Shame Those Boys Couldn't Be More Copacetic

My personal theory is that the reason the Ravnica sets are some of Magic's best sets is because they create an environment for good games to take place. There is plenty of mana fixing, good utility spells, and lots of different color pairings to build a cohesive deck around. The same can be said of Khans of Tarkir, which might have been the last time that a Standard format was really fun, at least in my eyes. Multicolor sets allow designers and developers to push the envelope on rate a little bit while still being beautiful and simple. And they can get away with it because most of the cool unique stuff they're doing are just utility spells. A card like Lightning Helix is above-rate, but at its core it's just a burn spell, it won't ever destroy a format. These are the kinds of cards that I look for in a set like this, cheap and versatile utility spells. And in New Capenna, there's plenty of that to be had, but maybe a little less of it in the Jund colors.

Riveteers Charm is excellent, above my expectations for sure. I was expecting something more in the way of Void Rend or Endless Detour in Jund colors, and didn't really get it. We did get a lot of cool stuff though, so let's check it out.

I've been trying to wrap my head around this card for a long time and I think I'm just going to have to admit that I have no idea if it's going to be good or not. Well, I mean, it's going to be good, but I don't know if it's a "You're going to need a reason to not play this in a Black and Red deck" type of card or a "If you have the pieces to support it, it will make your main deck" type of card.

Ob Nixilis is a three mana planeswalker that can defend itself, and if we were to stop right there, it's absolutely worth trying out. Beyond that, I like the synergy that Ob Nixilis has with the second copy of itself, and the squeeze that its +1 ability puts you in is going to be helpful either way. It looks like it has good synergy with Bloodtithe Harvester, not only because it's a creature you don't mind using for the Casualty ability, but because the additional pressure put on by cheap creatures will force the opponent to discard cards to the +1 ability more often. It also will have some nice synergy with Fable of the Mirror Breaker, allowing you to sacrifice Kiki Jiki's tokens instead of real creatures. And, it probably won't come up too often, but an Ooze that gets out of control big can be sacrificed and dome the opponent for seven out of nowhere.

The potential is there, but I'm not going to come out and say it's a 10/10 A+ Superstar until I've tried it.

Similarly to Play with Fire, anything that's at least a little close to straight Lightning Bolt needs to be considered. My gut feeling here is that I'm going to have a tough time playing Strangle in a format with Fatal Push or Bloodchief's Thirst, but who knows. It's not only worth a shot, but also worth keeping in the back of your mind for the next time a Narset deck or whatever turns into the best thing to be doing.

Graveyard hate ranges somewhere from Leyline of the Void to, like, Scavenging Ooze, where Leyline is a blunt-object sideboard card windmill slam, and the power behind Scavenging Ooze is that it's a maindeckable card with an effect that's usually not in your deck for game one. Cards like Hearse are in a weird spot where, it's clearly effective against a graveyard deck, but if it's not quite maindeckable, and it's not the hardest hitting graveyard hate you can put in your board, where does it see play? The thing about the Hearse is that, depending on the format you're playing, tapping to exile two cards might be the most graveyard hate you need. It does this every turn, at instant speed, for no mana. It deals with two Phoenixes at once, it keeps their delve food low, it eats Kroxa, it can get rid of a Parhelion, it counters Bala Ged Recovery. If Hearse can play as your go-to graveyard hate, then it's a big deal, because you can get in some outrageous attacks with this thing. Turn two Hearse, eat your graveyard for a while, attack for 20. That's an actual plan against what's probably the number one deck in Pioneer. I think the potential is there, and the vehicle ability makes Hearse a card you might not mind bringing in even if the only thing they have going on is a couple miser's Kroxas or something. I don't think I'd suggest Hearse for Modern or Vintage, but if the Hearse is all the graveyard hate you need for Pioneer, then it could absolutely be an upgrade to Leyline and other straight-up graveyard hate decks.

The Underdog looks like a card that is tailor made to go in a deck that runs Ob Nixilis, that's for sure. Additionally, though, it looks like the kind of card that goes in a deck that is in the market for some early pressure but doesn't mind the game going late. Usually this type of card has an "enters the battlefield tapped" or "can't block" type of clause that makes it really only good at offense and not defense, but Underdog is also totally fine with trading off with an opposing creature and giving you a couple of pseudo-Castle Locthwain activations later on. My gut feeling here is that this is the type of card that we're looking for, but might not be the power level necessary for Pioneer. I don't know though, I've been impressed with Bloodtithe Harvester, just because it's a 3/2 for two with some extra stuff thrown in, and that's a great description for Underdog, too. I think I'll start with two of these and see how it goes, I don't have high hopes but wouldn't be surprised if it worked out.

A card that I was hoping for out of this set was a Jund Siege Rhino or Huntmaster type of card, something that could gum up a board, could swing a race, and also be good against opposing removal. The Envoy looks like a solid enough card, but not exactly what I was hoping for. However, untapping with an Envoy is going to translate into wins a large amount of the time for a four mana card, so it's worth taking a look at. The Blitz mechanic on it is especially exciting, because it works well with cheap aggressive creatures in two ways. First, as Jamie Wakefield says, it's the last fatty that kills you, so if the opponent is under pressure and has to fire off removal spells against your early threats, the Envoy is more likely to survive and take over the game. Secondly, Blitzing in for five burst damage will steal some games that your cheap creatures got started. Because of that, I think the Envoy is well suited for an aggressive-slanted Jund deck. In general, as far as Pioneer is concerned, I'm wary of a card that costs this much and dies to a Chandra, but it's powerful enough to try. There are a lot of good things going on here.

This is an interesting one. The power is certainly there, especially in Pioneer. Most decks will have something along the lines of Oni-Cult Anvil, Trail of Crumbs, Portable Hole, Fable of the Mirror Breaker, Esika's Chariot, the list goes on. Tagging a Greasefang plus a Portable Hole or a Winota plus a Fable of the Mirror Breaker on chapter two can turn a game around for sure. At its worst, it's Hero's Downfall. In the end, again, I think it's worth trying out, but four mana is a lot. When it's good it's great, but it might be too hard to engineer the game to a point where this will swing it for you. For what it's worth, Unleash the Inferno might be the sickest card name ever.

I can't really imagine playing this in Historic or Pioneer, but man this makes me want to play Standard again. I just love Thragtusk, and while it's easy to look at this and think of it as a nerfed Thragtusk, there are plenty of cases where it's actually the better card. The token it leaves behind is a 4/4, big enough to crew a Chariot and also big enough to beat serious face. Trample is a big deal on a card like this too, where they can't just chump block it, so they might have to trade, which gives you your value. The Blitz is kind of an afterthought, but six mana to kill a planeswalker, gain three life, make a 4/4, and draw a card, sounds good to me. It's got amazing synergy with Fable of the Mirror Breaker. Also I love the art. It's a rhino wearing suspenders holding a gigantic golden wrench, and in the background is a mural of himself. I really want to bonk some people with a gigantic golden wrench.

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These are the cards that I think have the most potential for Jund in this set. If you think I missed any or my evaluations are stupid, let me know in the comments or harass me about it on Twitter. I didn't do any streaming last weekend due to being away for family obligations, but I'll be rectifying that for this weekend's Pioneer Challenges. Check it out if you're interested. Thanks for reading.

Some Rise Some Fall Some Climb

Let's go.

Mode one is Crackling Doom that hits Planeswalkers but doesn't deal 2 damage. This would be a Standard playable card in its own right, probably wouldn't see much play because of the restrictive mana cost, but a deck in these colors might consider it. It hits Goldspan at a mana advantage, so that's a big deal in its own right. This is likely worse than a Hero's Downfall, but there will be cases where this wins you games where Downfall wouldn't, like against stuff with Hexproof or against Dive Down type stuff. One of the reasons I like Abrupt Decay at the moment in Pioneer is to stop Graveyard Trespasser cleanly, and this does that as well, plus you don't take 2 damage from Bonecrusher Giant.

The fact that this hits planeswalkers is a huge deal. I try to incorporate things like Dreadbore, Murderous Rider, and Bloodchief's Thirst into my decks when I can, so it's very welcome to be an answer to hard to answer things. The decks that run few creatures and your removal is bad against will often have planeswalkers, which can be hard to deal with if you're not getting under them. I lost a game to Jace, Wielder of Mysteries on stream this weekend when I had a Phoenix opponent locked out of the game, so this would put a stop to that. This mode is excellent, about as good as could be expected.

Mode three is just a Tormod's Crypt activation, which seems like it's not worth three mana until your opponent has three Arclight Phoenix triggers on the stack. What makes Dredge and Dredge-adjacent decks so good is not that there aren't graveyard hate options, it's that you actually have to put those cards into your deck. When it's good, it will be really good, and when it's not, the other two modes on this card are flexible enough that you would play it with just two modes.

Mode two is the big one and maybe most important one, because it's the proactive one. The problem with removal spells is that if your opponent doesn't do anything, and all you have is removal in your hand, then you don't do anything either. This mode lets you punish your opponent for wasting their mana by giving you some advantage. It also lets us play it in the main deck and we'll never run into a matchup where it's dead. Also, it's just a lot of cards. Lots of times your opponent doesn't have anything going on with their graveyard, lots of times they don't have creatures or planeswalkers in play, but even if they do, you might use this mode anyways. When discussing Abzan Charm, Patrick Chapin once said that if you're on the fence between exiling a creature and drawing two cards, you should usually draw two cards, and that is likely to be the case with Riveteers Charm too.

I wouldn't say that this effect is restrictive on your deckbuilding, but some cards are going to be better to flip than others. The first thing that comes to mind is Bonecrusher Giant, who can just be cast as a 4/3 if the removal spell doesn't line up. The same is true with Bloodthirsty Adversary, which can either go top rope in the late game or just be a 2/2 haste and allow you to cast multiple spells off one Charm. Kolaghan's Command and Witherbloom Command are great because there are lots of options and you can usually find one that will work. The removal spells you do play will want to be as versatile as possible so they can be useful more of the time, so things like Maelstrom Pulse or Mythos of Nethroi. Also, of course, cheap creatures. I think you're going to want to keep your mana costs down a little bit so you're more likely to be able to cast two cards out of it. Casting this on their end step turn three and flipping a five drop won't work, so four might be as high as our curve wants to go. But that's okay now, because you can get away with cheaper spells when you have card advantage built into your deck. Funny enough, Riveteers Charm itself isn't the greatest hit, but again, you might use the draw mode even if your opponent has creatures in play, then use the edict mode on your turn.

It's also not out of the question to main-phase this in the ultra late game. Similarly to something like a topdecked Inscription of Ruin when you have eight lands in play, this should set up a pretty explosive turn to try and turn the corner.

In Pioneer, as I've mentioned before, the metagame is combo-heavy, which rewards having the right sideboard card at the right time, and therefore digging for those specific cards becomes very useful. Courser of Kruphix, Grim Flayer, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, all these cards get much better when you're not just gaining an extra card here or there or ditching lands and finding action, but you're getting one card closer to your Damping Sphere or Culling Ritual or whatever to put the game out of reach. Riveteers Charm adds just a little bit of extra juice to your sideboard and allows you to lean into the knockout-blow kinds of cards over the general purpose cards, because you're more likely to find them when you need them.

My way too early diagnosis on this card is that you're going to want to play two or three copies in Pioneer and Historic, probably a four of in Standard if a Jund deck is viable there, and I even have a little optimism for it in Modern as a flex slot. The Light up the Stage effect has a pedigree for being strong enough in powerful formats, as Expressive Iteration has shown us. The older the format, the more value an extra card has, and the more likely you are to be able to cast the stuff you hit because it's cheaper. Plus, a Tormod's Crypt can actually steal a game in Pioneer and Modern from time to time, whereas in Standard this is almost always going to be a removal spell or a draw spell, which is totally fine with that power level. All in all, I think this is about the same power level as the Obscura and Maestros Charms, and possibly even better. It feels like the kind of card that's going to take some practice to play correctly and some reps to tune a deck around, but I'm optimistic.

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Still a long ways to go before we actually get to play with this, so I'll be continuing to play the Pioneer Challenges every weekend. My first run was a 10th place finish, but this weekend I bombed out pretty severely. I've been toying with a Jund version of the deck that has Fable of the Mirror Breaker and it's been impressive so far, so maybe I'll try that this weekend if I can tune it up during the week here. I'll see you then, thanks for reading.

Spring From Night Into The Sun

For the last two winters, my wife and I have taken on this little project. We make donuts in our kitchen on Sunday nights, then early on Monday morning, we hand them out to folks driving to work. I live in a very small town in Vermont, so we set up shop on the busiest road in town. The whole ordeal takes all of Sunday and some of Saturday to actually do, so it's hard to really get anything else done during those times. During the week I've been doing a lot of work on the road away from home. Hence, not a lot of streams or blog posts recently.

Additionally, it's been hard to really nail down what I want to be doing. I've dipped my toes into Historic here and there since the Alchemy release, but I still kind of hate it. Part of that is the Alchemy cards, but another part is that I'm more interested in formats that match up with paper so I can practice IRL formats again, anticipating maybe playing in them in the near future.

Modern is okay but there are two problems, one is the Lurrus ban, which is lame, and two is that Ragavan and Urza's Saga cost a lot. I have Cardhoarder rental, which is awesome, but it's not enough to cover all of that. And I think you do want to be playing those cards if you're going to be playing Jund in Modern. I really like what Sanitoeter on twitch has been doing lately in Modern. He writes (and maybe runs?) a website called Greatnessatanycost.com, which is dope.

Anyways, the donuts project is done for the winter now, and I'm looking for something outside of Historic to stream and do. I decided a neat project for me would be to make a goal of winning a challenge on Magic Online at some point this year on stream. Then I put out a poll on Twitter to ask what format people wanted to see me do this in, and the most voted answer was Pioneer. That's cool, I like Pioneer.

This is what I've been toying with lately.

I can't in honesty claim that this build is tuned perfectly, but the engine that's going on here works well in Pioneer. It's a Golgari deck, which means it's going to be a little bit slower and less aggressive than a Jund deck. Instead of cheap removal and putting emphasis on life total pressure, we have versatile removal and put an emphasis on resource pressure. I mean, there's still cheap removal and aggressive creatures, but it's going to be less so.

There's a couple reasons that I've liked this better than a Jund build in this format. The mana in the Jund deck was okay, but there were certain cards that you really couldn't get away with playing. Courser of Kruphix has been worth it by itself, but stuff like Murderous Rider and Liliana the Last Hope are also great in the format. Also, going with only two colors opens up the ability to play more utility lands, like Field of Ruin and Boseiju and Takenuma. Because of that, and because of a couple of 'value' Fabled Passage that I'm playing, Witherbloom Command gets maximized here.

Witherbloom Command has been excellent in most of the formats I've been dabbling in as of late. When the best things going are cheap creature decks and Witch's Oven/Trail of Crumbs/Oni Cult Anvil, and folks are playing stuff like Portable Hole and stuff like that, Command starts to get really, really good. As long as you can depend on getting a land back, you get to play a two mana spell that turns itself into either a card advantage spell, or a race-winning spell with the Lightning Helix effect. I mean seriously, those are the two ways you win at Magic, through tempo or through card advantage, and Witherbloom Command lets you do whichever one you want. When you can reasonably expect to be able to use one of the destructive effects on this card, and the land base of the deck is tuned a little to support it, it's an incredible card. Believe it or not, it's been the stones in Vintage, if that's any indication of how powerful it can be.

There's a little bit of graveyard synergy here to round it all out, with the Command and Grim Flayer kind of combo'ing together, and they both work with Courser as well. It's just where I like my decks, enough graveyard interaction to keep up with some of the card advantage blue decks have, but not enough to get totally wrecked when they have Rest in Peace.

The sideboard is very rough right now, but what I can definitely say is that Sarulf and Culling Ritual do a lot of work. That might seem like a lot of that type of effect, but decks that flood the board with cheap garbage are all over the place in the format. The rest of the board is up in the air, but I would either keep as is or increase the number of Sarulfs and Rituals if you were to take this deck for a spin.

Like I said, the "Win a Pioneer Challenge" goal is probably going to be a year long process, so I should mention this thing. We don't get to play with it for a month, but when it comes out, I'll certainly give it a try. I can't tell you right now whether I'll add red permanently to the deck though. There's a few reasons I'm excited for what this does for us, but I'm trying to be cautious about it. All the things that I said about why I like the straight Golgari build still are true, and this will make the mana better, of course, but a splash is never free.

First, this is a card that has utility alongside Witherbloom Command. However, it's not a ton of utility. You can't really expect to be cycling for three mana very often, but in a late game situation it's bound to come up. Second, it's a Swamp, which means that it might be viable to fit some Castle Locthwains back in the deck. If we're playing four enters-tapped lands, then I like Hissing Quagmire a little less.

Red opens us up to some cards that I miss playing, like Dreadbore, Bonecrusher Giant, and Kolaghan's Command. If Witherbloom Command is great against Oni Cult Anvil etc, so is Kolagahn's Command, so that's a nice one to have. Bonecrusher is a one-card wrecking crew in itself as well. But the cards we'd be replacing, Murderous Rider and Bloodchief's Thirst most likely, aren't exactly bad. That's the other thing about this whole quandry: not only do you have to get the mana to work, but you have to be sure that the red cards you want to play are better than the alternatives you have access to. Like, for instance, I've been impressed with Abrupt Decay in the format for a lot of the same reasons Witherbloom Command has been good. It's a clean answer to Graveyard Trespasser and is great against Greasefang. Cutting it for a red card is a tough sell at the moment.

I think that the deal breaker for me, right at this moment, is Courser of Kruphix. If we can depend on having 1GG on turn four (which is the best time to cast Courser), then it could still work. Or, alternatively, if the format moves to a place where Courser isn't as good as it once was, then we won't need double green anymore. I don't know what that would look like, because Courser is so good. I just can't stop playing that card.

Fable of the Mirror Breaker is a card that went a little bit under my own radar for the Neon Whatever previews, but from what I've seen and played, it's solid. The problem with it is that it's pretty slow, but it's a ton of cardboard, lots of ways to play it, and helps turn your bad draws into good ones. It also happens to have synergy with a lot of what we have going on already. It's an enchantment to help give us delirium, and it loots to help fuel delirium. It lets you pitch lands to help set up a Witherbloom Command. A Courser in play helps you determine whether and what you want to discard. Plus, in a little bit of an Esika's Chariot kind of way, it just has synergy with our plan.

I've talked a little bit about this before, but it's often not enough for a card like this to just provide card advantage, I want to to be actually interacting with the opponent or finding you the cards you need to interact. Compare this to something like Esika's Chariot or Wrenn and Seven. Those cards are more powerful in a vacuum, sure, but when what you actually want to be doing is not just putting a bunch of stuff into play and instead want to be finding your Damping Sphere or Culling Ritual or Go Blank, then those types of cards just aren't enough. Pioneer specifically is a format where you're very interested in drawing your sideboard haymakers, so the digging here is excellent. Dig into the card I need, beat you up with two 2/2s. Don't get me wrong, I love a Chariot, but in Pioneer at the moment, cards like this are more what we're looking for. All the threats in this deck can either dig for sideboard bullets, like Courser, Grim Flayer, and Lolth, or they do some amount of disruption of our opponent on their own, like Scavenging Ooze and Liliana.

Between this and the cycling ability on ZPG, I'm interested in playing a high land count in this deck. Another thing that Witherbloom Command really likes is a high land count, so you can hit blind flips with it more often. That means that our red splash will be easier, since you'll have more sources of each color just because you'll have more total lands. Fable helps you deal with your mana flooding by letting you pitch excess lands and draw new cards. I could definitely see 26 being the right thing to do for a red splash.

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The red splash is all speculation for another time. I'm sure that New Capenna will have a bunch of cool cards to go over, so I'll definitely be doing some work on that during spoiler time. Like, when you think about it, Siege Rhino could just be Jund colored card and still work thematically.

Anyways, I'm going to be trying to stream at least one Pioneer challenge a weekend until I win one. So check me out coming weekend, they start at 5pm Eastern USA time on Saturday and 9am Sunday. Thanks for reading.

Daddy May Drive A V8 Vette

 

I'm enamored with Courser in Pioneer. Just phenomenal. In the same way that Chevill is in that sweet spot in Historic, Courser is in a good place in Pioneer, where you are interested in a cheap-ish creature that gives a little bit of value every turn. An extra land off the top here or there can swing a game, but you aren't out flat if it gets removed.

This is the list I've settled on after the latest Pioneer challenge. Playing Courser in your deck isn't a given, of course, since it takes away your ability to play both Jegantha and Lurrus, so if we're going down that path we have to make it worth it. The key to this deck is that I've cut red, even though I love Bonecrusher Giant and Dreadbore. That way we can afford to play both BB and GG costed cards easier, and we get to have some good tools in the mana base.

Grim Flayer is a card that pairs well with Courser, and also happens to be excellent in the format. Flayer lets you set up the top of your library to almost always hit a land off the top if you want it, plus a Courser in the graveyard is two card types, setting you up for easy Delirium. As far as the format, Grim Flayer has always been one of my favorites when you are expecting combo decks. Every time Grim Flayer connects, it helps you dig for the specific cards you need. Against combo decks, card selection tends to be more important than card quantity, because a single Damping Sphere or Necromentia is priceless in the right matchup. Also, Grim Flayer hits hard if left on the table, and against combo decks, you can expect it to be left on the table, and hitting hard is appreciated, not giving the opponent time to set up their combo. It's been great against Lotus Field decks and other combo decks.

Scavenging Ooze as a four of has been solid. It seems to do something against everyone, including Greasefang, Arclight Phoenix, Cauldron Familiar, etc. Of course, it's also just a creature that is cheap and can be cast early and grows against aggro decks. Not a lot to say about Ooze, it's good.

I like the Witherbloom Command package. To start, straight up getting a land back is always good if you're hitting an opponent's permanent, so the baseline here is solid. Lots of opponents are going to have stuff that Command can hit, like Witch's Oven, Llanowar Elves, Soul Warden, Portable Hole. Beyond that, Boseiju and Field of Ruin turn out to be excellent in the format. Field does good work against Lotus Field, even though the Field itself has Hexproof, Thespian Stage does not. The same goes for Boseiju, which has some extra flexibility in hitting Parhelion and other stuff. So, since those cards are going to be good, fetching one up with Witherbloom Command turns out to be a real solid play, whether you save a Command in hand until you actually pop your Field of Ruin, or you blind flip one of them. There's a little bit of synergy with Grim Flayer and Courser there, but not so much that it's crippling if the opponent has graveyard hate.

To round it out we've got some Planeswalkers. Not having a companion means that we can play whatever we want for Planeswalkers and top end stuff, but that we are also in the market for some late game value. Sorin is at a nice place in Pioneer, where you can expect your average mana cost to be pretty low, a Vampire token has some real value, and four mana isn't too expensive. Lolth is excellent at creating a board stall and then taking over the game, which is what you would expect from a five mana card, but she also has the added benefit of giving you your value even if they have the removal spell. I tried Elder Gargaroth in that slot but Lolth has been more consistent. Vraska Golgari Queen or Liliana, Waker of the Dead could both be okay here too if you wanted to try those.

During the lastest Pioneer Challenge, I had a Chevill package in my sideboard, and I've since cut it for two Sarulf and two Culling Ritual. For one, the Red/Black or Jund sacrifice deck is all over the place and very good. Chevill would be okay there, but Sarulf and Culling Ritual are knockout blows. Also, there are a lot of removal spells in this deck, but not quite as many as Chevill would really like to see. In the Historic Jund lists, for instance, Bloodthirsty Adversary and Inscription of Ruin count as Chevill trigger enablers in addition to our late game value plan. Here, that stuff manifests as Courser and Lolth, where the plan is more to create a board stall. Sarulf and Culling Ritual love a board stall.

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Pretty quick update here today, but I just wanted to get something in because I haven't had time to lately. Expect more frequent updates and streams and stuff when I'm done my latest work project, which should be soon. Thanks for reading.

Pioneer Jund and Some Deckbuilding Theory

I got really excited a week or two ago when I saw Fireshoes on Twitter post a Rakdos Midrange deck with four Bloodthirsty Adversary in it. Extremely my shit. In between rounds of Modern, I copy and pasted my Historic list into Pioneer on Magic Online and switched around some stuff. This is where I'm at so far.

Again, pretty similar to the Historic deck. The formats are quite a bit different, but the whole idea with the deck was versatility anyways, so a lot of the same cards and plans slot in against the Pioneer field. Warden of the First Tree and Mizzium Mortars might not be ideal, but I just like those cards, and I'm pretty happy with everything else in the main deck.

The only real absence from Historic to Pioneer is Maelstrom Pulse, which is a card that I love, but I'm replacing it here with Abrupt Decay and Dreadbore, which are cards I'd probably be playing instead of Pulse in Historic given the chance. Also, since Barren Moor isn't available, I'm not running the Witherbloom Command package, although playing some Canyon Slough and Witherbloom Command isn't the absolute worst idea if you're running into a lot of Witch's Oven stuff.

I'm high on Hissing Quagmire here mostly for the same reasons I like Raging Ravine in Modern. Cards like Lair of the Hydra or Den of the Bugbear are helpful when you're mana flooded, obviously, but they come with a drawback of being unhelpful when you're land light, here in a three color deck. In a game where it looks like you'll never activate your Den, which is a lot of them, it's worse than a basic Mountain, which is a card that wouldn't make your deck here. You'll be more likely to be missing a color when you have two lands and one of them is Lair of the Hydra versus when you have two lands and one of them is Hissing Quagmire. There will be hands where you have to mulligan because you have Lair of the Hydra instead of Hissing Quagmire, and taking a mulligan is bad and you should never do things that are bad.

The deck seems to be dealing with aggro decks nicely. We have 1,000 removal spells and stuff like Warden and Ooze and creaturelands to clean up. There's more of a burn presence is this format, including a bunch of decks that run Monastery Swiftspear, so cutting back a little on Shocklands and running one and two mana removal helps you get out of the early game.

Brad Nelson has a theory that it's a good idea to focus your midrange decks to beating aggro decks in the main deck, then worry about the control and combo decks in the sideboard. I've kind of had that same idea for a long time too, even in Modern, and there's a few reasons for that. First, aggro decks don't give you the time you need to draw the cards that are good against them. If I tell myself that I'm going to add two copies of Languish to my otherwise non-interactive midrange deck, I'd better hope one of those copies is in my top eleven or so cards, because if I don't have some interaction for the opposing creatures, I'll be dead. Conversely, if I add two Kroxa to my deck to bust up control decks, that could work pretty well, because I can expect to see quite a few cards in my deck before the game is over, since they aren't pressuring my life total.

I don't always buy the idea that you should build your decks to maximize your play skill over your opponent, because, you know, you might play someone better than you and have that backfire. Having said that, destructive midrange decks like this require having a little bit of format knowledge and deck familiarity to be piloted well, since all your stuff is so dependent on what your opponent is doing. You can't be a total noob to win with most decks, but there are going to be hands with the most aggressive decks that the Mario Kart 64 AI could pilot to a win. Setting yourself up to not lose to those draws and forcing your opponent to make decisions will win some matches. Again, not huge on this theory, but the more experience you have, the more you might want to try and extend the game, giving you more opportunities to make good plays and your opponents opportunities to mess up. This is probably a bigger deal if you're Brad Nelson, but you're smart too. Only smart people read jundlife.blogspot.com.

Also, when we play against control decks, all of a sudden we are the ones who are looking to shorten the game and compound bad draws from our opponents. A couple of Fatal Push in your hand might turn out to not be a problem if your opponent stumbles on lands or floods out a little bit and you just get them dead with your creatures.

Last point on this, against a control deck, or at least against a slower deck, you're more likely to be okay if you miss a land drop or two. If you miss your third land drop and your opponent just nails you with Questing Beast and Embercleave, it doesn't really matter how well set up your deck is for the matchup. If you're more susceptible to losing a game to an awkward draw to fast decks than slow decks, then I'd rather make sure I'm set up to win all three games against fast decks. If I'm confident that I have a good sideboard plan against slow decks and will be unpressured enough to be able to draw what I need, then it's more palatable to plan on not worrying too much about game one and taking down games two and three.

I've found in Pioneer that this theory works out well, just like it does in Historic. The aggro decks are fast and punishing, but don't always have a go-big plan like you might see in Standard. I have my sideboard set up right now to really punish the aggro decks further, with extra Fatal Push and Chevill in the board, plus Crush the Weak, which continues to impress me. I think that going forward, I'll probably cut back a little bit on that stuff as it becomes clear what cards are effective against the metagame.

One card that's impressed me is Damping Sphere. Pioneer has a considerable combo element, with stuff like Lotus Field, Jeskai Ascendency, and Izzet Phoenix, and Damping Sphere shuts them all down. It's clunky with Bloodthirsty Adversary, but you can always get around that by just casting Adversary as a 2/2 with haste, which isn't bad when you're trying to tempo out a combo deck anyways. Also note that Pioneer Phoenix decks are more combo oriented than in Historic, with no Sprite Dragons or Dragon's Rage Channelers, so Damping Sphere is more helpful than you might expect. I have even been boarding in Crush the Weak to clean up Phoenixes, which is only an okay plan in Historic. They play Thing in the Ice, so you can't just board all your removal out, but it's a little bit different of a deck.

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I have a plan to start trying to stream on Discord instead of Twitch, or maybe in addition to. I've set myself up a server there that you're free to go and check out, though there isn't really anything there yet. I've been doing some Modern Challenges on Sunday mornings but I think I might shift into Pioneer mode here and do that on Saturday evenings. Hit me up on Twitter or where ever to chat. Thanks for reading.

Moving Into Modern

 

For the time being I'm done with Arena. I don't expect that to be totally permanent, but I'm dipping my toes back into Modern and putting Historic on the shelf for now.

Jund in Modern can come in a few flavors. There's the extra low-to-the-ground, almost Delver-like Sagavan, which features Ragavan, Urza's Saga, and Lurrus. There's also a non-Lurrus build that has Liliana and Bloodbraids to go along with Urza's Saga.

Again, I'm just getting myself started in this format, basically, since the last time I earnestly played was pre-Modern Horizons 1. Pretty much a different format. So I'm kind of starting from scratch, taking old-school Jund and moving some stuff around until I find something I like, somewhat disregarding the Urza's Saga packages for now.

This is a list that I like so far, but by no means can I put any stamp of approval on it. It's just doing things that I think have potential.

Wrenn and Six has been awesome. There are a lot of one-toughness creatures running around, between Esper Sentinel, Ragavan, and DRC, plus stuff like Teferi Time Raveler that often winds up at 1 loyalty. It's so cheap, it usually can net you some value before any graveyard hate comes down if they even have any, and it still has value for you even if they have Rest in Peace or whatever. So I wanted to sort of maximize Wrenn and Six.

To do that, I'm playing a fairly low land count that's high on fetchlands. That's a little counterintuitive, because this is a medium speed deck and you can run out of fetchables. But there are some uses to excess lands. First, you can just pitch them to Liliana, which is what you're doing a lot of the time anyways and part of why Wrenn goes so well in a non-Lurrus deck. Second, you can just store them in your hand, threatening to unload a bunch of Bolts at the opponent if you ever ultimate the Wrenn and Six. The low land count of the deck is afforded because the Wrenn and Six will usually ensure you're hitting land drops all game. I've got one cheeky Barren Moor in the deck just for funsies, and that's clearly great with the Wrenn and Six, but if that was another fetchland, that would be fine too.

To maximize Wrenn and Six more, I'm trying to load up the deck with the types of cards that help protect it and are benefitted by it. Going down this path led me to want to try lots of planeswalkers. Wrenn and Six has some synergy with the planeswalkers in the deck, sure, but more than that, planeswalkers just kind of have synergy with themselves. There's a lot of reasons behind that, but when you untap with a planeswalker it's very good, when you untap with two it's overwhelming. Wrenn and Six makes this possibility a reality by costing two, so it can come down before your three and four mana walkers, and can protect them with its ping ability. Plus, it helps you hit the land drops required to cast your more expensive stuff. So far I've only got one Vraska, Golgari Queen as 4+ drops, but you could start going further down that road if you wanted to.

So since we're doing all of these planeswalkers, how we going to build the rest of the deck around them? Firstly, I want lots of cheap removal. Planeswalkers are expensive, so you need the rest of your stuff to be cheap in order to make them come down on a stable board. We've got 8 one-mana removal spells in the list right now, and the two copies of Ragavan are basically removal spells because they absolutely must be dealt with by the opponent. Ragavan doesn't really need an explanation. That helps protect the planeswalkers and make our opponents not able to get traction, plus we've got seven one mana discard spells. That's a little more than usual for the higher-up-the-curve midrange builds of Jund, but I want to be able to ensure that our planeswalkers can resolve and we can untap with them, and Thoughtseize effects are a cheap and easy way to do that. Plus, without Bloodbraids or Seasoned Pyromancers, our ability to clock the opponent is pretty poor, so I like having extra disruption for combo and control opponents.

To round out the deck, I've got a couple Dark Confidants and a couple of Crime/Punishment. I liked Crime/Punishment in the sideboard, but so many decks are going to either have Urza's Saga or cheap creatures that I thought it would work out, and it has. It's very versatile, and you can even cast Crime sometimes if you get some treasure tokens. Note that it doesn't hit planeswalkers, making it extra useful in this deck. Dark Confidant is sort of a planeswalker by itself and works well with a lot of the same support cards, the cheap removal to keep your life total high and the Thoughtseize effects to protect it. As I'm writing this paragraph I'm realizing that Crime/Punishment makes you take seven off the Dark Confidant, so maybe I'll change that, but the theory is sound. And oh yeah, four Tarmogoyf.

I also want to mention that Raging Ravine, while definitely is no Urza's Saga, has been performing very nicely. This deck doesn't need a quick clock, but it does need to close the game out with something once we've established the planeswalker hard-lock, and Ravine is able to do that. It's nice that some of the attacking power of the deck that's necessary doesn't take up the slots that we'd rather be using for threats and support spells.

Not a lot of the sideboard is set in stone, but there's a few things that I like. Leyline of the Void has been great. Graveyard hate is useful and all, but some of the midrange and aggro decks of the format lean into graveyard shenanigans more than they might have in the past, so a turn one Leyline is going to be worth it in a lot of matchups. Murktide Regent, Red/Black Midrange with Kroxa, and of course the Dredge nonsense, all gets shut down nicely. I also am really into playing one copy of Gaea's Blessing. The trick is that, against the Mill deck, you don't even have to draw it. There are a some times in metagames, few and far between, where you can swing a matchup by playing a card that doesn't even require you draw it. I like to take advantage of that when I can. Plus, I mean, Shadow Guildmage rules.

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That's where I'm at for the moment. I played in a Modern Challenge on stream on Sunday and I'm planning to do that every chance I get from here on out, but it's not the greatest time to be doing that kind of thing, with the holidays coming up. Still, I'm hoping to spend a lot of the next stretch of time here streaming and working on this deck. Thanks for reading.

AudioBlog about Alchemy, Historic, and Jund moving forward