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.