I haven't played Jund in months, but I'm looking to pick it back up for the Modern PTQ season after dabbling with Pod for a bit. I noticed that the manabase has changed. Are Grove/Thicket a nod to the loss of DRS + running Anger and Courser in the main now?
Not sure if people here remember my original post, but I had originally planned to go GBw. After doing some testing and having some mana issues, I decided to get on the GB train. Here's the list I ran at 2 different Game Day events.
I wish I could have run Mutavaults, but I'm not primarily a standard player and jumped at a chance to trade my playset for stuff I needed for Melira Pod.
Pharika might be too cute. There were times where she was awesome making snakes after a supreme verdict, but other times she just sat there doing nothing.
Caryatid is awesome against aggro, but like others have already pointed out, it's pretty bad against most other decks.
Everyone already knows Courser of Kruphix and Eidolon of Blossoms are amazing.
Bestowing Herald won me almost every game, but I agree with The Other Guy in that this deck is reactionary and therefore I think 2 Heralds is correct. I'm tempted to go down to 3 Boon Satyrs, but I really liked being able to use him as a pseudoremoval spell that replaces itself with EoB in play.
Abrupt Decay and Golgari Charm were always live for me since nobody in my area plays Jund Monsters.
The deck was a lot of fun, and a bunch of people complimented me on it. Moving forward, I might go the route the rest of you are going by replacing the Caryatids and Connections. The Caryatids were amazing in the aggro matchups that I had, but Courser does a fine job of brickwalling already and has built in life gain to stabilize.
After reading this thread, I've brewed up a Junk version to bring to Game Day. I think Banishing Light works too well with Eidolon of Blossoms to not include, and I like having Nyx-Fleece Ram out of the sideboard for aggro matchups.
For those of us who are splashing W, has anyone tried running Elspeth? I tried Primeval Bounty, and it doesn't always do what you want it to do. It's a powerful card and can close out games for sure, but it basically plays the role of a planeswalker. I haven't had a chance to test with Elspeth, so I was wondering if anyone else has tried her out.
I'm a fairly longtime Jund player and I'm going to give this deck a try at FNM this week. Can someone explain why most lists run Redcap as a 2 of whereas most of the other creatures are 1 ofs?
I drafted Theros last night and went Esper control. Removal, fliers, bounce.. pretty much what you'd expect.
Coastline Chimera was an all star for me. 5 is definitely the magic toughness. I brickwalled a red deck with it and when he drew the Lightning Strike/trick to try and kill it, I'd just bounce/kill his guy. Win cons are misc fliers and Grey Merchant. This guy is definitely real (there's a thread about him in this forum).
As an aside, I played against a guy running Reaper of the Wilds in the finals and it was an absolute nightmare to play against. Aggressively costed, evasion, magic toughness of 5 and it's just hard to block/kill, let alone profitably. He reminded me of Ætherling.
The guy who got the Zendikar pack with the Usea is a coowner of a store that I used to go to. He actually beat Caleb Durward in the finals of the last or second to last qualifier in the AM prior to the event and was was posting to our facebook group asking for opinions on which packs to pick. He was thinking that Future Sight would be a good pickup for Sprout Swarm, as well as any set with Pestilence in it.
He mentioned in addition to the Karakas and the Usea, other money cards that were cracked included a LED and Polluted Delta.
Hey guys. My LGS has been running small modern weeklies allowing a reasonable number of proxies and I decided to start playing classic Jund since I have the Goyfs. I played it for the second time this week and was hoping you guys could critique my deck.
I've been having fun with the deck. I play RUG Delver in Legacy, so I appreciate the Jund deck having multiple lines of play and needing to plan out what you want to do for several turns. I've made some basic mistakes when starting out playing the deck such as fetching for illegal lands since I'm used to just being able to fetch for whatever land I want and not having them kill me, but I feel like I'm getting better piloting it.
My meta is a lot of Affinity, some Jund with white, some Melira Pod, some Burn, at least one UWR player and some Scapeshift and some Tron. The Olivia in the main are a concession to at least 4 people running Affinity.
For this week I went 1-2, but made several critical errors that I realized immediately and could have easily won my games.
Round 1 versus Jund splash White
G1: We each start out the game by attacking each other's hand and spend a few turns 1 for 1'ing each other. I eventually pull ahead and win.
Out: 4 Liliana of the Veil, 1 Inquisition, 1 Dark Confidant
In: 1 Batterskull, 2 Thrun, 1 Obstinate Baloth, 1 Fulminator Mage, 1 Rakdos Charm
I believe that Liliana isn't that good against classic Jund and even worse against the version with Souls. Batterskull and Thrun are both hard to answer threats for Jund. Baloth is for his own Lilianas. Fulminator Mage attacks his fragile manabase. Rakdos Charm is an answer to his own Batterskull. Please let me know if I did anything incorrectly.
G2: After all that time spent sideboarding, he mulligans to six and misses his third land drop. I Fulminator Mage his Overgrown Tomb and it was easy to win from there.
After the match, he told me that he sideboarded out his Lingering Souls which I thought was strange. Is this normal?
Round 2 versus Affinity
G1: I'm on the play so my gameplan is to mulligan aggressively to a discard spell. I get an Inquisition in my opening hand and see that his hand is a bunch of stuff and a Steel Overseer. I take his Overseer. He never draws a Cranial Plating so is unable to deal with my bigger threats.
Terminate is the least versatile removal in the deck against affinity since it only hits creatures. Bolt does the same thing and can burn. Decay takes out any nonland permanent. I want to keep some number of Lilianas in to deal with Etched Champion.
G2: He keeps a slow hand. My opening hand is gas, but I top deck like 6 lands in a row and lose.
G3: He keeps another slow hand so I'm able to build up a board. I have a Finks, Goyf and Bob out. He has 3 guys that are x/1. I'm at 11 and Bob flips an Olivia putting me to 7. Ouch, but Olivia makes this matchup easy. He swings at me putting me to 4 then taps out to play Etched Champion. I have a Liliana on 2.
During his endstep I stop to think. Olivia is the only thing in the deck that can kill me with Bob and 1 is already on the board. He's tapped out so I can ping one of his guys end of turn then untap and ping his other 2 guys and use Lil's -2 to sac his Champion to clear his board other than Blinkmoth Nexus. I flip a Jund Charm to put me at 1. I go through with my original line of play which puts me at the mercy of dying to my own Bob on my next turn and of course I flip another Confidant. I quickly realize that I could have just used the Jund Charm and then used Lil's -2. Stupid.
Round 3 versus Affinity
G1: He runs me over.
Same sideboarding as the previous round.
G2: I inquisition his Ravager out of his hand. His hand is pretty slow other than a Thoughtcast. I one for one him to keep his artifact count low so he can't cast Thoughtcast and eventually land Olivia. He concedes after drawing a blank.
G3: He mulls to 5 but plays 2 Signal Pests and top decks a Vault Skirge. I 2 for 1 him with Maelstrom Pulse. He has two cards in hand and I know he sideboarded in Dispatch. My hand is two finks, decay and Olivia. My gut is telling me to run out a finks first, but I get greedy for the easy win and slam Olivia. His body language is a lot more relaxed this time so I know he has the Dispatch. He untaps and plays it.
Then he attacks with Signal Pest and Vault Skirge. For some reason that I still don't understand, I abrupt decay his Signal Pest. It was the most aggressive and knee-jerk play and I'm still trying to understand why I did it. I take one and he plays Cranial Plating. I don't draw an answer and I can't race a 6 power lifelinker and get a deserved loss.
If you managed to read this wall of text, I'd appreciate any critiques especially with regards to the sideboarding. Thanks.
Having been on a break during most of the early modern sets, this was my initial impression of this pack. Plumeveil seems like it will be removal most of the time + a really good blocker.
Was anyone else let down by the complete lack of Teysa in all three parts? I'm not just talking about her character (which was poorly done as others have stated), but I was expecting some more involvement. Especially considering the role she had in the first 3 novels in addition to the Uncharted Realms article from early April with her and Tajik, it was pretty disappointing to see her cast aside as a very poorly done supporting character.
You can figure out the probability using the hypergeometric distribution. With 10 red sources, the chance of drawing at least 1 red source by turn 2 on the play is 79.02% and on the draw is 83.05%.
However, this does not take into account that the Guildgate comes into play tapped so it has to be your turn 1 land in order to play Jester on turn 2 or situations where you draw a hand full of Dragonskull Summits and no swamps to have them come into play untapped.
This guy did work for me several times throughout the midnight prerelease at my LGS. It also didn't hurt that my pool had Obzedat, Ghost Council. One game I sent him in as an 11/11 with Scion of Vitu-Ghazi. But seriously, it wasn't that hard to keep him swinging as a 5/5 as long as you have a decent number of creatures.
4 Brain Maggot
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Courser of Kruphix
2 Herald of Torment
4 Boon Satyr
4 Eidolon of Blossoms
Non-Creatures - 14
3 Thoughtseize
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Devour Flesh
1 Golgari Charm
2 Hero's Downfall
1 Pharika, God of Affliction
2 Underworld Connections
1 Primeval Bounty
4 Temple of Malady
4 Overgrown Tomb
2 Temple of Deceit
1 Temple of Plenty
1 Temple of Mystery
6 Swamp
6 Forest
1 Thoughtseize
2 Duress
3 Mistcutter Hydra
2 Golgari Charm
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Bile Blight
1 Unravel the Aether
1 Hero's Downfall
1 Underworld Connections
1 Erebos, God of the Dead
I wish I could have run Mutavaults, but I'm not primarily a standard player and jumped at a chance to trade my playset for stuff I needed for Melira Pod.
Pharika might be too cute. There were times where she was awesome making snakes after a supreme verdict, but other times she just sat there doing nothing.
Caryatid is awesome against aggro, but like others have already pointed out, it's pretty bad against most other decks.
Everyone already knows Courser of Kruphix and Eidolon of Blossoms are amazing.
Bestowing Herald won me almost every game, but I agree with The Other Guy in that this deck is reactionary and therefore I think 2 Heralds is correct. I'm tempted to go down to 3 Boon Satyrs, but I really liked being able to use him as a pseudoremoval spell that replaces itself with EoB in play.
Abrupt Decay and Golgari Charm were always live for me since nobody in my area plays Jund Monsters.
The deck was a lot of fun, and a bunch of people complimented me on it. Moving forward, I might go the route the rest of you are going by replacing the Caryatids and Connections. The Caryatids were amazing in the aggro matchups that I had, but Courser does a fine job of brickwalling already and has built in life gain to stabilize.
For those of us who are splashing W, has anyone tried running Elspeth? I tried Primeval Bounty, and it doesn't always do what you want it to do. It's a powerful card and can close out games for sure, but it basically plays the role of a planeswalker. I haven't had a chance to test with Elspeth, so I was wondering if anyone else has tried her out.
Coastline Chimera was an all star for me. 5 is definitely the magic toughness. I brickwalled a red deck with it and when he drew the Lightning Strike/trick to try and kill it, I'd just bounce/kill his guy. Win cons are misc fliers and Grey Merchant. This guy is definitely real (there's a thread about him in this forum).
As an aside, I played against a guy running Reaper of the Wilds in the finals and it was an absolute nightmare to play against. Aggressively costed, evasion, magic toughness of 5 and it's just hard to block/kill, let alone profitably. He reminded me of Ætherling.
He mentioned in addition to the Karakas and the Usea, other money cards that were cracked included a LED and Polluted Delta.
I've been having fun with the deck. I play RUG Delver in Legacy, so I appreciate the Jund deck having multiple lines of play and needing to plan out what you want to do for several turns. I've made some basic mistakes when starting out playing the deck such as fetching for illegal lands since I'm used to just being able to fetch for whatever land I want and not having them kill me, but I feel like I'm getting better piloting it.
4 Dark Confidant
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Olivia Voldaren
4 Tarmogoyf
Sorceries
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Thoughtseize
Instants
2 Abrupt Decay
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Terminate
4 Liliana of the Veil
Lands
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
1 Forest
2 Marsh Flats
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Overgrown Tomb
3 Raging Ravine
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
2 Treetop Village
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Batterskull
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Torpor Orb
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Obstinate Baloth
1 Spellskite
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Slaughter Games
2 Jund Charm
1 Rakdos Charm
2 Jund Charm
2 Sowing Salt
My meta is a lot of Affinity, some Jund with white, some Melira Pod, some Burn, at least one UWR player and some Scapeshift and some Tron. The Olivia in the main are a concession to at least 4 people running Affinity.
For this week I went 1-2, but made several critical errors that I realized immediately and could have easily won my games.
Round 1 versus Jund splash White
G1: We each start out the game by attacking each other's hand and spend a few turns 1 for 1'ing each other. I eventually pull ahead and win.
Out: 4 Liliana of the Veil, 1 Inquisition, 1 Dark Confidant
In: 1 Batterskull, 2 Thrun, 1 Obstinate Baloth, 1 Fulminator Mage, 1 Rakdos Charm
I believe that Liliana isn't that good against classic Jund and even worse against the version with Souls. Batterskull and Thrun are both hard to answer threats for Jund. Baloth is for his own Lilianas. Fulminator Mage attacks his fragile manabase. Rakdos Charm is an answer to his own Batterskull. Please let me know if I did anything incorrectly.
G2: After all that time spent sideboarding, he mulligans to six and misses his third land drop. I Fulminator Mage his Overgrown Tomb and it was easy to win from there.
After the match, he told me that he sideboarded out his Lingering Souls which I thought was strange. Is this normal?
Round 2 versus Affinity
G1: I'm on the play so my gameplan is to mulligan aggressively to a discard spell. I get an Inquisition in my opening hand and see that his hand is a bunch of stuff and a Steel Overseer. I take his Overseer. He never draws a Cranial Plating so is unable to deal with my bigger threats.
Out: 2x Terminate, 1x Liliana
In: 2x Jund Charm, 1x Rakdos Charm
Terminate is the least versatile removal in the deck against affinity since it only hits creatures. Bolt does the same thing and can burn. Decay takes out any nonland permanent. I want to keep some number of Lilianas in to deal with Etched Champion.
G2: He keeps a slow hand. My opening hand is gas, but I top deck like 6 lands in a row and lose.
G3: He keeps another slow hand so I'm able to build up a board. I have a Finks, Goyf and Bob out. He has 3 guys that are x/1. I'm at 11 and Bob flips an Olivia putting me to 7. Ouch, but Olivia makes this matchup easy. He swings at me putting me to 4 then taps out to play Etched Champion. I have a Liliana on 2.
During his endstep I stop to think. Olivia is the only thing in the deck that can kill me with Bob and 1 is already on the board. He's tapped out so I can ping one of his guys end of turn then untap and ping his other 2 guys and use Lil's -2 to sac his Champion to clear his board other than Blinkmoth Nexus. I flip a Jund Charm to put me at 1. I go through with my original line of play which puts me at the mercy of dying to my own Bob on my next turn and of course I flip another Confidant. I quickly realize that I could have just used the Jund Charm and then used Lil's -2. Stupid.
Round 3 versus Affinity
G1: He runs me over.
Same sideboarding as the previous round.
G2: I inquisition his Ravager out of his hand. His hand is pretty slow other than a Thoughtcast. I one for one him to keep his artifact count low so he can't cast Thoughtcast and eventually land Olivia. He concedes after drawing a blank.
G3: He mulls to 5 but plays 2 Signal Pests and top decks a Vault Skirge. I 2 for 1 him with Maelstrom Pulse. He has two cards in hand and I know he sideboarded in Dispatch. My hand is two finks, decay and Olivia. My gut is telling me to run out a finks first, but I get greedy for the easy win and slam Olivia. His body language is a lot more relaxed this time so I know he has the Dispatch. He untaps and plays it.
Then he attacks with Signal Pest and Vault Skirge. For some reason that I still don't understand, I abrupt decay his Signal Pest. It was the most aggressive and knee-jerk play and I'm still trying to understand why I did it. I take one and he plays Cranial Plating. I don't draw an answer and I can't race a 6 power lifelinker and get a deserved loss.
If you managed to read this wall of text, I'd appreciate any critiques especially with regards to the sideboarding. Thanks.
Having been on a break during most of the early modern sets, this was my initial impression of this pack. Plumeveil seems like it will be removal most of the time + a really good blocker.
Snapcaster Mage
3x Spellskite
Duskmantle Seer
Pile B
Sacred Foundry
Temple Garden
Hallowed Fountain
Woodland Cemetery
Bonfire of the Damned
All shocks are new block.
However, this does not take into account that the Guildgate comes into play tapped so it has to be your turn 1 land in order to play Jester on turn 2 or situations where you draw a hand full of Dragonskull Summits and no swamps to have them come into play untapped.