, you can't really afford to play Inscription in something like Modern, where you're targeting Goblin Guide or Giver of Runes, Mind Rot doesn't work because your opponent might not have a hand by turn three, and you will very rarely have seven lands. In Historic, however, Inscription has been great for me. It's certainly the most versatile of the three mana removal spells available to us, not because of the versatility of targets but versatility of applications.
Murderous Rider is the card that probably has the best rate for the three mana spells. It comes with some downsides, which of course is the 2 life lost, but also it doesn't actually get to go on an adventure against a lot of the format. There's Phyrexian Tower, Witch's Oven, Woe Strider, Skirk Prospector, etc, all over the place. Rider is at its best against formats where you expect opponents to have a simple aggro game plan, like Gruul and Mono-Green, and/or you expect midrange mirrors and control decks that play to the board, like Grixis. I'm not sure what would need to get printed to make that reality happen, but you never know. As is, you could do a lot worse than putting some Murderous Riders in your deck, the upside is really good.
Also, maybe you noticed that Murderous Rider was in the removal category and Bonecrusher Giant was in the three-drop creature category. I've found that casting Bonecrusher Giant as a creature is the right move very often, more often than I think most people do it, and that casting Murderous Rider as a creature is the right move almost never. I really only like casting Murderous Rider as a creature against Mono-Red, where 2/3 lifelink is really good.
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That about covers all of the removal spells that I'm interested in for this deck. If you think I missed one, or have a different opinion, let me know. Also, I just uploaded a video to Youtube that's a quick overview of this deck and where it stands before we head into Kaldheim land.
You can watch that here. Thanks for reading.
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