Bebop Baby How Can This Be

 

Omnath seems to have destroyed Standard. Somehow, I haven't run into it in Historic. Why is that? Someone please kill me with this thing. I can't try to figure out how to beat it if no one plays it. And if the answer to all of this is "It's not as good in Historic because there's more discard and removal for Cobras" that's just serious balogna. Look at this thing! That deck plays like a Vintage deck, it's obscene. 

In the meantime, the format hasn't shaken up a huge amount in Historic. After a little less than a week of Zendikar Rising, this is where I'm at now.

I've cut all the five drops from the deck. I'm not sure that they're too slow for the format, but between Glorybringer, Thragtusk, Elder Gargaroth, or Angrath, you really want to have the right one for the right moment, and that's not super easy to pull off. If that's the case, then I'd rather have stuff that's less powerful but hits the board earlier. This was my initial thought with Nighthawk Scavenger, a card that's cheaper but has the ability be strong in the late game and close the game. Scavenger has been fine, but I cut them because I wanted another Mammoth and I wanted to add Radha and Klothys back into the deck. Don't sleep on Scavenger, depending on what you're looking for, it could definitely be right to include. With rate like it's got, you can't really mess up too bad by playing it.

Mammoth has been great. Five damage a turn is nothing to sneeze at. Mostly with Mammoth originally I was worried that the added flexibility and draw-smoothing wouldn't be worth it because neither the land side or the creature side would really be worthwhile, and I can officially say that that's not the case. By lowering the curve of the deck, a couple lands that enter tapped aren't the end of the world, so the land fits in fine. And also since we're lowering the curve of the deck, an aggressive blunt object 3-drop has a much more synergistic role in the strategy. We're moving away from the Thragtusk/Huntmaster/Bloobraid Jund strategy where you win through two-for-one threats and more of the Thoughtseize-Tarmogoyf strategy where you use your opponent's dwindling life total as leverage.

Inscription has also impressed me. What's funny is that Mind Rot is a perfectly reasonable thing to be doing on turn three in quite a few matchups, but just not enough matchups where you'd actually want the card Mind Rot in your deck. However, sometimes even in matchups where you wouldn't necessarily expect it, the Mind Rot mode turns out to be useful. If you have a board that's stable and suspect your opponent's last two cards are Hazoret or Collected Company, nail em. The other thing that makes Inscription so good is that having a Scavenging Ooze that survives is critical in a lot of matchups, and so having the ability to rebuy an Ooze in the late game is enormous, something I overlooked. Even against a board of opposing creatures that are more expensive, Ooze still is the king of a board stall.

My belief, at least for now, is that Bloodchief's Thirst is just too good of a card to not play four of. Unlike Fatal Push, drawing two of these against something like Blue White Control is not a death sentence, but similarly to Fatal Push, drawing one significantly hampers your opponent's ability to tempo you out of the early game. Just an unreasonably good card. 

In my last post, I said that I would stream an MTGMelee tournament last weekend, but some stuff came up, but this weekend I've definitely got the weekend cleared. My plan is to play in the MTGA Zone tournament that they usually hold on Saturdays at 1pm Eastern, and I'll stream it.

List

 First draft of what I think the list looks like on Thursday, when Zendikar Rising comes out on Arena. 

Link

A couple posts ago I said that I'd be annoyed if they only printed six of the Pathways, and only the red/green one for us, and guess what, they did and I am. Not a huge deal though, I'm not really certain that I would play them anyways. I think the mana is pretty reasonable here, and we'll try out the Kazandu Mammoth and see how it goes. I could honestly see any number 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 being right on those and also having no clue how to decide if they're good or not.

I'm lowering my count of 2-drop creatures to just 9 and I honestly don't love it. I think it's really important to have the ability to just establish something on the board early so we don't waste mana if our opponent doesn't have anything that needs answering. The most important things that I would say we are missing are the last two Gifted Aetherborns and a 1-of Klothys, which I've liked a lot.

I also am back on my Angrath bullshit, as you can see. It's such a house against Uro, which is just about the most popular card in the format. Beyond that, it's a great threat against control decks, and at worst steals and kills our opponents' best creature, since most decks aren't playing anything more than three mana. At the moment, I feel like Angrath is the best 5 drop for how the format looks right now, but I'm also interested in lowering the curve in total, so who knows. Thragtusk is on the chopping block.

We also have gotten to a place where Maelstrom Pulse isn't in the deck anymore, and that could certainly be wrong. We cannot destroy an artifact or enchantment in the main deck, and while that's kinda scary, sometimes you gotta just let Thoughtseize be enough security against that kind of thing. I'm excited to try out these other removal spells in its place, like Inscription and Bloodchief's Thirst, but if those don't line up well with what's being played in the format, well, Pulse always lines up.

Also, a whole separate issue: at some point it might be right to *gasp* cut red? Between Eliminate and Bloodchief's Thirst, and Disfigure out of the board, we kind of have enough cheap removal in Black to make up for what Red's really good at in the deck. That's an issue for later, but Bonecrusher Giant's utility sure has gone down now that all the best decks with small creatures play Village Rites, Phyrexian Tower, and Woe Strider, and it doesn't kill the two of the most important creatures, Mayhem Devil and Dreadhorde Arcanist. That said, no other removal spell can just yolo as a three mana 4/3 when you wanna clock em. It's an incredible card.

This boy is so exciting to me and it makes me pretty sad that I just can't see it being right to play it. I love Sprouting Thrinax, but Historic in general does not seem to be about this kind of thing right now. This card is phenomenal at the things that it actually does, like getting into combat on the ground, one-for-one removal, giving yourself wrath protection. I keep talking about how Claim the Firstborn is going to wreck this thing, but I mean, if those decks were to drop in popularity, Grakmaw isn't especially good against Uro or Ugin, either, whereas something like Nighthawk Scavenger is pretty solid against everything in the format right now. I think there's a world where printings, bannings, and just trends transform the format into something where Grakmaw can shine, but we certainly aren't there right now. Keep this one on the back burner.

I'll know more about it by the weekend, but Thursday afternoon should be some fun. I'm hoping to fire up the stream when the new set's out but may have to wait until Sunday to actually get a good session in.

A Few More Zendikar Hits

 

I think that this card is exceptional, but I also think that you can't really play it in the Claim the Firstborn format. It's really too bad, because this thing does everything we want. It's a low-ish mana investment, it has reasonable stats, and it loves getting into combat with opposing creatures. It's like a toned-down Thragtusk, and that's a pretty great place to be, unless, like I said, the two top decks in the format all play Claim the Firstborn and sacrifice outlets.

Here's the first, and I think only, double faced card that I'm really interested in, and it's a real nice one. The rate on this is solid enough, and attacking for potentially 5 is a really nice spot against things like Teferi. It certainly does close the game quickly if you have the lands, which is fine because if you're casting it as a creature then you probably will have the lands. Double green is not our favorite, but you know what? If you don't have the double green for it, you'll have it for the next one you draw. I'm guessing that at least a few of these have a spot in the deck.

I don't think that this is a Historic card, at least not for us, but how about Jund in Modern? I've talked about the graveyard trap before, where a lot of Jund's cards are good because of how they utilize the graveyard, but the more you lean on that the better our opponent's graveyard hate becomes. Channeler seems like it's still totally fine against a Rest in Peace, and even if you don't warp the list to maximize on instants and sorceries, Channeler helps fuel itself, first by discarding unused spells, and second by digging for more. I would even go so far as to say that this is a card that's tailor-made for Modern in general, since decks are often so focused and sideboard cards are so good. You can discard your blanks and help dig into your hate cards. I'm talking myself into it while sitting here writing, but it still just might be too slow to work in Modern for Jund. We'll have to see, but the potential is there. 

Thank You For A Real Good Time

Last week I participated in the MTG Arena Zone Historic Open on MTGMelee. I had a great time, played some Chrono Cross in between rounds, and even got featured a couple times on stream. You can check out the stream vod on my Twitch page and also the official stream here. I was on the official stream twice, once from my stream, once from my opponent's, and they tried to do one more but my opponent had technical difficulties.

I ended up 5-2, not too terrible. I guess I must have caught the eye of Reid Duke, who did a quick write-up about the deck on ChannelFireball. It's pretty cool, since Reid is kinda the whole reason I play Jund in the first place. In '09 and '10, I would chat with Reid and Ian at PTQs in New England. They're obviously really great dudes and fun to chat with, and then of course I noticed that they were really really good. I decided at some point along that I would just play whatever the Duke brothers were playing at tournaments, which wasn't hard since every week at least one of them top 8'd a PTQ. Naturally, I was hooked on Modern Jund as soon as I saw Reid playing it in the Magic Online Championships and never went back. So it's cool to see Reid himself do a write-up of my Jund list.

So I guess if that's all happening, we better keep up with the deck tuning, eh? I'm going to be playing in the same event here in a few hours with an updated list. I've moved away from Merfolk Branchwalker and to Gifted Aetherborn, among some other small things. I think this should help out against all the aggressive decks I run up against, but I do like Branchie. I'll miss ya, buddy.

Here's what I'm playing this afternoon:

I can't really convince myself to board in Grafdigger's Cage in Uro matchups, but Uro is, of course, a problem. So that's why Klothys is included. It's in an interesting spot in the metagame right now where gaining 2 life a turn, dealing 2 damage a turn, or exiling a card every turn are all effects that come up.

Chandra is an experiment but I have high hopes for her. Lots of the most important creatures to kill have one toughness, like Young Pyromancer, Skirk Prospector, and all the mono-blue stuff.

I'm not 100% confident in any of these updates since the CFB article, but we'll never know unless we try. I'm most skeptical about my decision to grow out my beard. If you watch my stream, don't be scared that the ghost of Brent Mydland is playing Jund now, although I bet he'd be a Jund player if he were still around. The deck's been pretty solid as of late, so hopefully I can top 8 this time. We'll see.

Zendikar Rising Spoilers

Yeah let's get into the real stuff baby.

I have yet to wrap my head around these things. How good would Taiga be if it didn't have basic types? Would you play them? At first glance they seem great, but if you're anticipating having a shockland or Canyon Slough in play, then Rootbound Crag is a strict upgrade. I think it's easy to disregard how good it is to be able to add one color one turn and then another the next.

However, it's also really easy to disregard how bad it is to not have a shockland in play and draw Rootbound Crag, or how bad it is to draw all shocklands against Skewer the Critics. But the synergy between the two is so good, any new dual land would have to be exceptionally strong to be better than that combo, since it's not like I'm going to add these in place of spells in order to play them and not throw off my land type count. If I want to play all Pathways, and cut Rootbound Crag et al altogether, then what are we replacing the shocklands with? Because we do need to have some number of lands that can be activated for multiple colors, not just make sure we're hitting red, black and green.

Also, why have they only spoiled six of these? We're missing B/G and R/B, and two others for the bad colors. Are they just going to leave some out for no reason? I might not end up playing these but that would still piss me off.

First of all, I want to say that Party is the coolest mechanic. Second, is this good? It's probably not worth warping the deck around but if you had some warriors and wizards lying around, this gets a little bit better. I think I might try making a Party deck for funsies, but this card is a little soft.

I think some of these haven't been spoiled yet, including a black mythic and a green mythic, I think. This is, so far, the only one spoiled that I could see myself playing. The problem with these cards is that, while they give you a lot of options and reduce your variance, neither side is really worth playing. Sure, your spell could be used as a land instead of a spell so you don't have to mulligan, but you also lose a lot of games because your lands enter the battlefield tapped, and you lose a lot of games because your three mana sorcery didn't affect the board. Don't get me wrong, I love the flexibility, but I think this card is worse than Tranquil Thicket and I'm pretty sure 0 is the right number of those, for now.

I get why this is good, but I think I'll just play Murderous Rider instead.

Okay, so do we have room for a three-drop creature that's just rate? Well it depends on the rate, mostly. It trades early, it's great against the mono blue decks, and it attacks and races for a million later on. I think it depends on how the format shakes out, but yeah, this card seems like a solid inclusion. It's an all-star against a large portion of the field, an early-ish drop that has tons of staying power, and can simply win the game by itself. It's also important to remember that decks with Thoughtseize have a little more agency in making sure their creatures avoid removal.

A note on Modern: are these cards worth playing? It's a tough call, they don't really do anything against Valakut decks, so they are targeted Tron hate that might not even be as good as Stone Rain. They sure would be good if Field of the Dead was still legal though.

Love it. Just an exceptional card. It scales up in power as the power of the format scales up, it's great early and late, it's easy to cast. Mwah! Probably going to play some of these in Modern as well as Historic, possibly even Legacy.

This is kind of like if Uro was a black card. Just a huge mass of value. Unlike the Bala Ged Recovery card and similar stuff, this thing has the ability to directly affect the board when you're in the control role, so your seven mana monster value card isn't a blank against anything.

The Blue/White control matchup, be it in Standard, Modern, Legacy, or even friggin Sealed Deck, comes down to the fact that they have to get ahead of you in cards and on the board. They absolutely have the tools to do that, but they have to do both, and we also get to Thoughtseize them to make one of those propositions tougher. A couple quick creatures are going to beat down enough to beat a hand of all Search for Azcantas and Chemister's Insights. Similarly, Castle Lochtwain and Planeswalkers will beat a hand of all Wraths and Seal Aways. What's fascinating about Inscription of Ruin is that it can play either of these roles, either getting back a creature from your graveyard, or making them discard cards. Add to that the ability to go way big and do it all, and that all the control decks will have creatures to target with the removal ability thanks to Shark Typhoon, and we have an excellent card in a number of matchups. It's not super flashy, but it's flexible and powerful, and what more can you ask for?