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?