Always Carry Two Spears

Just as I was wrapping my head around whether Elder Gargaroth belongs in the Jund deck, they decide to make Jumpstart and add Thragtusk to Historic.

Thragtusk, I think, changes this deck a lot. I think we want four, and I also think that some mana acceleration gets a little bit better now. Llanowar Visionary is another M21 card I've talked myself into lately that I didn't pay attention to earlier, and that card looks real good as a nice way to get right into Thragtusk mana.

There are some other cards spoiled for Jumpstart that look pretty good. One is Gonti, Lord of Luxury. I like that we have a card that's basically a mono-black version of Atris, which is a card I always wish I could play. Grim Lavamancer seems like it could also be good. I've started to incorporate Fabled Passage into the list in anticipation of helping Radha and it's been okay, so that could give us some extra Lavamancer fuel.

After having thought about it more, the Thriving lands seem like they might fit the deck as well. It's at least worth a shot, although I don't love lands that enter tapped and also don't help turn on Rootbound Crag et al. Thriving Moor counts as all three colors of mana, which is very helpful and turns some bad hands into playable hands, but Fabled Passage does the same thing kind of while it also turns on some of the buddy lands and also can enter untapped later in the game. I don't think I would play Thriving Lands and Triomes in the same list, and if that's the case, then more shocklands seem necessary. Notably, with Thragtusk in the deck, we'll want to curve out as smoothly as possible all the way up the chain, so a Thriving Land on turn one would be fine so long as the next four lands come in untapped. ETB tapped lands always makes me want to play cheaper spells, which is something we should probably be doing anyway and increasing the deck's consistency in two ways at once.

Anyways, summer is shaping up to be interesting over in Arena Historic land. It's a ton of fun, and I'm almost a little sad that they're printing Thragtusk because I had myself psyched up for Elder Gargaroth to be a big deal, but going back to the good old days of slamming Thragtusks will be nice. At least I can Gargaroth for a month and see how it goes, that should give me enough time to get sick of it getting -3'd by Teferi.

M21 Jund Cards

Hey all you great Jund fans that definitely exist and read this! It's been a while since I updated this blog, for a few reasons. One is that I had a great opportunity to write at MTGcorner.com, which is a sweet website with some under-the-radar brilliant Magic minds. That was great but I only got a few weeks into my tenure there before I had to stop due to work obligations. After that, I spent like five months straight campaigning for Bernie, then I bought a house. Lots going on, but now I'm back to Magic again, in large part due to how fun Historic on Magic Arena is.

M21 spoiler season is going GREAT. I opened up the blog just because I'm excited about some of these cards in the ol' trusty Jund deck. Let's dive in.

First card up, however, is not for us. I think. Instead, it's the new big top end threat of the format. As constructed, I don't think I'd ever beat a resolved Ugin with a Jund list I've played in the last couple months. I think Ugin will be really good in Historic, so it's important to have a plan. One drastic one I think I'm going to try is a planeswalker-less build with The Immortal Sun, but a likely more reasonable plan is to incorporate more discard spells to attack the raw resources Ugin requires.

Eliminate is a card that looks appealing to me. I've liked the card Easy Prey from Ikoria, since it is a cheap removal that isn't dead against decks that don't have cheap creatures. Eliminate is a better removal spell but its ability to stay relevant in the non-creature matchups is not as good as Easy Prey's. Hitting a Teferi or Narset is nice, but trying to one-for-one either of those two planeswalkers is not a good plan. It's still such an upgrade from Easy Prey in the removal department that it might be worth it.

Another reason I'm all of a sudden opening up to the idea of running creature-only removal spells is because of Liliana. It doesn't matter how bad the worst card in your hand is if you're going to discard it anyways. I think that Liliana is likely a step up from Vraska, Golgari Queen, but again you're going to be just hitting creatures with her removal ability. Unlike Vraska though, Liliana is a threat on her own against Teferi decks and she does some serious disruption along her way to ultimate, just like Liliana of the Veil. I think ultimately I'll play some mix of Golgari Queens and Waker of the Deads, perhaps two each.

This is not the type of card that I'm usually interested in, but Historic has a couple of popular decks that are hard to interact with and that Necromentia deals with quite nicely. Naming Field of the Dead is usually going to be game over or close to it, and naming Nexus of Fate is almost definitely game over. I'm not interested in using cards like this for anything else, like naming Teferi or anything, but as a targeted hate piece it can save some sideboard space by overlapping those two decks that both require specific cards to deal with. I have been playing three Blood Sun (and Alpine Moon during the Lurrus times) in my board for a while and I think this is better, and has more applications.

While this is probably the best card in the format against a mono red deck, is it worth the slots? At the moment I think it's not, since mono red isn't really even the number one aggro deck in the format anyways. Gruul has bigger creatures that Sporeweb Weaver can't really stop, and Sporeweb doesn't do anything substantial against any non-aggro deck. It's possible that Gruul gets a little less popular and mono-red decks get more popular in the coming months and Sporeweb Weaver stops them, but all out aggressive decks aren't really that common right now. An interesting card to keep an eye on, for sure.

One thing that's interesting to note about building the threat suites in these midrange decks is that there are a lot of different criteria that you should be thinking about to varying degrees, and you just have to kind of feel out which criteria you should be prioritizing. Elder Gargaroth is basically a green Baneslayer Angel in that it is extremely good at winning the game if it survives but doesn't have a lot in the way of protecting itself. Is Baneslayer Angel something that we want? Well it's hard to say, but the argument against it is that it's bad against removal, because pretty much everything else about this is a slam dunk. So let's talk about "bad against removal."

In my eyes there are a few different ways to be "good against removal." One is to have a trigger when the creature enters the battlefield, like Mulldrifter. Another is to be able to come back from the dead, like The Scarab God. Another is to be difficult to hit with a removal spell, like Troll Ascetic. You can also be be good against removal by having a trigger when the creature dies, like Sprouting Thrinax. Finally, it's also good against removal to be cheaper to cast than the removal spell that is used on it, like say Memnite or Delver of Secrets.

Gargaroth is good against removal in a certain way, in that it's unable to get hit by stats-based removal very well. You can't cast Easy Prey or Moment of Craving or Shock very effectively on Elder Gargaroth. This is important because those are the cheapest kind of removal spells, and you're therefore going to feel the effects of getting your five mana creature killed less harshly since you're not getting tempo'd as bad if they spent three mana to deal with it instead of one.

This advantage leads to Gargaroth being very good against the aggro decks in Historic not just because it gains life and has vigilance, but because those decks don't usually want to put expensive removal spells in their deck to deal with something like Gargaroth.

Something else to note about Gargaroth is a facet of Jund gameplay that I touched on in my blog post from a while ago called "Why Tarmogoyf." Tarmogoyf is useful in Jund because Jund seeks to strip both total and specific resources from the opponent, to the point where the opponent's game plan gets dumbed down and something like a big creature that attacks and blocks takes over the game. We usually don't seek to lock the opponent out, just make it hard for them to enact their game plan, while our own game plan is unassailably simple. Trade away all of our resources and then when the dust settles see if you can beat a 5/6. Gargaroth has that same advantage that Tarmogoyf does but at a more Historic-friendly mana cost. Gargaroth can't beat a Scapeshift for 16 Zombies, but if you can beat that plan, most backup plans from the Scapeshift deck aren't beating Gargaroth.

I'm not sure that we would play Baneslayer Angel if we had the opportunity in the past, but Liliana, Waker of the Dead amps up the Modern-esque resource denial facet of the deck. Gargaroth's rate is there, it's more a matter of whether the deck and the format around it allow for it to excel. My thinking is that Gargaroth is a great two-of or so to top the curve.

Uro is pretty much the single biggest problem for Jund in Historic, so Scavenging Ooze is very, very welcome in the deck. It's a serviceable early play on curve, has late game power, and is able sometimes to disrupt the opponent. Can't ask for anything more than that. In addition, Scavenging Ooze opens up sideboard space, if you want to, because you have graveyard hate in the main ready to go. Note that we might have to start playing a couple more green sources in the deck but that shouldn't be a huge problem. I think I'll likely play three of these.

So what's great about Radha is that she does three things very well that I'm interested in doing. Cheap-ish curve filler that puts on some pressure, check. Able to give you real card advantage every turn it's in play, check. Late game mana sink, check. Radha is an aggressive-slanted Courser of Kruphix, which is very exciting, but Courser's value-plus-defense recipe is part of what made it so good. But just the fact that it attacks you both in value and that it can threaten to straight kill you each attack step makes it a house in any matchup where your opponent's life total matters. I've been playing a lot with Dryad Greenseeker in the deck as a cheap creature that can help you keep pace in the late game, but I think Radha does the job a little better and has a substantial ability to pressure planeswalkers and opponents. At worst she's Trained Armodon, at best she draws you five cards and attacks for 27. Including an offense-focused three mana creature might necessitate gearing the deck down to fight against aggro decks, but similarly to Elder Gargaroth, the payoff is likely worth it.

It's very early, but here's a jumping off point for when M21 is released.

4 Merfolk Branchwalker
3 Chevill, Bane of Monsters
3 Scavenging Ooze
2 Radha, Heart of Keld
2 Elder Gargaroth
3 Murderous Rider
3 Bonecrusher Giant

2 Vraska, Golgari Queen
2 Liliana, Waker of the Dead
2 Liliana, Dreadhorde General
2 Bedevil
4 Maelstrom Pusle
2 Eliminate
2 Carnival/Carnage

1 Savai Triome
1 Indatha Triome
1 Barren Moor
2 Castle Locthwain
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Forest
3 Overgrown Tomb
2 Woodland Cemetery
4 Blood Crypt
1 Dragonskull Summit
3 Stomping Ground
4 Rootbound Crag

3 Necromentia
4 Shivan Fire
2 Chainer's Edict
2 Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage
3 Duress
1 The Eldest Reborn

It's unclear what the format will look like, of course, but I'm suspecting fairly few changes to the metagame at large. Historic is a pretty open format with only a few real solid top tier decks, so I like having a little more versatility in my sideboard options to deal more with macro-archetypes instead of specific lists. This might not always be the case and then we'll have to retool the sideboard, but I think we have our bases covered here.

Anyways, thanks for reading. If you have a chance, give Historic a try, it's really fun.