We should take just about any Planeswalker seriously, since they're basically tailor made for midrange decks. They can play multiple roles, are proactive threats, and turn your removal spells into card advantage spells, since keeping them alive nets you value. My gut reaction says that Davriel is just not quite there for us, but I could definitely be wrong about that. There's a whole bunch of research you have to do to figure out Davriel's second ability, but the gist is that you get a big reward and a slightly smaller cost. The problem with Davriel is that you can't really plan on what that reward is going to be, which makes it harder to carve out a game plan. That's critical in Jund, being able to line up your removal with their stuff or your stuff with their removal, or whatever. I also think the +1 ability is too weak and that four mana for a planeswalker is a little slow in this format. When you're competing for the same slot as Vraska, Golgari Queen and Chandra, it's tough. It's worth a shot, but I don't have high hopes. Also, maybe it's just fun as hell, which is enough reason to play it anyways.
Pretty solid card, but it doesn't seem as useful as stuff like Disfigure or Shivan Fire. Funnily enough, not being able to effectively kill a Vesperlark is a problem, but this could be worth trying.
This one is intriguing. In the late game, it's Hero's Downfall. Early on, it's Barbed Lightning, which isn't good. But anytime past turn three, you're usually killing your target with this. The other part of this whole equation is whether 2R: Hero's Downfall is even good enough to play, which it would have been six months ago but now I'm not sure. Again, another one to try out. It's hard when there's no precedent for this kind of mechanic.
I'm not a huge fan of Lightning Strike or Roil Eruption or anything like that in Historic and never have been, but Lightning Bolt is a mainstay of Modern Jund and Standard Jund back in the day, so it's not like it's an effect we don't want. This is getting a little closer to the range of Lightning Bolt in power level, but to really maximize it, you'll want to play all four, which might just not be in the cards. The other problem is that this would likely take the slot of Eliminate out of the deck, and I can't really say that reducing the number of instant speed removal spells is a great idea, given the Vesperlark combo and the new creaturelands that are in the format.
Yeah, now we're going deep. This isn't entirely out of the question. It's got some real Pack Rat vibes but is less vulnerable to removal. Maybe a one-of in the sideboard. I feel like it's gotta be really hard to beat this in a long drawn out game, but that isn't what Historic is often going to be about.
Almost certainly too good to not play. What's fantastic is how it utilizes the graveyard for that extra little value, but is totally fine if your opponent has a Leyline or Rest in Peace. We're going to be running a little close to The Graveyard Trap, but all of our graveyard synergy cards are still just fine to just cast and then attack with.
I think that Pyromancer makes Jegantha not a thing anymore, which is sad but we'll be okay. It's less necessary now with creaturelands and the graveyard ability on the Pyromancer itself. Double red on turn three is going to be a tricky thing to nail down, but the good thing is that Pyromancer on turn eight is even better than Pyromancer on turn three anyways.
Also, Pyromancer is going to make a lot of other decks better as well, like Izzet Phoenix and potentially Rakdos Arcanist, but I'd imagine any Red deck will play this.
I think I've actually somehow managed to get myself more psyched up for Dark Dwellers than for Pyromancer. This thing is the Thragtusk value-plus-large body we've been looking for, and the value you get from it is chosen by you. Maelstrom Pulse loves this, as does Inscription of Ruin. I'm not sure how many is the right number to run, but this thing resolving will translate into a win so often that I have to imagine it's at least 2.
Verdant Command lives in that weird spot where it's a little narrow for a main deck card but a little underpowered and unfocused for a sideboard card. What's nice about this over something like Witherbloom Command is that the baseline ability to just make two 1/1s isn't far off on rate for a two mana card anyways, so the rest is kind of gravy. But, in a deck like Jund, I'd like to think we're doing better than Raise the Alarm on rate, so this might not be for us, but instead for a deck that can utilize the tokens better. Any card that's a constructed-quality card from a Modern Horizons set is worth taking a look at though.
This exists in the same space as the Momir card, where if you have this in the ultra late game you can create a pretty huge advantage. The downside to that is your six mana spell has to not get countered and has to not get blanked by Rest in Peace. There is precedent for this with Season's Past, a one or two-of late game hammer that usually ended any game it resolved. Resolving this for four or more and then untapping should be the game, since your graveyard is usually going to be all gas, but only a few matchups are going to go that long, given not only the makeup of the format but the build of our own deck. Similarly to Verdant Command, if it came from Modern Horizons, it's worth keeping in mind.
I don't really have a decklist that I think I'm going to be playing on day one, because I think a good strategy for new sets is to try out a couple copies of anything you're interested in and see how it goes. So I'll probably have a Momir artifact and a couple Davriels or whatever to see what's up, but I can't imagine that that's going to be a useful list to try. If I had to guess what I thought the deck will look like five days after the release, it's something like this:
I haven't been the biggest fan of Witch's Vengeance in the past, half of that is because there are better options and half of that is because of Jegantha. But there are a few good Goblins and Elves cards in the new set and we might want help there, in addition to some Merfolk stuff and who knows what. Plus, three mana sorceries look even better with Goblin Dark Dwellers in the deck.
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I have a video going up on Youtube right now with a nice Modern Jund list. I tried a little bit of Pioneer Jund but basically I don't know enough about that format to really try and be any kind of an expert there, so I ported the Pioneer cards I liked into Modern, namely Bonecrusher Giant. You can find that video here. Thanks for reading.
