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.

The Grass Ain't Greener, The Wine Ain't Sweeter

Degen Tournament

Yesterday I played in a Standard tournament run by Degenerate Gaming. I went 4-2 with this, but took my losses early and missed on breakers. I played against two mono-green decks and against four various blue deck brews, and beat all the blue decks and lost to the green decks.

Tracker is just excellent in this format. It trades early with big aggro deck creatures, or it pressures life totals, all while generating card advantage. The blue decks all had a hard time with any hand that had Tracker in it, especially when backed up by either more pressure from Chariot or by Inscription generating more card advantage. Grakmaw was also good in the three drop slot, pressuring opponents, being a combo with Chariot, and leaving material behind when the opponent tried to remove it.

My Jund deck played Bloodthirsty Adversary, and while Adversary was clearly great whenever I drew it, it left me playing more reactive spells than I feel like I should have. My Green opponents had lots of Old Growth Trolls and Snakeskin Veils to make spot removal not work very well, plus Chariot is pretty good against spot removal too. I think that what I've found in this format is that spot removal for a few turns and then turning the corner doesn't cut it, or at least isn't as good here as it would be in other formats. I think a better plan is to try and build an equally powerful board presence as your aggro opponents, then win with bigger trumps. I've loved Tovolar's Huntmaster so far. Tainted Adversary has proven to be good in this format, since it trades off with anything out of the green deck, but also applies pressure to the blue decks. It's not busted with Inscription like Bloodthirsty is, but it's been good in conjunction there.

I don't think that the red splash is that problematic for the deck, but I did lose a game to getting hit by multiple Field of Ruins. If you're not on the Bloodthirsty Adversary plan, then it's a little bit less necessary. Moving forward, I think I would play something more along the lines of this. The mana is a little less awkward, but most of the power is still there. There's less spot removal and more cards to create board presence, notably Gnarled Professor, which is another card advantage generating big-stats-guy.

Degenerate Gaming is a cool program that you should check out. It was a fun and well run tournament, big thanks to the TOs and casters.

Bans

After having played this tournament, I can't really understand anymore why people think that Alrund's Epiphany is even close to ban worthy. Standard is great, it's the best it's been in years, and there are lots of tools to beat whatever you're going to face. I had a great experience brewing for, testing for, and playing in a Standard Tournament this weekend, and I even learned a lot and have new ideas to fix the problems I faced. If that isn't the experience you want to have as a Magic player, then Magic just might not be for you.

Bans are really, really bad. They price people out of the game. You get wildcards back in Arena, but on MTGO and in paper, you're just out the amount you put in. Sometimes your whole deck gets blown up in the process of banning a single card, and now the deck is unplayable and not worth anything in trade. Clamoring for bans is an extremely privileged thing to do, especially in Standard, which is supposed to be the most accessible format, and especially for something as innocuous and borderline as Alrund's Epiphany.

As far as Historic goes, I guess I don't really care that much about Memory Lapse being banned. Jeskai and Azorius control decks are still fine. Memory Lapse is a great card, but it's certainly not the reason that Jund specifically was losing to control, and honestly whatever the decks look like going forward could be even worse for Jund. I think banning it will end up having a net negative effect on the format, since it's opened the door for Five Color Niv Mizzet to become prevalent, but whatever.

Historic

I'm trying to find the card to bring in against Five Color Niv to beat it, but I'm not sure one exists. When there's a deck like this that's such a bizarre strategy, often there will be a single card that can take it out in one blow. For Field of the Dead it was Massacre Wurm, for Forsaken Monument it was By Force. So far the best thing I can think of is Cleansing Wildfire, but that's just a speedbump. It's a really good speedbump, but still not what we're looking for exactly. Maybe with Bloodthirsty, it's enough of a one-two punch to really knock that deck out. Now that the Standard event is done with, I'll get back to testing.

I think it's also worth remembering that Niv Mizzet, even if it is a popular deck and a successful and hard to beat one, is still just one deck. If you play four creature decks and one Niv Mizzet deck and go 4-1, that's a great record to have, and it might not be worth messing around with the deck too much to fix that one loss. If the next day you re-tune the deck, play those same matchups and go 3-2 but beat the Niv Mizzet deck, you've gone backwards. If Niv continues to get more popular, then maybe it's worth some drastic changes, but for now I think it's okay to just take your medicine, so long as you're confident elsewhere. Also, what's nice about Cleansing Wildfire is that it's actually a little useful in some other matchups and doesn't require a whole rebuild of the deck to include.

Crimson Vow

Cleave looks great. It's basically Kicker with extra steps, but I still like it. As for this card, I think it's too slow for Historic but it's not that far off. Fixing your mana for the rest of the game for just one mana is a great deal. Note that building around this card is way different than something like Attune with Aether or even Fabled Passage, because if you've tutored up all your basics, you can just use the Cleave ability instead. One Swamp, Forest, and Mountain aren't a huge sacrifice to make, especially if opponents are going to start playing more Field of Ruin and Cleansing Wildfire effects. The other part of why this might be okay in Historic is the sideboard space it saves you, and the volatile nature of the decks in the format. All of a sudden your one Witch's Vengeance turns into five, your one Klothys turns into five, your one Grafdigger's Cage, your one Tergrid God of Fright, etc. As more knockout blow silver bullets get printed and more combo decks get printed, this can gain a little bit of utility. Again, I think it's too slow for the format ultimately, but it's doing some good things.

This one has potential, but I think it'll see more play in Modern than in Historic. In Modern it looks great to me. It hits most of the stuff that Inquisition hits, including Snapcaster Mage, Counterspell, and every card out of a Lurrus deck. The added bonus is that it hits Primeval Titan and Karn and stuff like that when you need it to. Is three mana a lot to pay to get rid of a Titan? Sure, but it's better than taking 36 damage. Lots of games against Valakut decks turn out to all boil down to whether you had Thoughtseize or you had Inquisition, so Dread Fugue can do both. In Historic, I don't really like it as much, since 4 Thoughtseize and 0 Inquisition seems to be the thing to do anyways. I find myself pretty rarely taking something with Thoughtseize that costs 2 or less in Historic, but hey, more ways to snag a Niv Mizzet or Teferi might be worth it, depending on how the metagame shakes out.

Cool card, but I think it's too bad. 2/3 Flying Lifelink would be awesome in a format where the default aggro decks are red decks, but instead they are Green decks and the green decks just crush this thing. Maybe worth playing in the Golgari Standard deck I posted earlier, but the Professor is pretty nice too.

Call me crazy, but this is kind of okay. It's a 0/4 wall for B that has 2B: Transform, but you can only flip it as a sorcery. Then the other side is a 3/4 Menace that Vendilion Cliques them. It's got big toughness, attacks on turn three for three damage, disrupts the opponent a little bit, and can stop early attackers. All kinds of variable mana costs on this thing, since you can pay one mana early and three mana later or four mana all at once. I'm not sure what deck it goes into, but it's a solid card. I like it. I think it's worth trying.

Of course, I'm waiting for something like 

1BG Sorcery - Cleave 1B, Destroy target creature [or planeswalker, or artifact, or enchantment]. 

Or how about

1G Sorcery - Cleave 2RG, Create a 3/2 red Wolf creature token [with "when this creature enters the battlefield it deals damage equal to its power to any target.].

There's a lot of design space here, so we'll see what they do with it.

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That's about it for me. If more cool stuff comes from the new set I'll talk about it here. The tournament vods should be up on my Twitch channel for a little bit if you're interested. I had some wild games near the back end of the tournament but was ultimately out of contention anyways. Also, I played some Pokemon Blue and leveled up my Sandslash a bunch between rounds. Thanks for reading.

Summertime Done Come And Gone, My Oh My

I've been away for work for a little while, but still had some time to hit Mythic last month. This month, I've been working on Standard as much as I have Historic.

Here's a link if you're interested. It's pretty simple and seems to have game against most things. The sideboard is a little bit warped to fight the Alrund's Epiphany decks but that's not the worst thing in the world. It's possible that Duress is a main deck cards these days, but I try to do that as little as possible.

This deck certainly plays out more like a Bloodbraid 2009 style Jund deck than a Modern Jund list or even a Huntmaster 2012 Jund list. The threats are hard to deal with but are capable of winning the game by themselves if left unchecked, so they have to be dealth with. You don't kill every single creature the opponent plays, but you kill enough of them to let your top end get online. We also get lots of good value lands, which is nice because it lets us play a high land count.

It seems like the power in this format lies either in playing Esika's Chariot or Alrund's Epiphany, so we play Chariot and do a little bit of work to maximize it, but not a lot. Wrenn and Seven and Briarbridge Tracker are just good cards no matter what, and I like the rest of our threat suite even though more synergistic stuff is available, like Tainted Adversary or Reckless Stormseeker. Our way to win the Chariot mirrors isn't to have better Chariot synergy, it's killing their Chariot.

The mana works out pretty well. We get to utilize as many slowlands as we want and don't have to play any Snarls. That said, I'm not 100% sure that the red spells are worth it. Bloodthirsty Adversary is great, but doesn't seem to excel in this format as much as it does in Historic.

For what it's worth, and this could be it's own separate post, but having played Standard with this deck has not made me feel like anything should be banned in the format. Esika's Chariot and Alrund's Epiphany are clearly very good, but if those are the boogeymen of the format, then I think we're in a good place. This is the type of deck that intrinsically should be getting creamed by Izzet Turns and I haven't found the matchup to be that bad.

In Historic, this is my latest list. I wouldn't say that Adversary has been a revelation, but it's very good. It does all the things I liked about Goblin Dark Dwellers but with none of its downsides and most of its upsides. Plus, there's lots of neat tricks, in large part in concert with Inscription of Ruin. It isn't the most off the wall powerful card in the world, but if you give a card enough little abilities and tricks you can do with it, eventually one of them will be a route to win a game. The amount of things you can flash back, the timing that you cast it, the haste, all of it is a nightmare for the opponent to play around. Adversary is a card that rewards practice.

Not trying to subtweet (or sub-discord-chat or whatever) but I still think that I like Abundant Harvest. It's a card that doesn't see a lot of play, but at the same time there aren't that many decks that meet all its requirements. You're green, you don't have any spells that add mana, and you don't have Blue to use Opt or Consider instead (which you could argue are worse, but okay). Few decks meet all those requirements.

At the moment I'm not interested in cutting it from the deck. If you're running into Thalia and Esper Sentinel in a third of your matches or something, then maybe that's different, but that hasn't been my experience yet. I also think that it's totally fine to sideboard Harvest out in that matchup when you have a 24 land deck, which I do as of now. We'd ostensibly be bringing in cheap removal, so the overall mana cost of the deck goes down and 24 land seems more suitable.

Harvest is the kind of card that you might not realize is winning you games. It turns mulligans into keeps and turns sketchy hands into smooth draws. It also essentially reduces the number of cards in your deck which will help you find your good stuff after sideboard. It's the kind of card that I'm envious of my blue opponents for getting to play. I think it's totally reasonable to try and cut it if you don't like it, as is the case with any card, but it will be hard to gauge whether you're winning more or less without it. I do recognize its downsides, but I know I've been happy so far.

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I did some streaming on Twitch this weekend and might do some more soon. I like the weekend morning stream time, it's a nice relaxing way to start the day. Thanks for reading.