4 Thragtusk

I have not decided on what my post-jumpstart list is going to look like, and it's just a few days away. Jumpstart is such an interesting phenomenon. There are like 600 cards to look at, but almost none of them are that important. The funniest part is that they could print almost anything and none of it is as good as Teferi, Uro and Ugin, so a lot of new cards are in the format but I'm assuming it'll mostly look the same.

First, I want to talk about the takeaways from M21. Out of the new cards I've played, Liliana and Elder Gargaroth have been standouts, Scavenging Ooze might be the best card in the format, and Radha and Eliminate have been okay. Necromentia also has been good but has gotten weaker from opponents playing more Bant Nexus that Simic Nexus lately. I'm not sure that M21 changed much of the function of this deck, but it certainly upped the power level.

Ooze has been absolutely incredible, and putting four into the Jund deck has shored up a lot of the problems you have. One is Uro, of course, but another is Klothys, which is notoriously hard to beat. I love an early game play that has value late, and Ooze does that very well. Like Reid Duke said a long time ago, don't remember the quote exactly, but in midrange-ish creature battles, Scavenging Ooze is king. The size and lifegain make racing nearly impossible, which is great because it gets better as the game goes on. Ooze also gives you this take-out-the-trash-ability when concerning graveyard decks, like Cat Oven and Kroxa and whatnot.

I was skeptical about Elder Gargaroth, but sorta kinda convinced myself on it, then played with it and hot damn is it good. The thing is, we added a bunch of discard spells to this deck to help facilitate it with Liliana and throwing Agonizing Remorse in the deck. Remorse isn't my favorite card ever, but if you can knock out a removal spell and get the Gargaroth going, almost nothing can stop it. I've been beating aggro deck draws that I just have no business beating. Gargaroth stops them in their tracks and completely takes over. If it's a liability, which it is sometimes but not as often as I predicted it would be, I just board it out. It feels pretty fun to play a card that's just this high on power level.

Liliana's inclusion is more of a function of the format and the rest of the list than it being extremely powerful. The discard spells get better when you have Gargaroth and Ooze, sure, but also the Growth Spiral decks are just so good right now, we need something that fights on that axis a little bit. Agonizing Remorse here is kinda fighting the same battle. Add that to her ability to pick off creatures similarly to Vraska Golgari Queen and it's a recipe for a solid enough card that fits very well.

Radha has been pretty good, but I kind of wish it was better. She's a card that gets sideboarded out quite a bit. I'd say against almost 40% of the format my sideboarding plan is -2 Radha, -3 Agonizing Remorse, +4 Shivan Fire, +1 Chainer's Edict. If you think you're going to have time for her, she's great, but so much of the format is too fast for her. Crucially, this was never a problem with Courser of Kruphix because Courser was designed to be solid defensively while still netting you card advantage. Radha's downfall is that all of her abilities are designed for the long game, but doesn't help get herself there. The problem is, is there a better three mana play in the format? Do we even want one? I think in the future I'll try Radha just as a one-of. You'll rarely have her in your opener but might draw her later when she's at her best, and you'll never draw multiples. In cutting her, I won't miss the Trained Armodon mode she starts the game in but would certainly miss the Future Sight + Phage the Untouchable version in the late game.

Eliminate is super good. Really not a ton to say about it, except that its saving grace was that it can hit Teferi and Narset while still being Smother in creature matchups, but you just board it out in control matchups anyways. It's almost too effective to not play and just versatile enough to not screw us up too bad.

Jump Around

Like I said, there doesn't seem to be a ton of changes to the format as a consequence of JumpStart, except maybe that the ramp decks will play their own Thragtusks. It's funny, Thragtusk is a great Jund card, but it's also really good against us, to the point where I'd almost rather just have it not in the format and keep bashing with Gargaroths instead.

One thing to note about Jumpstart is that there's some Tribal stuff going on. Some good Elves like Elvish Archdruid and Craterhoof Behemoth, there's Goblin Chieftain, there's Rattlechains and Kira, Great Glass Spinner. In addition to that, there's Isamaru Hound of Konda. It makes me think I'm going to need some sweepers in the sideboard instead of just spot removal from now on, which is okay because Languish is also in the set. Languish also hits everything in the Gruul deck except for gigantic Oozes, so it's very welcome there as well. Oracle of Mul Daya and possibly Overgrown Battlement are a couple of cards that could power up the ramp decks even more, but it's hard to get better than Growth Spiral and Uro. I'm assuming we'll still need a ton of discard spells to help fight ramp strategies.

I'll definitely be starting with 4 Thragtusk, that's for sure, and it'll probably come at the cost of Gargaroth, although maybe we just play 5 or 6 five drop creatures. That's not unheard of, and it makes me wonder if we need some ramp of our own in order to get there. Let's try something like this:

4 Thragtusk
2 Elder Gargaroth
4 Scavenging Ooze
4 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Wolfwillow Haven
2 Casualties of War
1 Radha, Heart of Keld
2 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
3 Bonecrusher Giant
2 Murderous Rider
3 Eliminate
3 Liliana, Waker of the Dead
1 Angrath, the Flame Chained

25 Lands

Sideboard: Shivan Fires, Languishes, Davriels, Eldest Reborns, possibly large Planeswalkers.

This is what I call High Gear Jund. We're ramping, we're out-powering opponents, we're not as worried about gaining small value and instead we're gaining big value with big spells. This is closer to the RTR/INN Standard Jund deck that utilized Farseek to get just enough mana to have an advantage on opponents and make bigger plays, not necessarily to ramp up to impossibly expensive stuff.

Thragtusk excels here because as strong as Thragtusk is by itself, it's at its best when played ahead of schedule. When all of your creatures are huge and gain you life, it's really hard to win by attacking.

The downside is how weak a deck like this is to ramp strategies. You have no tempo threat, you have little hand disruption, and you're ramping into your big finish 2 or 3 for ones when your opponent's whole deck is like 5 or 6 for ones. Add to that the vulnerability to things like Nexus and Field of the Dead and this becomes a deck that looks amazing in the right metagame and toast in the wrong one.

4 Thragtusk
4 Scavenging Ooze
4 Merfolk Branchwalker
3 Chevill, Bane of Monsters
1 Radha, Heart of Keld
3 Bonecrusher Giant
2 Murderous Rider
4 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Liliana, Waker of the Dead
1 Gonti, Lord of Luxury
2 Eliminate
2 Agonizing Remorse
2 Carnival/Carnage

25 Lands

Sideboard: Same as before but with Duress

This is Low Gear Jund. While this is clearly less powerful at the top of the curve, we gain two important points: one is the Chevill package, which rewards you for playing small ball. The second is that we'll never have a hand of all top end and no ramp that we would have been planning on to get there, we'll also never draw a hand of ramp and all small stuff so there's nothing to do with it. In a head to head matchup, the High Gear version would definitely have an advantage, but in the format at large my bet is on this version being the one to go with. I would certainly welcome being wrong and I'd love to play the big spell version of the deck, I'm just not optimistic.

These are the two lists I'll start with and we'll see how it goes. Thanks for reading.

Always Carry Two Spears

Just as I was wrapping my head around whether Elder Gargaroth belongs in the Jund deck, they decide to make Jumpstart and add Thragtusk to Historic.

Thragtusk, I think, changes this deck a lot. I think we want four, and I also think that some mana acceleration gets a little bit better now. Llanowar Visionary is another M21 card I've talked myself into lately that I didn't pay attention to earlier, and that card looks real good as a nice way to get right into Thragtusk mana.

There are some other cards spoiled for Jumpstart that look pretty good. One is Gonti, Lord of Luxury. I like that we have a card that's basically a mono-black version of Atris, which is a card I always wish I could play. Grim Lavamancer seems like it could also be good. I've started to incorporate Fabled Passage into the list in anticipation of helping Radha and it's been okay, so that could give us some extra Lavamancer fuel.

After having thought about it more, the Thriving lands seem like they might fit the deck as well. It's at least worth a shot, although I don't love lands that enter tapped and also don't help turn on Rootbound Crag et al. Thriving Moor counts as all three colors of mana, which is very helpful and turns some bad hands into playable hands, but Fabled Passage does the same thing kind of while it also turns on some of the buddy lands and also can enter untapped later in the game. I don't think I would play Thriving Lands and Triomes in the same list, and if that's the case, then more shocklands seem necessary. Notably, with Thragtusk in the deck, we'll want to curve out as smoothly as possible all the way up the chain, so a Thriving Land on turn one would be fine so long as the next four lands come in untapped. ETB tapped lands always makes me want to play cheaper spells, which is something we should probably be doing anyway and increasing the deck's consistency in two ways at once.

Anyways, summer is shaping up to be interesting over in Arena Historic land. It's a ton of fun, and I'm almost a little sad that they're printing Thragtusk because I had myself psyched up for Elder Gargaroth to be a big deal, but going back to the good old days of slamming Thragtusks will be nice. At least I can Gargaroth for a month and see how it goes, that should give me enough time to get sick of it getting -3'd by Teferi.

M21 Jund Cards

Hey all you great Jund fans that definitely exist and read this! It's been a while since I updated this blog, for a few reasons. One is that I had a great opportunity to write at MTGcorner.com, which is a sweet website with some under-the-radar brilliant Magic minds. That was great but I only got a few weeks into my tenure there before I had to stop due to work obligations. After that, I spent like five months straight campaigning for Bernie, then I bought a house. Lots going on, but now I'm back to Magic again, in large part due to how fun Historic on Magic Arena is.

M21 spoiler season is going GREAT. I opened up the blog just because I'm excited about some of these cards in the ol' trusty Jund deck. Let's dive in.

First card up, however, is not for us. I think. Instead, it's the new big top end threat of the format. As constructed, I don't think I'd ever beat a resolved Ugin with a Jund list I've played in the last couple months. I think Ugin will be really good in Historic, so it's important to have a plan. One drastic one I think I'm going to try is a planeswalker-less build with The Immortal Sun, but a likely more reasonable plan is to incorporate more discard spells to attack the raw resources Ugin requires.

Eliminate is a card that looks appealing to me. I've liked the card Easy Prey from Ikoria, since it is a cheap removal that isn't dead against decks that don't have cheap creatures. Eliminate is a better removal spell but its ability to stay relevant in the non-creature matchups is not as good as Easy Prey's. Hitting a Teferi or Narset is nice, but trying to one-for-one either of those two planeswalkers is not a good plan. It's still such an upgrade from Easy Prey in the removal department that it might be worth it.

Another reason I'm all of a sudden opening up to the idea of running creature-only removal spells is because of Liliana. It doesn't matter how bad the worst card in your hand is if you're going to discard it anyways. I think that Liliana is likely a step up from Vraska, Golgari Queen, but again you're going to be just hitting creatures with her removal ability. Unlike Vraska though, Liliana is a threat on her own against Teferi decks and she does some serious disruption along her way to ultimate, just like Liliana of the Veil. I think ultimately I'll play some mix of Golgari Queens and Waker of the Deads, perhaps two each.

This is not the type of card that I'm usually interested in, but Historic has a couple of popular decks that are hard to interact with and that Necromentia deals with quite nicely. Naming Field of the Dead is usually going to be game over or close to it, and naming Nexus of Fate is almost definitely game over. I'm not interested in using cards like this for anything else, like naming Teferi or anything, but as a targeted hate piece it can save some sideboard space by overlapping those two decks that both require specific cards to deal with. I have been playing three Blood Sun (and Alpine Moon during the Lurrus times) in my board for a while and I think this is better, and has more applications.

While this is probably the best card in the format against a mono red deck, is it worth the slots? At the moment I think it's not, since mono red isn't really even the number one aggro deck in the format anyways. Gruul has bigger creatures that Sporeweb Weaver can't really stop, and Sporeweb doesn't do anything substantial against any non-aggro deck. It's possible that Gruul gets a little less popular and mono-red decks get more popular in the coming months and Sporeweb Weaver stops them, but all out aggressive decks aren't really that common right now. An interesting card to keep an eye on, for sure.

One thing that's interesting to note about building the threat suites in these midrange decks is that there are a lot of different criteria that you should be thinking about to varying degrees, and you just have to kind of feel out which criteria you should be prioritizing. Elder Gargaroth is basically a green Baneslayer Angel in that it is extremely good at winning the game if it survives but doesn't have a lot in the way of protecting itself. Is Baneslayer Angel something that we want? Well it's hard to say, but the argument against it is that it's bad against removal, because pretty much everything else about this is a slam dunk. So let's talk about "bad against removal."

In my eyes there are a few different ways to be "good against removal." One is to have a trigger when the creature enters the battlefield, like Mulldrifter. Another is to be able to come back from the dead, like The Scarab God. Another is to be difficult to hit with a removal spell, like Troll Ascetic. You can also be be good against removal by having a trigger when the creature dies, like Sprouting Thrinax. Finally, it's also good against removal to be cheaper to cast than the removal spell that is used on it, like say Memnite or Delver of Secrets.

Gargaroth is good against removal in a certain way, in that it's unable to get hit by stats-based removal very well. You can't cast Easy Prey or Moment of Craving or Shock very effectively on Elder Gargaroth. This is important because those are the cheapest kind of removal spells, and you're therefore going to feel the effects of getting your five mana creature killed less harshly since you're not getting tempo'd as bad if they spent three mana to deal with it instead of one.

This advantage leads to Gargaroth being very good against the aggro decks in Historic not just because it gains life and has vigilance, but because those decks don't usually want to put expensive removal spells in their deck to deal with something like Gargaroth.

Something else to note about Gargaroth is a facet of Jund gameplay that I touched on in my blog post from a while ago called "Why Tarmogoyf." Tarmogoyf is useful in Jund because Jund seeks to strip both total and specific resources from the opponent, to the point where the opponent's game plan gets dumbed down and something like a big creature that attacks and blocks takes over the game. We usually don't seek to lock the opponent out, just make it hard for them to enact their game plan, while our own game plan is unassailably simple. Trade away all of our resources and then when the dust settles see if you can beat a 5/6. Gargaroth has that same advantage that Tarmogoyf does but at a more Historic-friendly mana cost. Gargaroth can't beat a Scapeshift for 16 Zombies, but if you can beat that plan, most backup plans from the Scapeshift deck aren't beating Gargaroth.

I'm not sure that we would play Baneslayer Angel if we had the opportunity in the past, but Liliana, Waker of the Dead amps up the Modern-esque resource denial facet of the deck. Gargaroth's rate is there, it's more a matter of whether the deck and the format around it allow for it to excel. My thinking is that Gargaroth is a great two-of or so to top the curve.

Uro is pretty much the single biggest problem for Jund in Historic, so Scavenging Ooze is very, very welcome in the deck. It's a serviceable early play on curve, has late game power, and is able sometimes to disrupt the opponent. Can't ask for anything more than that. In addition, Scavenging Ooze opens up sideboard space, if you want to, because you have graveyard hate in the main ready to go. Note that we might have to start playing a couple more green sources in the deck but that shouldn't be a huge problem. I think I'll likely play three of these.

So what's great about Radha is that she does three things very well that I'm interested in doing. Cheap-ish curve filler that puts on some pressure, check. Able to give you real card advantage every turn it's in play, check. Late game mana sink, check. Radha is an aggressive-slanted Courser of Kruphix, which is very exciting, but Courser's value-plus-defense recipe is part of what made it so good. But just the fact that it attacks you both in value and that it can threaten to straight kill you each attack step makes it a house in any matchup where your opponent's life total matters. I've been playing a lot with Dryad Greenseeker in the deck as a cheap creature that can help you keep pace in the late game, but I think Radha does the job a little better and has a substantial ability to pressure planeswalkers and opponents. At worst she's Trained Armodon, at best she draws you five cards and attacks for 27. Including an offense-focused three mana creature might necessitate gearing the deck down to fight against aggro decks, but similarly to Elder Gargaroth, the payoff is likely worth it.

It's very early, but here's a jumping off point for when M21 is released.

4 Merfolk Branchwalker
3 Chevill, Bane of Monsters
3 Scavenging Ooze
2 Radha, Heart of Keld
2 Elder Gargaroth
3 Murderous Rider
3 Bonecrusher Giant

2 Vraska, Golgari Queen
2 Liliana, Waker of the Dead
2 Liliana, Dreadhorde General
2 Bedevil
4 Maelstrom Pusle
2 Eliminate
2 Carnival/Carnage

1 Savai Triome
1 Indatha Triome
1 Barren Moor
2 Castle Locthwain
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Forest
3 Overgrown Tomb
2 Woodland Cemetery
4 Blood Crypt
1 Dragonskull Summit
3 Stomping Ground
4 Rootbound Crag

3 Necromentia
4 Shivan Fire
2 Chainer's Edict
2 Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage
3 Duress
1 The Eldest Reborn

It's unclear what the format will look like, of course, but I'm suspecting fairly few changes to the metagame at large. Historic is a pretty open format with only a few real solid top tier decks, so I like having a little more versatility in my sideboard options to deal more with macro-archetypes instead of specific lists. This might not always be the case and then we'll have to retool the sideboard, but I think we have our bases covered here.

Anyways, thanks for reading. If you have a chance, give Historic a try, it's really fun.

Extremely Way Too Early WAR Spoilers

Chester Bennington definitely would have been a Jund player.

So I am pumped as hell for this set. Planeswalkers are midrange gold.

So of course I'm a big Bitterblossom fan, and this card is the first thing I gravitate towards. Lemme give y'all a little history lesson.

The original 5 Planeswalkers were pretty good. Garruk Wildspeaker was really good right out of the gates, Ajani Goldmane was solid once Spectral Procession was printed. The thing about them was that the format was pretty hostile towards them. Time Spiral had all of these tempo cards like cheap counterspells, Tarmogoyf, Ancestral Vision, good red cards. And Lorwyn was a tribal-themed set, which of course leads to really linear decks that are pretty obvious builds. You've gotta have a really good reason to put a planeswalker in your Goblin deck instead of a different Goblin. The real nail in the coffin was Bitterblossom, which was was impossible to interact with and provided a once-per-turn value add at a cheaper and less vulnerable card type than Planeswalkers, plus the tokens were super good at pressuring opposing Planeswalkers.

What happened when people started putting Jace Beleren in Faeries, though, is that we learned how good Bitterblossom was at blocking and making your planeswalkers better. All of a sudden you had two card advantage engines that, while small, cost 0 mana per turn and worked really well in concert with each other. The best thing to with Planeswalkers is to just cast one every turn and snowball them together, but that's only possible if you can keep them alive. What's great about Bitterblossom is that it basically is a planeswalker, but also plays great defense to keep your bigger Planeswalkers alive. Also, Bitterblossom only costs two mana, which is the other thing wrong with the Planeswalker into Planeswalker plan: they all cost four and five mana.

We can talk about the reasons why Dreadhorde Invasion is worse than Bitterblossom, but as some pros point out when cards that are similar to classic cards are printed, "Bitterblossom isn't legal, so it's not worth comparing this card to it." But just to point out some differences, losing flying is a huge deal. That said, you actually get to attack with the extra counter you put on the creature in your upkeep. Bitterblossom, you would attack with some tokens but one would have summoning sickness, but with Dreadhorde you get to attack for that extra point of damage. That makes it better in multiples, since the difference between attacking for 3 then 5 then 7 is huge compared to attacking for 1 then 3 then 5. Also, and this is a big deal, is that sometimes you would lose to your life total even though Bitterblossom had totally taken over the game, while Dreadhorde has a safety valve for that with the lifelink ability. It won't come up often, but it's there.

The other thing that's interesting about this card vs Bitterblossom is just how awful Bitterblossom would have been if Goblin Chainwhirler was in the format (Well, that's not true, Bitterblossom still would have been the best card. They printed Volcanic Fallout, Zealous Persecution, and Great Sable Stag and couldn't stop it.). Dreadhorde actually plays around Chainwhirler a little bit. And while Bitterblossom had great Faerie synergies...

I'm pretty stoked for this as a sideboard card. I've finally started adding Cry of the Carnarium to my Jund sideboard to deal with Red and White and Selesnya, and this card leaves a creature in its wake and doesn't blow up your zombie tokens. And, you know, Wraths and blockers are great for keeping your Planeswalkers alive. I'm really excited about this one as well.

For a while I've kind of hoped that we had a good ramp spell, something like Farseek or Sylvan Caryatid that was good in the past. Llanowar Elves doesn't really do it, since it adds green and is nigh-uncastable on turn one. Now we have that option available to us, the question will now be if we want it or not. We run headlong into Chainwhirler with this card, but it can't really be interacted with outside of that, and unlike Sylvan Caryatid it can actually attack a Planeswalker if need be. And, you know, another thing that's good with Planeswalkers is casting them a turn early. Vraska Golgari Queen or Karn, Scion of Urza both seem great on turn 3, and Angrath or Vivien on turn 4 seems awesome too. plus the Druid does a little bit of defensive work in a pinch.

As for actual Planeswalkers from the set, this is kind of the only one that's really sparked my interest. The problem is two-fold: do you want a 6 mana planeswalker in your deck, and is it better than Vraska Relic Seeker.

Vraska has some problems associated with it as well. Sometimes it sucks that it's your top end and then on the next turn you don't have anything good to cast and have to hope Vraska gets you there. Liliana has a nice little card advantage engine built in, and notice that it doesn't say non-token creatures for the extra Dreadhorde value. Vraska also gets trumped by Carnage Tyrant, while Liliana's -4 takes care of implacable death lizards quite nicely. You probably just want to make sure you don't play your own Carny Boiz in the same deck as Liliana, but she's got great synergy with Rekindling Phoenix.

Six mana is a lot, though, so who knows. I think it'll definitely see play, but whether it's good enough for our awesome unbeatable Jund Planeswalkers deck is yet to be decided.

There have been some other Planeswalkers leaked, but the pictures of them suck and none of them in the Jund colors are really that good. However, while I was writing this post, this beautiful card was spoiled: 

First thing I thought of was actually not Standard, but Modern. In Modern, we already play at least 4 Liliana planeswalkers, and this would make a pretty good cast for adding in a couple more. This deals nicely with Thing in the Ice and opposing Death's Shadows and Tarmogoyfs and whatnots. Making them pitch an extra card in the process is amazing when you can get it off. It doesn't even target so it gets around Leyline of Sanctity out of the Bogles decks. EAT SHIT SLIPPERY BOGLE!!!!!!! Also, who's discarding cards now, Reality Smasher? And I can't wait until someone Through the Breaches and Emrakul at me and we toast 'em. I am PUMPED.

I'll definitely be playing a couple of these in Modern Jund going forward for the forseeable future, and possibly some Liliana the Last Hope to help facilitate it. I love it. Absolutely love it.

UPDATE:

Angrath's Anger (?) -  Sorcery RB - Choose one, Target player sacrifices an artifact, Target player sacrifices a creature, Target player sacrifices a Planeswalker.

Looks great. It's clearly less powerful than Bedevil for a lot of reasons, but being cheaper and not requiring double black is a pretty big deal.

Sacrifice effects are usually pretty bad when your opponent has something like Llanowar Elves laying around and you want to hit their big baddie, but if the card you want to hit is a Planeswalker, you're in the clear. Is that enough to warrant this over Bedevil? Maybe it's not an either/or situation, but a 3/3 split? It's tough to have all your removal be the expensive and versatile stuff. Also, sacrifice effects are good for the same reasons Liliana's -4 and Liliana's Triumph are good: Carnage Tyrant, Dive Down. All good stuff here. Removal that's not dead against Esper (like Bedevil and Vraska's Contempt) is great, but cheap removal that's not dead against Esper and lets you keep pace with the aggro decks is awesome. Plus, if we're going to play a bunch of Planeswalkers, the more answers to The Immortal Sun we have, the better.

Cards That Miss The Cut

In my last post, I talked about Standard Jund. It's a list that I've worked on for pretty much the entirety of Arena's existence, so I've tried and passed on a bunch of different cards. Here's the list for reference:

Basically, I just want to talk about the cards that didn't make it into this deck. Standard is full of a lot of really good cards, so deciding which ones to play is really tough, since you are likely to be winning a game with Card A even though Card B is the card you should have been playing.

Llanowar Elves

This card, however, is unlike all the other cards in the format because it dictates how you build the entire rest of your deck. It became clear to me that this wasn't going to be a Llanowar Elves deck when I decided that I wanted Rekindling Phoenix and Bedevil. The extra green mana from the elf isn't that big of a help, and you also need to warp your land base to be able to cast it on the first turn. It's certainly powerful, but we also aren't losing games because we draw Llanowar Elves in the late game when we need to draw action, and we aren't losing games because our opponent had removal for our land-light elf-heavy hand.

Dire Fleet Daredevil, Thorn Lieutenant

I like both of these cards because they are early game plays that scale up in power as the game goes on, so they are good topdecks late but can also help put on pressure or play defense early. However, the biggest reason that I cut them is that mono-blue decks are all the rage right now and they don't do enough to either help you hit land drops and cast your big stuff or fight their flying attackers. All the other creatures in the deck do that, kind of. I think that, as the metagame fluctuates, these two cards might find their way back into the 75.

Incubation Druid, Growth Chamber Guardian

Growth Chamber Guardian was pretty bad. We're tapping out early and often and turning a 2/2 into a 4/4 isn't really worth spending our mana on in the early game. Not to mention, if you play one of these you kind of have to play four, which I don't want to do. Incubation Druid ran into same problem that Llanowar Elves did, in that it's a boost but only if your opponents want you to have it. The adapt ability costs a lot of mana, so it doesn't really come into play too often.

Wildgrowth Walker

The reason I don't have Wildgrowth Walker in the list is because I play District Guide over Jadelight Ranger. I would probably change the list a lot otherwise, because right now Walker is a pretty good plan, although that doesn't always seem to be the case in this format.

Jadelight Ranger

This card is really really good, but the problem is the mana requirements. Similarly to the Llanowar Elves land situation, it's tough to guarantee that we can have 1GG on turn three of the game. Additionally, Jadelight Ranger doesn't always let you hit your land drops, while District Guide does, and it gives you the color you're missing 100% of the time. You can hit two lands off of Jadelight Ranger but also still miss the black source you're missing for Chupacabra.

Lava Coil, Cast Down, Assassin's Trophy

Honestly Assassin's Trophy shouldn't even be in this category since you really don't want to cast it on turn two, but sometimes you have to. The thing I want to avoid with this deck's removal suite is to have cards that are dead against Esper Control. Bedevil at least answers their planeswalkers, Carnival/Carnage is Blightning if you want it to be, and Rakdos Firewheeler is a pretty solid aggressive creature. If I was going to play one of these cards, it would be Cast Down, since the instant speed is really important against Mono Blue. Assassin's Trophy isn't really that much of a consideration since I don't want to cast it early against aggro decks anyways.

Legion Warboss, Gruul Spellbreaker

These two cards I actually kind of like, but they fit with the theme of the deck a little less than Midnight Reaper and the other stuff we've got going on. Spellbreaker is solid enough against Red and White aggro, but not against Blue. Warboss is fine if you get to your combat step, but the 1/1 creature has to suicide attack a lot of the time, and the Boss itself doesn't block well at all. While I like these cards, the room for slots is tight and they just don't quite fit the theme well enough of hitting land drops and letting us cast planeswalkers and two-for-ones.

Ripjaw Raptor

I think there's a version of this deck that's a little different and plays this, Carnage Tyrant, and Regisaur Alpha, maybe even Ranging Raptors, and then Thunderherd Migration. It's pretty bad, but I just so badly want to play with Thragtusk, y'know? Anyways, Ripjaw Raptor might be a consideration if people were still playing red in their control decks instead of black, but the difference between Cast Down and Justice Strike on this is huge. Plus, the aggro decks nowadays aren't all just ground creatures and burn spells, it's flying creatures that Ripjaw Raptor does nothing against.

Vraksa's Contempt

We've got Bedevil, and I very rarely run into opposing Rekindling Phoenixes and Seraph of the Scales.

Regisaur Alpha, Siege Gang Commander, Biogenic Ooze

The problem with these cards is how soft they are to Kaya's Wrath (and Cleansing Nova, et al). Granted, they pretty much require a wrath by themselves, but when you get your board wiped and follow up with a planeswalker, you're way ahead. If you do that with one of these but then get wrathed again, you're kind of nowhere.

Doom Whisperer, Skarrgan Hellkite

I think an interesting situation has come up where Vivien Reid is so good against big flying creatures that people don't want to play them, but Mono Blue Tempo is so good against the absence of big flying creatures and it might be right to play them again. When I was playing 50% Vivien mirrors, these cards seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. At this point in the metagame, it might be time to give them a spin again. However, that means cutting some cards, specifically the more expensive ones in the deck like Vivien or Angrath, which are basically the best cards you have. I could see Skarragan Hellkite being a really good option if the format gets flooded with Mono-Blue, more so than it is now.

Carnage Tyrant, Vraska Relic Seeker

Six mana is just too much to fight the aggro decks in the format. Carnage Tyrant was originally in the list pretty much to fight other Carnage Tyrants. Midrange mirrors devolved into a battle of Carnage Tyrants, getting them back with Memorial to Folly and Find/Finality, and just bashing them into each other until someone forgot to cast a Carnage Tyrant for a turn and died. Now that everyone is doing Hydroid Krasis, Carnage Tyrant doesn't really work anymore and we don't need it. Vraska is better than Carnage Tyrant right now, but in this format, it doesn't seem to be worth playing a six-mana card. Even the midrange mirrors have Disdainful Stroke!

Find/Finality

This is a more recent cut, because I had it in the deck for a long time but eventually experimented with shaving a few and didn't miss it. While it's awesome against white aggro, if it's not good against Red or Blue, why is it in the deck? It's a card that's undeniably powerful, but requires a lot of setup to get value out of either side that you either don't draw the required resources for or don't have time for.

Memorial to Folly

This one's tough, because I really miss it, but I think we're better off without it. This particular Standard format has taught me a lot about hitting land drops, having them untapped, and just being able to cast your stuff on time. That hasn't always been the case for me in Standard, I'm always a little greedy trying to get some juice out of my lands. Some of the time, though, the best mana fixing is the value lands, like Temple of Malady or Hissing Quagmire. That's definitely not the case in this format, where you are stretched to cast three colors of spells, try to squeeze value out of your lands, and play enough basics to play around Assassin's Trophy and Field of Ruin. It's tough, but in the format as it exists right now, you don't have enough time in lots of your matchups to make use of Memorial to Folly anyways, and in those matchups in particular, the entering tapped is a huge cost.

Getting to this point has been a fun process. I still don't think I'm done with this deck, because let's face it, I never am done with tinkering and trying new stuff out. But I like where it's at and I'm going to try to grind some rankings with it this month. Stay tuned for that, I'll be doing a bunch on my Twitch channel and on Youtube. Thanks for reading!

District Guide is the Best Card Ever Printed Ever

You know what I'm going to do? A legit-ass deck run-through and sideboard guide.

Because this deck is legit.

3 Seekers' Squire, 4 Merfolk Branchwalker

I've talked about this a lot before, but these are the perfect cards for the deck. You get to keep up the pace on the board by playing some pretty solid rate creatures, you get to hit land drops or even get a little scry value, and you get to do this while adding to your creature count to help Vivien Reid and Find/Finality have plenty of targets. I'm down to seven total copies of this effect, because we are in need of some extra late game help, and they aren't at their best against the mono-blue tempo deck. By the way, the mono-blue tempo deck is Enemy #1 right now, but it's perfectly beatable if you tune your deck to beat it.

4 District Guide, 2 Midnight Reaper, 2 Thrashing Brontodon

So District Guide is just straight up better than Jadelight Ranger in this deck. The reason is that we don't need a ton of lands, but we do need specific ones, since we have strict color requirements. If we needed a large volume of mana, for say, Hydroid Krasis, we would want Jadelight because it can get you two lands at a time. District Guide is just perfect for us.

I've been impressed by Midnight Reaper, but it's an effect I don't think I want too many of. Multiples being drawn could net you a lot of cards, but you're likely to lose a lot of life in that way and it becomes a problem, and in a related story, it's bad against red. It is, however, awesome with Angrath and with Vraska, Golgari Queen.

Brontodon lives on the chopping block in the 60. It's your best card against anything with Gates, anything with Wilderness Reclamation, red, and it's great against control decks, too. However, it's at its worst against any midrange mirror or against decks that don't care about the body. It has the perfect stats to be useless against Crackling Drake, Enigma Drake, and Tempest Djinn, as well, so I take them out there. I like having 4 in the 75, and they aren't the worst draw in the world even if the activated ability is a blank.

2 Bedevil, 1 Vraska's Contempt, 3 Carnival/Carnage

I'm not sure about the split here, but Contempt's life gain and exiling is certainly welcome so I don't mind having access to it. If you end up facing more Rekindling Phoenixes, then by all means go to more copies of Contempt, but the cheaper removal spells are important.

Carnival/Carnage is a card that I tried to get into the list here and there in the past, but now I'm not playing without it. If you can answer the tempo and aggro decks one-for-one and break even on mana, you're way way way ahead of the game. It's a godsend against Sultai, since fast Llanowar Elf draws are the most common way to lose the matchup, but Carnage isn't dead in the late game. If it could hit planeswalkers like Blightning could, it would be absolutely amazing, but I think it's great anyways.

4 Rekindling Phoenix, 2 Ravenous Chupacabra, 2 Rakdos Firewheeler, 1 Vraska, Golgari Queen

The thing about Chupacabra at the moment is that it's the only dead card against Esper control. Every other card in the deck at least does something, even if targeting a Teferi with a removal spell isn't really the best thing in the world, it's at least got value. That said, the effect of a value creature that deals with your opponent's stuff and then pressures their planeswalkers is really really good in the format. Firewheeler does this too, while not being completely dead against control decks, it's like a 4/3 with crappy haste. It can't hit the big creatures, but, not a lot of big creatures exist that don't have flying, and those ones can get picked off by Vivien. Being the deck with Firewheeler when both decks have a Vivien Reid going is a big deal.

Vraska kind of has this same effect of a removal spell attached to a permanent of varying value. If you can remove something and force your opponent to attack into a blocker, that's usually pretty good. It also is another answer to Search for Azcanta, which can't be understated. The ultimate threat is helpful but it rarely ever happens. Don't be afraid to cash in a Vraska when you feel pressured, it doesn't have a ton of value outside of the removal spell aspect, and if you can get two Abrupt Decays out of it, you're doing great.

2 Vivien Reid, 3 Angrath, the Flame-Chained, 1 Find/Finality

These are your big payoff spells, which is actually pretty light considering everything. I've been pretty happy cutting Find/Finality and using those slots on the cheaper Carnival/Carnage. C/C always has at least some effect on the game, but F/F can make your hands quite clunky and is really susceptible to Spell Pierce. Being able to play at instant speed can make or break the mono-blue matchup.

Angrath has moved from sideboard-flex-slot-maybe card to the main source of late-game power in the deck. I'm just so impressed when it's in play, it's either a really awesome removal spell that deals your opponent damage, or it gives you an incredible inevitability engine while clocking them and taking away their resources. The fact that the +1 ability hits them from two angles is phenomenal, and alongside Vraska, Golgari Queen and Midnight Reaper, you can even get a little bit of extra value out of the Threaten effect. If you're sitting there hoping your opponent plays a 12/12 Krasis, that's a good card.

I've even brought Vivien Reid down to a 2-of to make room for Angrath. Vivien is awesome in her own right, however. I don't think I need to expand much on why, but Naturalize effects and shooting down flyers happens to be really strong in the format right now, not to mention she has a huge amount of loyalty and helps you either draw a card or hit land drops every turn, whichever one is better for you.

Before we continue, I'm noticing that it's really easy to make this article just be, like, "here are the cards I play, I play them because they are good." when in reality, the whole problem with deck building is figuring out what to cut from the deck, not add. I think my next post will be about the cards I'm not playing, which is maybe more interesting. At least it'll give insight to how I build decks and why I choose the cards I do.

24 Land, including 5 basics and 0 Memorial to Folly

5 basics is the bare minimum for District Guide. You draw them pretty infrequently, but even when you do, they help out your check-lands but don't cost you life. One Forest is the worst one to draw because it doesn't help cast Rakdos Firewheeler or Bedevil, but I have yet to have that come up.

0 Memorial could be wrong, but again, unlike the Sultai decks with their Jadelights and Llanowar Elves, we have good and enough mana, but not excessive amounts usually. Not having late game mana sinks isn't as big of a deal when you can hit every spot on your curve with the strongest threat at each mana cost, and Memorial costs us in that department.

Sideboard

The sideboard for this deck has been an interesting puzzle to figure out. 4 Duress is a must, but which removal spells and how many is a big question. Shivan Fire has been a godsend, since it helps with both aggro decks with cheap creatures and aggro decks with big creatures. I don't want Shock or Moment of Craving against Gruul or Mono-Green, but being able to shoot a Llanowar Elf on curve is something I'll take when it's available to me.

In addition to that, we've got the rest of the Thrashing Brontodons to round out 4 in the 75. Don't leave home without 'em. Outside of that, we're just looking for cards that add a bunch of value, but specifically aren't so expensive that we lose some of our advantage in the midrange mirror. 1 Vraska, Relic Seeker is the deepest I'll go down the midrange arms-race rabbit hole, since it actually deals with Hydroid Krasis pretty effectively. Siege-Gang Commander is the next card on the chopping block, as I haven't found myself bringing it in very often.

Sideboard Guide

Mono Blue Tempo: +2 Shivan Fire, +2 Moment of Craving, +2 Cast Down, +1 Vraska, Golgari Queen, -2 Thrashing Brontodon, -1 Vivien Reid, -2 Angrath the Flame Chained, -1 Seekers' Squire, -1 Find/Finality

I could be convinced that Duress is worth bringing in, now that these decks play a lot more non-creature spells. But either way, the idea is to just have really cheap and instant speed removal to help not get tempo'd out. That's basically the trick to the whole matchup, keep the board as clear as you can, say go with an instant speed removal spell up, and when they counter it, untap and use a Planeswalker or Nekrataal to kill the creature instead.

Red: +2 Cast Down, +2 Shivan Fire, +2 Moment of Craving, +1 Vraska, Golgari Queen, +2 Thrashing Brontodon, -2 Angrath, -2 Bedevil, -2 Midnight Reaper, -1 Find/Finality, -2 Merfolk Branchwalker

Vivien is okay here to have some insurance against Experimental Frenzy, but she's not at her best. She doesn't hit any creatures, and so is kinda useless at affecting the board outside of Frenzy. It's a red deck, their whole plan is pretty easy to figure out, if not very easy to actually beat. Knowing how and when to turn the corner is tricky, and you need to do it fast because they don't need a lot of time to kill you off the top of their library.

Esper Control: -2 Ravenous Chupacabra, -2 Rakdos Firewheeler, -3 Seekers' Squire, +1 Vraska, Golgari Queen, +4 Duress, +2 Thrashing Brontodon

I hate boarding out the Seekers' Squires, but at the same time you kind of have to. You'll hopefully draw one Explore creature and then no more for the rest of the game, but having all 11 copies of mana-smoother creatures doesn't really work out in the late game. I leave in Bedevil and Vraska's Contempt to fight their creature plan out of the sideboard, but at the same time, you can't get caught against Teferi with Cast Downs in your hand. Luckily our Planeswalkers are awesome against the creature plan if they take that route, just try and make sure you can beat a Thief of Sanity.

Sultai: -2 Thrashing Brontodon, -2 Seekers' Squire, +2 Cast Down, +1 Vraska, Golgari Queen, +1 Vraska Relic Seeker

The trick here is to spend the early turns controlling the board, which pretty much centers around Wildgrowth Walker. If you can have yourself a better board presence for when Vivien comes down, you'll be doing fine. Rakdos Firewheeler and Angrath are great here at taking out opposing creatures and letting you deal with Vivien the old fashioned way. The Krasis plan is tough to deal with, but it's slow, and we have a lot of answers for the creature itself that are pretty cheap and easy. If they are just going to load up on cards and life but only add the one creature to the board every turn, you can usually just race it with Planeswalkers and Phoenixes.

That just about covers the majority of the format. Similarly to all Jund decks ever, the plan for combo decks is just identical to beating Esper Control, take out removal and board in discard and disruption.

I really, honestly think that this deck is in a great spot. It's pretty focused on beating a few things right now, but all the tools are versatile enough to hit whatever crazy stuff people play these days. It's also incredibly consistent, which is a major plus when trying to grind on the Arena rankings or play traditional events. Give it a spin!

New Format, New Client, Same Jund

Hey folks!

Today we're going to talk about Jund. Weird, I know, but I've been doing lots of Arena Standard as of late and I've got some conclusions to share. And decklists!

So if you were with me last time, this is where I entered into Ravnica Allegiances at. This is what I call the "District Jund" since it has District Guide. District Guide kind of messes some stuff up, notably, you need to play a lot of basic lands, while on its face, it would seem that the best way to build a manabase is just 4X of each shock and M10 land. You also might note that we've only got 23 land here, since between Seekers' Squire, Merfolk Branchwalker, and District Guide, hitting land drops shouldn't be too much of a problem.

The virtual and actual card advantage gained by a low land count and lots of creatures that give you lands is somewhat negated by losing access to Memorial to Folly. We could play it, I just can't bring myself to do it. Not playing Memorial, though, makes it so all of our lands enter untapped pretty much all the time, which is very nice.

One card I've been high on lately is Thrashing Brontodon. Wilderness Reclamation scares me, and it also happens to be fantastic against the Red decks and the White aggro decks, since it both gums up the ground very effectively early and kills their good enchantments late. In addition to that, Search for Azcanta is always a problem that gets solved pretty cleanly with it, and its worst case scenario is just a three-mana 3/4, which isn't that bad anyways. That's the biggest reason why Jadelight Ranger is absent from most of these lists. Jadelight is great, but I want to play Brontodon when I can, and we don't really do the whole Wildgrowth Waker plan anyways.

Another thing with this deck is that the basic lands let you punish opposing Settle the Wreckage and Assassin's Trophy much better. Personally, I don't like Assassin's Trophy and giving my opponents extra mana, but I also play basic-light decks that often draw the one basic land and get punished for it. You don't really run into that here.

Out of the lists here, I think that this is the one with the most potential. The actual numbers here are pretty bad because I've spent most of my time 

Also, what is up with those card prices?!? I think they're for Magic Online and they are the total for all the copies of that card, but wowza, Vivien is pretty pricey.

So here's a lot of the same stuff, except no District Guide. Memorial makes our long game a little better, but our early game is a little hampered by lands entering the battlefield tapped and maybe missing out on some fixing.

The big problem with having a late-game focused deck is that the late-game might not be a winnable fight against Hydroid Krasis. The way that I've been able to beat the Sultai decks is to wipe up their Wildgrowth Walker early game and then pressure them enough so that they have to cast Krasis before they want to. There's always a bigger fish. There's also merit to putting on some pressure against the control decks early to keep them off balance. Explore-guy plus District Guide might not require a sweeper, but it's certainly a noticeable clock, and you got to hit land drops out of the deal. This deck is still capable of presenting a quick clock but not as consistently.

The other thing is that this deck doesn't really even have extra mana to work with, so it's not like we're really running away with the game with our Siege-Gang Commanders and Biogenic Oozes. These two cards are really quite good, though. They gum up the ground and are pretty useful mana sinks in the late game. I'm not sure which one is better, they have different applications. The Ooze can tangle with Carnage Tyrants and get better as the game goes on. Siege-Gang is a little bit more of a defensive card but doesn't beat Carnage Tyrant as well. Untapping with either against a control opponent is usually game. The decider might be Goblin Chainwhirler: if the red deck becomes more popular in the Best of Three Arena Events, then I might swap to Ooze.

You'll also note that we cut Carnage Tyrant altogether here, except for one in the board. I think that eventually I'll end up doing that with the previous list as well. Carny Boy isn't all it's cracked up to be anymore, honestly. I think the format is a little bit more prepared for it, with Kaya's Wrath and  and the Sultai nee Golgari lists can go over the top of it anyways. That wasn't the case before Hydroid Krasis, where if you were playing Memorials, Find/Finalities, and a bunch of Tyrants of your own, then you were on even footing with them. To be clear, Carnage Tyrant is a good card against the Sultai decks, but it might not fit the plan we need to be able to beat the midrange decks and have good game against everyone else. We are no longer Golgari plus red, we are differentiating ourselves more than that. You don't want to be a worse version of something else.

A couple of cards that I am really liking are Vraska, Golgari Queen and Angrath the Flame Chained. They are both long-game threats that are at worst removal spells for a big Wildgrowth Walker. A lot needs to go wrong for you to really get taken out by a Walker draw, including you not drawing removal and them having multiple Jadelight Rangers or Branchwalkers, but when that happens it's really hard to win. That's why I'm always glad to have extra ways to kill opposing Wildgrowth Walkers and take that element out of the game. These two planeswalkers do that and then some, helping turn the corner and create some late game advantage. Notably they both kill Hydroid Krasis as well, although when Krasis is an 8/8 or whatever, it's not actually the body that's important.

Dire Fleet Daredevil has been hit or miss. You can't always depend on your opponent to have cards that are good against themselves. Against Esper Control, for instance, if they don't have Thought Erasure, it's almost a blank. Similarly to Thrashing Brontodon, the fail state of a two mana 2/1 first striker isn't awful. Plus, Dire Fleet's best matchup might be the mirror match. Hitting an opposing copy of Find/Finality helps quite a lot, and any Cast Down or Vraska's Contempt replicates Ravenous Chupacabra very well, which is an effect you can't have too much of. A card that I'm interested in trying in its slot is Growth-Chamber Guardian, which is another mana sink-esque cheap creature. 

I've worked on this deck the least of all so far. It's an attempt to get back to the Farseek/Thragtusk decks of RTR/Innistrad standard, where you had a mana ramp source that didn't depend on a creature surviving. Rejuvenator is no Farseek, but it is a 1/1 creature, which isn't insignificant. Your planeswalkers are far more likely to live if they come down a turn earlier and have a 1/1 chump blocker for them. The problem is getting them to resolve, which doesn't always happen.

See, what makes a deck like this work is that you load up with cheap removal and expensive haymakers, then have a light ramp element to help fix and facilitate the late game. You try and keep up with aggressive decks until you get enough mana to start slamming big stuff. Against control opponents, that strategy doesn't work well at all, and you need to let your sideboard do lots of heavy lifting. Even still, the way to win those games isn't necessarily to board in Duress. You're threat light because you have ramp spells. You need to be taking two or more cards with you every time you cast a business spell. In the past that meant things like Rakdos's Return, Thragtusk, Huntmaster of the Fells, Garruk Primal Hunter. The cards we have available to us now don't seem like they quite can fit the roles in that plan as well. Also, in 2012, we never had to play against Teferi.

The other big problem for Jund in 2012 was Junk Reanimator (that now would be called Abzan Reanimator). They went way over the top of you and did the big value creature thing much better than you did, plus they had more mana dorks and beat you on that front too. But, Olivia Voldaren and Bonfire of the Damned were incredible against them, and we don't have that luxury in 2019. Find Finality is the closest thing to Bonfire of the Damned I can think of these days, and it pales in comparison, plus our version of the Junk Reanimator deck, Sultai, runs their own.

Without those tools, I don't think that a Jund deck can fight a long-game fight against Hydroid Krasis or Angel of Serenity or whatever there is for supermassive top-end. In fact, that's kind of the case for Black/Green strategies throughout all formats: Lingering Souls and Snapcaster Mage are fantastic in the Jund mirror in Modern, it's the other end of the spectrum that we're worried about when we play Red instead of Blue card advantage or White resiliency. The advantage comes from better, cheaper removal options and consistency that comes from having fewer moving parts.

I do like some of the flexibility you get from some of these cards though. Shivan Fire seems awesome when you have a bunch of mana available to you, but can't always expect to. Same goes for Carnival/Carnage, which is a card that I've been trying to squeeze into my decks and can never find the room. It doesn't really work as a sideboard card, but like I've said before, you have to have a really really good reason to play a non-creature in a Vivien Reid deck. Vivien is at its worst in this deck of any of the Jund lists I've tried, so there's another detractor for this plan.

Moving forward, I also want to try the Wildgrowth Walker package in one of these shells. It probably has to be the no-District Guide and no-Rejuvenator list, since I'm not sure Jadelight Ranger co-exists very well with those. I like not worrying about Wildgrowth Walker, since in a draw with no Explorers it is really, really bad, and drawing more than one Walker in that scenario is atrocious. Those are the kind of deckbuilding decisions I try to stay away from, where your cards are interdependent, but you still don't have any library manipulation or tutoring to fit the pieces together. Still, if the Chainwhirlers start to whirl their chains, it might be time to do some Explore shenanigans.

One last card I want to note is Incubation Druid, which I think is just a non-starter. Unlike Llanowar Elves, it has more late game capabilities and adds more than just green mana, which is super important. But costing two instead of one is huge of course, but also, just the fact that we depend on a creature's survival to get its payoff doesn't really work in this environment on such a killable creature. I really hate losing tempo in the early part of the game, which Llanowar Elves does not do when it dies to a Shock, but this does.

Thanks for reading, check out my Twitch channel for the slog that is Free to Play deck tuning, also go here for instagram, here for Twitter, and here for Youtube. See ya later!