MTG Salvation

Electrolyze will be better at dealing with planeswalkers now when the planeswalker-redirection rule gets changed. If there's two planeswalkers in play, we can now deal one damage to each of them, or one damage to a planeswalker + one damage to opponent.

i can see shaving 1 or 2 bolts but i wouldnt cut them all. otherwise you have to lean more on path to deal with an early bob. also bolt makes electrolyze better. being able to double up on burn spells without 2 for 1'ing yourself comes up quite frequently.

Currently my Big Jeskai list is playing 4-bolts. I feel that without 4 it leaves behind in a lot of matchups, especially on the play. What do you guys think?

Quote from DragonTrainerJohn »

Currently my Big Jeskai list is playing 4-bolts. I feel that without 4 it leaves behind in a lot of matchups, especially on the play. What do you guys think?

Yeah I added the 4th bolt as well, but missing out on that last bit of reach picks at me, is a huge reason 99% of my decks are red.

Quote from DragonTrainerJohn »

Currently my Big Jeskai list is playing 4-bolts. I feel that without 4 it leaves behind in a lot of matchups, especially on the play. What do you guys think?

bolt is a good game 1 card. in the dark having cheap interaction in any form is smart. also even if the opponents deck is built not to be soft to bolt its never truly a dead card, even if you just point it at their face you are converting it to some nonzero amount of value.

that said i dont think playing the full 4 is always required or best.

I remember reading about this but I cant find it anymore through my search.

Is running only 3 snapcasters viable if you mainboard 2 azcanta?

Is 4 a must? Has anyone had any luck with running only 3?

Also i havent seen much discussion on a card like nevermore?

It seems pretty good to stop primeval titan, inferno titan, blood brain elf.. could it be a good tempo card in the sb?

Quote from ccc1522 »

I remember reading about this but I cant find it anymore through my search.

Is running only 3 snapcasters viable if you mainboard 2 azcanta?

Is 4 a must? Has anyone had any luck with running only 3?

youll see people cut snaps when they are playing less instants or 1 cmc spells. you can operate without the full 4, but just be mindful that it is probably one of the best cards in our deck and partially the reason a deck like jeskai can exist.

nevermore is one of those cards that seems pretty good on paper, but doesnt play particularly well. if your opponent doesnt have the card you named in hand, or can play around it; then you are just down a card. you wouldnt want to play it in any kind of fair matchup where its about trading resources, but rather against decks that revolve around 1 or 2 specific cards. it is similar to runed halo in that sense. i would recommend trying it out unless its a super competitive event, since its something best understood with experience and gives a better grasp on how to evaluate cards.

Quote from TheAller »

Quote from tronix »

i can see shaving 1 or 2 bolts but i wouldnt cut them all. otherwise you have to lean more on path to deal with an early bob. also bolt makes electrolyze better. being able to double up on burn spells without 2 for 1'ing yourself comes up quite frequently.

I have 4 Helixes. And I bring in a Celestial Purge. So I have quite a few ways not to die to an early Bob (4x Path, 4x Helix, 1x Purge, 2x Electrolyze) plus of course EE and Verdict later on. Sometimes discard + Bob will just get you, but that's part of the game.

well pathing a bob is a horrendous exchange. one because of the ramp, and two because path is our only targetted removal that can cleanly deal with a goyf or ravine that has grown (purge can snag ravine). everytime you use path on something that isnt one of those you increase the potency of those cards down the line.

mana efficiency also cant be overlooked. helix costing one more can be the difference between being able to snap bolt a BBE cascading into liliana on the draw and not. or something simple like killing a bob and holding up mana for their next play.

its a series of small things, but is enough for me to not want to cut them entirely.

I agree with tronix, personally I cut my burn spells into a 2/2 split postboard vs jund, and Id earlier cut all helixes than all bolts. Boltsnapbolt being much easier to line up than helixsnaphelix is also a big selling point. Finally, bolt lets you kill t2 bobs and scoozes and have up logic knot for liliana both on the play and on the draw, which helix cant do

I was curious about that gearhulk im glad you addressed it. Hes seems okayy but feels like if youre casting him youre probably already winning.. thats how i feel about it at least. Ive been running 3 snappies but just bought the 4th. Its a really good card and allows for a greater range of spells to be played at less then 4 and even down to one. I have found that search for azcanta has serious synergy with snapcaster as you toss what you dont need to draw what you do without losing what you tossed bc of snappy.

I was just curious bc i havent seen anyone running less then 4 in jeskai but i have seen UW run only 2 to some success.

Through my playtesting with only 3 the deck feels good but i will admit that you can tell that it is lacking that oomph or that over the edge power. Especially with azcanta where youre dumping things for what you need.

That being said 3 was not bad at all. Its just that you can tell that it needs that extra bit to really push it over the edge.

Thanks guys!

well of course you are gonna path bob if that is your only play, that isnt what i was implying. its the fact that you have less answers in your deck that arent path.

also good jund players will leverage ravine even with they have stuff going on in their hand. because you have no discard, they can force you to trade a real card for a land; which makes their subsequent plays better. if you dont trade a card ravine becomes much more threatening since its harder to burn out, in which case you are still behind.

it isnt that you have other answers, the point is to have more answers. helix lifegain is a nice upside, but i dont agree with the rationale to cut bolts because you have helix. they each have their unique advantages which i pointed out. the mana efficiency being particularly relevant because bolt + some other play is how you pull ahead on tempo.

basically its the same reason why you keep snares in your deck. you have plenty of removal for their 2 cmc creatures, but this doesnt make snare less useful.

Quote from TheAller »

Bolt vs Helix is debatable. I accept someone can favor Bolt, but personally I'm convinced about Helix.

Blindly attacking with Ravine when you can do other stuff is not a good play if you are the Jund pilot. You want to try not to get your Ravine bolted/helixed. When I play Jund I'm pretty careful how I use my Ravine vs Bolt/Helix decks.

On having less spot removal, sure. That's true. But it's an exchange I'm willing to accept, because the cards I bring in to replace some of my weakest conditional removal, are much more powerful and impact the MU way more. Plus, some of these cards do act like removal of their own.

On your last sentence, I'm not trying to play a tempo game vs Jund, unless the game went in a specific direction that allows me to do so because of their draws being slow. Outside of specific scenarios, trying to tempo them out is how you get wrecked vs Jund. In most cases you need to trade carefully and be the controller, not the aggressor.

The reason to keep in Snare is not that you want to play a tempo game, Snare stays in because it trades with all of their creatures outside of Bloodbraid. The rationale for keeping or cutting Snare in any MU is usually pretty simply the number of relevant CMC2 spells your opponent plays. Jund plays at least 10 (4 Bob, 4 Goyf, 2 Ooze), and all of them are relevant targets.

By the way, THIS, IMHO, is a great post about how to play against Liliana of the Veil from the Blue Moon thread. It applies to Liliana but also to Jund in general. In short: trade carefully.

yeah we each stated our piece. not much reason to go in circles about it. people can try out each and see what they are more comfortable with.

as for ravines, most of the time they arent blindly attacking because theyve seen your hand with discard. besides that though manlands have always been good against control decks for a couple of reasons; only one of which is having something when they run out of gas. it also lets them play around sweepers by not having to overcommit to the board, they can deploy a single creature then swing in with it + a manland. in the case of ravine they can also fire one up immediately after you tap out for verdict to secure a free counter on it to make it a much more dangerous threat for the rest of the game. basically if the jund player is just vommiting cards as they come into their hand then they arent maximizing their resources.

as for the comments on tempo, i guess i should apologize, because i didnt mean to refer to it in the context as the defining strategy you are trying to employ but rather just the concept of tempo as it applies to all games of magic. looking for mana efficient plays that make the opponent spend more time and resources (ie mana) than it takes for your responses puts you in a position of strength since it gives you more breathing space to take actions that further your own gameplan (ie deploying an azcanta or a cantrip). THAT is the reason to play snare. it is a clean answer to a majority of their threat base that costs 1 mana. would you play spell snare if it costed 2 mana? no you wouldnt, because that card would blow.

this is opposed to the tempo strategy where you deploy early threats and ride them to victory by keeping your opponent off balance. eschewing stuff like card advantage because after a point they could have 100 cards in hand, but never have enough time to deploy them.

yeah i think @rickster_'s assessment of liliana is pretty spot on. similar to playing a 2 drop directly into liliana's edict being bad, its also bad for them to tap out liliana uptick we deal with it at instant speed -> untap play a cantrip and leave open mana for their next play. this is what im talking about when referring to tempo positive plays.

yeah ill admit that im probably a little biased when it comes to ravine. i cant tell you how many games ive played against jund, both pre and post unbanning, where the game just grinds to a halt and comes down to colonnade vs. ravine; often times becoming this pitiful sort of race.

tempo also isnt the end all be all. sometimes your hand or draw just points you towards just staying alive long enough until you start slamming cryptics, sweepers, and jace; at which point they fold under the brute force of your plays.

on a new topic, 2 sideboard cards that have been treating me well are Grim Lavamancer and Spell Pierce.

i shelved lavaman quite a while ago because the activation cost seemed too steep when we are leaning heavily on logic knots and azcanta. ive only played like a total of 10 games where he came in out of the board, but everytime it came up it was pretty sweet. definitely gonna keep testing it.

ive also been facing less blue mirrors recently so i swapped out my dispels for pierces. it still great against decks like burn. so far ive gotten to tag a goblin lore, amulet of vigor, cathartic reunion, and a blood moon. all of which looked decidedly like game winning plays.

yeah you are probably right about pierce. its hard to justify sideboard slots for something that could easily end up being low impact.

i view it as desperation card. where the opponent is doing something broken and i just need any cheap form of interaction, no matter what it may be. dispel often doesnt make the cut in these types of matchups. perhaps ill switch over to negates like you suggested, or maybe use the slots for something else entirely.

Hello everyone!

I'm playing in SCG Milwaukee next week, my first large event, and was wondering if anyone would be willing to critique my list that I'm planning on taking:



The one thing I'm most unsure about is how to fit Spell Snare into the list. The easiest thing to do would be to cut a Bolt, but I also like having the 4th one to make sure I can take out an opposing one drop creature. It's also a better top deck later in the game than a Snare usually is. I still would like a Snare in the list as it can take care of a lot of otherwise hard to deal with turn two plays. Any advice at all is appreciated!

I don't think you need to fin Snare in the deck, but if you wanted to, cutting the Bolt would be the way to go. This is exactly what I would run at a big event at the moment, except I'd shave a Purge for another Halo, or the Counterflux for another Halo. Looks great otherwise, and good luck!

Is Electrolyze still effective for two slots in the main deck?

Quote from chaos021 »

Is Electrolyze still effective for two slots in the main deck?

I think so, it still has many many play's where it's a blow out of a card.

Quote from chaos021 »

Is Electrolyze still effective for two slots in the main deck?

nikolich was playing 3, cutting snares entirely. didnt make sense to me. ive been on 1 copy for the longest time.

good against affinity, lingering souls, young pyromancer, and...what else. decent in snapcaster mirrors, and has the side benefit of making your 3 dmg burn spells less of a liability when you can double up - so i like it vs jund.

yeah you wouldnt have to twist my arm to convince me to play 2.