Spring From Night Into The Sun

For the last two winters, my wife and I have taken on this little project. We make donuts in our kitchen on Sunday nights, then early on Monday morning, we hand them out to folks driving to work. I live in a very small town in Vermont, so we set up shop on the busiest road in town. The whole ordeal takes all of Sunday and some of Saturday to actually do, so it's hard to really get anything else done during those times. During the week I've been doing a lot of work on the road away from home. Hence, not a lot of streams or blog posts recently.

Additionally, it's been hard to really nail down what I want to be doing. I've dipped my toes into Historic here and there since the Alchemy release, but I still kind of hate it. Part of that is the Alchemy cards, but another part is that I'm more interested in formats that match up with paper so I can practice IRL formats again, anticipating maybe playing in them in the near future.

Modern is okay but there are two problems, one is the Lurrus ban, which is lame, and two is that Ragavan and Urza's Saga cost a lot. I have Cardhoarder rental, which is awesome, but it's not enough to cover all of that. And I think you do want to be playing those cards if you're going to be playing Jund in Modern. I really like what Sanitoeter on twitch has been doing lately in Modern. He writes (and maybe runs?) a website called Greatnessatanycost.com, which is dope.

Anyways, the donuts project is done for the winter now, and I'm looking for something outside of Historic to stream and do. I decided a neat project for me would be to make a goal of winning a challenge on Magic Online at some point this year on stream. Then I put out a poll on Twitter to ask what format people wanted to see me do this in, and the most voted answer was Pioneer. That's cool, I like Pioneer.

This is what I've been toying with lately.

I can't in honesty claim that this build is tuned perfectly, but the engine that's going on here works well in Pioneer. It's a Golgari deck, which means it's going to be a little bit slower and less aggressive than a Jund deck. Instead of cheap removal and putting emphasis on life total pressure, we have versatile removal and put an emphasis on resource pressure. I mean, there's still cheap removal and aggressive creatures, but it's going to be less so.

There's a couple reasons that I've liked this better than a Jund build in this format. The mana in the Jund deck was okay, but there were certain cards that you really couldn't get away with playing. Courser of Kruphix has been worth it by itself, but stuff like Murderous Rider and Liliana the Last Hope are also great in the format. Also, going with only two colors opens up the ability to play more utility lands, like Field of Ruin and Boseiju and Takenuma. Because of that, and because of a couple of 'value' Fabled Passage that I'm playing, Witherbloom Command gets maximized here.

Witherbloom Command has been excellent in most of the formats I've been dabbling in as of late. When the best things going are cheap creature decks and Witch's Oven/Trail of Crumbs/Oni Cult Anvil, and folks are playing stuff like Portable Hole and stuff like that, Command starts to get really, really good. As long as you can depend on getting a land back, you get to play a two mana spell that turns itself into either a card advantage spell, or a race-winning spell with the Lightning Helix effect. I mean seriously, those are the two ways you win at Magic, through tempo or through card advantage, and Witherbloom Command lets you do whichever one you want. When you can reasonably expect to be able to use one of the destructive effects on this card, and the land base of the deck is tuned a little to support it, it's an incredible card. Believe it or not, it's been the stones in Vintage, if that's any indication of how powerful it can be.

There's a little bit of graveyard synergy here to round it all out, with the Command and Grim Flayer kind of combo'ing together, and they both work with Courser as well. It's just where I like my decks, enough graveyard interaction to keep up with some of the card advantage blue decks have, but not enough to get totally wrecked when they have Rest in Peace.

The sideboard is very rough right now, but what I can definitely say is that Sarulf and Culling Ritual do a lot of work. That might seem like a lot of that type of effect, but decks that flood the board with cheap garbage are all over the place in the format. The rest of the board is up in the air, but I would either keep as is or increase the number of Sarulfs and Rituals if you were to take this deck for a spin.

Like I said, the "Win a Pioneer Challenge" goal is probably going to be a year long process, so I should mention this thing. We don't get to play with it for a month, but when it comes out, I'll certainly give it a try. I can't tell you right now whether I'll add red permanently to the deck though. There's a few reasons I'm excited for what this does for us, but I'm trying to be cautious about it. All the things that I said about why I like the straight Golgari build still are true, and this will make the mana better, of course, but a splash is never free.

First, this is a card that has utility alongside Witherbloom Command. However, it's not a ton of utility. You can't really expect to be cycling for three mana very often, but in a late game situation it's bound to come up. Second, it's a Swamp, which means that it might be viable to fit some Castle Locthwains back in the deck. If we're playing four enters-tapped lands, then I like Hissing Quagmire a little less.

Red opens us up to some cards that I miss playing, like Dreadbore, Bonecrusher Giant, and Kolaghan's Command. If Witherbloom Command is great against Oni Cult Anvil etc, so is Kolagahn's Command, so that's a nice one to have. Bonecrusher is a one-card wrecking crew in itself as well. But the cards we'd be replacing, Murderous Rider and Bloodchief's Thirst most likely, aren't exactly bad. That's the other thing about this whole quandry: not only do you have to get the mana to work, but you have to be sure that the red cards you want to play are better than the alternatives you have access to. Like, for instance, I've been impressed with Abrupt Decay in the format for a lot of the same reasons Witherbloom Command has been good. It's a clean answer to Graveyard Trespasser and is great against Greasefang. Cutting it for a red card is a tough sell at the moment.

I think that the deal breaker for me, right at this moment, is Courser of Kruphix. If we can depend on having 1GG on turn four (which is the best time to cast Courser), then it could still work. Or, alternatively, if the format moves to a place where Courser isn't as good as it once was, then we won't need double green anymore. I don't know what that would look like, because Courser is so good. I just can't stop playing that card.

Fable of the Mirror Breaker is a card that went a little bit under my own radar for the Neon Whatever previews, but from what I've seen and played, it's solid. The problem with it is that it's pretty slow, but it's a ton of cardboard, lots of ways to play it, and helps turn your bad draws into good ones. It also happens to have synergy with a lot of what we have going on already. It's an enchantment to help give us delirium, and it loots to help fuel delirium. It lets you pitch lands to help set up a Witherbloom Command. A Courser in play helps you determine whether and what you want to discard. Plus, in a little bit of an Esika's Chariot kind of way, it just has synergy with our plan.

I've talked a little bit about this before, but it's often not enough for a card like this to just provide card advantage, I want to to be actually interacting with the opponent or finding you the cards you need to interact. Compare this to something like Esika's Chariot or Wrenn and Seven. Those cards are more powerful in a vacuum, sure, but when what you actually want to be doing is not just putting a bunch of stuff into play and instead want to be finding your Damping Sphere or Culling Ritual or Go Blank, then those types of cards just aren't enough. Pioneer specifically is a format where you're very interested in drawing your sideboard haymakers, so the digging here is excellent. Dig into the card I need, beat you up with two 2/2s. Don't get me wrong, I love a Chariot, but in Pioneer at the moment, cards like this are more what we're looking for. All the threats in this deck can either dig for sideboard bullets, like Courser, Grim Flayer, and Lolth, or they do some amount of disruption of our opponent on their own, like Scavenging Ooze and Liliana.

Between this and the cycling ability on ZPG, I'm interested in playing a high land count in this deck. Another thing that Witherbloom Command really likes is a high land count, so you can hit blind flips with it more often. That means that our red splash will be easier, since you'll have more sources of each color just because you'll have more total lands. Fable helps you deal with your mana flooding by letting you pitch excess lands and draw new cards. I could definitely see 26 being the right thing to do for a red splash.

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The red splash is all speculation for another time. I'm sure that New Capenna will have a bunch of cool cards to go over, so I'll definitely be doing some work on that during spoiler time. Like, when you think about it, Siege Rhino could just be Jund colored card and still work thematically.

Anyways, I'm going to be trying to stream at least one Pioneer challenge a weekend until I win one. So check me out coming weekend, they start at 5pm Eastern USA time on Saturday and 9am Sunday. Thanks for reading.

Daddy May Drive A V8 Vette

 

I'm enamored with Courser in Pioneer. Just phenomenal. In the same way that Chevill is in that sweet spot in Historic, Courser is in a good place in Pioneer, where you are interested in a cheap-ish creature that gives a little bit of value every turn. An extra land off the top here or there can swing a game, but you aren't out flat if it gets removed.

This is the list I've settled on after the latest Pioneer challenge. Playing Courser in your deck isn't a given, of course, since it takes away your ability to play both Jegantha and Lurrus, so if we're going down that path we have to make it worth it. The key to this deck is that I've cut red, even though I love Bonecrusher Giant and Dreadbore. That way we can afford to play both BB and GG costed cards easier, and we get to have some good tools in the mana base.

Grim Flayer is a card that pairs well with Courser, and also happens to be excellent in the format. Flayer lets you set up the top of your library to almost always hit a land off the top if you want it, plus a Courser in the graveyard is two card types, setting you up for easy Delirium. As far as the format, Grim Flayer has always been one of my favorites when you are expecting combo decks. Every time Grim Flayer connects, it helps you dig for the specific cards you need. Against combo decks, card selection tends to be more important than card quantity, because a single Damping Sphere or Necromentia is priceless in the right matchup. Also, Grim Flayer hits hard if left on the table, and against combo decks, you can expect it to be left on the table, and hitting hard is appreciated, not giving the opponent time to set up their combo. It's been great against Lotus Field decks and other combo decks.

Scavenging Ooze as a four of has been solid. It seems to do something against everyone, including Greasefang, Arclight Phoenix, Cauldron Familiar, etc. Of course, it's also just a creature that is cheap and can be cast early and grows against aggro decks. Not a lot to say about Ooze, it's good.

I like the Witherbloom Command package. To start, straight up getting a land back is always good if you're hitting an opponent's permanent, so the baseline here is solid. Lots of opponents are going to have stuff that Command can hit, like Witch's Oven, Llanowar Elves, Soul Warden, Portable Hole. Beyond that, Boseiju and Field of Ruin turn out to be excellent in the format. Field does good work against Lotus Field, even though the Field itself has Hexproof, Thespian Stage does not. The same goes for Boseiju, which has some extra flexibility in hitting Parhelion and other stuff. So, since those cards are going to be good, fetching one up with Witherbloom Command turns out to be a real solid play, whether you save a Command in hand until you actually pop your Field of Ruin, or you blind flip one of them. There's a little bit of synergy with Grim Flayer and Courser there, but not so much that it's crippling if the opponent has graveyard hate.

To round it out we've got some Planeswalkers. Not having a companion means that we can play whatever we want for Planeswalkers and top end stuff, but that we are also in the market for some late game value. Sorin is at a nice place in Pioneer, where you can expect your average mana cost to be pretty low, a Vampire token has some real value, and four mana isn't too expensive. Lolth is excellent at creating a board stall and then taking over the game, which is what you would expect from a five mana card, but she also has the added benefit of giving you your value even if they have the removal spell. I tried Elder Gargaroth in that slot but Lolth has been more consistent. Vraska Golgari Queen or Liliana, Waker of the Dead could both be okay here too if you wanted to try those.

During the lastest Pioneer Challenge, I had a Chevill package in my sideboard, and I've since cut it for two Sarulf and two Culling Ritual. For one, the Red/Black or Jund sacrifice deck is all over the place and very good. Chevill would be okay there, but Sarulf and Culling Ritual are knockout blows. Also, there are a lot of removal spells in this deck, but not quite as many as Chevill would really like to see. In the Historic Jund lists, for instance, Bloodthirsty Adversary and Inscription of Ruin count as Chevill trigger enablers in addition to our late game value plan. Here, that stuff manifests as Courser and Lolth, where the plan is more to create a board stall. Sarulf and Culling Ritual love a board stall.

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Pretty quick update here today, but I just wanted to get something in because I haven't had time to lately. Expect more frequent updates and streams and stuff when I'm done my latest work project, which should be soon. Thanks for reading.

Pioneer Jund and Some Deckbuilding Theory

I got really excited a week or two ago when I saw Fireshoes on Twitter post a Rakdos Midrange deck with four Bloodthirsty Adversary in it. Extremely my shit. In between rounds of Modern, I copy and pasted my Historic list into Pioneer on Magic Online and switched around some stuff. This is where I'm at so far.

Again, pretty similar to the Historic deck. The formats are quite a bit different, but the whole idea with the deck was versatility anyways, so a lot of the same cards and plans slot in against the Pioneer field. Warden of the First Tree and Mizzium Mortars might not be ideal, but I just like those cards, and I'm pretty happy with everything else in the main deck.

The only real absence from Historic to Pioneer is Maelstrom Pulse, which is a card that I love, but I'm replacing it here with Abrupt Decay and Dreadbore, which are cards I'd probably be playing instead of Pulse in Historic given the chance. Also, since Barren Moor isn't available, I'm not running the Witherbloom Command package, although playing some Canyon Slough and Witherbloom Command isn't the absolute worst idea if you're running into a lot of Witch's Oven stuff.

I'm high on Hissing Quagmire here mostly for the same reasons I like Raging Ravine in Modern. Cards like Lair of the Hydra or Den of the Bugbear are helpful when you're mana flooded, obviously, but they come with a drawback of being unhelpful when you're land light, here in a three color deck. In a game where it looks like you'll never activate your Den, which is a lot of them, it's worse than a basic Mountain, which is a card that wouldn't make your deck here. You'll be more likely to be missing a color when you have two lands and one of them is Lair of the Hydra versus when you have two lands and one of them is Hissing Quagmire. There will be hands where you have to mulligan because you have Lair of the Hydra instead of Hissing Quagmire, and taking a mulligan is bad and you should never do things that are bad.

The deck seems to be dealing with aggro decks nicely. We have 1,000 removal spells and stuff like Warden and Ooze and creaturelands to clean up. There's more of a burn presence is this format, including a bunch of decks that run Monastery Swiftspear, so cutting back a little on Shocklands and running one and two mana removal helps you get out of the early game.

Brad Nelson has a theory that it's a good idea to focus your midrange decks to beating aggro decks in the main deck, then worry about the control and combo decks in the sideboard. I've kind of had that same idea for a long time too, even in Modern, and there's a few reasons for that. First, aggro decks don't give you the time you need to draw the cards that are good against them. If I tell myself that I'm going to add two copies of Languish to my otherwise non-interactive midrange deck, I'd better hope one of those copies is in my top eleven or so cards, because if I don't have some interaction for the opposing creatures, I'll be dead. Conversely, if I add two Kroxa to my deck to bust up control decks, that could work pretty well, because I can expect to see quite a few cards in my deck before the game is over, since they aren't pressuring my life total.

I don't always buy the idea that you should build your decks to maximize your play skill over your opponent, because, you know, you might play someone better than you and have that backfire. Having said that, destructive midrange decks like this require having a little bit of format knowledge and deck familiarity to be piloted well, since all your stuff is so dependent on what your opponent is doing. You can't be a total noob to win with most decks, but there are going to be hands with the most aggressive decks that the Mario Kart 64 AI could pilot to a win. Setting yourself up to not lose to those draws and forcing your opponent to make decisions will win some matches. Again, not huge on this theory, but the more experience you have, the more you might want to try and extend the game, giving you more opportunities to make good plays and your opponents opportunities to mess up. This is probably a bigger deal if you're Brad Nelson, but you're smart too. Only smart people read jundlife.blogspot.com.

Also, when we play against control decks, all of a sudden we are the ones who are looking to shorten the game and compound bad draws from our opponents. A couple of Fatal Push in your hand might turn out to not be a problem if your opponent stumbles on lands or floods out a little bit and you just get them dead with your creatures.

Last point on this, against a control deck, or at least against a slower deck, you're more likely to be okay if you miss a land drop or two. If you miss your third land drop and your opponent just nails you with Questing Beast and Embercleave, it doesn't really matter how well set up your deck is for the matchup. If you're more susceptible to losing a game to an awkward draw to fast decks than slow decks, then I'd rather make sure I'm set up to win all three games against fast decks. If I'm confident that I have a good sideboard plan against slow decks and will be unpressured enough to be able to draw what I need, then it's more palatable to plan on not worrying too much about game one and taking down games two and three.

I've found in Pioneer that this theory works out well, just like it does in Historic. The aggro decks are fast and punishing, but don't always have a go-big plan like you might see in Standard. I have my sideboard set up right now to really punish the aggro decks further, with extra Fatal Push and Chevill in the board, plus Crush the Weak, which continues to impress me. I think that going forward, I'll probably cut back a little bit on that stuff as it becomes clear what cards are effective against the metagame.

One card that's impressed me is Damping Sphere. Pioneer has a considerable combo element, with stuff like Lotus Field, Jeskai Ascendency, and Izzet Phoenix, and Damping Sphere shuts them all down. It's clunky with Bloodthirsty Adversary, but you can always get around that by just casting Adversary as a 2/2 with haste, which isn't bad when you're trying to tempo out a combo deck anyways. Also note that Pioneer Phoenix decks are more combo oriented than in Historic, with no Sprite Dragons or Dragon's Rage Channelers, so Damping Sphere is more helpful than you might expect. I have even been boarding in Crush the Weak to clean up Phoenixes, which is only an okay plan in Historic. They play Thing in the Ice, so you can't just board all your removal out, but it's a little bit different of a deck.

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I have a plan to start trying to stream on Discord instead of Twitch, or maybe in addition to. I've set myself up a server there that you're free to go and check out, though there isn't really anything there yet. I've been doing some Modern Challenges on Sunday mornings but I think I might shift into Pioneer mode here and do that on Saturday evenings. Hit me up on Twitter or where ever to chat. Thanks for reading.

Moving Into Modern

 

For the time being I'm done with Arena. I don't expect that to be totally permanent, but I'm dipping my toes back into Modern and putting Historic on the shelf for now.

Jund in Modern can come in a few flavors. There's the extra low-to-the-ground, almost Delver-like Sagavan, which features Ragavan, Urza's Saga, and Lurrus. There's also a non-Lurrus build that has Liliana and Bloodbraids to go along with Urza's Saga.

Again, I'm just getting myself started in this format, basically, since the last time I earnestly played was pre-Modern Horizons 1. Pretty much a different format. So I'm kind of starting from scratch, taking old-school Jund and moving some stuff around until I find something I like, somewhat disregarding the Urza's Saga packages for now.

This is a list that I like so far, but by no means can I put any stamp of approval on it. It's just doing things that I think have potential.

Wrenn and Six has been awesome. There are a lot of one-toughness creatures running around, between Esper Sentinel, Ragavan, and DRC, plus stuff like Teferi Time Raveler that often winds up at 1 loyalty. It's so cheap, it usually can net you some value before any graveyard hate comes down if they even have any, and it still has value for you even if they have Rest in Peace or whatever. So I wanted to sort of maximize Wrenn and Six.

To do that, I'm playing a fairly low land count that's high on fetchlands. That's a little counterintuitive, because this is a medium speed deck and you can run out of fetchables. But there are some uses to excess lands. First, you can just pitch them to Liliana, which is what you're doing a lot of the time anyways and part of why Wrenn goes so well in a non-Lurrus deck. Second, you can just store them in your hand, threatening to unload a bunch of Bolts at the opponent if you ever ultimate the Wrenn and Six. The low land count of the deck is afforded because the Wrenn and Six will usually ensure you're hitting land drops all game. I've got one cheeky Barren Moor in the deck just for funsies, and that's clearly great with the Wrenn and Six, but if that was another fetchland, that would be fine too.

To maximize Wrenn and Six more, I'm trying to load up the deck with the types of cards that help protect it and are benefitted by it. Going down this path led me to want to try lots of planeswalkers. Wrenn and Six has some synergy with the planeswalkers in the deck, sure, but more than that, planeswalkers just kind of have synergy with themselves. There's a lot of reasons behind that, but when you untap with a planeswalker it's very good, when you untap with two it's overwhelming. Wrenn and Six makes this possibility a reality by costing two, so it can come down before your three and four mana walkers, and can protect them with its ping ability. Plus, it helps you hit the land drops required to cast your more expensive stuff. So far I've only got one Vraska, Golgari Queen as 4+ drops, but you could start going further down that road if you wanted to.

So since we're doing all of these planeswalkers, how we going to build the rest of the deck around them? Firstly, I want lots of cheap removal. Planeswalkers are expensive, so you need the rest of your stuff to be cheap in order to make them come down on a stable board. We've got 8 one-mana removal spells in the list right now, and the two copies of Ragavan are basically removal spells because they absolutely must be dealt with by the opponent. Ragavan doesn't really need an explanation. That helps protect the planeswalkers and make our opponents not able to get traction, plus we've got seven one mana discard spells. That's a little more than usual for the higher-up-the-curve midrange builds of Jund, but I want to be able to ensure that our planeswalkers can resolve and we can untap with them, and Thoughtseize effects are a cheap and easy way to do that. Plus, without Bloodbraids or Seasoned Pyromancers, our ability to clock the opponent is pretty poor, so I like having extra disruption for combo and control opponents.

To round out the deck, I've got a couple Dark Confidants and a couple of Crime/Punishment. I liked Crime/Punishment in the sideboard, but so many decks are going to either have Urza's Saga or cheap creatures that I thought it would work out, and it has. It's very versatile, and you can even cast Crime sometimes if you get some treasure tokens. Note that it doesn't hit planeswalkers, making it extra useful in this deck. Dark Confidant is sort of a planeswalker by itself and works well with a lot of the same support cards, the cheap removal to keep your life total high and the Thoughtseize effects to protect it. As I'm writing this paragraph I'm realizing that Crime/Punishment makes you take seven off the Dark Confidant, so maybe I'll change that, but the theory is sound. And oh yeah, four Tarmogoyf.

I also want to mention that Raging Ravine, while definitely is no Urza's Saga, has been performing very nicely. This deck doesn't need a quick clock, but it does need to close the game out with something once we've established the planeswalker hard-lock, and Ravine is able to do that. It's nice that some of the attacking power of the deck that's necessary doesn't take up the slots that we'd rather be using for threats and support spells.

Not a lot of the sideboard is set in stone, but there's a few things that I like. Leyline of the Void has been great. Graveyard hate is useful and all, but some of the midrange and aggro decks of the format lean into graveyard shenanigans more than they might have in the past, so a turn one Leyline is going to be worth it in a lot of matchups. Murktide Regent, Red/Black Midrange with Kroxa, and of course the Dredge nonsense, all gets shut down nicely. I also am really into playing one copy of Gaea's Blessing. The trick is that, against the Mill deck, you don't even have to draw it. There are a some times in metagames, few and far between, where you can swing a matchup by playing a card that doesn't even require you draw it. I like to take advantage of that when I can. Plus, I mean, Shadow Guildmage rules.

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That's where I'm at for the moment. I played in a Modern Challenge on stream on Sunday and I'm planning to do that every chance I get from here on out, but it's not the greatest time to be doing that kind of thing, with the holidays coming up. Still, I'm hoping to spend a lot of the next stretch of time here streaming and working on this deck. Thanks for reading.

AudioBlog about Alchemy, Historic, and Jund moving forward

Crazy Cat Peeking Through A Lace Bandana

Here's the list I've been playing.

It's been all of one week since I made an obnoxious Twitter post where I said "Sorin's too good", so of course I've cut Sorin. Right around the same time I was playing Sorin and climbing to Mythic with it, Nik was doing even better with a Lurrus Jund build. I made a point to try his list out.

I also wanted to try out Sign in Blood, which I haven't yet for a few reasons, one being Jegantha. But also, it's not really doable with Abundant Harvest, and I'll explain why. First, it's just another spell that improves the quality of your hand, which is fine but that takes time away from actually affecting the board, so it's not great there. Second, Sign in Blood requires double black, which skews the mana base in a weird way so that it's hard to reliably have green mana on turn one. Also, in order to play enough total black sources and sources for the other spells in the deck, you need to up the total land count, which is not what you want to do with Harvest.

Last week, I mentioned:

"However, I can't say that I'm really 100% happy with the list as it is. Bloodthirsty Adversary, Chevill, and Sorin all work well with removal spells, but the exact number and configuration is a tough nut to crack."

What Sign in Blood does for the deck is keep Bloodthirsty Adversary fed (since it's thirsty for blood, of course) while gaining you card advantage. You're powering both of your engine cards, since Adversary has a wider array of cards to flash back, and you're drawing into removal spells to trigger your Chevill, and simultaneously putting those extra life points to work. All the while, we're cutting our overall mana costs and playing a card that can go toe-to-toe with Expressive Iteration on card quantity, especially with Inscription and Lurrus in the mix.

Sign in Blood feels like it works well in a Lurrus shell, because, similarly to Sorin, ideally the cards you're drawing off it are relatively cheap, so that you have the time to cast them and you can play defense early and protect your life total. It's also not inconsequential that Lurrus is a three-power Lifelinker, so if the game grinds down enough that you can get Lurrus into play, you can pad your life total enough to cast all this stuff. With Bloodthirsty Adversary in the mix, you can cast Sign in Blood lots of times in a long, drawn out game, and even if they don't pressure you at all, eventually that life loss can catch up to you.

Lurrus also works fantastically with Ooze, Chevill and Bloodthirsty Adversary. Having the ability to rebuy your Oozes works out nicely, since you can rely on getting it back and taking down graveyard shenanigans so long as you can reach the late game. Lurrus rebuying a Chevill is a fine play for five mana, since it gums up the ground, forces your opponent to attack into it, and Chevill's deathtouch trades off with opposing creatures to do it again next turn. And of course an Adversary coming out of the graveyard is just always going to be hard to beat.

I think it's also important to note that this deck can both utilize the graveyard shenanigans nicely, but also functions totally fine against opposing graveyard hate. Between Pulse and Witherbloom Command, you can nail opposing Rest in Peaces if you need to, and you can always Thoughtseize them too. But, it's totally fine to just ignore their graveyard hate and win with Sign in Blood, free 3/2 lifelinkers, and removal spells. I had a game today where an opponent used a Skyclave Apparition on my Outland Liberator and instead of using my one leftover mana to hit their Rest in Peace, I just let the ability resolve so I could get a 2/2 elemental later. It was more important. 

Because of this, Lurrus works especially nicely in this build. Lurrus is great, of course, but the companion mechanic itself is a huge boost for a deck like this that wants to grind the game down. I just want to trade off resources until all that's left is Lurrus, and if I get back a creature or two, that's a bonus.

I like Witherbloom Command in this deck. First, it just has more stuff that it hits these days, so that's good. There are decks with Mind Stone, with Trail of Crumbs and Witch's Oven, Search for Azcanta, Portable Hole, etc. Also, there are a lot of 1-toughness creatures out there too, like Llanowar Elves, Soul Warden, Inkeepers, Ravenous Squirrels if you're lucky. So, the format has shaken out in a way where you can expect this to do something relevant, which is great. Also, since we are playing a higher land count, we're more likely to hit off the blind flips. The difference between 26 lands and 23 lands is not huge, but it counts for something. And, since we've increased our land count, I added some Barren Moor to help make our draws more consistent, so if you can nail an opposing creature or permament and then get back a Barren Moor, we're talking actual factual 2 for 1s. I'm always in the market for cards that can trigger a Chevill but are useful in other ways, too.

I have one copy of Soul Shatter and one copy of Kolaghan's Command in the deck right now, which I'm not convinced is correct in any capacity, but it is useful to have a few different cards at your disposal when casting Bloodthirsty Adversary. Inscription will usually be about the best thing you can do, but outside of that, feel free to diversify your removal to make sure your Adversary can do whatever needs to be done. Also, look at the art on this card, it's the sickest.

I also like Crush the Weak a lot right now in Historic. For one, it's a three or less mana spell, which has extra utility in a Bloodthirsty Adversary deck. You'll see three-of Crush, Cleansing Wildfire, and Go Blanks in this sideboard. A lot of that has to do with Lurrus, but also, you just want to hit them multiple times with your sideboard cards if possible. When you draw an Adversary and one of these hard hitter sideboard cards, it's like you get to play with 7 copies instead of three. Crush has been great at a couple of things. One, when you Foretell it on turn two and then cast it on turn three, you can dodge Thalia, Esper Sentinel, and Elite Spellbinder ruining your day. Pyroclasm effects might not hit all the creatures your opponents play, but when you set your deck up to Wrath away the small stuff and then answer the big ones one-for-one, you'll do great. I usually shy away from exile effects when playing with Chevill, but Crush is great with Chevill because he survives it. Also, Crush is great against any of the Witch's Oven stuff. The Cat/Oven combo might be able to dodge it, but it still is going to be useful sweeping up Squirrels, Geese, Cats, Llanowar Elves, etc.

It pains me to cut Bonecrusher Giant from the deck, but Lurrus might be worth it. One thing I've said, probably in this blog somewhere and definitely on stream a few times, is that I'm not opposed to cutting good cards, I'm opposed to playing bad cards. Having to cut Bonecrusher to make Lurrus work and having to cut Abundant Harvest to make Sign in Blood work, it's tough but it's not like we're replacing them with cards that suck. Every card in the deck has value on its own. However, it's important to recognize that cutting something is going is change how you can normally expect matchups to go. I've had trouble with Gruul decks since moving away from Jegantha, and even moreso since cutting Bonecrusher. Bonecrusher was, outside of Chevill, the best card against that deck, so having since cut it, you can expect the matchup to change. As the list stands now, I think we're weaker on that front, but also, you can expect less Gruul and more Selesnya Humans and other kinds of aggro decks, instead of the Gruul-heavy metagame that made up Historic a few months ago.

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I streamed a bunch today and yesterday and got requests to make another Youtube video. I'd love to, it's just a matter of having the time to do it. If I can get my life together, maybe I can bust one out this weekend for this deck. Also, check out Nik's Stream if you like this kind of deck. Thanks for reading.

One Man Gathers What Another Man Spills

 For a card that I didn't think made the cut in Standard, Sorin has been impressive in Historic.

The difference between the two formats is that in Historic, the tools are there to keep the board clear early, or close to it, so that Sorin can gain you card advantage every turn without being threatened or having your life total be at risk. The overall cost of your spells will be a lot cheaper, too, so the life loss is less of a big deal. That's important for another reason: in Standard, you're usually just casting the biggest thing in your hand every turn all game, but in Historic, with your cheaper and more clinical utility spells, you want to be able to cast more of them per turn. 

Sorin does great work as a threat as well. There will be a lot of matchups where your life total isn't at risk, and card advantage is at a premium. When this is the case, the opponent will have to eat the card advantage loss and use a removal spell of some sort on Sorin. They can't just let it sit around and out card-draw you, because the -7 will kill the opponent most of the time, and it doesn't take that long to get there.

There have been pretty few times when I've used the -2 ability, since drawing a card and pumping Sorin's loyalty is so good, but if your life total is at a premium then it's not that bad. 2/3 Flying lifelink matches up pretty poorly with Dragon's Rage Channeler but is nice against a lot of the rest of the aggressive red stuff in the format.

There are a few reasons why I like Sorin more than Chandra Torch of Defiance at the moment, but one of them is that when you +1 a Sorin, you get to keep the card in your hand. Chandra can draw you cards, but Sorin will draw you cards. You don't have to untap with Sorin to get your value, you get it immediately if you cast it on turn four. Also, the card Sorin draws you might not be useful now but could be later. When Chandra reveals a Bloodchief's Thirst and the opponent's board is empty, it's gone, but with Sorin, you keep that in the holster for later. Also, double black is easier to cast than double red, but that's kind of a small issue.

This is the deck that I used to make Mythic this month. In it, I'm playing three copies of Sorin, which is a lot for a planeswalker. Something I've said about planeswalker builds in the past is that it's better to have two different planeswalkers in your hand than a specific one. Sorin is a little bit different, because if you have one in play, you won't get stuck with a legend rule issue, since Sorin will often just find you a different card to cast. But, if you're finding that three is too many, then something like Chandra or Davriel or Vraska can work here too. Alternatively, you can just play the fourth Bonecrusher Giant, which is the best planeswalker.

Sorin fits nicely alongside the already existing engine of the deck, which basically is just casting removal spells. However, I can't say that I'm really 100% happy with the list as it is. Bloodthirsty Adversary, Chevill, and Sorin all work well with removal spells, but the exact number and configuration is a tough nut to crack. Plus, with Thoughtseize and Scavenging Ooze existing in the deck as "cards I will not be playing less than 4 of" space for all the things we want to be doing is tight.

I also wish that I could give a better sideboard guide, but the board was really a work in progress as I was climbing. I'm happy with two new cards that I've added, Cleansing Wildfire and Crush the Weak. Crush has been a fantastic workaround for the Esper Sentinel decks, allowing you to pay for Sentinel and Thalia taxes and wipe the board early, while also exiling small creatures against graveyard engine decks. Cleansing Wildfire isn't exactly the super-duper-knockout-blow card against Niv Mizzet I was hoping for, but it is really good, and if you can draw a Bloodthirsty in the same game, then it actually is a super-duper-knockout-blow. It's got a few applications outside of that matchup specifically, but it's also the kind of card that might get boarded in too often if you're not careful.

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That's about it for me. Be sure to comment if you've got any questions or are looking for some tips, or you can find me on twitter @griffinzoth. I also have a Patreon if you're interested, but it's not that serious, I just kind of set it up because subbing on Twitch sucks. Thanks for reading.