New Format, New Client, Same Jund

Hey folks!

Today we're going to talk about Jund. Weird, I know, but I've been doing lots of Arena Standard as of late and I've got some conclusions to share. And decklists!

So if you were with me last time, this is where I entered into Ravnica Allegiances at. This is what I call the "District Jund" since it has District Guide. District Guide kind of messes some stuff up, notably, you need to play a lot of basic lands, while on its face, it would seem that the best way to build a manabase is just 4X of each shock and M10 land. You also might note that we've only got 23 land here, since between Seekers' Squire, Merfolk Branchwalker, and District Guide, hitting land drops shouldn't be too much of a problem.

The virtual and actual card advantage gained by a low land count and lots of creatures that give you lands is somewhat negated by losing access to Memorial to Folly. We could play it, I just can't bring myself to do it. Not playing Memorial, though, makes it so all of our lands enter untapped pretty much all the time, which is very nice.

One card I've been high on lately is Thrashing Brontodon. Wilderness Reclamation scares me, and it also happens to be fantastic against the Red decks and the White aggro decks, since it both gums up the ground very effectively early and kills their good enchantments late. In addition to that, Search for Azcanta is always a problem that gets solved pretty cleanly with it, and its worst case scenario is just a three-mana 3/4, which isn't that bad anyways. That's the biggest reason why Jadelight Ranger is absent from most of these lists. Jadelight is great, but I want to play Brontodon when I can, and we don't really do the whole Wildgrowth Waker plan anyways.

Another thing with this deck is that the basic lands let you punish opposing Settle the Wreckage and Assassin's Trophy much better. Personally, I don't like Assassin's Trophy and giving my opponents extra mana, but I also play basic-light decks that often draw the one basic land and get punished for it. You don't really run into that here.

Out of the lists here, I think that this is the one with the most potential. The actual numbers here are pretty bad because I've spent most of my time 

Also, what is up with those card prices?!? I think they're for Magic Online and they are the total for all the copies of that card, but wowza, Vivien is pretty pricey.

So here's a lot of the same stuff, except no District Guide. Memorial makes our long game a little better, but our early game is a little hampered by lands entering the battlefield tapped and maybe missing out on some fixing.

The big problem with having a late-game focused deck is that the late-game might not be a winnable fight against Hydroid Krasis. The way that I've been able to beat the Sultai decks is to wipe up their Wildgrowth Walker early game and then pressure them enough so that they have to cast Krasis before they want to. There's always a bigger fish. There's also merit to putting on some pressure against the control decks early to keep them off balance. Explore-guy plus District Guide might not require a sweeper, but it's certainly a noticeable clock, and you got to hit land drops out of the deal. This deck is still capable of presenting a quick clock but not as consistently.

The other thing is that this deck doesn't really even have extra mana to work with, so it's not like we're really running away with the game with our Siege-Gang Commanders and Biogenic Oozes. These two cards are really quite good, though. They gum up the ground and are pretty useful mana sinks in the late game. I'm not sure which one is better, they have different applications. The Ooze can tangle with Carnage Tyrants and get better as the game goes on. Siege-Gang is a little bit more of a defensive card but doesn't beat Carnage Tyrant as well. Untapping with either against a control opponent is usually game. The decider might be Goblin Chainwhirler: if the red deck becomes more popular in the Best of Three Arena Events, then I might swap to Ooze.

You'll also note that we cut Carnage Tyrant altogether here, except for one in the board. I think that eventually I'll end up doing that with the previous list as well. Carny Boy isn't all it's cracked up to be anymore, honestly. I think the format is a little bit more prepared for it, with Kaya's Wrath and  and the Sultai nee Golgari lists can go over the top of it anyways. That wasn't the case before Hydroid Krasis, where if you were playing Memorials, Find/Finalities, and a bunch of Tyrants of your own, then you were on even footing with them. To be clear, Carnage Tyrant is a good card against the Sultai decks, but it might not fit the plan we need to be able to beat the midrange decks and have good game against everyone else. We are no longer Golgari plus red, we are differentiating ourselves more than that. You don't want to be a worse version of something else.

A couple of cards that I am really liking are Vraska, Golgari Queen and Angrath the Flame Chained. They are both long-game threats that are at worst removal spells for a big Wildgrowth Walker. A lot needs to go wrong for you to really get taken out by a Walker draw, including you not drawing removal and them having multiple Jadelight Rangers or Branchwalkers, but when that happens it's really hard to win. That's why I'm always glad to have extra ways to kill opposing Wildgrowth Walkers and take that element out of the game. These two planeswalkers do that and then some, helping turn the corner and create some late game advantage. Notably they both kill Hydroid Krasis as well, although when Krasis is an 8/8 or whatever, it's not actually the body that's important.

Dire Fleet Daredevil has been hit or miss. You can't always depend on your opponent to have cards that are good against themselves. Against Esper Control, for instance, if they don't have Thought Erasure, it's almost a blank. Similarly to Thrashing Brontodon, the fail state of a two mana 2/1 first striker isn't awful. Plus, Dire Fleet's best matchup might be the mirror match. Hitting an opposing copy of Find/Finality helps quite a lot, and any Cast Down or Vraska's Contempt replicates Ravenous Chupacabra very well, which is an effect you can't have too much of. A card that I'm interested in trying in its slot is Growth-Chamber Guardian, which is another mana sink-esque cheap creature. 

I've worked on this deck the least of all so far. It's an attempt to get back to the Farseek/Thragtusk decks of RTR/Innistrad standard, where you had a mana ramp source that didn't depend on a creature surviving. Rejuvenator is no Farseek, but it is a 1/1 creature, which isn't insignificant. Your planeswalkers are far more likely to live if they come down a turn earlier and have a 1/1 chump blocker for them. The problem is getting them to resolve, which doesn't always happen.

See, what makes a deck like this work is that you load up with cheap removal and expensive haymakers, then have a light ramp element to help fix and facilitate the late game. You try and keep up with aggressive decks until you get enough mana to start slamming big stuff. Against control opponents, that strategy doesn't work well at all, and you need to let your sideboard do lots of heavy lifting. Even still, the way to win those games isn't necessarily to board in Duress. You're threat light because you have ramp spells. You need to be taking two or more cards with you every time you cast a business spell. In the past that meant things like Rakdos's Return, Thragtusk, Huntmaster of the Fells, Garruk Primal Hunter. The cards we have available to us now don't seem like they quite can fit the roles in that plan as well. Also, in 2012, we never had to play against Teferi.

The other big problem for Jund in 2012 was Junk Reanimator (that now would be called Abzan Reanimator). They went way over the top of you and did the big value creature thing much better than you did, plus they had more mana dorks and beat you on that front too. But, Olivia Voldaren and Bonfire of the Damned were incredible against them, and we don't have that luxury in 2019. Find Finality is the closest thing to Bonfire of the Damned I can think of these days, and it pales in comparison, plus our version of the Junk Reanimator deck, Sultai, runs their own.

Without those tools, I don't think that a Jund deck can fight a long-game fight against Hydroid Krasis or Angel of Serenity or whatever there is for supermassive top-end. In fact, that's kind of the case for Black/Green strategies throughout all formats: Lingering Souls and Snapcaster Mage are fantastic in the Jund mirror in Modern, it's the other end of the spectrum that we're worried about when we play Red instead of Blue card advantage or White resiliency. The advantage comes from better, cheaper removal options and consistency that comes from having fewer moving parts.

I do like some of the flexibility you get from some of these cards though. Shivan Fire seems awesome when you have a bunch of mana available to you, but can't always expect to. Same goes for Carnival/Carnage, which is a card that I've been trying to squeeze into my decks and can never find the room. It doesn't really work as a sideboard card, but like I've said before, you have to have a really really good reason to play a non-creature in a Vivien Reid deck. Vivien is at its worst in this deck of any of the Jund lists I've tried, so there's another detractor for this plan.

Moving forward, I also want to try the Wildgrowth Walker package in one of these shells. It probably has to be the no-District Guide and no-Rejuvenator list, since I'm not sure Jadelight Ranger co-exists very well with those. I like not worrying about Wildgrowth Walker, since in a draw with no Explorers it is really, really bad, and drawing more than one Walker in that scenario is atrocious. Those are the kind of deckbuilding decisions I try to stay away from, where your cards are interdependent, but you still don't have any library manipulation or tutoring to fit the pieces together. Still, if the Chainwhirlers start to whirl their chains, it might be time to do some Explore shenanigans.

One last card I want to note is Incubation Druid, which I think is just a non-starter. Unlike Llanowar Elves, it has more late game capabilities and adds more than just green mana, which is super important. But costing two instead of one is huge of course, but also, just the fact that we depend on a creature's survival to get its payoff doesn't really work in this environment on such a killable creature. I really hate losing tempo in the early part of the game, which Llanowar Elves does not do when it dies to a Shock, but this does.

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2019 JUNDVENTURES

So it's been a minute since I really did anything. I had all these big plans around the beginning of Autumn 2018 to up all my production of stuff: videos, streams, blog posts, all that. Then my laptop pretty much went out of commission, not really anything specific, but I just got to the point where it was really hindering any content creation process. Not enough power to run Premiere or OBS or even Magic Online that effectively. So I started working to re-tool my old gaming PC that had been sitting in my buddy's basement forever. After a lot of work and learning how to build a computer a bunch of times, I'm back!

So of course, in the mean time I've been rolling on MTG Arena. The whole 'stream the entirety of my Free-To-Play campaign' didn't work out because of computer issues, but I couldn't just not play. It's too fun. And obviously, once I got my Golgari deck built, I started Junding.

You'll note I don't have the sideboard listed here, because sideboarding isn't really a thing on Arena. That's certainly something that makes this deck worse. I also don't have to play best of ones, but it's the only way to rank up in the ladder. Plus, it helps out free-to-play players because you don't have to craft any sideboard cards. I can focus solely on getting the maindeck the way I want it, then start doing some 'competitive' (aka Best of Three) leagues.

The mana in this deck is not good. I rarely have color problems, which is good in a deck with 2BB, 2RR, and 3GG. I've managed to hold myself back from playing Jadelight Ranger, which is a personal achievement that I'm quite proud of. District Guide is amazing. That being said, the biggest problem with the deck is that a lot of the lands enter the battlefield tapped. I get so many hands that are one each of Woodland Cemetery, Dragonskull Summit, and Rootbound Crag, or something like that. I'm playing my Seekers' Squires really late and getting run over by my opponents when I don't draw Overgrown Tomb or the right basic lands.

That being said, when this deck does draw Overgrown Tomb, it's fantastic. Super smooth, lots of fixing, only Timber Gorge sticking out like a sore thumb making me look pretty bad. I can't even district guide for it. The curve is full of some extremely powerful cards, so when you're running on all cylinders, it's worth the trouble. That makes me excited for Stomping Ground and Blood Crypt (more on that in a bit).

Seekers' Squire and Merfolk Branchwalker are awesome, and honestly makes me wonder if I should have been playing them more often in previous formats. Maybe they'd have been good with Winding Constrictor? I also have been liking a Thorn Lieutenant or two in my Green/Black decks. It's great early and solid enough late, but they're still a little slow and not great in multiples. I don't love having the whole deck be weak to Deafening Clarion and Ritual of Soot. Legion Warboss also eats it to sweepers, but it gets to play both the role of quick, cheap threat and good sweeper follow-up. It's definitely a must answer threat, which we want to have a lot of (duh).

I've decided on the 3 Chupacabra/2 Vraska's Contempt split for a couple reasons. One is that the control decks often have things like Niv Mizzet or Crackling Drake, so only hitting creatures isn't the hugest of deals in lots of scenarios. Vraska's Contempt is clearly better against Teferi, but between Contempt and Assassin's Trophy, we have a lot of answers to Planeswalkers. Chupacabra also fits really well with the creature-density theme of the deck. We are low on removal and high on utility creatures because of how well they work with Find/Finality and Vivien Reid, which are kinda sorta the two best cards in the deck.

Rekindling Phoenix is as awesome as I had hoped. Lava Coil and Vraska's Contempt are problems, but it's not like you are without other targets for them, and they aren't super common. Carnage Boi is awesome as well, obviously. I might go up to a third copy.

Of course, today marks the first day of spoiler season for Ravnica Allegiance (I think that's what it's called, I just want to call it Rivals of Ravnica). And the biggest two cards for Jund were, technically, spoiled:

However, that's about it. We also saw Bedevil, which should probably take the place of Assassin's Trophy in Jund, and might even see Modern play. But instead of new cool stuff, we just saw a bunch of blue cards today, letdown city. Oh well, we'll see what's up tomorrow.

I have hope for Domri. I know I shouldn't, but a straight reprint of Domri Rade would actually be pretty sick in this deck, since it's so creature-heavy and could use a removal spell/card advantage split card. However, you never know what they'll do and maybe it'll be nothing like the original Domri.

Bedevil was the good Rakdos removal spell I was hoping for, although it might do weird things to the mana. Gruul Spellbreaker honestly looks pretty good too, just a big fella or someone who can attack a Teferi and can't get removed on that turn. Maybe it'll take the Legion Warboss slot.

Alternatively, this deck could go through a pretty big transformation with its whole mana base and District Guide setup. It's impossible to maximize District Guide while playing four copies each of the three Shocklands and three Buddy Lands. We could just mix and match some stuff, trim a basic or two, cut the Timber Gorges, but that still leaves us playing basic Forest which isn't great with Bedevil, and basic Swamps and Mountains that aren't great with adding Jadelight Ranger potentially. Not to mention, one thing that I'd really like in this deck is to add Memorial to Folly somewhere. Right now, that's way out of reach, but a 25 land deck that's all Memorials and dual lands could work for us. The fixing would be worse, kinda, but we'd have pretty good late game. I'm going to try to build a District Guide version and a no- or few-basic version and see which is better.

That's about it for now. Next time, I'll go through whatever spoilers we've gotten, and talk about Modern in anticipation for SCG Worcester, my first actual magic tournament since, uh SCG Worcester!

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