The Grass Ain't Greener, The Wine Ain't Sweeter

Degen Tournament

Yesterday I played in a Standard tournament run by Degenerate Gaming. I went 4-2 with this, but took my losses early and missed on breakers. I played against two mono-green decks and against four various blue deck brews, and beat all the blue decks and lost to the green decks.

Tracker is just excellent in this format. It trades early with big aggro deck creatures, or it pressures life totals, all while generating card advantage. The blue decks all had a hard time with any hand that had Tracker in it, especially when backed up by either more pressure from Chariot or by Inscription generating more card advantage. Grakmaw was also good in the three drop slot, pressuring opponents, being a combo with Chariot, and leaving material behind when the opponent tried to remove it.

My Jund deck played Bloodthirsty Adversary, and while Adversary was clearly great whenever I drew it, it left me playing more reactive spells than I feel like I should have. My Green opponents had lots of Old Growth Trolls and Snakeskin Veils to make spot removal not work very well, plus Chariot is pretty good against spot removal too. I think that what I've found in this format is that spot removal for a few turns and then turning the corner doesn't cut it, or at least isn't as good here as it would be in other formats. I think a better plan is to try and build an equally powerful board presence as your aggro opponents, then win with bigger trumps. I've loved Tovolar's Huntmaster so far. Tainted Adversary has proven to be good in this format, since it trades off with anything out of the green deck, but also applies pressure to the blue decks. It's not busted with Inscription like Bloodthirsty is, but it's been good in conjunction there.

I don't think that the red splash is that problematic for the deck, but I did lose a game to getting hit by multiple Field of Ruins. If you're not on the Bloodthirsty Adversary plan, then it's a little bit less necessary. Moving forward, I think I would play something more along the lines of this. The mana is a little less awkward, but most of the power is still there. There's less spot removal and more cards to create board presence, notably Gnarled Professor, which is another card advantage generating big-stats-guy.

Degenerate Gaming is a cool program that you should check out. It was a fun and well run tournament, big thanks to the TOs and casters.

Bans

After having played this tournament, I can't really understand anymore why people think that Alrund's Epiphany is even close to ban worthy. Standard is great, it's the best it's been in years, and there are lots of tools to beat whatever you're going to face. I had a great experience brewing for, testing for, and playing in a Standard Tournament this weekend, and I even learned a lot and have new ideas to fix the problems I faced. If that isn't the experience you want to have as a Magic player, then Magic just might not be for you.

Bans are really, really bad. They price people out of the game. You get wildcards back in Arena, but on MTGO and in paper, you're just out the amount you put in. Sometimes your whole deck gets blown up in the process of banning a single card, and now the deck is unplayable and not worth anything in trade. Clamoring for bans is an extremely privileged thing to do, especially in Standard, which is supposed to be the most accessible format, and especially for something as innocuous and borderline as Alrund's Epiphany.

As far as Historic goes, I guess I don't really care that much about Memory Lapse being banned. Jeskai and Azorius control decks are still fine. Memory Lapse is a great card, but it's certainly not the reason that Jund specifically was losing to control, and honestly whatever the decks look like going forward could be even worse for Jund. I think banning it will end up having a net negative effect on the format, since it's opened the door for Five Color Niv Mizzet to become prevalent, but whatever.

Historic

I'm trying to find the card to bring in against Five Color Niv to beat it, but I'm not sure one exists. When there's a deck like this that's such a bizarre strategy, often there will be a single card that can take it out in one blow. For Field of the Dead it was Massacre Wurm, for Forsaken Monument it was By Force. So far the best thing I can think of is Cleansing Wildfire, but that's just a speedbump. It's a really good speedbump, but still not what we're looking for exactly. Maybe with Bloodthirsty, it's enough of a one-two punch to really knock that deck out. Now that the Standard event is done with, I'll get back to testing.

I think it's also worth remembering that Niv Mizzet, even if it is a popular deck and a successful and hard to beat one, is still just one deck. If you play four creature decks and one Niv Mizzet deck and go 4-1, that's a great record to have, and it might not be worth messing around with the deck too much to fix that one loss. If the next day you re-tune the deck, play those same matchups and go 3-2 but beat the Niv Mizzet deck, you've gone backwards. If Niv continues to get more popular, then maybe it's worth some drastic changes, but for now I think it's okay to just take your medicine, so long as you're confident elsewhere. Also, what's nice about Cleansing Wildfire is that it's actually a little useful in some other matchups and doesn't require a whole rebuild of the deck to include.

Crimson Vow

Cleave looks great. It's basically Kicker with extra steps, but I still like it. As for this card, I think it's too slow for Historic but it's not that far off. Fixing your mana for the rest of the game for just one mana is a great deal. Note that building around this card is way different than something like Attune with Aether or even Fabled Passage, because if you've tutored up all your basics, you can just use the Cleave ability instead. One Swamp, Forest, and Mountain aren't a huge sacrifice to make, especially if opponents are going to start playing more Field of Ruin and Cleansing Wildfire effects. The other part of why this might be okay in Historic is the sideboard space it saves you, and the volatile nature of the decks in the format. All of a sudden your one Witch's Vengeance turns into five, your one Klothys turns into five, your one Grafdigger's Cage, your one Tergrid God of Fright, etc. As more knockout blow silver bullets get printed and more combo decks get printed, this can gain a little bit of utility. Again, I think it's too slow for the format ultimately, but it's doing some good things.

This one has potential, but I think it'll see more play in Modern than in Historic. In Modern it looks great to me. It hits most of the stuff that Inquisition hits, including Snapcaster Mage, Counterspell, and every card out of a Lurrus deck. The added bonus is that it hits Primeval Titan and Karn and stuff like that when you need it to. Is three mana a lot to pay to get rid of a Titan? Sure, but it's better than taking 36 damage. Lots of games against Valakut decks turn out to all boil down to whether you had Thoughtseize or you had Inquisition, so Dread Fugue can do both. In Historic, I don't really like it as much, since 4 Thoughtseize and 0 Inquisition seems to be the thing to do anyways. I find myself pretty rarely taking something with Thoughtseize that costs 2 or less in Historic, but hey, more ways to snag a Niv Mizzet or Teferi might be worth it, depending on how the metagame shakes out.

Cool card, but I think it's too bad. 2/3 Flying Lifelink would be awesome in a format where the default aggro decks are red decks, but instead they are Green decks and the green decks just crush this thing. Maybe worth playing in the Golgari Standard deck I posted earlier, but the Professor is pretty nice too.

Call me crazy, but this is kind of okay. It's a 0/4 wall for B that has 2B: Transform, but you can only flip it as a sorcery. Then the other side is a 3/4 Menace that Vendilion Cliques them. It's got big toughness, attacks on turn three for three damage, disrupts the opponent a little bit, and can stop early attackers. All kinds of variable mana costs on this thing, since you can pay one mana early and three mana later or four mana all at once. I'm not sure what deck it goes into, but it's a solid card. I like it. I think it's worth trying.

Of course, I'm waiting for something like 

1BG Sorcery - Cleave 1B, Destroy target creature [or planeswalker, or artifact, or enchantment]. 

Or how about

1G Sorcery - Cleave 2RG, Create a 3/2 red Wolf creature token [with "when this creature enters the battlefield it deals damage equal to its power to any target.].

There's a lot of design space here, so we'll see what they do with it.

~

That's about it for me. If more cool stuff comes from the new set I'll talk about it here. The tournament vods should be up on my Twitch channel for a little bit if you're interested. I had some wild games near the back end of the tournament but was ultimately out of contention anyways. Also, I played some Pokemon Blue and leveled up my Sandslash a bunch between rounds. Thanks for reading.

Summertime Done Come And Gone, My Oh My

I've been away for work for a little while, but still had some time to hit Mythic last month. This month, I've been working on Standard as much as I have Historic.

Here's a link if you're interested. It's pretty simple and seems to have game against most things. The sideboard is a little bit warped to fight the Alrund's Epiphany decks but that's not the worst thing in the world. It's possible that Duress is a main deck cards these days, but I try to do that as little as possible.

This deck certainly plays out more like a Bloodbraid 2009 style Jund deck than a Modern Jund list or even a Huntmaster 2012 Jund list. The threats are hard to deal with but are capable of winning the game by themselves if left unchecked, so they have to be dealth with. You don't kill every single creature the opponent plays, but you kill enough of them to let your top end get online. We also get lots of good value lands, which is nice because it lets us play a high land count.

It seems like the power in this format lies either in playing Esika's Chariot or Alrund's Epiphany, so we play Chariot and do a little bit of work to maximize it, but not a lot. Wrenn and Seven and Briarbridge Tracker are just good cards no matter what, and I like the rest of our threat suite even though more synergistic stuff is available, like Tainted Adversary or Reckless Stormseeker. Our way to win the Chariot mirrors isn't to have better Chariot synergy, it's killing their Chariot.

The mana works out pretty well. We get to utilize as many slowlands as we want and don't have to play any Snarls. That said, I'm not 100% sure that the red spells are worth it. Bloodthirsty Adversary is great, but doesn't seem to excel in this format as much as it does in Historic.

For what it's worth, and this could be it's own separate post, but having played Standard with this deck has not made me feel like anything should be banned in the format. Esika's Chariot and Alrund's Epiphany are clearly very good, but if those are the boogeymen of the format, then I think we're in a good place. This is the type of deck that intrinsically should be getting creamed by Izzet Turns and I haven't found the matchup to be that bad.

In Historic, this is my latest list. I wouldn't say that Adversary has been a revelation, but it's very good. It does all the things I liked about Goblin Dark Dwellers but with none of its downsides and most of its upsides. Plus, there's lots of neat tricks, in large part in concert with Inscription of Ruin. It isn't the most off the wall powerful card in the world, but if you give a card enough little abilities and tricks you can do with it, eventually one of them will be a route to win a game. The amount of things you can flash back, the timing that you cast it, the haste, all of it is a nightmare for the opponent to play around. Adversary is a card that rewards practice.

Not trying to subtweet (or sub-discord-chat or whatever) but I still think that I like Abundant Harvest. It's a card that doesn't see a lot of play, but at the same time there aren't that many decks that meet all its requirements. You're green, you don't have any spells that add mana, and you don't have Blue to use Opt or Consider instead (which you could argue are worse, but okay). Few decks meet all those requirements.

At the moment I'm not interested in cutting it from the deck. If you're running into Thalia and Esper Sentinel in a third of your matches or something, then maybe that's different, but that hasn't been my experience yet. I also think that it's totally fine to sideboard Harvest out in that matchup when you have a 24 land deck, which I do as of now. We'd ostensibly be bringing in cheap removal, so the overall mana cost of the deck goes down and 24 land seems more suitable.

Harvest is the kind of card that you might not realize is winning you games. It turns mulligans into keeps and turns sketchy hands into smooth draws. It also essentially reduces the number of cards in your deck which will help you find your good stuff after sideboard. It's the kind of card that I'm envious of my blue opponents for getting to play. I think it's totally reasonable to try and cut it if you don't like it, as is the case with any card, but it will be hard to gauge whether you're winning more or less without it. I do recognize its downsides, but I know I've been happy so far.

~

I did some streaming on Twitch this weekend and might do some more soon. I like the weekend morning stream time, it's a nice relaxing way to start the day. Thanks for reading.

Got A Letter This Morning Baby And All It Read

We've got a few days until Midnight Hunt comes out so I asked folks to ship some questions for a Q and A post. If there's anything I like more than playing Magic, it's talking about Magic.

What's your favorite Mind Rot?

Great question. My friend Steve asked me to do a Top 10 Mind Rots post. I can tell you that my favorite Mind Rot is Blightning, but I don't think it's the best. I'm going to define Mind Rot as a sorcery that makes the opponent discard two cards.

10. Unburden - The best thing to do with a Mind Rot when you don't need a Mind Rot is to cycle it, but you'll probably just draw a different Mind Rot.

9. Carnival/Carnage - Carnage is not as good as Blightning because the new damage templating doesn't let you hit planeswalkers. However, I really liked this in Standard a couple years ago, when Llanowar Elves and cheap red, white, and blue one-drops were all over the place. You have no idea how many Teferis I picked off after they used their -3.

8. Heartless Pillage - Build your own Gerard's Verdict? Honestly does some good work as a sideboard card in decks where you have lots of two drop creatures. Two drop on two, attack and Pillage on three, then five mana Planeswalker on four is a nice plan when you're in an aggressive role.

7. Stupor - Pretty good.

6. Go Blank - One of the worst parts of Mind Rots is when they discard stuff but also have graveyard abilities to recover. Sure I'll just go discard this Arclight Phoenix or Kroxa or Unburial Rites or whatever, great card advantage spell. With Go Blank, no shenanigans allowed. Plus, it's a graveyard hate spell for Dredge or whatever, so it's a nice sideboard slot.

5. Inscription of Ruin - The best part here is that it's Mind Rot that can do other things. There are lots of times where Mind Rot is a good enough card to cast in a constructed game, but the times when it isn't, it really isn't, and so doing something else with the Inscription is a huge deal. Also, Mind Rot is obviously bad when your opponent has no cards and you've drawn it on turn twelve, but Inscription is great in that scenario.

4. Wrench Mind - The problem here is that if they happen to have an artifact, it's so bad. But two mana vs three is a huge deal.

3. Blightning - The crucial part here isn't that it domes the opponent for three, it's that it can do that if you want but also you can blow up an opposing planeswalker. Folks like to say that Bloodbraid Elf was the reason Jace the Mind Sculptor was kept in check in Standard, but Blightning was a big part of it.

2. Gerard's Verdict - If this cost 3 it would still be pretty high on this list, but at two mana it's so good. You either want to be gaining life or gaining card advantage in most matchups, and this card does it all. I think this is the one card that if it got ported to Modern would make me want to play either Abzan or a white splash.

1. Hymn to Tourach

Honorable Mention to Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage, who usually is a three mana discard two, but when you hit all three cards with him, it's awesome. Done a lot of work with Davriel in my day, I have.

No Way Out from the new Midnight Hunt seems interesting, but it's in the same Standard as Inscription and Go Blank. I could be wrong, maybe it's gas.

What's your favorite weird card you've played and why?

See, I don't think I play weird cards. All the cards I play are pretty basic. My idea of a weird card is something like The Ozolith or Hollow One, things that require you to do weird things. My weird cards are just weird because few people play them, not because they are strange.

Looking at that list of stuff, there's lots to choose from. There's a few reasons for that. One is that I've been playing for a long time, so I have a backlog of cards I remember for when a metagame calls for certain effects. Another is that players don't often know how to play against stuff if it's not the same things they always play against. And of course, I just like certain cards and have fun playing them.

I guess another thing is that I just don't really care what the status quo cards are. When I build every deck in Historic with Shivan Fire and Flunk in the sideboard while playing zero Heartless Acts and Fatal Pushes, I'm sure it looks strange, but I play them because it works. As long as you can be honest with yourself and not just play weird stuff for the sake of being different, then you should feel absolutely free to play what you want. It is entirely possible that you're right and everyone else is wrong.

A few that come to mind are Bitterblossom, Chevill, Wolfir Avenger, and Sprouting Thrinax. I think maybe my favorite though is Shadow Guildmage. It's not the case anymore, but a turn one Guildmage was close to unbeatable for a lot of decks in Modern around five years ago. Affinity, Infect, Humans, any of the Collected Company decks, all of them just fold to this thing. I beat a medium-fame SCG Grinder with it once and saw later they tweeted "Just got taught a lesson by Shadow Guildmage." But again, the trick with these cards is to only play them when they work. None of the decks Shadow Guildmage preys on see play these days, so my Guildmages are back on the shelf. But some day, when it's time again, get ready.

How do we feel about punishing Memory Lapse and Expressive Iteration? Is it possible that maindecking Cindervines is correct?

Lots going on here. First, I don't think that it's that outlandish to play maindeck Cindervines when both the metagame calls for it and it works in the deck you're playing. I'm not sure that right now meets the first criteria (I could be convinced otherwise) and as far as Jund Midrange goes, it certainly doesn't meet the second.

As far as a midrange card, Cindervines doesn't really do it for me. We don't put on enough life total pressure, or at least can't rely on putting on enough life total pressure, for the damage to matter that much. A lot of what makes Cindervines good is when your aggressive game plan forces your opponent to take damage when they don't want to because they don't have any other choice. Sometimes we get that draw, and you can tune your deck to get it more consistently if you want to, but lots of times we don't, letting the opponent dictate how much they want to let Cindervines affect the game. You can cast a Cindervines on turn two and have your opponent cast literally 19 spells and still lose that game.

I've put Cindervines in my sideboard before to fight Nexus of Fate decks, but that's just one particular metagame call. The most twisted I ever got in deck construction in Historic I think was when I jammed four main deck Massacre Wurms to fight against Field of the Dead. Field of the Dead decks were the most common and best decks in the format, and drawing a Massacre Wurm turned the matchup from legitimately unwinnable to legitimately unloseable, not to mention being the checkmark against Goblins and other creature decks. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but I'm not sure we're there.

These Jeskai decks are good, but they're plenty beatable, as are the Phoenix decks and the control decks. The three best decks in the format all being blue decks isn't actually that rare a phenomenon, if you go back in Magic's history far enough.

What got you so into Jund?

I've kind of wondered this myself for a while. I think that there's two things.

One is that I grew up and still live in Vermont. Well before Arena and even before Magic Online, Magic metagames and philosophies were very regional-based. Sure, we all had StarCityGames and other strategy sites, but nothing really teaches you Magic like learning from the player sitting next to you. In Vermont, our big defining player was Jamie Wakefield.

Wakefield is best known for playing green decks, but he also liked black midrange decks. He was kind of an innovator and definitely came up with his own philosophies and theories. I don't really remember it fully, but I think he came up with the concept of a creature that can attack being a source of card advantage, theoretically. Like, given enough turns, a Wild Nacatl is worth seven Lava Spikes. I still base a lot of my deckbuilding on that, I like creatures and threats that can win the game by themselves, hence the Cindervines stuff previously. Wakefield was actually on the cutting edge there, the only real creatures people played for like the first decade of Magic were Morphling and Jackal Pups, so casting a bunch of mid-sized creatures and winning the game was a big deal. He wasn't Patrick Chapin or Mike Flores or anything, but he was a big deal. Lots of the local players from the time when I started playing were disciples of Wakefield and I think it shaped a lot of how the more tenured players play. I don't think I ever played against or really interacted with Jamie, but he influenced a lot of the people who influenced me, like Aaron McCaslin and Jeremy Muir, and looking back you can tell that a lot of the Vermont Magic scene was shaped by him. And it really was a stark contrast from outside of the state. I have a lot of memories of grisly looking dudes in plaid and snow boots from the woods showing up to Boston and Montreal, playing in PTQs against pro level players, playing slow green creature decks and just completely kicking ass. It's less significant now, but you can still see the impression Wakefield made on the state if you know what you're looking for.

The second thing is that I was looking for deck inspiration about ten or twelve years ago for some upcoming event and started looking at winning decklists on the internet and found decklists by the Duke brothers. Usually at least one of them Top 8'd every PTQ in the Northeast US. I knew them a little bit from chatting to them at PTQs and their lists looked good, so I just started playing whatever they were playing. The first time I did that, I think I lost a win-and-in for Top 8 of a PTQ with a list from Ian, then a few weekends later I qualified for Nationals with a list from Reid. Reid usually played Mythic, the Bant colored ramp/midrange creature deck, and Ian usually played Bloodbraid Jund. So in a way, it wasn't Reid but actually Ian that got me into Jund the first time.

Fast forward a few years later and Reid won the Magic Online championships with the first iteration of Modern Jund, and I was hooked.

That's the actual storyline, but I guess what keeps me interested in Jund is the challenge of trying to apply a lifetime of experience and what is kind of an outdated strategy to a current game. People call it grinding, but in reality "grinding" is just what it looks like when black decks try to accrue card advantage. In reality, Jund is playing Total Football, trying to fight the game on as many axes as possible, in the hopes that it's better than the opponent at at least one of them. You have to be good at pretty much everything in Magic to play Jund well. I certainly don't feel like I've mastered it yet, even after all this time. I like that I get to use my experience and I also like that I get to actually tangle with what my opponents are doing, which teaches you for later.

Why is Jegantha only a 5/5? It's clearly a gigantic thing.

Yeah, I don't know. It's a big deer. I'd love if they replaced the mana ability with just making it a 6/5 or whatever. Jegantha has been an interesting puzzle to solve. Lurrus and Yorion are pretty easy to build around and evaluate, but how much value does straight up no-text Colossapede have on a game? As it turns out, it's a huge deal, especially when you're playing a deck like Historic Jund.

What are some of the best cards for Historic Jund in Midnight Hunt?

I've been talking about this a lot in the last two posts, but so far I like Bloodthirsty Adversary and Briarbridge Tracker. Equally or possibly more importantly, the "slowlands" also are pretty promising. I love good new lands. As far as cards I haven't mentioned yet and have been spoiled, Florian looks like it has some potential in the same way Tovolar does, and Primal Adversary looks a little better than Tainted Adversary, but I'm still not super impressed. You've gotta be a real good card to earn a slot when you have the same mana cost as Bonecrusher Giant.

I haven't played Magic in years, why is Jund the right deck for me, and how much better has Goyf gotten since I've been gone?

For what it's worth, the guy who asked this question is a good friend of mine, and Jund is the right deck for him because he already owns a lot of the cards and has played that kind of strategy his whole life. But, for the rest of you, I should say that I don't usually try to convince people that they should play Jund all the time. I kind of know that what I'm doing is weird and probably not the best path to tournament success.

Having said that, I think that the lifelong project of mastering and tuning a single deck is really fun and could be worth doing for you. I don't think that Jund is the only deck you can do that with, but it is one of them. Also, Jund could be right for you if you haven't played in a while because it's basically the same deck as when you did play, even if the last time you played Magic was Standard in 2009.

Tarmogoyf is a super interesting card because it just kind of can't be that bad. When formats speed up and decks gain more velocity, Tarmogoyf just keeps growing. Whereas you could rely on attacking on turn three with a 3/4 Goyf, nowadays that will usually be a 5/6 due to all the broken stuff going on around it. Mishra's Bauble, Urza's Saga, Dragon's Rage Channeler, all this stuff makes Tarmogoyf better and you don't need to do anything to make it happen. Tarmogoyf was good, is still good, and will always be good.

What's the best place to eat at the DCU Center (in Worcester, MA)?

Mezcal Cantina lunch special!!!!

Why play Jund over doing busted Jeskai stuff?

I think that this is actually a pretty deep question, but as far as this weekend's Mythic Qualifier or whatever the hell it is, the various Jeskai decks do look pretty good. As I have it built right now, Jund isn't really that well positioned against Jeskai control or Creativity. Not that badly either though, they're just a blue deck you can Thoughtseize and attack and stuff. But I would change the deck significantly if I was going to try and gun for this specific metagame.

But forgetting about the Jeskai part of the question, why are we playing Jund over busted stuff, in general? First, fair decks are often harder to disrupt than unfair decks. We don't fold to Rest in Peace, we don't fold to Kor Firewalker, we don't fold to Thalia, we don't fold to Damping Sphere. There's nothing to disrupt! Midrange decks are hard to sideboard against because there are few cards that are easy knockout blows against us.

Second, Magic is a game of high variance and midrange decks don't really need to have that good of a draw to play the game. For the same reason that we don't fold to hate because there's nothing to hate, we can't not draw our key cards because there are no key cards.

As far as a snapshot of this very moment's metagame is concerned, paying your ten thousand gems or whatever and registering Griffin's latest Jund deck might not be the best thing to do (honestly maybe it is though, I've been doing just fine on the ladder). But in the grand scheme of things, I'm looking to reduce variance and to increase interaction.

Who is Kenji?

I would imagine that by now most people hear the name Kenji and think of Numot on Twitch, but Kenji Tsumura was a legend of the game from about 2004 to 2008. A handful of the game's absolute best ever were coming up during that time, including PV, LSV, Masashi Oiso, Shuhei Nakamura, and a bunch of others. I became a huge Magic coverage fanatic as soon as I got to college in 05 and had good enough internet to download and watch Top 8 Pro Tour coverage, and Kenji was my favorite. The dude was amazing, just truly one of the all time greats, and it's kind of a shame that more people don't know him. I would imagine that the consensus top five players of all time are Finkel, Kai, PV, LSV, and Nassif in some order, but a hill I will die on is that number six and seven are solidly Kenji Tsumura and Masashi Oiso. The numbers that those two players put up in such a short amount of time will probably never happen again, even if we go back to the old PT system some day.

He's also just so easy to root for. He's like 5'4" and is either extremely dialed in to a game or giggling and bubbly. He was friends with everyone on the Pro Tour even though he could barely even communicate with most people. Patrick Sullivan told a story on a recent episode of the Resleeveables where Kenji and Patrick's mom have a long conversation in a New Jersey convention center and PSulli is just watching, thinking it's the greatest thing ever. Pretty sure he Top 8'd that GP, too, because he always did.

To explain Pro Player cards I would also have to explain Tournament Packs, so I won't, but basically Wizards made some promotional cards with Pro Tour players on them like baseball cards and put them into sealed product, kind of like they do now with token/ad cards and stuff. For no real reason, I bought like 50 Kenji Tsumura cards and used them for all my tokens forever when I play paper magic. It's weird, but it's served me well. Instead of having to figure out what kinds of tokens my deck makes and find the right ones through all my junk, I just make sure to bring my Kenjis with me to every tournament. Kenji has spent a lot of time as a 2/2 Wolf and as a 1/1 Faerie Rogue, and even some time as a 2/2 Zombie next to a Grave Titan.

I got to play against Kenji Tsumura on the ladder a few months ago. He was playing Black/White Auras and I just nuked him with Chevill both games. But he made some pretty savvy plays, if I remember right. It seems like he's still got it.

Is Urza's Saga good in Jund? How about Ragavan?

I think the answer to Urza's Saga is probably yes, but I haven't tried it. I've been more focused on Historic for the last little bit here.

I think that a good rule for deck building in midrange decks, and this is just my own philosophy that others will probably disagree with, is that I don't mind cutting good cards in order to facilitate powerful payoffs, but I'm not a fan of playing bad cards to facilitate powerful payoffs. The Urza's Saga bullet package in the Modern Jund Delirium deck looks loose to me, but you have to do that if you want to play Saga. It's probably worth it, but I'm less into that type of thing than most. Cutting Liliana and Bloodbraid et al for Lurrus is less of a problem for me though, because it's not like you're going to replace them with bad stuff. Lurrus doesn't ask you to play with bad cards, it just asks you to play with different good cards. Maybe Urza's Saga is worth it, or maybe the shell is so good that people are Stone Raining themselves for no reason and winning anyways.

I don't have any real expertise on the matter, but I wouldn't be surprised if Urza's Saga was kind of a trap in this exact deck, but a Lurrus and Dragon's Rage Channeler version of Jund might be still be the best thing to do. Every draw step is still gas, the curve is lower but you still have lots of power, and you don't fold to graveyard hate. Classic non-Lurrus Jund still might be plenty viable, but Lurrus is a huge deal.

Ragavan is busted.

Does Jund have room for Blue?

I've tried Jund with White and I've tried Jund with Blue in Modern. I think that there are some legitimate reasons for splashing White, but splashing Blue doesn't really do it for me.

In the past I've played Wild Nacatl and Lingering Souls in Jund and been kind of impressed. It takes a certain kind of metagame for that to be the right thing to do, where you expect mirror matches and want Lingering Souls, but also want Wild Nacatl against combo decks to apply fast pressure. If those are what you expect to face, it's honestly pretty good, or else it was good when I tried it in the pre-Modern Horizons times.

I've also tried splashing Snapcaster Mage and some other blue stuff in Jund in Modern and liked it a lot less. You win the mirror, but you aren't really speeding the deck up at all, and you're not bringing a lot of new angles to the deck. If that's what you want to do, win the mirror, White might just be the better splash then anyways.

Both of these plans come with significant costs to your life total, your decks' overall consistency, and your ability to deploy your spells and keep up tempo. It greatly reduces your ability to play stuff like Raging Ravine and other utility lands and also good dual lands like Blackcleave Cliffs because you need to play more lands you'll want to fetch and you'll need to draw more fetchlands to make it happen. It's not even clear to me that Lingering Souls and Snapcaster Mage are such value all stars that they make cutting Raging Ravine worth it.

I think that Modern might be the only format where going four colors like this makes sense. You have the fetchlands and dual lands that newer formats don't have, but you don't have Wastelands and Stifles to ruin your manabase.

I know that this is completely biased, but I would imagine that there's evidence that would hold it up; I think that Jund is the best color combination for a Green and Black midrange deck most of the time. Green and Black cards complement each other nicely. You deal with the opposing big creatures with black removal, you deal with the opposing small creatures by playing big green creatures. You can use a discard spell to take away removal and counters for your threats, and your bigger threats create a bigger advantage for you. The red cards help make sure that you don't fall too far behind on the board and make sure the opponent isn't too comfortable with their life total. This is all completely theoretical and fairly likely bullshit, but every Sultai, Abzan, Golgari, or four color midrange deck just feels like it's built wrong to me. Of course there are things like Siege Rhino and Uro that get printed and are worth bending for from time to time, but this has been my experience.

Is Goblin Dark Dwellers better than Ox?

?

~

Big thanks to everyone who got in with a question. This was really fun, and I hope you enjoyed. When Midnight Hunt comes out in a little bit here, I'll fire up the stream and maybe even the Youtube channel. In the meantime, thanks for reading.

It Might Be Twelve O'clock And It Might Be Three

 New spoilers, let's go.

I think that this is going to do less than Radha for us almost all of the time. Radha fights better, is easier to cast in Jund, and doesn't require any weird deck construction to get her going. Augur of Autumn is clearly at its best when you're likely to have creatures on top, and you're likely to have multiple creatures in play at once. That doesn't seem to be what we're doing these days, but there is some power there. I just don't like our chances if this is going to be a little worse than Radha most of the time and also we're not even playing Radha much.

Three drop creature that trades with Questing Beast sized creatures, deals a lot of damage, and is good against removal because they two for one themselves by using a removal spell on it. They can't really just let you beat them up with a 4/3, so they have to let you net a card at some point. It doesn't look like much, but might hit that sweet spot like Bonecrusher Giant, where there's just enough rate to threaten them effectively and also enough defensive size to hold off attackers. Trading off with a creature and getting a Clue token out of the deal is excellent when that's what you want to be doing, and forcing them to have removal and then gaining card advantage for it later is also excellent. An excellent card, my biggest concern is the plethora of other three drop cards available to us we could be playing instead. But I like it. Like I was talking about with Wrenn and Seven and new Arlinn, putting a bunch of numbers on the battlefield without doing anything disruptive isn't always going to be what we want to do, but the difference between that strategy at three mana versus four or five is huge. For what it's worth, this card seems awesome in Standard and I'm excited to try it with Esika's Chariot.

I was getting myself a little bit interested in this card until I saw the next card I'm going to show, but this one has its merits as well. 1B for 2/3 Deathtouch is already doing work for us, since it dodges a lot of the cheap removal and can't be easily attacked into. Moving past that, this gets pretty powerful in the later stages of the game, but is making decayed tokens something we're interested in doing? I like blocking, and I like forcing opponents to have removal for my creatures instead of just absorbing some damage and calling it a day. The unkicked body is relevant, for sure, and the kicker is a bonus, but none of the deals here are particularly exciting, and the tokens aren't particularly useful.

It's important to note that this is a 2 drop creature with an ability when it enters play. That is so, so much better than Kicker, since you can cast it with three mana open and in the event it gets destroyed or countered, use three mana on something else if you'd like. The same is true with the next card.

This card is incredible. I don't know when I've seen a card with this much flexibility and rate rolled into the same card. I just barely got done talking about how the problem with Goblin Dark Dwellers is that it's a five mana card in an increasingly tempo-dependent format. Bloodthirsty Adversary has the best way to play a five drop and get around this drawback, by not costing five mana.

First, two mana 2/2 Haste is a card that has its applications. Michael Majors was on The Resleeveables and said that haste is an underrated enters the battlefield ability and no one seems to realize it. The ability to go after Planeswalkers and deal some burst damage the opponent wasn't planning on is a big deal. The ability to threaten a Narset or Teferi is nice. Plus, sometimes you just have no other play on turn two and want something on the board. Additionally, this is a nice safety valve to get around graveyard hate. You can Thoughtseize them and let them keep their Rest in Peace or whatever, just start bashing.

In addition to the 2/2 Haste for 2 plan, I think there's a real argument that 3/3 Haste is as good or sometimes better than 4/4 Menace, and if that's the case, we're cruising with this card. Dark Dwellers has already been awesome for this deck, and that card comes with much less flexibility than the Adversary (even though it's a very flexible card). Even if not, there's just so much going on here.

The combination of this card and Inscription of Ruin is bonkers. First, you've got your simple Mind Rot and 3/3 haste combo, which is great. Then, you've got the removal spell plus 3/3 haste creature that completely flips a race situation. Then there's make my Adversary a 3/3 haste, use Inscription to bring back another Adversary in my graveyard and now I've got five power with haste attacking you or your planeswalkers, or get back an Ooze and eat your Kroxa or Phoenix, or get back Chevill and let him fuck people up. That's awesome, but you'll also run into situations where you're at six mana with an Inscription in your hand and rebuy your Adversary and flash back that same Inscription, basically getting the value of a full kicked Inscription but for only six mana. It's of course still awesome with Eliminate, Maelstrom Pulse, and Kolaghan's Command.

Eight mana isn't likely to happen that often, but when it does, it becomes very hard to lose. Now we're getting into Hydroid Krasis territory, where you can get tons of card advantage and a race swinging battlefield presence in one topdeck. Even a 4/4 haste that casts a removal spell and an Abundant Harvest is going to win a huge amount of games.

One more thing, cards like this become much better after sideboard when you can board in knockout blow cards and then cast them again. Go Blank is clearly a good one, but there are sure to be other things in the format as new stuff comes out. Witch's Vengeance and Necromentia come to mind, given the right metagames. Also of note, this card, for no reason, gets around Grafdigger's Cage. It also is Jegantha-ready, unlike Dark Dwellers.

I'd be shocked if Adversary wasn't the best card in the set, for us anyways. Like I said, it's got flexibility on top of flexibility, it's got rate, it's doing all the stuff we want to be doing at whatever point of the game we happen to be at. I'm pumped.

~

That's likely going to be it for spoilers for this set, I can't imagine too many cards making as much of a splash as the red Adversary and Briarbridge Tracker, but we still don't have the green Adversary so who knows. If anything really exciting pops up, then I might post about it here, but either way, I'll catch you on Twitch or on Youtube soon. Also, for no good reason other than I think it would be fun and make for some good material, hit me up on Twitter for mailbag questions. That could be a fun post. Thanks for reading.

Crazy Rooster Crowing Midnight

Spoiler season is over so that means it's spoiler time again.

A quick update on the Historic deck, here's my latest build. I've found Goblin Dark Dwellers to be great, but most of the other Jumpstart Historic cards to be only okay. Dark Dwellers requires a little bit of deckbuilding concessions, mainly maximizing your three drop removal spells to try and make sure that you have something worthwhile in your yard to cast with the Goblin. That's kind of fine, because Inscription, Maelstrom Pulse, and Kolaghan's Command are all things we wanted to be doing anyways. Some other cards from Jumpstart were okay, like Davriel and Seasoned Pyromancer, but didn't fit in the deck that's trying to maximize Dark Dwellers. Dark Dwellers just fits nicely in what this deck is trying to do and for what is going on in the format.

This card is exceptionally powerful, but doesn't really do anything for me in Historic. Too much mana, doesn't meaningfully disrupt the opponent. You're too likely to make your token and then lose. As far as purely putting numbers onto the battlefield, which is important to do, this card is excellent, even for five mana. But, that seems to be less and less what Historic is about. The reason that I'm so into Goblin Dark Dwellers right now is that it does a lot of the same stuff that W7 does, puts a big body on the table and gives you card advantage, but it does it in a way where it disrupts your opponent. I'm pretty excited for it in Standard though. Curving Esika's Chariot into this is going to be awesome, and Chariot is already one of the better cards in the format anyways. Standard 22 has looked pretty fun from what I've seen so maybe I'll give this a shot.

Speaking of Esika's Chariot, I'm not sure that Arlinn really does anything for us that Chariot doesn't. Similarly to Wrenn and Seven, she doesn't kill any opposing creatures to do anything to any of their stuff. And since we can already get that from Chariot, is Arlinn going to be able to do that better? It's possible, especially since Prismari Command seems to be everywhere right now. As far as I have the deck built at the moment, I don't think there's really room for either of these cards, but the build of the deck is very likely to change at some point, like always, so maybe we'll want to jam some cats or wolves again.

Not long ago, if you were to tell me there was a three mana 3/3 Ophidian with some significant upside, I'd have loved it. Now, I'm not so sure. The problem is that there just aren't that many opponents out there where you can expect to cast a three mana 3/3, untap with it, and attack with it the next turn. I got fooled by Nighthawk Scavenger, so I don't want to get fooled by Tovolar. But, the power is definitely there. It's certainly worth a shot.

Here's another three drop with potential. It reminds me a little of Deathgorge Scavenger, but I think it's probably more powerful. I don't disregard any graveyard hate cards, so this will always have a chance. The Ward ability is a pretty big deal against decks where you're grinding, and the back side has enough power to threaten an opponent. It doesn't really tangle on the ground with anything in the format, but there's some potential here.

It's funny, losing 2 life is a pretty significant cost to a removal spell. In theory, you want to use your cheap removal spells to keep your life total high, not empty your hand out fast. But, Historic seems to be very much about keeping pace on the battlefield instead of worrying about your life total. Right now, I'm more interested in catering my deck around Goblin Dark Dwellers, and losing 2 life twice isn't what we want to be doing, but this could be an interesting option in the right metagame.

It's been a while since I kicked a Shivan Fire, so this card is certainly an option out of the sideboard. Is it good enough to main deck? I think we'd main deck Lightning Bolt if give the chance, potentially even something like Chain Lightning, so it's not out of the question. Three is a lot more than two, though, no matter what else we tack on.

The translated version of this is 1R, Sacrifice a Vampire and discard a card: Draw two cards, activate only if an opponent lost life this turn. Similarly to my explanation on Ragavan in Modern, nothing is off the table if it's versatile and cheap and powerful enough. It gets on the board early, trades with most other cheap stuff, pressures planeswalkers, and can help you dig for value in a pinch. I don't think it can fit in the Dark Dwellers top end plan that I've got going now, but I like to keep an eye out for cheap stuff like this. Over time, the power level of eternal formats necessitate mana curves going down.

I like these a lot. One thing that's apparent with the list I posted earlier is that the mana is stretched quite a bit to hit all of our requirements, Thoughtseize on turn 1, Abundant Harvest on turn 1, and double red for Goblin Dark Dwellers. These don't help you cast your early stuff, but they do increase the count for your red sources, and without needing land types like Rootbound Crag does. By cutting those lands, we can also cut the Shocklands from the deck and have a functional mana base. I'm interested in trying to get Stomping Ground out of the deck entirely, which is tough to do if you're using Rootbound Crags. These lands also work nicely with Darkbore Pathway, since a Pathway plus either one of these lands will get you all your colors, plus the Pathway will be able to cast your one mana spell, be it Thoughtseize or Harvest. And, like most of these other lands, at the very worst they are tapped lands that add two colors, so your awkward mana draws will still be able to cast stuff, if possibly a little slower than we'd like. My best guess right now is that somewhere between three and five of these lands should be in the deck, but it will take quite a bit of testing to get the knobs turned just right.

~

There's still plenty left of this set to see, and if there's another card or two that look viable then I'll post something quick here. Also, I'd love to get another Youtube video out about Goblin Dark Dwellers in Historic, if I have time. If you want to check it out, you can see my past broadcasts on Twitch. Thanks for reading.

Jump Like A Willy's In Four Wheel Drive

I like the way they've rolled out Historic Jumpstart. First, show us all the bad news, the cards they are printing for Arena only that make the game feel closer to Hearthstone. Then, show a bunch of high-rate cards that will be injected into Historic. Then, delay the release so that the anger dissipates and now everyone is excited to play with the new cards. Perfect!

We should take just about any Planeswalker seriously, since they're basically tailor made for midrange decks. They can play multiple roles, are proactive threats, and turn your removal spells into card advantage spells, since keeping them alive nets you value. My gut reaction says that Davriel is just not quite there for us, but I could definitely be wrong about that. There's a whole bunch of research you have to do to figure out Davriel's second ability, but the gist is that you get a big reward and a slightly smaller cost. The problem with Davriel is that you can't really plan on what that reward is going to be, which makes it harder to carve out a game plan. That's critical in Jund, being able to line up your removal with their stuff or your stuff with their removal, or whatever. I also think the +1 ability is too weak and that four mana for a planeswalker is a little slow in this format. When you're competing for the same slot as Vraska, Golgari Queen and Chandra, it's tough. It's worth a shot, but I don't have high hopes. Also, maybe it's just fun as hell, which is enough reason to play it anyways.

Pretty solid card, but it doesn't seem as useful as stuff like Disfigure or Shivan Fire. Funnily enough, not being able to effectively kill a Vesperlark is a problem, but this could be worth trying.

This one is intriguing. In the late game, it's Hero's Downfall. Early on, it's Barbed Lightning, which isn't good. But anytime past turn three, you're usually killing your target with this. The other part of this whole equation is whether 2R: Hero's Downfall is even good enough to play, which it would have been six months ago but now I'm not sure. Again, another one to try out. It's hard when there's no precedent for this kind of mechanic.

I'm not a huge fan of Lightning Strike or Roil Eruption or anything like that in Historic and never have been, but Lightning Bolt is a mainstay of Modern Jund and Standard Jund back in the day, so it's not like it's an effect we don't want. This is getting a little closer to the range of Lightning Bolt in power level, but to really maximize it, you'll want to play all four, which might just not be in the cards. The other problem is that this would likely take the slot of Eliminate out of the deck, and I can't really say that reducing the number of instant speed removal spells is a great idea, given the Vesperlark combo and the new creaturelands that are in the format.

Yeah, now we're going deep. This isn't entirely out of the question. It's got some real Pack Rat vibes but is less vulnerable to removal. Maybe a one-of in the sideboard. I feel like it's gotta be really hard to beat this in a long drawn out game, but that isn't what Historic is often going to be about.

Almost certainly too good to not play. What's fantastic is how it utilizes the graveyard for that extra little value, but is totally fine if your opponent has a Leyline or Rest in Peace. We're going to be running a little close to The Graveyard Trap, but all of our graveyard synergy cards are still just fine to just cast and then attack with.

I think that Pyromancer makes Jegantha not a thing anymore, which is sad but we'll be okay. It's less necessary now with creaturelands and the graveyard ability on the Pyromancer itself. Double red on turn three is going to be a tricky thing to nail down, but the good thing is that Pyromancer on turn eight is even better than Pyromancer on turn three anyways.

Also, Pyromancer is going to make a lot of other decks better as well, like Izzet Phoenix and potentially Rakdos Arcanist, but I'd imagine any Red deck will play this.

I think I've actually somehow managed to get myself more psyched up for Dark Dwellers than for Pyromancer. This thing is the Thragtusk value-plus-large body we've been looking for, and the value you get from it is chosen by you. Maelstrom Pulse loves this, as does Inscription of Ruin. I'm not sure how many is the right number to run, but this thing resolving will translate into a win so often that I have to imagine it's at least 2.

Verdant Command lives in that weird spot where it's a little narrow for a main deck card but a little underpowered and unfocused for a sideboard card. What's nice about this over something like Witherbloom Command is that the baseline ability to just make two 1/1s isn't far off on rate for a two mana card anyways, so the rest is kind of gravy. But, in a deck like Jund, I'd like to think we're doing better than Raise the Alarm on rate, so this might not be for us, but instead for a deck that can utilize the tokens better. Any card that's a constructed-quality card from a Modern Horizons set is worth taking a look at though.

This exists in the same space as the Momir card, where if you have this in the ultra late game you can create a pretty huge advantage. The downside to that is your six mana spell has to not get countered and has to not get blanked by Rest in Peace. There is precedent for this with Season's Past, a one or two-of late game hammer that usually ended any game it resolved. Resolving this for four or more and then untapping should be the game, since your graveyard is usually going to be all gas, but only a few matchups are going to go that long, given not only the makeup of the format but the build of our own deck. Similarly to Verdant Command, if it came from Modern Horizons, it's worth keeping in mind.

I don't really have a decklist that I think I'm going to be playing on day one, because I think a good strategy for new sets is to try out a couple copies of anything you're interested in and see how it goes. So I'll probably have a Momir artifact and a couple Davriels or whatever to see what's up, but I can't imagine that that's going to be a useful list to try. If I had to guess what I thought the deck will look like five days after the release, it's something like this:

I haven't been the biggest fan of Witch's Vengeance in the past, half of that is because there are better options and half of that is because of Jegantha. But there are a few good Goblins and Elves cards in the new set and we might want help there, in addition to some Merfolk stuff and who knows what. Plus, three mana sorceries look even better with Goblin Dark Dwellers in the deck.

~

I have a video going up on Youtube right now with a nice Modern Jund list. I tried a little bit of Pioneer Jund but basically I don't know enough about that format to really try and be any kind of an expert there, so I ported the Pioneer cards I liked into Modern, namely Bonecrusher Giant. You can find that video here. Thanks for reading.

22 Tournament Today

Hey folks, just wanted to post here and say that I'll be commentating a tournament today, August 7th. It's an MTG Melee tournament run by Jaffer, a cool streamer. He runs a sort of tournament series called Gouda Wars. I've played in a few events, they're a fun time and pretty low key. It's a nice, low-pressure way to get your feet wet if you've got a semi-competitive deck.

The format is Standard 22, which from what I've seen so far is a pretty nice, fresh format. Nothing is really overpowered yet, but we'll see how the format shakes out. It reminds me a little bit of Standard formats from a long time ago, where the mana fixing was bad and there were a few cards that were head and shoulders above the rest, but everything was kind of balanced. It's hard to just try to play all the good stuff because your mana base might not support it that well. Goldspan Dragon, Esika's Chariot, and Alrund's Epiphany seem to be the best cards, but nothing is really oppressive, and there's enough good aggressive stuff going on that if you try to stretch your mana too far then you can get really punished. Various Mono White, Mono Red, and Elves decks are perfectly good choices, and there's good control stuff going on, too.

Here's a link to the tournament if you're interested in playing, and here is where you can watch the stream.