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.