Every Damn Thing But The Jailhouse Keys - Two Drop Creatures

 Let's dive in.

Chevill is beyond bonkers. I think it's a testament to how absurd the power level of printings have been in the last two years that Chevill isn't a staple of at least Pioneer, nevermind Historic and Standard. A card like this in the past that was a card advantage engine stapled onto a mana-cost worthy body would normally lose you life. Think Dark Confidant, Glint-Sleeve Siphoner, or Midnight Reaper. Instead, Chevill draws you cards and plays defense. That is the recipe that we want in our best cards, the ability to be proactive and protect you at the same time. Some of the best creatures in Magic's history fit this description: Tarmogoyf, Stoneforge Mystic, Scavenging Ooze, Thing in the Ice, Kitchen Finks, Courser of Kruphix.

Chevill doesn't really force you to to do anything special to accomodate him, but he certainly makes your removal spells better. We aren't playing Bloodchief's Thirst and Maelstrom Pulse and Chandra because of Chevill, we play them to kill our opponent's stuff, but Chevill turns your necessities into an advantage. He's perfect for this kind of deck.

Chevill also neatly dodges the legend rule. Opponents are often willing to trade a creature in combat just to get him off the table, which frees up the second copy in your hand. If your worst case scenario is just Doom Blade, then I like where we're at. Also, at first glance, Chevill looks like a liability against control decks, but in practice it's a huge plus to be able to recoup some of the inherent card disadvantage that comes with casting removal spells on planeswalkers. I play three Chevill normally, but in aggro-heavy metagames, don't be afraid to go to four if you anticipate needing to trade him off early.

Ooze is quite a bit different than Chevill, but accomplishes a lot of the same thing. It adds value to your removal spells, since you can eat their creatures for life and counters. Ooze also can act as your late game nail in the coffin card against aggro strategies, since with more mana at your disposal it turns into Pelakka Wurm pretty quickly.

Ooze also does this thing that's really special in Magic: it's a main-deckable hate card. Lots of decks have Uro or Cauldron Familiar, sure, and Ooze has some incidental value there, but Ooze makes your deck better by being a pretty dedicated hate card against graveyard decks while being in your starting 60. It's probably not as good as Leyline of the Void (although even that's up for debate, I've never attacked for nine with a Leyline of the Void), but it also doesn't take up space in your sideboard. It's also there for game one, so you have more chances to steal games by drawing your hate cards.

Ooze's only drawback in my mind is that I find myself boarding it out against decks without creatures. But again, Ooze's floor is really high, a grizzly bear that can pump itself every once in a while off your own dead creatures or can help keep Search for Azcanta or Torrential Gearhulk in check. I like playing four, and would not go below four as long as Uro is in the format.

Channeler is first up in a pretty long list of cheap creatures that I've been trying out (well, Knight of the Ebon Legion is kind of in this category, too). It has a lot of the things we look for in a threat for this deck: it's good early, it's good late, and it can help stop your opponent's game plan. It even has the ability to smooth out your draws if you're mana screwed or get rid of excess lands to find removal.

Channeler lives in this weird space where it's kind of a build-around card, but also the payoff is that you just get a 4/4 creature when you finally get there. Increasing your instant and sorcery count helps, but isn't super necessary, this deck doesn't care that much about getting the 4/4 turned on quickly, so long as it happens. But, Channeler does necessitate that we play more cards that are versatile and going to be useful as one of the two cards we hit off its ability. Kazandu Mammoth comes to mind as a card that's great here, but so is Maelstrom Pulse. The problem with this, though, is that if we're playing a bunch of versatile, slower cards to facilitate Channeler, then we have less desire to dig through our deck because the cards in our hand get the job done fine.

However, you can't say that Channeler is not good. I have had a lot of games where a Channeler came down early, perhaps did some blocking or chip damage, helped hit a critical removal spell or land drop, then turned the corner and hit for four a turn until they were dead. Not a lot of cards can compete with the likes of Chevill and Scavenging Ooze at checking all the boxes of proactive, defensive, and cheap, but Channeler does a great job.

To put this into perspective, I want this deck to have 10 to 13 cheap creatures, cheap being one or two mana. Channeler, in my mind, is at the top of the list behind Scavenging Ooze and Chevill. That said, if you're planning on playing this deck or a similar list, test for yourself and see what you like. I'll run through the rest of the contenders here and talk about their pros and cons, but really it might all come down to the metagame you predict and the way you like to play the deck.

Gifted Aetherborn is definitely a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of card. That said, whether it belongs in the deck is longer discussion. A few months ago, Historic was a much more aggressive format, with Gruul being the de facto top deck in the format and things like mono-red and others not far behind. In that moment, Aetherborn was excellent. The ability to gain a few incidental life points, trade with big creatures, and be a cheap and somewhat resilient threat goes a long way against the blunt-object decks of the format.

The format has shifted, however, and that's a big part of why Aetherborn isn't in the deck anymore. Even the current most popular aggro deck, Goblins, has a much easier time dealing with Aetherborn than Gruul, since it can just cast Muxus and attack for 40 or whatever. But the other part of the equation is that Aetherborn's mana cost is more prohibitive if we want to include things like Shatterskull Smashing and Kazandu Mammoth.

Merfolk Branchwalker was a mainstay of the deck for a long time, but some stronger stuff got printed and I haven't been back for a while. Still, this card does a lot of the things we want, and isn't as bad a late game card as you might expect, since there's a good enough chance that it draws you a free card. Nowadays, there's a good chance that free card will actually be a spell, like Kazandu Mammoth or Shatterskull Smashing. (Edit: This is wrong. Kazandu Mammoth et al don't count as lands for the Explore trigger.)

One thing that Merfolk Branchwalker does well is that it can often have good stats right out of the gate. It's not our plan, per se, to cast two mana 3/2s on turn two. If it was, I'd play Voltaic Brawler. However, a Branchwalker that doesn't flip over a land can put a lot more pressure on a control opponent than most other two drops, and that's the card at its worst. In order to get the most out of Branchwalker, you need any option that it gives you to be good, and I think our deck does that well. We're into drawing an extra card, and we're into attacking. We are into trading with a big creature and we're into drawing an extra card and trading with a small creature. All good stuff, but less raw power than most of the other two drops available.

Siphoner might be the best proactive card available for us, but it's also the worst defensive card. Not only do you lose life when you draw the card, but you have to attack in order to get it, and Siphoner doesn't block especially well.

You could say that the way to maximize Siphoner is to play with energy producers, which is true, but the other way to maximize Siphoner is to play with lots of cheap removal. I think the best shell of Siphoner adds in extra Fatal Push and possibly Harnessed Lightning, not only for its energy production but for being a good, cheap removal spell. That's because Siphoner is going to give you a raw volume of cards, so you can afford to have one of them be a dud in a matchup where removal isn't at a premium. Additionally, in order to have Siphoner work against creature decks, you need those creatures to be off the battlefield.

Siphoner runs into the same problem that Thoughtseize has, which is that while it's strong most of the time, there will be matchups where it's extremely bad and needs to be boarded out. With Thoughtseize in the deck, this means you're going to want to have eight cards to bring in against a dedicated burn deck, if you're playing four Siphoners.

To sum up this section, my rankings for best cheap threats are:

1. Scavenging Ooze

Also number 1. Chevill

3. Magmatic Channeler

4. Knight of the Ebon Legion

5. Glint-Sleeve Siphoner

6. Merfolk Branchwalker

7. Gifted Aetherborn

Take rankings like these with a grain of salt. Each of these cards is going to be better based on the build of your deck, the way that you play the deck, and the opponents you expect to face. I think they all have their merits and I wouldn't consider you wrong for playing any of them.

Kroxa, however, is a card that I don't like very much in this deck. I've touched on this before, but in order to maximize Kroxa, we need to really re-work a lot about the strategy of the deck, or have a very specific metagame that we expect to face.

Kroxa opens us up to graveyard hate that I don't want to get involved with. Uro is the number one card in the format right now, so people are prepared for this effect. If we're going to run the risk of being nailed by opposing Scavenging Oozes and Klothys, then we should make sure that we're getting the most out of Kroxa as we can. Run down this logic line long enough and you end up just building Rakdos Arcanist.

Additionally, Kroxa is slow. It doesn't effect the board at all, it gets rid of your opponent's worst card, if they even have any, and it's honestly kind of hard to cast from your hand, let alone when you escape it. Add to that how bad it is with Kazandu Mammoth in the deck, and I'm just kind of over it. It's splashy and wins big when it wins you the game, but I haven't missed it since I stopped playing it.

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That's it for two-drop creatures for Jund Midrange in Historic. There are plenty more that I think are pretty good cards, but don't quite cut the mustard for slots in this deck. Let me know in the comments if there's any that you think I may have missed or to voice your opinion. Thanks for reading!

Every Damn Thing But the Jailhouse Keys

When I was a kid I read the article My Fires by Zvi Mowshowitz. Actually it wasn't an article, it was an article series, all about one deck. What made it special was how in-depth Zvi went on every single card in his Fires deck, and also on cards that he didn't end up playing as well. Fires, like all Standard decks (or Type II as it was called back then), is a snapshot in time. Metagames ebb and flow, cards are printed and rotate out, but themes and strategies stay the same.

It's been just about a year since I really dug into playing Historic Jund. It's been a lot of grinding, bashing my head against the wall, but also analysis of cards and decks and trying to think deep about what I want to be doing and what space I want to be occupying. To wrap up 2020, I want to run through just about every card that's been in or out of the deck. I'll start with the one drops.

We got quite a gift with the Amonkhet Remastered set. Thoughtseize wasn't in either Amonkhet or Hour of Devastation, but it somehow got injected into Historic. Just wish we got the original art for it.

Anyways, Thoughtseize is so good that sometimes I think about the time before it became legal and have a hard time understanding how it all even worked. Thoughtseize is definitely a 4 of in any deck like this if they let you play it. That being said, in Modern we usually play 4 Inquisition of Kozilek and then some number between 1 and 4 of Thoughtseize. So if we ever get gifted Inquisition, we'll have to revisit.

Thoughtseize also makes our sideboard construction a little different. There are going to be decks we run into where it's important that we board out Thoughtseize, and so you need to have at least four cards in your board ready to go for that situation, and on top of that some more stuff for your maindeck cards that aren't optimal. Not a problem, just a something to think about. Anyways, yeah. Thoughtseize is great.

Also, if you only ever read one article about Magic in your life, it should be this one.

Sure, this is the quintessential sideboard card, but there honestly are some metagames where maindeck Duress can be good. When the second most popular deck in the format is 36 Goblins and 24 lands, then no, Duress isn't really maindeckable. But in metagames of the past I've had Duress in the main and didn't hate it.

As far as its sideboard utility, before Thoughtseize was legal I just liked jamming four copies in the board, but usually I've been down to just two. You can definitely draw too many copies of Duress effects, plus it's only as good as the threats that you're able get to stick with it. Lately I've been on two copies of Duress and three copies of good Planeswalker-ish threats to sneak in, like Phyrexian Arena and Angrath.

I'm currently not playing Fatal Push, but that has more to do with the power of Uro than it does the weakness of Fatal Push. We don't have a lot of ways to turn on Revolt in the Historic format at the moment, and surprisingly we have a newly printed card that does a really good Fatal Push impression while being more versatile in the late game. That said, it's Fatal Push, it's an exceptionally efficient removal spell and I think we can expect some future where Fatal Push becomes a mainstay in this deck.

One thing that would make Push much better is more ways to turn on revolt. In Modern and Legacy that means fetchlands, but in Pioneer people get by with Fabled Passage. I'm not huge on Fabled Passage, however, as we'll get to later. Historic is a wacky format though, and we never really know what might get put in. Prismatic Vista comes to mind as a card that would make Fatal Push look a lot better that could get injected into Historic via some Anthology or Remaster set.

I've had Fatal Push in the sideboard as well, and I have to say, I think something a little more focused like Shivan Fire or Disfigure might be a bit better there. It's hard to be too wrong by playing a card this good, though.

The other reason that I'm off of Fatal Push for the time being is that we have a second divinely-efficient removal spell that's just a little more versatile. Bloodchief's Thirst certainly comes with some drawbacks that Fatal Push doesn't have, but it's almost tailor-made for this deck and format. We don't have to warp our deck at all to accommodate it, and it's almost never going to be a dead card.

I've been on four Bloodchief's Thirst since almost day one. Fatal Push was a game-changer in Modern, and Bloodchief's Thirst comes with none of the downside and almost all of the efficiency. It's kind of amazing.

Knight's good. For a card with this much versatility it's kind of strangely variable in how good it is. Sometimes it's Norwood Ranger, and other times it can win the game by itself. It's also strangely bad in this deck because it's often the only pressure you have, despite that kind of being what it's good at. It's hard to maximize its +1/+1 counter ability, but it's also hard to maximize its pump ability with certain draws. You often have to choose between pumping Knight and casting spells, or between pumping Knight and activating Castle Locthwain, or you might not have enough mana to pump it anyways.

I don't really have a final verdict on whether this card should be in the deck or not. I've had it be amazing and I've had it be abysmal, but what makes it interesting is that it doesn't synergize with the rest of our deck at all. It doesn't trigger Chevill, it doesn't disrupt the opponent, it doesn't generate card advantage. It just kind of does its thing, which is okay if it's working. Currently I'm playing zero, which is definitely subject to change, but any number 0-4 works if you like it. 

I think that there are also builds of this deck in which Knight is excellent. Maybe you run more shocklands, maybe you run a more aggressive angle. It's certainly powerful and it's probably the most powerful creature that's just there to attack and block that we can play, and if attacking is something you're very interested in, then go nuts.

I actually love this card. It does a lot of things that this deck wants, which is killing creatures very cheaply and killing creatures that are big. If you can save yourself from your opponent's fastest draws with the same card you're using to kill their biggest threats, then it's a great deal. It's basically an instant-speed, creature only version of Bloodchief's Thirst, which is great. Few of the aggressive decks in Historic are 100% small creatures, so the ability to knock out their bigger creatures in the late game is phenomenal.

Since the printing of Bloodchief's Thirst, I've been more interested in Abrade as a sideboard card. It kills stuff like Mayhem Devil for cheaper, and hits Witch's Oven and some other stuff when necessary. That said, I really do love Shivan Fire and if the format starts to shift towards small creatures again, it's fantastic. If they ever give us Burst Lightning, it's game time.

Attune with Aether is probably the best card in Historic that sees almost zero play. I keep thinking that Temur Energy is going to start taking over the format, but it's yet to happen. As for Jund, the problem with the Energy package is that most of the payoffs are blue, be it Rogue Refiner, Whirler Virtuoso, or Confiscation Coup. As for us, the only card that is good enough to play without a ton of energy support is Glint-Sleeve Siphoner. Siphoner is great, but really what makes it great is how little extra support it needs. It's great after a turn one Attune, sure, but isn't it just better after a turn one Thoughtseize?

The other problem with Attune is what it does to your mana base. Not only do you have to add in a lot of basic lands, but you have to reduce your total land count of your deck. You also need to skew your deck towards having lots of green sources to make it work. Plus Aether Hub is kinda lame too. Add to this it's making our Rootbound Crags and Castle Locthwains worse and we're into a situation where the enablers are hampering us more than they are pushing the cards they are enabling, since we would have to make cuts to some really good cards we're currently playing.

Llanowar Elves is extremely powerful, but like Attune, it needs a lot of things in order to be at its best. One is for extra green mana to be useful, and it's just not in this deck, so Llanowar's kind of a non-starter. But for a thought experiment, how good would a one mana green mana dork have to be to have a spot in this deck?

For what it's worth, I don't think I would play Birds of Paradise if it were legal. I could definitely be wrong about that one, though. However, Llanowar Elves is nice in that it has a point of power, which means it can pressure planeswalkers and can do something sort of useful when you aren't using it for mana. If you gave me a Llanowar Elves that was just a one mana 1/1 that could tap for Red or Black, I'd take it. That sounds like a crazy card, but it's almost certainly worse than Noble Hierarch.

The problem with a card like this is that while you want to set your deck up to utilize the extra mana, you also need to be able to function without it, either because you didn't draw it or because the opponent killed it. You also have to be able to function with drawing two of them, since they are pretty weak cards on their own, which is hard. I think that I would want to play a Planeswalker-heavy build, possibly with Vraska Golgari Queen, Liliana to ditch excess Elves, and Chandra. Glorybringer might be good in this deck, too, since it's aggressive. C'mon WotC, give me my Jund Noble Hierarch.

Here's another card that has overperformed for me. The thing about this deck is that we're looking for all of these effects. I think that Inscription of Ruin has pretty much replaced this kind of effect, but when the format was more Llanowar Elves centric, I enjoyed having a two-for-one card that pressured the opponent's life total and could be used to keep pace with early creatures if that's what the game was about.

Cling to Dust is strong, but it's in a weird spot of being a little too narrow to be a main deck card and also not quite strong enough at what it does to be a sideboard slot. I have played Cling in the past and it's been okay, and I really do enjoy having some incidental graveyard hate in the main deck.

Cling really exemplifies the difference between a card that draws you a card and a card that gives you some selection. I would play the crap out of Opt if it were in Jund colors. Instead, Cling to Dust gives you whatever is on top of your library, so when it's in your opener you can't really assume it will offer much help. The other problem is that, even though it costs one mana, you can't just cast it on turn one, unlike Opt.

The thing about Cling, though, is that having outs to Uro is so critical in this format, that it might be worth playing anyways. And it's got some late game power built into it, but its Escape ability isn't really better than Castle Locthwain anyways. If it wasn't for Locthwain, I might be more bullish on this card, but as is I'm not the hugest fan.

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I'll keep this series going in the near future, which will give us something to think about going into Kaldheim spoilers. Thanks for reading.

All I Said Was Come On In

It's early for Kaldheim spoilers but they've shown us a few cards to get spoiler season kicked off. One of them is this thing:

It's a long read, but the gist is that it grows when something your opponents control dies, and then later can be used to do a mini Planar Cleansing.

It's good. I wonder if it's fast enough for this format. I think it's going to be a doozy against things like Goblins, Sacrifice, and Auras. Note that it hits nonland permanents, so things like Witch's Oven get eaten, as do creature enchantments. It gets triggered by anything Jund Sacrifice does at all. 

Sarulf's problem, of course, is that it dies to Doom Blade (well not actually Doom Blade but you know). Can we afford to play a three mana creature that kinda just sits there for a turn before it's turned on? This is going to be an ongoing question we have to ask ourselves, because the answer might fluctuate from time to time based on both the metagame and the payoff of the card itself. If we can expect Sarulf to live until our turn against a large portion of decks, and that doing so is going to lead to wins, then it looks really good. But if it's getting hit by removal spells that cost less than it does, or if it's just not as good on the battlefield as we thought, then it's bad.

I'm bullish on Sarulf for a few reasons. One is that it slots well into our deck. We already have the Chevill plus removal engine, we already have the Scavenging Ooze plus removal engine, whatever other cards we have all either draw us into removal or are removal. I'm currently on Magmatic Channeler again at the moment, which is good when you are casting removal spells on your opponents' creatures. So if there is a theme to the current Jund Midrange deck, then it's that we like killing their stuff, and Sarulf likes that too.

Two, Sarulf is just one of a pretty good amount of creatures that our opponents really don't want us to have. It's hard to beat a Chevill that stays on the table, the same is true with Scavenging Ooze, and all the other cards we have in here. They kind of have to deal with your two drop or else lose to it, so that clears the way for Sarulf to survive the turn. This works well because Sarulf might not be at its best when you have a bunch of two drop creatures hanging out anyways, since the threat of its upkeep ability is weakened.

Third, we play with Thoughtseize. You just steal their Fatal Push.

Fourth, and maybe this isn't why Sarulf is good but why other cards are bad, is that Sultai is such a hard deck to attack that anything that can meaningfully interact with Uro while still being a maindeckable card has a lot of value. I love my Oozes mostly because they fit into this category, but so does Klothys, and even Chevill kinda does because it lets you keep pace on cards when you kill an Uro. Sarulf's upkeep trigger exiles Uro, and for just three counters, and Sarulf gains a counter when your opponent casts their Uro the first time. And of course, if it's good against Uro it's usually good against Kroxa, which is another problem card that we like to have outs to.

I'm pretty sold on Sarulf. It's way too early to sketch out what a starting point list would look like, but I would imagine that two Sarulf is the right way to go. There's a lot more to see with this set though, and they seem to be on a cheap efficient removal spell printing spree these days, so I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm interested to see what the Black, Green and Red gods are, if there are any, because I think Halvar, God of Battle looks really cool. And who knows? Maybe they'll just go reprint Lightning Bolt to go with the Thor theme.

Thanks for reading.

Faced With Mysteries Dark and Vast

No real updates in Jund land at the moment. I've been pretty busy with work but I don't have a ton of changes I would make to the deck. I really like where it's at, and honestly feel like I'm a favorite in every matchup I play.  Link.

Chevill continues to be incredible. I can't really imagine playing a deck without him. Don't know what else to say about him really. He wins games that you have no business winning. It's like if Shadowmage Infiltrator gained you three life a turn and cost 2 mana.

Chandra has been excellent, but I think that what I really found out by playing Chandra is that a four-mana Planeswalker works really well in this deck, as long as it has an ability that can kill a creature. Chandra is the best at that, but having one copy each of Vraska and Liliana lets us have a little bit of diversity, and lets us get around the legend rule. Casting a Chandra on turn four and then a Liliana on the next turn is a sequence you can't do when you have only Chandras in your deck.

I think we utilize Castle Locthwain really well, which is important. I think this kind of deck needs a little extra oomph from its lands, kind of like playing Raging Ravine or Treetop Village in Modern. We're set up to maximize Castle for a few reasons. One is that our cards are cheap and we can empty our hand pretty quickly so that we don't lose life, but that also helps our ability to actually cast those cards. It's essentially four mana to use it, so your mana is a little tied up. Secondly, it is an uncounterable and un-Thoughtseizable value engine in the matchups where your life total isn't as critical. We're not as good at raw card draw as Uro and Teferi decks might be, but we can leverage our tempo, point and click discard their important stuff, and then keep pace on cards later on with Castle. We are good at getting both decks into topdeck mode, and when that happens, Castle is one of the best topdecks you can have. Castle wins a lot of games and I think it's worth shoehorning a few into your mana base.

Inscription has been excellent. This kind of versatility usually comes at a steep mana cost, but all of these effects are solid enough for three mana, especially when you consider how good returning a Scavenging Ooze to the battlefield is against a lot of decks. It's not the flashiest thing ever, but it gets the job done.

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That's about it for today. I think this list right now is as tuned as it's ever been and I don't want to make any changes to the 75. I think my next move soon here is to work on Pioneer on Magic Online, but we'll see. Thanks for reading.

Test Me Test Me, Why Don't You Arrest Me

It's Sunday morning as I write this, and yesterday I played in the MTG Arena Zone Open on MTG Melee. I really like these events because they're carefree, free to play, and nothing to win or lose but bragging rights. Of course, if you know me, bragging rights are the only currency I care about.

Here's the list I played.

In classic Griffin style, I wrote all about how I liked Knight of the Ebon Legion but not enough to play it, then decided later to play it. It was solid. It has a low floor because it's only one mana to cast, and it doesn't need a lot of other things to go on around it in order for it to be good. It also pressures your opponent's life total pretty well, since you can trigger its counter pretty often between either beatdowns on your opponent or Locthwain, Thoughtseize, and Shocklands on yourself. I'm also only playing three copies at the moment, which works well for Knight because they are okay but not ideal in multiples. Playing only three Glint Sleeve Siphoners or Magmatic Channelers seems pretty loose since Siphoners are so good in multiples and Channelers need deckbuilding work to maximize.

I also am up to four four-mana planeswalkers in the deck, two Chandra, one Liliana, and one Vraska. Having a mix gives you the effect that we're looking for, but avoids the legend rule. I think that Chandra is the best of them, but all three are solid in the format at the moment.

In the sideboard, I decided to go with my 3x By Force plan. I never ran into the Forsaken Monument deck, but there were a couple running around and it felt good to be prepared.

I ended up playing against Sultai (or Yasharn Sultai) three times and Esper Yorion Doom Foretold once. The swiss was only four rounds because there was a pretty light turnout, whereas earlier iterations of this tournament had over one hundred the times I played it previously. I think that they hadn't run them for the last few weeks here for whatever reason, but hopefully they pick up steam again. It's a fun time.

I won my first match against Sultai. Scavenging Ooze did a lot of work to make sure I never had to deal with Uro, and I ended up just killing them with attackers and discard spells.

What's nice about the Sultai matchup is that you don't necessarily have to attack them to death with small creatures, but if you do that can certainly work. You just need to have some plan to either gain some leverage from your tempo or to out-grind them in the long game. That seems like it's hard to do against the Uro and Hydroid Krasis deck, but Castle Locthwain gives us a big edge in that regard, as does stuff like Inscription of Ruin, Chevill, Ooze, and our Planeswalkers. Add to that we play 24 lands, three of which are Locthwain and four are cycling lands, and we also are drawing way more spells with our card draw throughout the game.

In the second round I was paired against Esper Yorion Doom Foretold and lost quite badly. It's a pretty tough matchup but I have been able to beat similar decks in the past. I beat Sultai again in round three but then lost to it in round four in what later I found out was a win-and-in. Nothing really special about the match, just had draws that didn't really cooperate.

All in all, I really liked the decklist. I think if you can average beating Sultai twice out of three times with a deck like this, then you're in really good shape. I managed to hit a slice of the metagame that wasn't exactly hostile to us, but also not ideal, and had a solid shot at Top 8. The only real change I'd be interested in making would be to add a Kazandu Mammoth back into the list somewhere. Having a little extra green mana to make better use of Scavenging Ooze would help in a lot of matchups.

Thanks for reading. If you get a chance, check out the MTGAZone Historic Opens, that hopefully will pick back up to every weekend from here on out. They're a really fun time and a good way to get some high quality reps in. See ya later.

The Heat Came By And Busted Me

Here's where I'm currently at.

And when I say I'm currently at, very little of this is set in stone or proven. Jund Midrange in Historic is getting a little bit of traction at the moment and I don't think that anyone has anything close to a set in stone list ready to go.

Crokeyz, who has got to be Magic's number one streamer right now, played this list recently. It's got no Chevill and includes Knight of the Ebon Legion. It's also got no double face cards, so no Mammoths and no Shatterskulls, but it includes all four Chandra and all four Bonecrusher.

Bonecrusher I can get behind right now. As far as Knight of the Ebon Legion goes, some folks swear by it. For me, it's clearly a strong card but it doesn't do what I'm looking for. I think Ooze is certainly better as far as a card that you can cast early and dump mana into late, but maybe there's more room for that kind of effect. I think the difference is that my list has more mana sinks, most notably Castle Locthwain, and it's also not as aggressive on the opponent's life total, where Knight shines. If you're looking for a more aggressive slant to the deck, then it's really good there. It just feels like the strategy of casting Chevill and Knight are at odds with each other. I'll test some more, but I like the threat suite that we have. The cards complement each other pretty well.

Speaking of that, folks in the social medias were talking about Glint-Sleeve Siphoner. I gave it a shot, mixing around some stuff to include it in place of Channeler. I was impressed. Siphoner definitely is a card that doesn't need extra help to get some good work out of it. It's a little like Bitterblossom has been in Modern for me, where on it's face it looks like you want some Scion of Oona or Intangible Virtues to get the best out of it, but by itself it's just a really good card. Running no copies of Aether Hub or Attune with Aether, to say the least of Harnessed Lightning et al, Glint-Sleeve Siphoner held its own. It was really good in matchups where my life total didn't matter that much. That's not necessarily because I was losing 1 life to draw a card, it's because it had pretty low ability to block. That was the kicker for me, that Channeler was a better defensive card early in the game and good on offense late, the right kind of timing for this deck. Glint-Sleeve was offiensive all the time. I think that you could change some numbers around to make the deck more Glint-Sleeve friendly and have it be better than our current list against some portion of the metagame, but again, it's a little more matchup dependent than I'd like when there's a perfectly good substitute that isn't.

Shatterskull Smashing has been impressive to me. The double faced cards are always going to be pretty good, but Shatterskull is even more versatile than the most versatile cards, and unlike the rest of the mythic double faced lands that were printed, it's good early too. Emeria's Call is great when you have seven or more lands, but Shatterskull is still good if you have five or six. Creatures in this format are often small but still dangerous, and if we can make sure we're keeping up with them with cheap removal, Shatterskull ensures we don't run out of gas later. Plus, it's an amazing draw on turn 12, unlike Mammoth which is better than a land in the super late game but not as good as Shatterskull. It reminds me a little bit like Bonfire of the Damned, but with a lower ceiling and higher floor, and that card was phenomenal in its day.

It's just a one-of in my list above, but I have been trying out Grakmaw a little bit and haven't hated it. Then I figured, well if we're doing Grakmaw, how about we roll with the original Grakmaw? I think we can afford one big drop in the deck, especially if it's the kind of card that can shift a race when it comes down, and five drops get better since we're running Chandra instead of Liliana these days. The reason I like Thragtusk is because it's the five drop of the format that's best against black decks, which seems to be the most popular color these days, but it's also huge to resolve one against a U/W Control deck. Whereas Elder Gargaroth is a liability against a Murderous Rider or Teferi, Thragtusk excels in that scenario, while still being a big stop sign to anyone pressuring your life total. If a five-drop has a place in the deck, I think that this one is the one, for now, although I also like Angrath quite a bit.

What do we do about Forsaken Monument? Well, I've started trying to help that by adding one copy of By Force. I think By Force against the Monument deck is just about as close to an instant win as exists in Magic, but what matters is how many copies we can afford to play. Unlike Grafdigger's Cage, it's really only great in the one matchup, but it's okay-ish in a couple of others. If the Monument deck keeps showing up, it might be right to add more copies to the board. But then the question becomes, what do we take out, followed by the other question, what do we do to the maindeck to fix the matchup that we just cut sideboard cards for? Brad Nelson says that it's more important to have an anti-aggro main deck and fix the rest with the sideboard, and I have to say that I mostly agree. That said, I still want some action to bring in when I cut my Thoughtseizes against the aggro decks of the format, and what's nice is that Abrade is great in that capacity and against Forsaken Monument. I'm not ready to pull the trigger yet, but should the day arise, I think we go to four Abrade in the board and no Fatal Push or other one mana removal spells, then lower our curve in the main a little bit. Something like this:

4 Abrade

3 By Force

3 Grafdigger's Cage

5 Discard spell/value cards, like Angrath, Liliana, Duress, Davriel, Casualties of War

Big mana decks are usually a big problem for low-to-the-ground midrange decks, but if the tools are available in the format, you can beat it, if you want to. That's a real question though, because the cost is your sideboard space, but if you really want to, you can take this thing down.

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Thanks for reading. I'm hoping to fire up the stream some more this coming week, since I'll be not traveling. Stay safe out there.

Close the Gap on the Dark Years In Between

Hardest part of writing a blog is thinking of Grateful Dead lyrics use for the title.

Anyways, Kaladesh comes out in a couple days and I just want to go over some stuff. I've been getting some good questions from folks on Reddit and Discord about Jund in general and the list moving forward, so I'll address some things that have been popping up.

On Chevill

Some folks ask about Chevill. I never really talked about Chevill in this blog because I just wasn't writing at the time when it was released and Chevill became a staple, to me, immediately, so it kind of didn't come up.

Personally, I saw Chevill in the spoiler and was hooked. I quite often get attached to a card and have to teach myself to let it go when it doesn't cut the mustard. This was not the case for Chevill. It overperformed from day 1 and I never looked back. I've played up to 4 and been happy with it.

The best analogy I can make to Chevill, at the same mana cost, would be something like Stoneforge Mystic with higher upside but a lower floor. We want to be killing our opponent's creatures anyways. Chevill offers us cards and life for this exchange, that you plan on doing like five times a game. It's not uncommon to be up five cards and 15 life for a 2 mana investment.

Chevill's floor is also really high. It's a 1/3 with deathtouch, which is already a huge pain in the ass for a lot of Historic decks. You can't really attack into it with anything that's the same mana cost or less, so usually your worst case scenario is your opponent has to take a turn off from casting threats to play a removal spell, or you trade with a more expensive creature. Being a good deal to trade off with helps negate the legend rule.

That's all well and good against aggro decks, which makes up a large part of the Historic format for what it's worth, but how about the rest of the field? Chevill doesn't attack especially well, but he doesn't need to. Trying to keep pace with the card advantage from stuff like Teferi and Narset used to be impossible, but if you're able to draw a card each time you Maelstrom Pulse or Bloodchief's Thirst an opposing Planeswalker, all of a sudden your removal spells are good instead of a liability. Also note that with Thoughtseize and Castle Locthwain in the deck, life gain is appreciated in matchups that normally would not need it.

I like Chevill a lot.

Cutting Red

I think there are plenty of arguments for cutting red. It may even be right to do so. This isn't great evidence or anything, but every time I do that, it doesn't feel right to me. Red cards offer the best cheap removal most of the time. In Modern this manifests as Lightning Bolt, Forked Bolt, Flame Slash, Terminate, and Dreadbore, but in Historic, Bloodchief's Thirst, Eliminate, Heartless Act, and now Fatal Push are probably the most efficient removal spells in the format. So we're sort of covered there, but I still like Abrade and Shivan Fire out of the sideboard. We also don't need to play Magmatic Channeler instead of the next best black or green value creature, and we don't need to play Chandra, Torch of Defiance instead of Vraska, Golgari Queen and Liliana, Waker of the Dead, but they are better.

My biggest gripes with the straight Golgari versions of this deck, though, is that the mana isn't that much better than with red. The cost of playing red isn't that you often miss a color, which happens but rarely, it's that you have to play lands that enter tapped or cause you damage. The mana requirements, even in Golgari, don't really allow for the use of colorless value lands, like Crawling Barrens.

I think Temple of Malady and maybe Field of Ruin if you're interested are the only big gains you get out of cutting Red, right now, and you lose out on efficiency. Jund feels like a sleeker, more efficient strategy to me, in basically every format I've tried it. If you feel different, then by all means, and you could very well be right. But I'm happy with the Red for now.

Kroxa

Patrick Chapin (I think) said that you never want to be a worse version of someone else. I played Kroxa in the past and it was good, but I don't think the deck is set up to utilize it very well right now with our Kazandu Mammoths, and I don't think the format is in a place where we can play Kroxa the fair way and make it work. Casting Kroxa for two mana isn't something I'm interested in while Burning Tree Emissary is legal. That's to say nothing of running into the graveyard trap and having our opponent's Rest in Peaces and Grafdigger's Cages and Scavenging Oozes do work against us. If you're willing to have graveyard hate be really good against you, then you should just play Rakdos Arcanist or Jund Sacrifice. Kroxa is certainly powerful and is good in matchups where we could admittedly use help, but I haven't missed it since I cut it from the deck a few months back. If you want to play with Kroxa, I'd suggest playing Elder Gargaroth or Glorybringer instead, which are huge creatures that have lots of impact on the board and actually cost less mana overall.

Glint-Sleeve Siphoner

This is a card that seems like it's perfect for this deck, and I'm definitely going to give it a try, but I don't have high hopes. I had someone in my twitch chat mention that they hope that Dark Confidant gets injected into Historic, and while I love Bob, it's not at the top of my wish list. Historic is fast, the aggro decks are really aggressive, the removal spells are cheap, your life total is taxed, and winning games comes down less often to how many cards you drew and more often how many cards you had time to cast. Remember that Dark Confidant in Modern is drawing you into stuff like Nihil Spellbomb and Damping Sphere and Anger of the Gods, whereas in Historic you'd be getting stuff like more copies of Maelstrom Pulse. Which is fine, but not always worth the cost of the undersized body that attacks your own life total.

Having said that, Siphoner is really good in conjunction with stuff like Attune with Aether and Winding Constrictor, and if you're headed down that road, there's Rogue Refiner and Confiscation Coup or Harnessed Lightning and Longtusk Cub. It's hard to say if the Energy package is going to be the way to go with midrange or not, but it sure was good while it was in Standard. I know I love my Chevills, but even I have a tipping point.

How's the Sultai Matchup?

It's good. Intrinsically it shouldn't be, but I've tested a lot of stuff out and have a plan that works. It wouldn't be good if Scavenging Ooze wasn't as good as it is. But not only do we play four Ooze, we also play three Inscription of Ruin to get it back. That said, it's really hard to play, plus they draw lots of cards and make lots of mana, and we aren't super fast. However, once we get into the late game, we're able to keep up on cards pretty well with our Planeswalkers, Inscription of Ruin, and Castle Locthwain, and I really like our sideboard plan. There are lots of games where you're like, "Aw, jeez, Uro again" and think you're screwed but you can sometimes just grind it out anyways.

How's the Blue/White Matchup?

It's ok. You need a lot of things to go right because their card advantage engines come online pretty fast if you stumble early, but you also need to have a sustained ability to present threats later on. It's totally doable though, and Castle Locthwain is extremely good because they don't pressure your life total hardly at all. We have a good sideboard plan and also don't necessarily need to walk into Wrath, so that's helpful. Each individual creature we present is good enough to essentially win the game by itself, so they all need to be dealt with. This is the matchup I'm looking to improve the most going forward, but Kaladesh might totally revamp the format, so who knows.

Now that the contents of Kaladesh are known, any changes to the deck?

This is the list I posted in the last post, a too-early-look at a post-Kaladesh Jund list. Since then the contents of the set were revealed, and nothing extremely out of the ordinary is in it, with some interesting little details.

No Felidar Guardian means we don't have to worry about Saheeli Rai combo. This makes it so we aren't pressured to play stuff like Eliminate or Bonecrusher Giant and hold up mana for it against control decks. Dedicated combo decks aren't that bad, and dedicated control decks aren't that bad, but decks that get to do both become real problems. Anyways, problem solved!

No Smuggler's Copter means that I'm even less incentivized to play Fatal Push over Bloodchief's Thirst. Heart of Kiran and Aethersphere Harvester will still exist, but they're slower and will be less prevalent. For what it's worth, I kind of like Smuggler's Copter being in the format, mostly because I don't see the downsides as downsides. The ubiquity amongst aggro decks, the low opportunity cost, the hard to deal with permanent type, not really that big of a deal to me, but I also like Umezawa's Jitte so I'm probably taking an L on this one.

No Walking Ballista means that the Forsaken Monument decks will not get better, which is good because that matchup is a nightmare for us. It also means that Winding Constrictor Energy decks won't be as prevalent and Whirler Virtuoso looks a little better. Outside of the Forsaken Monument decks, I'm not sure Ballista would have been a huge player in the format, but it's seeing play in stuff like Vintage all over the place so I'm probably wrong.

The inclusion of Aetherworks Marvel is scary, but we didn't have Grafdigger's Cage back when Marvel was first legal.

After everything, I don't think that there's anything I really want to change on day 1 of the set from the list I've posted, but this deck is definitely a work in progress, as is the whole format. I would imagine that a week from now it'll look quite a lot different, and I'll let you know then.

Why no Fatal Push?

I think that it's too inflexible, and we can't utilize the Revolt mechanic in this deck at all. Reid says that it's impossible to have a matchup that's too good, but we're already beating up on aggro decks and lacking against control. It's certainly possible that I should have it in my sideboard over Shivan Fire and Disfigure, though. We'll see. I want to be clear that I don't think that Fatal Push is a bad card. Fatal Push is extremely good. During the Bolt vs Push debate when Push was printed, I played this in Modern. It's very good, but Bloodchief's Thirst is also very good, and I think Thirst fits this deck and the format better.

Why not more Klothys?

I have to admit that Klothys is a card that I rejected for a long time but finally decided to give it a spin and now I'm wishing I had done it sooner. However, I've always been afraid to go above one copy, and that's because Klothys is uniquely hampered by its Legendary status. It's really hard to get this thing off the table, so it's really hard to make use of the second copy you draw. Is that cost worth adding another one or two? Possibly, but I feel pretty secure in my matchups where I desperately want this thing, so one has been good for me so far. Similarly, Radha is a legend rule trap herself, because she helps you dig into action so well that you're more likely to find yourself another copy of Radha. Anyways, if you want to take the risk and throw more copies of these two cards in, then go for it.

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That's about it for me. Thanks a lot for reading, it's cool to see people get interested in an off-the-beaten-path style of deck. If you have more questions, I love talking about Jund probably even more than I love playing it, so feel free to comment here, harass me @griffinzoth on twitter, or catch me in the r/mtgHistoric discord channel. Also I stream on twitch and have a Youtube page that I'm thinking about getting up and running again. See ya soon.

Rainbow Spirals Round and Round

 Kaladesh Remastered

There are two things to discuss when planning out the near future for the Historic Jund deck. Well, I guess three, one of them being "Is the deck where we like it right now?" I think for that, the answer is yes, but there are plenty of little changes you could make to ratchet up your ability to win certain matchups. Right now, it seems to work really well against aggro decks but is lacking against control decks. That's fixable, but tough to accomplish without teetering the seesaw and then you'll lose to Gruul and Red and whatnot. Anyways, what we want to figure out today is 1. What will the format look like going forward, and 2. What do we want to add to the deck?

If you remember from when Kaladesh was in Standard, it was a very powerful couple of sets. There was a definite aggressive slant with cheap creatures like Bomat Courier, Toolcraft Exemplar, and Scrapheap Scrounger. These aggro strategies kept in check the Energy decks, one of the main mechanics of the set, and there were a few ways to build Energy, either aggro, midrange, or combo.

I think that all of these things are good enough to see play in Historic. Toolcraft Exemplar enters the format as the closest thing to Wild Nacatl we've got, so if that deck becomes popular, our low-to-the-ground Chevill plus removal plan will continue to be good. Rogue Refiner and Longtusk Cub and Harnessed Lightning are good synergy cards that also have high ceilings and are looking to grind. The cards are consistent and powerful, they work great together, and you can imagine that Uro might find its way into a Blue and Green midrange deck as well. Fighting these decks will look a lot like the way we fight today's Sultai midrange decks, with discard, value plays, and trying to keep Uro off the table.

Some unknowns from Kaladesh Remastered are whether or not WotC wants to put cards that were formerly banned in Standard into Historic. Smuggler's Copter ate a ban early on in its Standard tenure, Aetherworks Marvel was banned shortly after, Felidar Guardian was banned and deemed to be a mistake, and eventually Attune with Aether and Rogue Refiner met similar fates. Copter and Walking Ballista are also banned in Pioneer, for what it's worth. It's unclear if these banned cards will be put into Kaladesh Remastered, and also whether some new goodies will be put in, like Thoughtseize and Collected Company et al were thrown into Amonkhet.

I'm most interested in finding out about Felidar Guardian. For a hot second, Felidar Guardian and Saheeli Rai in Jeskai control decks looked a lot like Splinter Twin. Outside of that, Kaladesh's best stuff was not necessarily pure control cards, but the Felidar Guardian package added a lot to existing control strategies. If Felidar Guardian is legal, I'm interested in trying to give ourselves more instant speed interaction. This could mean Bedevil to deal with Saheeli Rai, Heartless Act or Cast Down to hit Felidar Guardian, or whatever works. The idea previously was to make sure your anti-creature spells could hit your opponent's planeswalkers, now we want to bust up their combo as well.

So what does that mean we're playing, moving forward?

Blooming Marsh is an upgrade to our mana base for sure, but we run into the same problem we ran into when Cragcrown Pathway was spoiled. Can we afford to bust up our Shockland/Checkland combo? I think the answer is yes, since Blooming Marsh is so good, and if every once in a while our Castle Locthwain comes into play tapped, then that's okay.

How about Fatal Push? Well, this card gets much, much worse when you don't play fetchlands, and I don't think we want Fabled Passage. It also runs into the problem of being a dead card against a lot of decks, which Bloodchief's Thirst does not. For now I think that Bloodchief's Thirst is just a little bit safer.

I've been really into Chandra Pyromaster out of the sideboard lately, but Torch of Defiance does all of that and more. She's perfectly maindeckable, since she's a removal spell and a value engine in one. She's flexible, has a big effect right out of the gates, and threatens to run away with the game, even ultimating and winning the game by herself. What's nice is that we're aggressive enough to take advantage of the +1 ability dealing 2 damage when we don't want the card. To really maximize Chandra, ideally we have a way to utilize the two red mana on turn 4 and turn her into a 2 mana planeswalker. Magmatic Channeler is perfect for this, but red removal spells also get a little bit better when Chandra is in your deck as well. Bonecrusher Giant and Cut/Ribbons start to look a little better when they cost 0 mana. Extra mana on turns you untap with her make Shatterskull Smashing look much better as well.

Do we want to move towards the Winding Constrictor Golgari Energy package? My gut feeling is that Constrictor itself is too bad of a card when not working in synergy with your other stuff to be exactly my personal style of deck, and that Glint-Sleeve Siphoner's stats are a little too low impact for the format. Constrictor works really well with Scavenging Ooze, however, so maybe there's something there. If you decide to go this route, I can't imagine that you'd want to run a midrange Energy deck without Rogue Refiner. Maybe 4 color Energy is viable? It's worth a look. Aether Hub and Attune with Aether make lots of crazy things possible.

Here's a way too early look at Jund:

I like this MTG Goldfish Visual View thing. We've got some cool stuff to do with RR added to our pool, including Cut/Ribbons. The mana is going to be a work in progress for sure, but I like the ratios as they are now. All of this is up in the air, of course, since we don't know what will and won't be exactly in the Kaladesh Remastered set list, but I'm happy and excited with this list. Thanks for reading, and check out the twitch stream if you're interested. See ya!

Don't Shake The Tree When The Fruit Ain't Ripe

Years from now, we'll think to ourselves, "Remember that three week stretch where Omnath was legal? What the hell was that?"

I want to talk about three things today: Magmatic Channeler, Omnath, and I guess just bannings in general. Everyone has an opinion on Wizards design as of late, but whatever.

List

I've added Magmatic Channeler to the Historic deck. Having taken out Murderous Rider already, the only thing to do was throw in a few more instants and sorceries and we were off to the races. Bonecrusher Giant is a great card, but I haven't missed it.

Channeler certainly has that Tarmogoyf feel to it, where it's a 2-drop but it's a good draw step late in the game as well as early. That is certainly a welcome addition, but the other thing that's good with Channeler is that we play cards that are versatile, so it's likely that one of the two cards you hit off of it will be something you want. Maelstrom Pulse is great here, but so is Inscription of Ruin, which is a card I really hoped would be good that has exceeded expectations. Kazandu Mammoth fits in this category as well, being a land drop if you need it or a threat that's perfectly serviceable. Late game Thoughtseizes and extra lands can turn into gas, plus it turns dead cards in your hand into action that's outside of your hand, which helps with Castle Locthwain and Liliana.

Gifted Aetherborn was certainly a card I liked, but it's just a role player. I mean, so is Channeler, but I think it's better. Double-black on turn two isn't exactly the best thing, especially with Kazandu Mammoth in the deck, so Channeler is definitely better on that front.

So this thing was clearly too good for Standard, but in Historic we were beating it pretty well. Omnath the card is absolutely a mistake to print, just kind of an unprecedented combination of rate and synergry potential. However, as a deck, I don't even think it was the best deck with Uro in it. In a format where you can have your best pieces Thoughtseized, you can have them countered, you can have your mana-generating creatures killed easily and have your expensive cards stuck in hand, or you can just be attacked for 30 out of nowhere via Neoform or Bolas's Citadel or Muxus, Omnath turns from the clear best deck to a deck that's explosive but not necessarily much better than others. It absolutely could have been the best deck in the format, looking at win rate numbers, but so much so that it had to be banned?

As far as we're concerned, I was able to beat Omnath pretty regularly with Jund. Not 100% or anything, but for a deck that plays out like a Vintage deck, I wasn't awfully scared of it. I never really made any significant changes to the list to try to beat it, save maybe being one factor in swapping Murderous Rider for Maelstrom Pulse. The Omnath experiment was silly.

Bans

This rant is going to get off topic. There's a lot to talk about in regards to WotC's decisions over the last few years. I think it's important to view everything that's happened from a lens that identifies that Wizards is a company that is making an effort to make money. Also, there has been a well-documented push in the last four years or so to take a profitable company and make it more profitable, as requested by Hasbro, the corporation that owns Wizards.

This important for a few reasons, but it's important to diagnose the problems with Wizards' actions with that in mind. I'm absolutely not in favor of attacking or criticizing the game designers themselves, many of whom are Twitter active and formerly public pro players, not necessarily to protect them, although there's that, but also because they're most likely just following orders, or at least under different pressures than they were 8 years ago when Magic was at its peak. When I order a drink from a bartender and they put well vodka in it instead of Grey Goose, it's tough to blame the bartender instead of the owner who told them what they can and can't do, or how much of a margin they need to be hitting.

Another thing that comes up a lot in this discussion is that, in their articles about game design, Wizards designers introduced a design philosophy called FIRE, which stands for Fun, Inviting, Replayability, and Exciting. Folks I've seen are critical of the philosophy, but I really don't think it means much of anything. Magic was all of those things in 2012 and 2006, and isn't anymore. If you put an article on the website about how we want to make Magic fun and inviting and then the best deck in the format wins by casting multiple spells for free each turn and stealing all of your lands, then it's not the philosophy's fault, you just didn't do the philosophy.

There's also the myth that Magic Arena has made Standard too easily solved and players don't get the experience of discovering what is and isn't good. Folks have been saying this for years across multiple formats, and I have never bought into it. Consider the card Death's Shadow. It was printed in Conflux, in 2009, and it became popular around 2016 in Modern. It existed, alongside Shocklands, Fetchlands, and Street Wraith, in Extended and Legacy for seven years before being identified as pretty much the premier threat of the format. Magic players aren't as smart as we think we are. Omnath is a pretty in-your-face busted card that's hard to miss, but we left a one mana 7/7 on the sidelines for seven years. There's no way of knowing, because there's no AI that you can put all the cards of a format into and have it spit out the best decks in the metagame, but I am unconvinced that the Omnath decks we saw at the Grand Finals were even tuned that well. It didn't take a ton of games to see that WURG for a 4/4 that draws you a card, generates four mana a turn, and casts Soul Feast every turn would be too good. Same with Wilderness Reclamation, Lurrus and Yorion, Oko, Uro, even Lucky Clover is obviously busted once you've seen it in play one time.

We have to remember that, in addition to having over 50% of the Standard bans in the last 20 years taking place in 2020 (in addition to the companion nerf, which we shouldn't overlook), in the last 15 years there have been only 2 cards banned before Wizards switched up their set release schedule with the printing of Battle for Zendikar. In my personal opinion, Battle for Zendikar is when Standard went from fun to not fun, and it must have been the opinion of other players, too. Tournament attendance went way down and something had to be done to the format. I don't consider those 2016 bans to be design philosophy problems, I consider them to be oversights. Maybe they could have seen that Emrakul was going to be unfun and broke a bunch of rules, the same with Reflector Mage, maybe Smuggler's Copter was too obviously going to be ubiquitous, and they straight up missed Felidar Guardian. Did anyone just put a bunch of Energy producers and Ulamogs and Emrakuls in a deck with Aetherworks Marvel to make sure it wasn't too good? Doesn't seem like it. It would be strange for the design and development team that gave us Magic's best years around 2012 also to have begun a downward spiral to ban frenzy land we're in now. That's why my theory is that the set release schedule change is the most important culprit for the state we're in. The design team is great, unless they're under a set of new pressures, be it time or financial.

And I also can't assume that I'm the only one to come to this conclusion. When you make a big change, then you start losing money, the easy thing to do is say, "that change didn't work." You know, unless your job is to be Hasbro Corporate's voice inside Wizards and if you ended up making the decision that cost the company millions of dollars, it's tough for your employment status for you to later diagnose the problem as yourself. Clearly, there are just a few more changes that need to be made to make the new big change work, like FIRE, or four big sets a year instead of Large Set - Small Set release schedule, or a change to Magic's tournament structure. Right?

It's wild to me that a company, that supposedly makes good decisions and therefore has become a big corporation, can see something like Magic, the greatest game in the world, and try to tinker with it. It's just a card game, but it's pretty emblematic of a lot of problems we have in society, in my eyes. So before I go too far off the deep end and start talking about how many yards of linen it takes to make a jacket, let me just say that I just hope Hasbro can start listening to Magic designers, who understand that sets are ecosystems and cards don't individually need to be super splashy to make a format Fun and Inviting and ultimately sell. I hope they see Omnath and Oko and companions and set release schedule bungles as what they are: huge failures, and a breach of trust with its players, that needs to be fixed.

I think there are some cards that have been banned in the last few years that shouldn't have been and they're pulling the trigger more frequently than maybe they should, but the root of the problem is that Magic sets have been less fun since Hasbro got more hands-on, and the cost of that is on us.

Anyways, thanks a lot for reading, and check out the twitch stream.