Lost Now On The Country Miles In His Cadillac

Imagine this card. A middle-to-top part of the curve that can stem the bleeding when you're being attacked or can threaten an opponent's life total. It's good power and toughness rate spread out over two bodies to fight against targeted removal. At the very worst, it's two 2/2 bodies that trades with opposing attackers, but has the potential for a lot more. There are a lot of tricks you can do with it to gain a bunch of value if given the opportunity, so not only is your opponent in a bad spot if they try to use removal on it, they almost kind of have to because it can run away with the game if they don't. You can build around it to really maximize it, but you also don't have to. By playing a deck that is both looking for a one-card threat that can win the game by itself and also is a huge defensive roadblock, you've already built your deck to maximize it. 

Which card am I talking about?

So far Esika's Chariot is my favorite card from Kaldheim. It's too early to say if it's the best card I've played with for Historic Jund out of Kaldheim, but I wouldn't be surprised if I came to that conclusion a few weeks from now. Maybe that's just because I love Huntmaster so much, but Chariot has been impressive in ways I didn't plan on.

Similarly to Huntmaster, you don't need a lot of extra help to make it work. If you're on the fence about a card and one of them helps Chariot, then maybe choose that one, but if you totally put combos with the Chariot out of your mind, you'd be fine too. If you're trying to decide between Abrade and Bonecrusher Giant in the main, then maybe go for the Bonecrusher because it crews Chariot. But you also don't have to if you don't want, Chariot is fine without it.

The reason is that if you cast a Chariot and you trade off your 2/2 creatures or have them Wrath'd or Doom Bladed, then Chariot has kind of already done its job. You will have a permanent left over that you may or may not be able to utilize, but the card has been fine and you're closer to winning because of it.

Unanswered, Chariot turns the corner fast. You're attacking for four a turn, but it turns into six and then eight quickly. But more than that, it basically gives creatures in your hand haste, so any other creatures you draw turn the heat on quick.

Defensively, you can't really attack into the thing. If you swing in with a Questing Beast, we trade my Vehicle for your best creature and I'm left with two extra blockers. If you attack with lots of smaller creatures, I trade off the cats and and I've completed a two for one and have the Chariot left over.

One thing real quick is how Gnottvold Slumbermound (Benedict Cumbermound) and Jegantha fit with Chariot. Both of these cards and the Chariot itself are cards that are just going to be lying around waiting for you to use them, and they just instantly win topdeck wars without even having to be drawn. Slumbermound starts to look real good when instead of a 4/4 it's creating it's actually two 4/4s and one of them has haste. The same is true with Jegantha, sometimes on an empty board you get to just play a 5/5 that can attack for four with haste, and all of a sudden, you're not in a topdeck war, your opponent is topdecking for their life. Baking in extra late game value to your deck like this makes deckbuilding much easier, because you can afford to play cheaper and more efficient cards and not lose if you draw them late.

I should also mention that Esika's Chariot gets around the legend rule interestingly in that when you have a Chariot in play, two 2/2 tokens is about the best thing you can cast. So, I don't think that there's a maximum number of these you should play due to the legend rule. Historic is a fast format so I'm not sure you want to slam four copies, but don't let the legendary status sway your decision too much.

Kaldheim just was released two days ago, so clearly it's too early to tell what it's going to do to Historic. But Chariot has all the parts of a perfect midrange card recipe. Great defensively, attacks the life total, gives you tangible value, and is impossible to deal with effectively. Again, it's early, and maybe I'm jumping the gun, but I suggest giving it a spin and seeing how it does for you. Thanks for reading.

It Costs A Lot To Win And Even More To Lose

Kinda bored, figured I would sketch out a way-too-early Kaldheim decklist.

My goal initially here is to test a bunch of stuff. The list is going to have some cards that I'm almost certain won't make it that far, but you never really know until you try. If something looks out of place, or missing, then this is why.

Here's a link to it.

First off, no Chandra. Mostly because I'm trying other stuff out to see how it goes, but in the back of my mind I'm also testing out how a no-Chandra list plays out in order to play Jegantha. I don't know if it will ever happen, but the idea of Mono-Black with four copies of Faceless Haven scares me, since I already think that matchup is close. Jegantha would allow for us to also have a way to use mana in a topdeck war, and they can't really attack into it with the Haven. It's a big, beefy creature that is hard to get off the table with Eliminates and Fatal Pushes. Playing without Kazandu Mammoth, Chandra, or Shatterskull Smashing is certainly a cost, but if these Kaldheim cards turn out to be good, they won't be missed as badly.

Second, I'm testing out Eliminate, but I'm expecting that Bonecrusher Giant needs to be put back in. Without Chandra, Bonecrusher Giant is our best bet on a card that's able to be a removal spell, threat, and value in one. It's also a nice add if Esika's Chariot turns out to be something worth doing. I also really like where Vraska is at, since there are likely going to be some incidental artifacts hanging around from being the back side of God creatures.

As I said, it's just a list to test out how some cards work, since the format itself won't be very fleshed out yet. I think that on Thursday the 28th, when the set drops, I'll be on Twitch for at least some of the day, testing stuff out if you're interested in joining. And once I get a grasp on some of these cards, I'll refine the list and get something up on Youtube. Let me know in the comments if there's anything you think I should be testing out but am not, or just whatever. Thanks for reading.

Every Damn Thing But The Jailhouse Keys: Removal

Jund has a simple game plan against aggressive decks. You use removal to keep your life total high, then you play your more powerful stuff and turn the corner. It's easy in theory but it's hard in practice, mostly because not every deck you face is an aggressive deck. I can't just jam 20 Fatal Push and 14 Thragtusks and call it a day, because that's 20 dead cards against a pretty significant portion of the field. Choosing your removal suite is a delicate balancing act between efficiency and versatility. If you have all Maelstrom Pulses and Vraska's Contempts, you'll lose to fast aggro draws. If you have all Fatal Pushes and Heartless Acts, you'll lose to any resolved Planeswalker. You should be willing to change up what you have going on based on what you expect out of your opponents.

This is why I like Bloodchief's Thirst so much. You can't make this thing any cheaper as a way to pick off cheap creatures and make sure you don't get tempo'd out of the game. But, you also have a lot of flexibility later on to get rid of big creatures and planeswalkers. There's honestly not much else to say. I would currently say that Thoughtseize is the best card in the deck, but Bloodchief's Thirst might be a close second. It's hard to tell. They're all good cards.

Fatal Push is another card that's extremely efficient and has a lot of flexibility. I think I should go over some reason why I don't play it.

I would consider this deck and Sultai to be both midrange decks, but they attack their matchups differently. Against aggro decks, they both play cheap removal and turn the corner with powerful threats. That looks a little different between the two decks, but it's basically the same. Against control decks however, Jund seeks to answer their threats and try to keep its own threats on the board, which is basically what the control deck is trying to do as well. Sultai's plan is simpler, they try to establish their threats and then their threats win the game, because Sultai's creatures and planeswalkers are just too powerful. That means that Sultai can afford to just be okay with having a few dead cards in their hand because Hydroid Krasis will win the game by itself. I think it's also important to note that Sultai plays Fabled Passage and Uro, both of which turn on Revolt pretty easily.

Fatal Push is an incredibly good card. As the metagame and the rest of the makeup of Historic Jund Midrange looks at the moment, I don't think it has a place in this deck, but that could change. In fact, I'm going to make a prediction right now that Mono Blue Tempo is going to make a resurgence after Kaldheim. Fatal Push is the perfect card to fight that deck, so I'm thinking that I'll be adding a couple to the main deck. Push is also a great sideboard card if you're expecting a wide range of quick aggro decks and you need to lower your average mana cost.

This card reminds me a lot of Fatal Push. It's instant speed, kills creatures for extremely cheap, and has the ability to hit some bigger stuff if you jump through some hoops. The ability to hit a Zhur Taa Goblin or Robber of the Rich before it hits you is huge, and you can do the same thing with Questing Beast with this same card. 2 damage instead of converted mana cost 2 or less is better against Goblins with their Chieftains and Warchiefs, but worse against stuff like Dreadhorde Arcanist and Knight of the Ebon Legion. But still, you can't get any cheaper, and it's got quite a bit of versatility, but might not be better than Fatal Push and Bloodchief's Thirst. Before those two were printed, this was a go-to 4-of in my board at all times. You can certainly do worse.

I guess I should talk about why I like cheap removal spells in the sideboard. Usually you're going to find stuff like Witch's Vengeance or Languish as anti-creature sideboard slots. The problem I find myself facing against most creature decks is not that I need to gain card advantage by sweeping up multiple creatures with one card, but that I need to have enough time for my powerful cards to come online. We don't need to get card advantage from our removal spells because when we have stuff like Castle Locthwain, Planeswalkers, Chevill, and Scavenging Ooze we have a lot of real or virtual card advantage baked into our decklist just by having the game go longer. If you and your opponent are both in topdeck mode but you have a Castle Locthwain, you're gaining an advantage every turn, not to mention that your deck contains bigger hits.

This is one of the reasons why I like value lands in a deck like this. You don't have to actually pull ahead by that much to seal the game, you just have to keep pace. I'll talk about it more in a future post, but this is why I'm really interested in Gnottvold Slumbermound from Kaldheim.

In a world before Planeswalkers became a thing, I'd say that these would be maindeckable cards. And they certainly are perfectly maindeckable in the right deck, but I'm not sure I want them in this deck. There are more versatile options that not only hit non-creatures, but also hit all creatures. Something like Terminate or Go for the Throat would definitely be worth looking at, though.

I probably only like this card because I'm old, but it does a lot of work in the right format. Ideally you would be playing against decks where the extra value matters and there aren't very many token generators. Cards like Young Pyromancer, Woe Strider, and Wily Goblin make Edict look pretty bad, but in a world where Gruul or White Weenie are played more, this starts to look good. This is not the right format right now, though.

Angrath's Rampage is a card that I feel is probably worse than it looks but also sees less play than it should. It's very useful, but its baseline ability to remove creatures doesn't really stack up, even given the versatility. Again, in a world where there aren't lots of token generators, this starts to look good, especially given that it answers Teferi and The Great Henge and stuff for just two mana.

This card is very good. I liked it when there were more copies of three-mana planeswalkers around, but haven't played it in a little while. It kind of occupies the same space as Abrade in my mind, and Abrade seems like it's better than this out of the sideboard, which is where I've got this right now. If another really good three-mana planeswalker gets printed (like Liliana the Last Hope from a Remastered set) or more people start playing stuff like Narset, Gideon Blackblade, Gideon of the Trials, or big green animals like Yorvo and Steel Leaf Champion, Eliminate might deserve a slot in the main deck again. I also think that Eliminate does a lot of the same work as Fatal Push as far as making us less vulnerable to some of the things Kaldheim might present us with, like Mono-Blue decks and Faceless Haven.

This one is probably just a pet card, but a Flame Slash for two mana isn't the worst rate as is, and the upside is appreciated in a deck like this. A deck like this is always seeking to reduce an opponent's options, so a copy of Ribbons in the graveyard removes their option to absorb damage down to 6 life or so. Ribbons can turn a game around without you even having to cast it. I think that if Heartless Act or Cast Down ever become viable, then Cut/Ribbons is the pure anti-creature card I would go for first.

Abrade has been a go-to sideboard card for a while. It's great because it's solid enough against stuff like Paradox Engine and Forsaken Monument while still being a Doom Blade against most of the format, or at least the decks where you'd bring it in. It also hits the two most important permanents out of Jund Sacrifice, which are Witch's Oven and Mayhem Devil, and for pretty cheap. Having said that, Abrade might have even more value after the release of Kaldheim, since there are a few Gods that have artifacts as their flip side, and it kills Faceless Haven.

Similarly to what I said about three mana creatures in an earlier post, Pulse is our go-to three mana removal spell, and versatility, not power, is what we get out of it. It hits everything from Skirk Prospector to Ugin, and all of it needs to die. But its hidden power is that every once in a while, you can randomly completely destroy an opponent. Triple Burning Tree Emmissary draws are often times unbeatable, but with Pulse in your deck, you're almost hoping they have it. The same is true with double Witch's Oven. Really not much to say about Maelstrom Pulse, other than that a three mana sorcery isn't always going to cut it, so it's not like this is an automatic 4-of every time.

I've talked a lot about this card already, but I just want to mention how tailor-made this card is for Historic. Not only does the Mind Rot effect come up, because we're playing games on narrow margins and each card matters, but Historic is at a place speed-wise where four mana creatures aren't too common. You can't really afford to put seven mana bombs in your deck, but you also can expect games to get to the point where you have seven mana in play and are looking to do something powerful. In Standard, Inscription looks a lot worse when it's fighting Questing Beasts and Yorions, it's a less powerful play than something like Garruk Cursed Huntsman at the top end, and Mind Rot looks pretty bad when they are playing Into the Story and Dream Trawler. Similarly, you can't really afford to play Inscription in something like Modern, where you're targeting Goblin Guide or Giver of Runes, Mind Rot doesn't work because your opponent might not have a hand by turn three, and you will very rarely have seven lands. In Historic, however, Inscription has been great for me. It's certainly the most versatile of the three mana removal spells available to us, not because of the versatility of targets but versatility of applications.

Murderous Rider is the card that probably has the best rate for the three mana spells. It comes with some downsides, which of course is the 2 life lost, but also it doesn't actually get to go on an adventure against a lot of the format. There's Phyrexian Tower, Witch's Oven, Woe Strider, Skirk Prospector, etc, all over the place. Rider is at its best against formats where you expect opponents to have a simple aggro game plan, like Gruul and Mono-Green, and/or you expect midrange mirrors and control decks that play to the board, like Grixis. I'm not sure what would need to get printed to make that reality happen, but you never know. As is, you could do a lot worse than putting some Murderous Riders in your deck, the upside is really good.

Also, maybe you noticed that Murderous Rider was in the removal category and Bonecrusher Giant was in the three-drop creature category. I've found that casting Bonecrusher Giant as a creature is the right move very often, more often than I think most people do it, and that casting Murderous Rider as a creature is the right move almost never. I really only like casting Murderous Rider as a creature against Mono-Red, where 2/3 lifelink is really good.

~

That about covers all of the removal spells that I'm interested in for this deck. If you think I missed one, or have a different opinion, let me know. Also, I just uploaded a video to Youtube that's a quick overview of this deck and where it stands before we head into Kaldheim land. You can watch that here. Thanks for reading.

Every Damn Thing But The Jailhouse Keys: Five Drops

At five mana, we find ourselves some cards that are extremely powerful. Things that, when they're in your deck, can tangle with Uro, Nissa, and Teferi on raw power. As with all cards, they look amazing when they're on the battlefield, but not amazing when they're in your hand and you don't have the mana to cast them, or when the ability they have to turn the game around is dwindling.

Each of these cards listed is super duper strong, and each with their own set of pros and cons, which is kind of the problem in my eyes. If you're going to be paying this much mana on something, it's gotta be the right one every time, and as it stands, none of the cards are lights out against the whole format. Some of them are lights out against some of the decks, but beatable against others.

Gargaroth is usually just going to end the game when you untap with it. That seems like a quality that you'd want in a card, but for this mana cost, the downside if they do have the answer becomes huge. Unlike something like Chevill that is high floor high ceiling, Gargaroth is super low floor and super high ceiling, just because of the mana investment needed to play the two cards.

I think that there are times when Gargaroth could be better, but right now lots of decks are playing black removal spells or counterspells. When red removal is the most played way to deal with creatures, Gargaroth looks much better. If you think it will live, and you think you will live long enough to cast it, there's nothing better, but it doesn't seem like those two things are happening right now.

Glorybringer is similar to Gargaroth in that it is extremely good against an aggressive deck. If they don't have black removal or counterspells, then you're going to be getting some value out of it. It acts a little like a planeswalker, whever every other turn it casts a 4 damage Searing Blaze, but you can also just turn on the jets and try to close a game quickly.

I think of Glorybringer as an anti-creature huge-drop like Gargaroth but slightly worse against creatures and slightly better against UW Control. If your list has a more aggressive slant to it and the 4/4 haste can finish off an opponent from time to time, Glorybringer gets a little better. Out of all the five drops available to us though, I would say Glorybringer is among the worst options against Sultai, which certainly is public enemy number one. It matches up poorly against Uro, Krasis, Nissa, and Doom Whisperer, it's hard to attack Sultai's life total, and they have answers for it like Maelstrom Pulse and Aether Gust if needed. That said, if the format moves to a place of creature decks where Glorybringer shines, like Gruul, and planeswalker heavy control decks, like Grixis, then Glorybringer starts to look good.

Out of these first three cards on this list, Thragtusk is the one I like the best for a wide open format. It's got immediate value, it's got stats big enough to attack down a Teferi, and it's good against removal, instead of being bad against removal. It's a big enough roadblock against aggro decks that you can usually turn the corner with it.

However, being a Jack of all trades means you're an Ace against nothing, and if we're spending five mana for something big, it needs to have a lot of power. Thragtusk is most playable in a diverse metagame like we're in now, but that a five mana spell isn't too expensive for the speed of the format.

The Eldest Reborn is my favorite five drop if you expect to be playing fair magic and want some value. This thing gives a ton of value and is pretty hard to get off the board. It's one of the best things to be doing against midrange mirrors and control decks, but it lacks so much against aggro decks. Most of the aggro decks in the format go wide, so your opponent might be losing a Soul Warden, a Cauldron Familiar, or a Llanowar Elf.

Eldest Reborn, in my eyes, is more of a maindeckable version of Angrath, but I don't think that's something we're looking for.

Angrath shines against Uro, which as you could imagine is very valuable in this format, but it lines up nicely against other things out of that deck, like Nissa and Hydroid Krasis. It also can pretty nicely square off against Teferi out of U/W Control decks. It disrupts the opponent's hand and makes counterspells pretty weak, it pressures opposing planeswalkers by stealing their stuff and then attacking them with their own creatures. It also has a little bit of inevitability attached, since it Shocks them every turn.

Angrath represents a card advantage engine that also can help itself gain traction, but as long as it resolves, is never able to be answered on a one for one basis. The -3 is a tempo play that can completely change the focus of a game, from both players amassing board presence to your opponent being on the back foot immediately, and having to deal with an engine/clock planeswalker. Similarly to most of these cards, untapping with it in play gives you a huge likelihood to win the game.

I usually play Angrath in the sideboard, and the reason is that, the matchups where it's at its best are matchups where you can expect to get to your fifth turn. At this mana cost, you can play cards like this where they're included to fight a specific card (Uro) but are just strong enough cards to come in for a lot of matchups. Plenty of times when you're playing against another midrange brew, what you're really looking for is a disruptive value threat to try and go a little bigger than the opponent, so Angrath shines there as well.

~

These are the five drops that I've considered playing in the last few months here, but there are others that I've tried out. Siege Gang Commander, Biogenic Ooze, both 5 mana Viviens, and Doom Whisperer come to mind, but they don't really seem to have the huge power swings that the cards I've listed here have. I also talked a bit about Battle Mammoth in an earlier post, and I think that one is a contender if, like always, a five mana spell is something we want to be doing. As for going further up the mana curve, Casualties of War is my favorite supermassive value card, but Garruk Cursed Hunstman is a pretty unbeatable force if you can get it into play. I don't think the Historic format lends itself to doing stuff like that but you kind of never know. If Uro gets banned ever, it will definitely shake up a lot of our preconceived notions about card assessment, and I'll probably have to rewrite this whole series. Anyways, I think I'll do two more of these, one on removal spells and one on sideboard cards. Thanks for reading.

Not A Chill To The Winter But A Nip To The Air

Taking a break from the Jailhouse series today to check in on Kaldheim spoilers. I've already talked about Sarulf here if you want to check that out, but we've seen a lot of new cards since then. There's some stuff that's between interesting and good for us, and there's some stuff that's between interesting and format defining against us. 

FYI, I'm gonna talk about some cards that are leaked and not official spoilers. I'll let you know when that's going to start and we'll cover the non-leak cards first.

Let's start off with this thing.

Metagames get into a weird place when there are forces that push players to play one-color decks. If you were playing during the Return to Ravnica/Theros metagame, you probably remember Mono Black Devotion, Mono Blue Devotion, Mono Green Devotion, Mono Red Devotion, and Mono White Devotion. The devotion mechanic made you really want to play a single color to maximize its effect. That was one of the forces there, but the other was Mutavault. It was a card so strong that you'd rather play fewer colors and therefore weaker spells in order to cut dual lands from your deck and not get color-screwed. A hand of a bunch of black spells, swamps, and a Mutavault was usually better than a hand of multi-colored spells, dual lands, and no Mutavault.

This has a pretty significant homogenizing effect on deckbuilding. When you are strapped to playing one color, then you usually just play all the best cards in that color. There was a little bit of room to customize, but if your opponent played a swamp on turn one, you could usually guess about 55 cards that were in their deck. Customizing and tinkering your deck over time was reduced to which C- removal spells you wanted in your couple of flex slots. And the thing is, what can you realistically do to change it? If you try to come up with some neat new deck that attacked the mono-color decks, you were either just playing a mono-color deck with worse cards, or you were playing multiple colors and therefore not being able to play Mutavault.

To be fair, I honestly liked this format a lot. I was able to do a little bit of deck tuning and customization within the restrictions of the format, and the decks themselves were not the most egregious things to have to play against. Lots of players complained about Pack Rat and Thoughtseize, but players will always complain about whatever they lose to. However, a couple of 2019-2020 power-level printings and this format would have been awful. Imagine if there were only five decks you could play, and they were all one color, but one deck had a card as strong as Omnath or Oko or Uro.

Snow is a mechanic that's similar to Devotion and Mutavault because it draws you into playing just one color. We haven't seen all of the payoffs that we're going to get for Snow decks, but with Faceless Haven in the deck, it doesn't have to be much. It's not as good a card as Mutavault, but it does something that no other deck really can do to this level. The vigilance is very strong and it hits really hard.

I think that this card could make mono-blue tempo decks and mono-black aggro decks really good in this format. Those two decks aren't too far off of being solid metagame contenders on their own, and now they get to have something that few other decks will get to have, to go along with how consistent their game plan and mana bases are. I also think that we'll have to take a hard look at Mono-Black midrange. When you can cut color consistency issues out of your deck but not go down on power, it's very enticing. Either way, I also think this might just turn into a metagame staple, and something we have in the back of our minds when we build decks.

When you compare this card to other Simic Mythics like Oko, Uro, and Hydroid Krasis, it definitely seems worse. But how do you beat it? My guess is that Sultai won't play this card because the card quality of that deck is so high already, but if they do then it's certainly going to be trouble.

I also just wanted to mention this card because I don't know if there will be a cycle of them or if any of the ones in our colors will be good, but I'm always up for some value lands. Also, I knew Gavony Township, and this sir, is no Gavony Township.

Great numbers, flying and lifelink go very well together, but we just barely got Nighthawk Scavenger given to us and turned it down. This card starts to look good when our opponents have not just Planeswalkers, but Planeswalkers that have creature removal abilities. Eradicator Valkyrie is awful against Nissa and Narset, but would be good in a format where Chandra was popular, or Teferi Time Raveler was legal.

So first of all, it's totes adorbs, right? My wife and I are currently long-term cat sitting for our friend Kyler (who is rats_relyk on twitch and has a really cool stream) and their two cats look just like these two. Check this out:

So about the playability, it's honestly not that far off. You get two 2/2 bodies and a little extra value, which depending on what that extra value is, we start getting into Huntmaster of the Fells territory. But we don't really have anything (other than the Chariot itself, ostensibly) that makes tokens. We also don't play a ton of creatures that have four power, so the vehicle might just sit around and not do much after the cats are gone. If we could depend on giving our creatures pseudo-haste with the vehicle or creating some tokens, I'd be more interested. It's definitely something to keep an eye on, because it lines up really well against Gruul, and there are some token generators and four-power creatures that aren't that far off from being playable. Maybe Thrash/Threat or Sarkhan the Masterless?

I want to compare this with Eldest Reborn, but it's not really a card advantage engine like that. It's closer to Vraska Golgari Queen, except the effects that you get after the initial removal spell ability are worse. In my mind it's more like Maelstrom Pulse than anything, and it doesn't give the upside of getting some free wins when your opponents draw multiples of their creatures.

It takes a lot for me to completely dismiss a card as versatile as a dual-face modal card like this, but I don't think we want to be doing either half, and both halves cost a lot of mana.

This one was just spoiled and I haven't quite wrapped my head around it yet. I don't think it's going to work in a deck without good graveyard synergies, but a three-mana 6/6 is just so big. It doesn't really have to be in play for very long to have a pretty important effect against Gruul, you cast it, you threaten to block for a couple turns, then you cash it in when you run out of food. Unlike something like Rotting Regisaur, you can use the back half when the body isn't good, which also seems like it's a pretty solid card in the right matchup. I'm skeptical but I also think that there's so many options with it that I wouldn't be surprised if it found a place.

Okay, so this one I'm bullish on. First of all, it's hard to judge how good Valki is because it has a pretty amazing backup plan if you draw it in the late game. These dual faced cards are so versatile. Being a two-drop creature is supposed to be a big cost, since later on in the game you don't want to be drawing Goblin Piker. But Valki gets around this pretty well.

Second, this is as high-floor high-ceiling as it gets. If you trade your two drop with a Fatal Push, okay fine. But if they don't have it, or you Thoughtseize it, or they used it on your Scavenging Ooze, all of a sudden we are stealing their Uro and getting Uro triggers on turn three. Against Gruul it protects itself by stealing Bonecrusher Giant if need be, and saves you damage by taking their haste creature, trading in combat, then they can only play their haste creature post-combat. If they Stomp it (or Swift End it) in response to the trigger, they lose a different creature forever. Also lol if they kept their hand based on playing Mammoths as lands. Add to that it's also an out to Muxus and Goblins don't have a ton of ability to get it off the table, you get information, it's great against Kroxa, it turns itself into a mana sink if you take something big. This thing does a lot of stuff for a card that's such low investment.

Third, if you've played Inscription of Ruin before, you know that the ability to have a useful cheap play that can go toe-to-toe against our opponent's expensive stuff late really turns matchups around. Plenty of times I've been dead to rights against Sultai or a control deck and cast a full blast Inscription and won the game. All that from a Mind Rot/Smother flex slot card. Tibalt is also really strong against Uro, which makes it extra valuable as an expensive card. We're not supposed to have this much late game power if we're also playing cheap cards and keeping our curve low.

The last thing I want to say about Valki is that in the Jund deck as we have it built now, Valki definitely is easy to make space for. I've been slamming my head against the wall trying to find the right two-drops to go alongside Scavenging Ooze and Chevill, and Valki is certainly high on power level and can do its own thing. We have a deck that both wants early plays to keep up against aggro decks and wants to play big spells to turn the corner. I like it a lot.

--Leaks--

Some folks in a Historic Midrange discord I'm in have been having good experiences with Shaper's Sanctuary out of the sideboard lately. It seems like you need a lot to go right, like they have targeted removal spells, you have a lot of creatures, and the strength of your creatures necessitates them killing them instead of just casting Uros and Nissas or Wraths and Sharks. If those things are in play, though, it's pretty amazing to be able to draw a bunch of cards for one mana, and it's even better in multiples. Battle Mammoth gives us that same effect but without costing a card, and it has huge stats.

I haven't spoken about Foretell because it's not on any of the stuff that seems interesting to me, but I think that it's very useful. Build your deck however you want, there will still be hands you draw where you're not really doing anything useful on turn two. When that's the case, you can put that mana to good use and get Mammoth out a turn early. That might not seem that useful, but Mammoth represents a huge roadblock for Gruul and other aggro decks, so getting something like this out a turn early represents saving a lot of damage.

As I'll likely talk about in the next blog post, I'm not sure if a five mana or more threat has a place in the deck. There are a lot of good options between Elder Gargaroth, Thragtusk, Glorybringer, Angrath the Flame Chained, and more, each with their own set of pros and cons. But Battle Mammoth gives you the best option of all of them, which is of course, to not be five mana. Lots of rate, lots of upside, lots of flexibility, but it still just might be too much mana.

This card impressed me right up until I saw Valki, but I think it might have potential. In the Robber of the Rich/Burning Tree Emissary format, 2/2 First Strike is solid enough that if you have some late game value it might be worth it. Again, if it eats a Fatal Push, then it's okay. It's a low investment card that can get out of hand if not dealt with, fills the curve, and pressures planeswalkers and life totals. Getting a single 5/5 out of the deal is great, but it has potential for a lot more. There's a lot of play here that I think is worth trying out. Even if you get a dragon one out of every ten times you cast it, the threat is there and your opponent really can't afford letting you untap with this.

~

Spoilers keep rolling in, so I'll keep up with any cool stuff I see. There's usually some kind of Doom Blade/Hero's Downfall type thing to check out that we're missing at the moment, so I expect something like that to show up. I really like the look of the set. Dual faced cards and Foretell cards are the type of thing that give players lots of options, which is what we're looking for in midrange decks. Let me know your opinions in the comments, and thanks for reading.

Every Damn Thing But The Jailhouse Keys: Four Drops

We're getting into territory here that's somewhere between top-end and middle of the road, depending on the speed of the format. In something like Modern, we can afford something like Bloodbraid Elf and Huntmaster of the Fells, but that's about as high as we can go up the mana curve for a deck like this. In Standard, Huntmaster and Bloodbraid were the cheap-to-middle of the curve threats. Same deck philosophy, same cards, different roles. That has a lot to do with the speed of the format, but it also has to do with the narrow margins that games are decided on when the cards are cheap and efficient. That same Huntmaster that takes over games in Modern looked pretty helpless in Standard when the opponent was casting Sphinx's Revelations and Angel of Serenitys.

Historic is in a speed and power level area in between Modern and Standard and maybe a little slower than Pioneer. You wouldn't quite say that four mana is expensive, but you really can't go much higher. Not only are a lot of games over quickly, but the power discrepancy between something like Chandra Torch of Defiance and Glorybringer isn't as pronounced, because both cards are pretty unbeatable if they stick. So, what we're looking for is something that can stabilize a board and then turn the corner. It's a tough ask, but at four mana, there are some cards that are up to the task.

Speaking of, Chandra just seems to be the best card here. She nukes a creature the turn she comes into play, which is pretty similar to every other Planeswalker. The mana ability is useful from time to time, and the +1 is a little worse than drawing a card but applies pressure, which is what we're looking for.

Also unlike most Planeswalkers available to us, she has the ability to actually win the game on her own, or pretty close to it, with her ultimate, and it's pretty attainable. This facet of Chandra is part of why Teferi, Hero of Dominaria and Jace the Mind Sculptor were so good. As long as you can keep pace with what your opponent is doing while Chandra is on the table, you don't really need to worry about pressuring the opponent, she can handle that herself.

Chandra, more than most cards we can play here, does something special which is that she helps you dig through your deck. In a format like Historic where we have some lights-out sideboard cards, the ability to have extra shots to find those cards will win a lot of games. Grafdigger's Cage and By Force come to mind, but you can also play stuff like Sporeweb Weaver or Witch's Vengeance in your sideboard if you anticipate those decks. As decks get more singularly-focused and these knockout sideboard cards look a lot better, so does the ability to find those knockout cards. When Kaladesh Remastered was released I was worried about replacing Liliana, Waker of the Dead with her because I needed that ability to go after the opponent's hand. Instead, Chandra turns out to be great at that effect because your deck has lots of that effect and she draws you cards.

Chandra gets hampered by the Legend rule pretty badly, since her +1 misses if she hits another copy of herself. That said, she also gets around the Legend rule by killing the opponent. I think playing two copies is the right number at the moment.

Liliana is a great card. She's a lot like Chandra in that she can come down and kill a creature, then get to work on your opponent's resources. She's a good topdeck because, like Chandra, she can turn her +1 ability into a clock when it otherwise wouldn't be useful.

What she lacks from Chandra is that she's graveyard dependent, meaning that her -3 and -7 abilities aren't going to be as useful in a format with Scavenging Ooze. Not only does her -3 do next to nothing against an Ooze, the -7 isn't great in conjunction with our own Oozes.

What I will say about Liliana, though, is that she can do a lot of the same things as Chandra while not being named Chandra Torch of Defiance, so she's a totally fine choice if you want more Planeswalkers but don't want to go higher on Chandra. Note also that Liliana's Legend Rule problem isn't that bad, since you can just discard excess copies of herself. I don't think there's too many cases where she's going to be better than Chandra, except in a case where you want to cut double-red costing cards from the deck.

Vraska is of course in the same league as Chandra and Liliana but has some significant differences. One is that the +2 ability is pretty useless for us, we don't have very much graveyard synergy and we want to keep our lands if possible. However, the ultimate is pretty strong here and she gets there pretty quick since she climbs by 2 loyalty a turn.

Vraska's biggest upside is when you start to see opponents playing things like Search for Azcanta and Narset. All the Planeswalkers can pick off creatures and get a little value while they climb to ultimate, but Vraska adds in a little bit of versatility to fight against some stuff that we normally have difficulty dealing with. She also gets back up to three loyalty after just one turn if you use her -3, ready to Abrupt Decay another permanent.

If I had to rank them, at the moment I like Chandra, then Vraska, then Liliana.

A different route, but Questing Beast can get some work done for us. The thing here though is that for Questing Beast to be at its actual best, we want to pressure life totals, which we don't really do that well most of the time. You can tune the deck to be more proactive if you want to, sure. I really like Questing Beast when it's pressuring their life total and doing something else, which is to say blocking, killing planeswalkers, and sometimes even countering Fog effects. When the format had lots of Teferi Time Raveler and Haze of Pollen, Q Beast was great.

Anyways, this all is on a package that just gets hit by Doom Blade effects, unlike Planeswalkers. And also unlike Planeswalkers, if we hit them from 20 down to 8 with it and then they find their removal spell, then the game just continues as normal. With Planeswalkers, you've usually gained a bit of value off of them just being around and trying to get to their ultimate.

Questing Beast is pretty consistent, though. It's never going to be a terrible card to cast on turn four and never a terrible topdeck. I don't hate it, and again, if people start playing more decks with Planeswalkers that this thing can gobble up, give it a shot.

When Rekindling Phoenix was spoiled in January of 2018, I wrote this:

"This card is really cool, and I think it's really good, but I really can't imagine it's going to see play until Chandra rotates out of the format. Watch out for this one being really good in the future. It does a lot of cool things that a lot of decks are looking for, but Chandra just does better."

Phoenix is a fantastic card, and it stabilizes a board and turns the corner like we want, but its inclusion in the deck at this point is based pretty much solely on Chandra. There will be times where Rekindling Phoenix is great, where blocking and being good against removal are important in the format. Phoenix's problem is that in that specific universe, Chandra is really good too, and she'll be good all the other times too.

I also didn't mention this with Questing Beast, but as of right now, in the back of our minds we should be thinking about Uro with just about every card that we put in the deck. Planeswalkers at least can try to kill Uro and keep it off the table or dig and try to find Scavenging Ooze. Phoenix and Questing Beast kind of just lose to it, so that's another detractor.

I actually like this card quite a bit. I mentioned Huntmaster of the Fells earlier in this post but Polukranos does a pretty good Olivia Voldaren impression. Unlike Olivia, the turn Polukranos comes down it's already big enough to tangle, and you don't care that much of it dies.

Polukranos's downsides are kind of the same as Questing Beast and Rekindling Phoenix's except that it hits in really big chunks. Six power is a lot, and an Escaped Polukranos may as well be Phage the Untouchable, which means that it has a ton of ammo to shoot down opposing blockers. Six other cards in the graveyard is a long time in this deck, since we don't play anything to really facilitate it, but in matchups where you're getting to six mana, you're likely going to get to six cards as well.

Additionally, Questing Beast is the right recipe of useful mana sink and body that's good enough if we don't have the time to use it. It costs mana, but Polukranos can do something useful while it's in play, unlike Questing Beast who can only attack for four and then pass the ball back to Jimmy.

I like playing a Polukranos from time to time, when I expect to not get tempo'd out by playing it and when my opponent is likely to have small creatures. It's versatile, consistent, easy to cast, and is high-rate.

~

Of course, there are a lot of cards that are perfectly reasonable to play at any price point in these colors. These are the ones I've found to be the best, but if you think I've missed one, or have a different opinion, let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading.

Every Damn Thing But The Jailhouse Keys - Three Drops

Three drop creatures in this deck are in a weird place. They aren't cheap enough to create an early advantage, but they're also not powerful enough to stabilize a board. That's not to say that they can't exist, but more that they don't at the moment. A printing like Kitchen Finks or Courser of Kruphix would slot nicely into this deck, but alas. For now, what we can get out of our three drop creatures is versatility.

Radha is very matchup dependent. The problem with her is that the matchups where she excels are the ones where removing a three mana 3/3 isn't a huge problem for the opponent. That said, she's good with Kazandu Mammoth et al, and she really only needs to hit one land off the top to be worth it. If you're the aggressor in the matchup, then she's definitely a must-deal-with threat, which is kind of all we can ask for. But again, the awkwardness of the three mana slot is that it's not always going get you value if they have the answer and also not cheap enough to be a good play if it trades one for one. She's also in this awkward place metagame-wise where she's a little more matchup-dependent than you'd like for a maindeck card but also not quite focused enough to be a sideboard card.

Where I've landed with Radha is that if you're gunning for Sultai, conrol, and midrange matchups, a one-of Radha is just fine. If you're spending more of you time on the back foot and facing Gruul, Goblins, and stuff like that, then Radha's maybe not what you're looking for.

Klothys is in a similar spot as Radha, in that having a one-of copy in your list is fine if the metagame calls for it, but it's not quite a focused enough card to be a sideboard card. That said, Klothys is less matchup dependent than Radha, and while it doesn't quite take over the game if left unchecked like Radha can, it provides a unique Uro-fighting ability, is hard to get off the table, and gives you inevitability against control decks. It seems that either gaining 2 life a turn, dealing 2 damage a turn, or exiling cards from the graveyard will be good against almost any opponent. That said, I would never go higher than one copy in the main deck because Klothys is uniquely hampered by the legend rule.

Jadelight Ranger might be the strongest three drop creature available to us, but the reason I don't play it is because of its mana cost. 1GG isn't impossible to cast or anything, but what Jadelight provides is an ability to make land drops and smooth your draws. Ideally our mana enablers are easy to cast, but adding Jadelight to the deck would decrease our consistency overall instead of increasing it. Jund Triome when????

I was high on this card when it was released, but quickly learned that it's not quite what we're looking for. The lesson for Nighthawk Scavenger is that, at least at the moment, you can't just pay three mana for power and toughness. Nighthawk is too easy to remove and also not powerful enough to stop any of the things our opponents are going to be doing.

Having said that, Nighthawk Scavenger might have a place at some point, because the numbers on the card are just so good. In Modern we play Tarmogoyf not because it disrupts the opponent, but because it kills them. If we get to the point where we're looking for threats just to attack people with, then Nighthawk is at the top of the list.

Mammoth has been fantastic. At first glance it doesn't seem like a card advantage card, but you've gotta remember, mulliganning is card disadvantage. Mammoth gives you more keepable hands, which is one of the advantages a deck like this is looking for. Unlike some of the other cards in this category, Mammoth doesn't just attack and block, but it does attack and block perfectly well for the flexibility it gives you. Five damage can kill in four hits, or it can kill a Teferi in one, so it's pretty important they get rid of this thing when it's on the table. Like I've been saying, the three drops in this format aren't going to blow you away with their power, and they're not coming out of the gates super fast, but what they can provide is some flexibility. Mammoth does this very well.

I wasn't writing in the blog at the time, but before the companion nerf, this was a Lurrus deck and it was fantastic. As for nowadays, Lurrus is still just a fine card to have in your deck. 3/2 Lifelink is honestly pretty good against a large portion of the field, and when your two-drops you can rebuy are things like Scavenging Ooze and Chevill, there's a ton of late game value and toolbox-ish gameplay available.

Lurrus runs into a lot of the problems that Legendary creatures have, where you can't really play too many of them. That would be fine, except that to get the most out of Lurrus, we'd like to be playing some specific things that are pretty subpar when you don't draw Lurrus. Dead Weight comes to mind, but you also want to have a lot of two drop creatures, more than you would probably play without Lurrus. Unlike Inscription of Ruin, where if you don't happen to have a creature in your graveyard you can do something else with it, Lurrus really wants to be reanimating things.

I like that Lurrus is a good three drop creature but also a good five drop creature. You have a lot of play with it and it's all powerful stuff that it's doing. But the downsides are pretty numerous, like how we open ourselves up to graveyard hate, how poorly it plays with Grafdigger's Cage, and how the legend rule can get us if we try to play too many copies. In the end, Lurrus is the perfect example of something I mentioned a while ago in a blog post (maybe it was a video? I forget). To get the most out of our cards, while also playing the midrange game of disruption, consistency, and being difficult to attack, start looking not only at tuning one deck but coming up with packages to slot in and out of the decks based on what the metagame is calling for. Lurrus doesn't have to have your whole deck built around it, but a 6-card "Lurrus Package" that includes two Lurrus, one Dead Weight, a Kroxa, and a couple Merfolk Branchwalkers might be a good trick to have practice with when you think the time is right.

Here is a pretty cool Lurrus deck that we can work from.

Deathgorge Scavenger is a little bit like Klothys in how flexible it is, but unlike Klothys the power level of this card is just a little too low. As I write this I have been playing one copy to fight Uro decks alongside the normal four Ooze and one Klothys, and it's been solid enough to keep in. While it does just about everything we want, it's probably just one mana too expensive, seeing how unlike Klothys, if it's really hampering the opponent's game plan then they can just kill it. Definitely a high-floor low-ceiling card.

Bonecrusher is a phenomenal card rate-wise and flexibility-wise, and it takes just about no work to make it good in the deck. Its only real problem is that the metagame right now is just not suited for it at all. Gruul's creatures are often too big for the Stomp half, and the other aggro decks of the format are running stuff like Witch's Oven, Village Rites, Alseid of Life's Bounty, and Skirk Prospector. The control decks can answer the 4/3 with stuff like Baffling End and Glass Casket without even taking damage from its ability, and it trades with Nissa Elementals.

Having said all of that, you still really can't go wrong by playing Bonecrusher Giant. Even if the deck isn't really focused too much on pressuring the opponent's life total, Bonecrusher can just end the game by itself pretty fast if left unchecked. Similarly to Kazandu Mammoth, if you're looking for a good creature to just attack and block with, choose the ones that give you some additional flexibility and consistency in your draws. This deck isn't blowing anyone's doors off in the power level end of things, so consistency and flexibility is where we make up ground.

~

As ever, the next set coming out in a few weeks here will likely change things up, but I'm especially excited about Sarulf. I think it will add an important dimension to this deck and we'll have to revisit some of these things. Let me know if you think I missed anything or to give your own opinions. Thanks for reading.