Sultai Energy in Standard

Decklist:

4 Aether Hub

4 Blooming Marsh

4 Botanical Sanctum

2 Fetid Pools

4 Forest

2 Island

1 Swamp

4 Fatal Push

4 Attune with Aether

3 Blossoming Defense

2 Confiscation Coup

4 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner

4 Longtusk Cub

4 Winding Constrictor

3 Deathgorge Scavenger

1 Rishkar, Peema Renegade

4 Rogue Refiner

3 Bristling Hydra

3 Walking Ballista

Sideboard:

4 Negate

3 Duress

4 Hostage Taker

1 Deathgorge Scavenger

1 Walking Ballista

2 Essence Scatter

What I like about this list over the Temur Energy deck is the Glint-Sleeve Siphoners. That's pretty much the big draw. At first Hostage Taker impressed me a lot, but I've relegated it to the sideboard for now. Siphoner is the big edge that we have over Temur Energy, which I think is worth it. My experience, or how I feel at least, is that our control matchups are better than Temur's, but our aggro matchups get a little worse. The mirror or pseudo-mirror seems like it's 50-50ish. Where I think we have an advantage over Temur is against the Abzan token decks, since we have access to Walking Ballista.

Let's run through the changes I've made to the Jessup brothers' initial list. First, I fell in love with Deathgorge Scavenger. I got to the point where I just wanted it in the main, first one, then two, then three. The problem with Rishkar is that it gets seriously tempo'd out by opponents with Magma Sprays and Shocks, and it's really only at its best with a Snake in play. A few sets ago, we could expect our Snakes to live with more regularity, but everyone either has access to Fatal Push and Abrade at this point, making Rishkar nothing more than a 3/3 Llanowar Elf most of the time. And even when it's better than that, it's usually because you are flooding the board and walking into a Fumigate. Deathgorge, on the other hand, is amazing in the metagame right now. It hits for 4 and fights opposing Search for Azcanta. It gains life against Red decks. It also eats all the embalm and eternalize creatures out of the Tokens decks and God Pharaoh's Gift decks. It's pretty much at its worst against Energy decks, which are just a big midrange battle, so I board it out there, but I've been really pleased.

I've cut my Hostage Takers and replaced them with Bristling Hydras. The biggest reason is that Hostage Takers are abysmal against any sort of control decks, whereas Hydras are at their best in those matchups but never abysmal against anything. I found myself having lots of games where I was stuck with useless Hostage Takers in my hand and losing against control, thinking that if they were Hydras instead they would be amazing and I would have definitely win. I made the swap, knowing that other matchups would suffer for it, but to my surprise, the Hydras have been pretty reasonable against Red and Tokens. Hostage Takers are so backbreaking that I still wanted access to them though, so they sit in the board to bring in when Hydras aren't at their best. I usually make the swap against Red and Tokens, and board in Takers against Energy decks as well, but leave in my Hydras there.

The Jessups had a couple of top end cards, like maybe a couple Scarab Gods and Vraskas in the 75. In place of those, I've got Confiscation Coup. I found it to be the most backbreaking card against midrange mirrors while also being really solid against Red decks. Unlike the Scarab God, it is pretty bad against Control decks, but we've improved our chances there with other card choices, so I felt like it was okay. Also it's 10,000 tickets online, blargablarg. Still, Confiscation Coup has been really, really good. I have attacked with more Hazorets than I ever thought I would have with this deck.

The sideboard is pretty self explanatory. The 4th Dinosaur, the 4th Ballista, the Hostage Takers, and then Duresses and Negates and Essence Scatters. I have been toying with Gonti in the sideboard, but I don't like the double black casting cost. If I was to move away from Confiscation Coup, then that option would be a little better, since I would have no double blue cards and could go back to 2 Swamps 1 Island. Bringing in Hostage Taker against Red is a little nerve wracking, but even stealing a 1 or 2 drop and casting it the same turn before they untap is often a winning play.

If you like the looks of it, give it a try. Or, you can check out my stream! I've been getting into streaming on Twitch a little bit at twitch.tv/griffinlussier and you can also check out past streams I've done here.

Thanks for reading!

Jundpdates

So it's been a minute since the last update here. Let's see what's going on in ol' Griff's life and what's coming up.

1. I worked a bunch all summer at my day job and finally finished up Pigs vs Monsters pre-production. I have since quit my job to do Pigs/Magic more full time, with an option to go back to work whenever I want if I fail at both.

2. Being away from any big cities with FNMs and whatnot has made it difficult to play any real Magic, so I'm in the process of boosting up my Magic Online account and cashing in most of my paper collection to do so. Before I go headlong into Modern, I'm starting out with playing a bunch of Standard, which I actually like a lot at the moment, which isn't always the case with this format. I've also been streaming a bunch of the Standard I'm playing, so if you're interested, check out twitch.tv/griffinlussier. At the moment I'm only playing Standard and working on Sultai Energy, but in the near future I'll be jamming and tuning Modern Jund.

3. In the near future, I'm planning to hit up as many SCG events as I can. I'm quite a ways away from most of them, but I'm planning on driving to any of them that are in Washington DC or closer. Did you know that you have to take a fucking rocket ship to get to Ohio? It's so far away it may as well not even exist.

So with that out of the way, let's talk about the actual Magic I got to play between my last post and now.

A buddy of mine and I traveled to SCG Syracuse back in August. I rumbled with the current Jund list and liked it quite a bit. The only changes I've made are to switch Tasigurs out for Sprouting Thrinaxes. I was really underwhelmed with Tasigur, but I've loved Thrinax. It makes combat rough, makes sweepers bad, great against removal and Liliana, and is castable under a Blood Moon. If it weren't for my Blood Moon sideboard package, I'd be more interested in Courser of Kruphix, Kitchen Finks, Eternal Witness, or, now after the Planeswalker Legend rule change, Liliana the Last Hope. I also split 2 Scavenging Ooze and 2 Grim Flayers instead of the 4 Flayers in anticipation of Dredge.

It's been a couple of months, but let's see if I can remember all my matches. Round 1 I played Abzan Death's Shadow, which is a rough matchup on paper but I was able to win, largely on the back of Bitterblossom and Sprouting Thrinax.

In round 2 I was crushed by Grixis Death's Shadow. Unlike the Abzan Death's Shadow deck, I actually think this matchup is pretty close, maybe 50-50ish, but it sure didn't seem like it during the games.

Rounds 3, 4, 5, and 6 saw me beat Dredge, Affinity, GB Midrange, and Burn in some tight matchups. Bitterblossom was crazy good against Affinity and Green/Black.

Round 7 was against Caleb Scherer with Storm. Since they play 7 cost reducers that are easy targets for my removal, I like this matchup quite a bit, but some bad draws got the worst of me and I was defeated 2-0. Caleb, of course, is a Storm master and dealt me exactsies one game when I had lethal the next turn, womp womp.

Round 8 I completely lucksacked my way around BW Eldrazi. I like the matchup, but I ripped Huntmaster of the Fells like every time I needed it both games.

Round 9 I was paired against Jim Davis (yuck) playing Tron (also yuck). In the first game, I actually managed to secure the board and had a clock going against Jim having just lands, but he drew back to back Wurmcoil Engines, and don't ya know, they were pretty good. In the second I think I made a pretty critical mistake by not flashing back an Ancient Grudge on a Wurmcoil token, if memory serves, which ended up costing me quite a bit, until of course, Jim topdecked Ugin into Ulamog that would have just killed me anyways.

So I was 2 SCG ringers away from making Day 2. The deck seemed great, very powerful, metagame called correctly. Soon I'll do a more at-length post about Sultai Energy in Standard that I've been working on before I get back into the Modern saddle.