First, I want to talk about the takeaways from M21. Out of the new cards I've played, Liliana and Elder Gargaroth have been standouts, Scavenging Ooze might be the best card in the format, and Radha and Eliminate have been okay. Necromentia also has been good but has gotten weaker from opponents playing more Bant Nexus that Simic Nexus lately. I'm not sure that M21 changed much of the function of this deck, but it certainly upped the power level.
Ooze has been absolutely incredible, and putting four into the Jund deck has shored up a lot of the problems you have. One is Uro, of course, but another is Klothys, which is notoriously hard to beat. I love an early game play that has value late, and Ooze does that very well. Like Reid Duke said a long time ago, don't remember the quote exactly, but in midrange-ish creature battles, Scavenging Ooze is king. The size and lifegain make racing nearly impossible, which is great because it gets better as the game goes on. Ooze also gives you this take-out-the-trash-ability when concerning graveyard decks, like Cat Oven and Kroxa and whatnot.
I was skeptical about Elder Gargaroth, but sorta kinda convinced myself on it, then played with it and hot damn is it good. The thing is, we added a bunch of discard spells to this deck to help facilitate it with Liliana and throwing Agonizing Remorse in the deck. Remorse isn't my favorite card ever, but if you can knock out a removal spell and get the Gargaroth going, almost nothing can stop it. I've been beating aggro deck draws that I just have no business beating. Gargaroth stops them in their tracks and completely takes over. If it's a liability, which it is sometimes but not as often as I predicted it would be, I just board it out. It feels pretty fun to play a card that's just this high on power level.
Liliana's inclusion is more of a function of the format and the rest of the list than it being extremely powerful. The discard spells get better when you have Gargaroth and Ooze, sure, but also the Growth Spiral decks are just so good right now, we need something that fights on that axis a little bit. Agonizing Remorse here is kinda fighting the same battle. Add that to her ability to pick off creatures similarly to Vraska Golgari Queen and it's a recipe for a solid enough card that fits very well.
Radha has been pretty good, but I kind of wish it was better. She's a card that gets sideboarded out quite a bit. I'd say against almost 40% of the format my sideboarding plan is -2 Radha, -3 Agonizing Remorse, +4 Shivan Fire, +1 Chainer's Edict. If you think you're going to have time for her, she's great, but so much of the format is too fast for her. Crucially, this was never a problem with Courser of Kruphix because Courser was designed to be solid defensively while still netting you card advantage. Radha's downfall is that all of her abilities are designed for the long game, but doesn't help get herself there. The problem is, is there a better three mana play in the format? Do we even want one? I think in the future I'll try Radha just as a one-of. You'll rarely have her in your opener but might draw her later when she's at her best, and you'll never draw multiples. In cutting her, I won't miss the Trained Armodon mode she starts the game in but would certainly miss the Future Sight + Phage the Untouchable version in the late game.
Eliminate is super good. Really not a ton to say about it, except that its saving grace was that it can hit Teferi and Narset while still being Smother in creature matchups, but you just board it out in control matchups anyways. It's almost too effective to not play and just versatile enough to not screw us up too bad.
Jump Around
Like I said, there doesn't seem to be a ton of changes to the format as a consequence of JumpStart, except maybe that the ramp decks will play their own Thragtusks. It's funny, Thragtusk is a great Jund card, but it's also really good against us, to the point where I'd almost rather just have it not in the format and keep bashing with Gargaroths instead.
One thing to note about Jumpstart is that there's some Tribal stuff going on. Some good Elves like Elvish Archdruid and Craterhoof Behemoth, there's Goblin Chieftain, there's Rattlechains and Kira, Great Glass Spinner. In addition to that, there's Isamaru Hound of Konda. It makes me think I'm going to need some sweepers in the sideboard instead of just spot removal from now on, which is okay because Languish is also in the set. Languish also hits everything in the Gruul deck except for gigantic Oozes, so it's very welcome there as well. Oracle of Mul Daya and possibly Overgrown Battlement are a couple of cards that could power up the ramp decks even more, but it's hard to get better than Growth Spiral and Uro. I'm assuming we'll still need a ton of discard spells to help fight ramp strategies.
I'll definitely be starting with 4 Thragtusk, that's for sure, and it'll probably come at the cost of Gargaroth, although maybe we just play 5 or 6 five drop creatures. That's not unheard of, and it makes me wonder if we need some ramp of our own in order to get there. Let's try something like this:
4 Thragtusk
2 Elder Gargaroth
4 Scavenging Ooze
4 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Wolfwillow Haven
2 Casualties of War
1 Radha, Heart of Keld
2 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
3 Bonecrusher Giant
2 Murderous Rider
3 Eliminate
3 Liliana, Waker of the Dead
1 Angrath, the Flame Chained
25 Lands
Sideboard: Shivan Fires, Languishes, Davriels, Eldest Reborns, possibly large Planeswalkers.
This is what I call High Gear Jund. We're ramping, we're out-powering opponents, we're not as worried about gaining small value and instead we're gaining big value with big spells. This is closer to the RTR/INN Standard Jund deck that utilized Farseek to get just enough mana to have an advantage on opponents and make bigger plays, not necessarily to ramp up to impossibly expensive stuff.
Thragtusk excels here because as strong as Thragtusk is by itself, it's at its best when played ahead of schedule. When all of your creatures are huge and gain you life, it's really hard to win by attacking.
The downside is how weak a deck like this is to ramp strategies. You have no tempo threat, you have little hand disruption, and you're ramping into your big finish 2 or 3 for ones when your opponent's whole deck is like 5 or 6 for ones. Add to that the vulnerability to things like Nexus and Field of the Dead and this becomes a deck that looks amazing in the right metagame and toast in the wrong one.
4 Thragtusk
4 Scavenging Ooze
4 Merfolk Branchwalker
3 Chevill, Bane of Monsters
1 Radha, Heart of Keld
3 Bonecrusher Giant
2 Murderous Rider
4 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Liliana, Waker of the Dead
1 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
2 Eliminate
2 Agonizing Remorse
2 Carnival/Carnage
25 Lands
Sideboard: Same as before but with Duress
This is Low Gear Jund. While this is clearly less powerful at the top of the curve, we gain two important points: one is the Chevill package, which rewards you for playing small ball. The second is that we'll never have a hand of all top end and no ramp that we would have been planning on to get there, we'll also never draw a hand of ramp and all small stuff so there's nothing to do with it. In a head to head matchup, the High Gear version would definitely have an advantage, but in the format at large my bet is on this version being the one to go with. I would certainly welcome being wrong and I'd love to play the big spell version of the deck, I'm just not optimistic.
These are the two lists I'll start with and we'll see how it goes. Thanks for reading.
