I get that, but you said "it comes in handy" against Living End. It really doesn't in my estimation. Anyway, it's just an opinion. I'll leave it at that.
My problem with spellbomb is that theyll hold on cycling or cast living end in response.
If jund doesn't apply enough pressure they'll just hard cast it
Void is the only thing that really hits them hard with a goyf on turn 2
Personally i feel void is much better than Relic and Spellbound.
Relic kinda hurts as you can do one card a turn, but living end can be cascaded into in response to the sac trigger as you can only sac it once. Which leaves with just a cycle and exiting ur GY. I feel it is stronger with scooze tho as you can kill the gy quickly.
Spellbomb is the weakest imho cantrips and only kills there gy.
Just my personal opinion from what i have seen when playing living end.
Private Mod Note
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Standard: No Time
Modern: Jund Midrange BRG
Legacy: Shardless Bug BUG
So I still have mixed feelings about the land count. Last event I played 25 lands and flooded a lot. This time I played 24, some games I flooded but I did legitimately lose two games from missing land drops. I lost one game to the mirror after he hit Bloodbraid into Dreadbore for my Lili, then Bloodbraid into Fulminator Mage to keep me from getting four lands.
Speaking of which, I know the mirror is about getting 2-for-1s and just incrementally gaining advantage that way. Does that make Fulminator Mages good? My sideboard plan today was EE, two Kitchen Finks, Last Hope, and Tireless Tracker, cutting the 5 discard spells I have in the main. I still have three Mages in my board though. Fulminator becomes mediocre later on, but if it means you get to BBE sooner, does that make it good?
So I still have mixed feelings about the land count. Last event I played 25 lands and flooded a lot. This time I played 24, some games I flooded but I did legitimately lose two games from missing land drops. I lost one game to the mirror after he hit Bloodbraid into Dreadbore for my Lili, then Bloodbraid into Fulminator Mage to keep me from getting four lands.
There's going to be variance with both. If you look back a few pages (or searching my post history might be the easiest way to go about it), I posted some actual results of mana on field with 3 different manabases, 25 land, 24 land, and 24 land+1 mana search card over 10,000 games with each setup. The true answer to this question is that your land count is irrelevant here. What really matters is your mana curve, and that's true of both 24 and 25 lands. 1 drops are especially powerful with a curve because they function as filler to maximize mana usage, and they can be played under both flood and screw.
In my list I'm playing
1 - 10
2 - 15
3 - 7
4 - 4
In all honesty, I'm a bit high on 3's but not by much, and they're all too good to cut. In the lists most others have been proposing, Flying Delvers for example there's
1 - 12
2 - 13
3 - 7
4 - 4
As you can see here, the biggest difference is that some 2's shifted to 1's. That's really the question in deck building in Modern (and Legacy for that matter), striking the balance between efficient 1 drops that make the deck run smoothly, and powerful 2 drops that give more card equity for the card and mana spent. More lands let you marginally shift that balance between 1's and 2's but not by much. Part of it really just comes down to a comfort threshold of consistency vs power. In my opinion though, it's better to favor a couple more 2 drops because of the ability to mulligan.
Dark Steel, while I was on the 25 land build, my opponent boarded in 3 or 4 fulminators against me. He hit me 3 times in fairly quick succession, but It ended up hurting him and he lost.
After reading top player articles on the mirror, I'm not 100% sure we should side out ALL the discard in the mirror, unless we have good cards like Finks, Hazoret, etc. I'm actually off the fulminator plan now for the mirror.
I don't think anyone has mentioned it yet but for the Modern Super League, ChannelFireball's group came up with a Jund list that looks very close to the list that we've come up with here:
3 scooze and LtLH in the main, 12 1-drop discard spells, they decided to take out the 1 terminate and have the 25th land, 4 manlands, and no fulminator in the side.
I play Living End and I’m a lot better of a Living End pilot than a Jund pilot, unfortunately. I have some thoughts on Spellbomb from both angles.
Here’s the deal: When playing LE, I don’t get worried or upset at all to see a Spellbomb slammed down in front of me. It’s just going to slow me down a little bit. But the thing is, I don’t get upset about any GY hate. That includes RiP and Void. That’s what Krosan Grip is for. That’s what Beast Within is for. I draw a VERY large percentage of my deck in most games because of cycling, and chances are I will find a way to get rid of that hate piece, and if it takes me too long I’ll just start hardcasting dudes. This is why a lot of successful lists are running so many Archfiend of Ifnir now even though it’s our worst cycler. It’s our best hardcast.
Spelbomb, Relic, RiP, Void; they’re all the same. They slow us down a little, not shut us down. RiP can occasionally be the exception to this. Sometimes an timely (or untimely) RiP can hurt pretty bad if you overextend into it just because it clears the yard AND doesn’t let you rebuild.
Where I’m going with all this is that Spellbomb is just as good as the others against LE. What wins the MU is a Spelbomb to buy time, followed by Scooze to back it up. Targeted discard for the Cascades. Establishing a clock. Stockpiling Terminates and Pulses for the hardcasts. Jund LE (it’s weird to have to distinguish now) is a super grindy deck with a lot of outs. It not nearly as linear as people think and doesn’t fold to any one GY hate piece.
Spellbomb is good. Just know that they will board in some number of Ingot Chewers after game one. It’s a safe bet. No one is playing the enchantment hate pieces right now. It’s all Spellbombs and Relics.
Watch out for Blood Moon. A lot of them are on it. If they’re fetching basics, you know the drill.
And I’d say watch out for Krosan Grip with your Relics and Spellbombs but there’s really no way to play around it. That card is REALLY solid.
Private Mod Note
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MODERN: BRGJUNDGRB---BRHOLLOW ONERB---BGELVESGB---BRGLIVING ENDGRB---GWBOGLESWG EDH: BRGKARRTHUS, TYRANT OF JUNDGRB
Went 3-1 tonight. I’m tired and typing in a phone so I’m not gonna go into great detail.
The deck was amazing!! I love the list and I’m exceedingly happy about it. I had turn-one discard almost all the time, the curve was great, the 24-lands were great, the MB Lavaman was a BEAST or removal fodder to clear the way for Bob or Scooze, and the 9th Fetch felt good.
Oh, I absolutely loved the SB Scooze plan! The extra Terminate was amazing to have, and the Scooze was there if I needed him after game one.
Olivia was great tonight. She stays in.
Round 1: Junk (1-2)
This is embarrassing. My track record with this guy (my buddy) is 1-6. It sucks. Tireless Tracker is stupid good. I swear I lose to those ******* clues every time. I wish I could run him. It was a fun round, the matches are always neck and neck, but he always seems to pull ahead. I’m starting to get annoyed about this one and would appreciate any tips.
Round 2: Grishoalbrand (2-1)
Round one he goes off. I thought maybe I could get him with a Lightning Bolt while he’s drawing his deck, but he’s wise to me and bothers to use Shoal again before drawing another 7 and going down to 3.
Game two I followed hand disruption with a Spellbomb and then a Scooze.
Game three I had a ton of hand disruption and a clock.
Round 3: GB Elves (2-0)
Junded him out.
Round 4: Jank Doubling Season/PWalkers deck (2-0)
He got paired up. The deck is scary like every other big mana deck. The Walkers’ ults are game-ending. Found enough disruption and won both games by the skin of my teeth.
I’m falling asleep as I type this. I’ll try to add more detail later.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
MODERN: BRGJUNDGRB---BRHOLLOW ONERB---BGELVESGB---BRGLIVING ENDGRB---GWBOGLESWG EDH: BRGKARRTHUS, TYRANT OF JUNDGRB
I get that, but you said "it comes in handy" against Living End. It really doesn't in my estimation. Anyway, it's just an opinion. I'll leave it at that.
My problem with spellbomb is that theyll hold on cycling or cast living end in response.
If jund doesn't apply enough pressure they'll just hard cast it
Void is the only thing that really hits them hard with a goyf on turn 2
Personally i feel void is much better than Relic and Spellbound.
Relic kinda hurts as you can do one card a turn, but living end can be cascaded into in response to the sac trigger as you can only sac it once. Which leaves with just a cycle and exiting ur GY. I feel it is stronger with scooze tho as you can kill the gy quickly.
Spellbomb is the weakest imho cantrips and only kills there gy.
Just my personal opinion from what i have seen when playing living end.
I agree what Piney_Tinecones said about the living end matchup. It basically doesn't matter which GY hate we have, no single GY hate will likely shut them down. In that sense, Void of course is better in theory, but like Piney said, Living End doesn't care what they face. Since Void is not an option for now (And Relic is a card which we never would consider btw), we basically only have Spellbomb left as impactful GY hate. While Spellbomb alone does not win the matchup (and again, no other GY hate available to us does) you can still get a decent shot at winning if you combine it with multiple Spellbombs, or add Ooze to the mix. Therefore I think that among the viable GY hate cards we should be considering in the first place right now (which are Cage, Ooze and Spellbomb) Spellbomb is surely the best one out of them, while also being most versatile against the field.
However, we are drifting off. This whole discussion was about whether we should cut SPellbomb to include Anger for example in its spot, and my opinion is that we should not for an open meta. Anger does not cover, or impact, every GY based strategy, wheras Spellbomb does (regardless of its effectiveness).
Sideboarding guide regarding the BR Hollow One troubles me.. I mean why would we want to side 4 x LoTV out against Delve fatties and Hollow Ones? Is there some merit to leave bolts and pushes in opposite to LoTV?
I don't think anyone has mentioned it yet but for the Modern Super League, ChannelFireball's group came up with a Jund list that looks very close to the list that we've come up with here:
3 scooze and LtLH in the main, 12 1-drop discard spells, they decided to take out the 1 terminate and have the 25th land, 4 manlands, and no fulminator in the side.
Obviously they don't have to play fulminator at the league, they can just ban Tron or Titanshift.
The list is matching up a little with what we're saying. I just don't think running 0x terminates is correct, but I cut down to 24 lands and -1 Scooze to fit them in there. I really think eventually they're going to come back down to 24 lands. Those 5x man-lands were an overreaction to Jace decks. They're already lowering the curve and doing exactly what we predicted would happen.
Grafdigger's cage doesn't work against Living End! That's a very common mistake to newer Jund/modern players. I'm sure I did that when I was new, too, I think.
Haha, glad you said something so you didn't do it in a real game.
Living End exiles the creatures from the graveyard and returns them from the EXILE so Cage does not work, like Spsiegel987 has already stated.
Regarding the Hollow One matchup I would cut Lily but keep BBE. Lily's dicard ability is not very good against them and they often have a second creature next to the fattie. They often reduce their life total very aggressively so a hasty BBE can help kill them out of the blue or can bring another blocker on the board.
After having read all the comments from the last few days, I have to admit that I really like the idea of the 3rd Ooze in the sideboard. I would have never come to that idea by myself, but that's the advantage of discussing in a forum like this.
Anyway, here is my updated decklist, which I will be playing tomorrow:
If I see an uptick in Humans, I will add a 2nd Lavamancer to the sideboard instead of the Last Hope.
Artifact decks are not played an awful lot at my store currently, but I will always respect these decks. Therefore I am not going to cut a Grudge anytime soon.
I have been playing with 2 Spellbombs for quite some time now and they have never disappointed me. Leyline is a card I have not been a big fan of outside
Legacy.
If jund doesn't apply enough pressure they'll just hard cast it
Void is the only thing that really hits them hard with a goyf on turn 2
Personally i feel void is much better than Relic and Spellbound.
Relic kinda hurts as you can do one card a turn, but living end can be cascaded into in response to the sac trigger as you can only sac it once. Which leaves with just a cycle and exiting ur GY. I feel it is stronger with scooze tho as you can kill the gy quickly.
Spellbomb is the weakest imho cantrips and only kills there gy.
Just my personal opinion from what i have seen when playing living end.
Modern: Jund Midrange BRG
Legacy: Shardless Bug BUG
Speaking of which, I know the mirror is about getting 2-for-1s and just incrementally gaining advantage that way. Does that make Fulminator Mages good? My sideboard plan today was EE, two Kitchen Finks, Last Hope, and Tireless Tracker, cutting the 5 discard spells I have in the main. I still have three Mages in my board though. Fulminator becomes mediocre later on, but if it means you get to BBE sooner, does that make it good?
Grixis Death's Shadow, Jund, UW Tron, Jeskai Control, Storm, Counters Company, Eldrazi Tron, Affinity, Living End, Infect, Merfolk, Dredge, Ad Nauseam, Amulet, Bogles, Eldrazi Tron, Mono U Tron, Lantern, Mardu Pyromancer
There's going to be variance with both. If you look back a few pages (or searching my post history might be the easiest way to go about it), I posted some actual results of mana on field with 3 different manabases, 25 land, 24 land, and 24 land+1 mana search card over 10,000 games with each setup. The true answer to this question is that your land count is irrelevant here. What really matters is your mana curve, and that's true of both 24 and 25 lands. 1 drops are especially powerful with a curve because they function as filler to maximize mana usage, and they can be played under both flood and screw.
In my list I'm playing
1 - 10
2 - 15
3 - 7
4 - 4
In all honesty, I'm a bit high on 3's but not by much, and they're all too good to cut. In the lists most others have been proposing, Flying Delvers for example there's
1 - 12
2 - 13
3 - 7
4 - 4
As you can see here, the biggest difference is that some 2's shifted to 1's. That's really the question in deck building in Modern (and Legacy for that matter), striking the balance between efficient 1 drops that make the deck run smoothly, and powerful 2 drops that give more card equity for the card and mana spent. More lands let you marginally shift that balance between 1's and 2's but not by much. Part of it really just comes down to a comfort threshold of consistency vs power. In my opinion though, it's better to favor a couple more 2 drops because of the ability to mulligan.
After reading top player articles on the mirror, I'm not 100% sure we should side out ALL the discard in the mirror, unless we have good cards like Finks, Hazoret, etc. I'm actually off the fulminator plan now for the mirror.
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Bloodbraid Elf
Land (25)
1 Twilight Mire
2 Swamp
3 Raging Ravine
1 Treetop Village
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Stomping Ground
1 Forest
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Kolaghan's Command
3 Lightning Bolt
3 Fatal Push
1 Abrupt Decay
3 Thoughtseize
1 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
Planeswalker (5)
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
4 Liliana of the Veil
2 Grim Lavamancer
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Anger of the Gods
2 Collective Brutality
2 Tireless Tracker
3 scooze and LtLH in the main, 12 1-drop discard spells, they decided to take out the 1 terminate and have the 25th land, 4 manlands, and no fulminator in the side.
Here’s the deal: When playing LE, I don’t get worried or upset at all to see a Spellbomb slammed down in front of me. It’s just going to slow me down a little bit. But the thing is, I don’t get upset about any GY hate. That includes RiP and Void. That’s what Krosan Grip is for. That’s what Beast Within is for. I draw a VERY large percentage of my deck in most games because of cycling, and chances are I will find a way to get rid of that hate piece, and if it takes me too long I’ll just start hardcasting dudes. This is why a lot of successful lists are running so many Archfiend of Ifnir now even though it’s our worst cycler. It’s our best hardcast.
Spelbomb, Relic, RiP, Void; they’re all the same. They slow us down a little, not shut us down. RiP can occasionally be the exception to this. Sometimes an timely (or untimely) RiP can hurt pretty bad if you overextend into it just because it clears the yard AND doesn’t let you rebuild.
Where I’m going with all this is that Spellbomb is just as good as the others against LE. What wins the MU is a Spelbomb to buy time, followed by Scooze to back it up. Targeted discard for the Cascades. Establishing a clock. Stockpiling Terminates and Pulses for the hardcasts. Jund LE (it’s weird to have to distinguish now) is a super grindy deck with a lot of outs. It not nearly as linear as people think and doesn’t fold to any one GY hate piece.
Spellbomb is good. Just know that they will board in some number of Ingot Chewers after game one. It’s a safe bet. No one is playing the enchantment hate pieces right now. It’s all Spellbombs and Relics.
Watch out for Blood Moon. A lot of them are on it. If they’re fetching basics, you know the drill.
And I’d say watch out for Krosan Grip with your Relics and Spellbombs but there’s really no way to play around it. That card is REALLY solid.
BRGJUNDGRB---BRHOLLOW ONERB---BGELVESGB---BRGLIVING ENDGRB---GWBOGLESWG
EDH:
BRGKARRTHUS, TYRANT OF JUNDGRB
The deck was amazing!! I love the list and I’m exceedingly happy about it. I had turn-one discard almost all the time, the curve was great, the 24-lands were great, the MB Lavaman was a BEAST or removal fodder to clear the way for Bob or Scooze, and the 9th Fetch felt good.
Oh, I absolutely loved the SB Scooze plan! The extra Terminate was amazing to have, and the Scooze was there if I needed him after game one.
Olivia was great tonight. She stays in.
Round 1: Junk (1-2)
This is embarrassing. My track record with this guy (my buddy) is 1-6. It sucks. Tireless Tracker is stupid good. I swear I lose to those ******* clues every time. I wish I could run him. It was a fun round, the matches are always neck and neck, but he always seems to pull ahead. I’m starting to get annoyed about this one and would appreciate any tips.
Round 2: Grishoalbrand (2-1)
Round one he goes off. I thought maybe I could get him with a Lightning Bolt while he’s drawing his deck, but he’s wise to me and bothers to use Shoal again before drawing another 7 and going down to 3.
Game two I followed hand disruption with a Spellbomb and then a Scooze.
Game three I had a ton of hand disruption and a clock.
Round 3: GB Elves (2-0)
Junded him out.
Round 4: Jank Doubling Season/PWalkers deck (2-0)
He got paired up. The deck is scary like every other big mana deck. The Walkers’ ults are game-ending. Found enough disruption and won both games by the skin of my teeth.
I’m falling asleep as I type this. I’ll try to add more detail later.
BRGJUNDGRB---BRHOLLOW ONERB---BGELVESGB---BRGLIVING ENDGRB---GWBOGLESWG
EDH:
BRGKARRTHUS, TYRANT OF JUNDGRB
I agree what Piney_Tinecones said about the living end matchup. It basically doesn't matter which GY hate we have, no single GY hate will likely shut them down. In that sense, Void of course is better in theory, but like Piney said, Living End doesn't care what they face. Since Void is not an option for now (And Relic is a card which we never would consider btw), we basically only have Spellbomb left as impactful GY hate. While Spellbomb alone does not win the matchup (and again, no other GY hate available to us does) you can still get a decent shot at winning if you combine it with multiple Spellbombs, or add Ooze to the mix. Therefore I think that among the viable GY hate cards we should be considering in the first place right now (which are Cage, Ooze and Spellbomb) Spellbomb is surely the best one out of them, while also being most versatile against the field.
However, we are drifting off. This whole discussion was about whether we should cut SPellbomb to include Anger for example in its spot, and my opinion is that we should not for an open meta. Anger does not cover, or impact, every GY based strategy, wheras Spellbomb does (regardless of its effectiveness).
Modern: Jund Midrange BRG
Legacy: Shardless Bug BUG
I've seen people side out the LOTVs and I've seen people side out like 3x BBE's
I have no clue whats correct
Obviously they don't have to play fulminator at the league, they can just ban Tron or Titanshift.
The list is matching up a little with what we're saying. I just don't think running 0x terminates is correct, but I cut down to 24 lands and -1 Scooze to fit them in there. I really think eventually they're going to come back down to 24 lands. Those 5x man-lands were an overreaction to Jace decks. They're already lowering the curve and doing exactly what we predicted would happen.
Haha, glad you said something so you didn't do it in a real game.
Regarding the Hollow One matchup I would cut Lily but keep BBE. Lily's dicard ability is not very good against them and they often have a second creature next to the fattie. They often reduce their life total very aggressively so a hasty BBE can help kill them out of the blue or can bring another blocker on the board.
Legacy: UWR Miracles [https://deckstats.net/decks/44442/1092831-uwr-miracles-2]
I actually think maybe cutting 1x Bob on the draw may be correct, as casting Bob on the back heel against that deck is difficult
Anyway, here is my updated decklist, which I will be playing tomorrow:
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Bloodbraid Elf
Planeswalker: 5
4 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Spells: 17
3 Fatal Push
3 Lightning Bolt
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Terminate
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Twilight Mire
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
3 Raging Ravine
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Scavenging Ooze
3 Fulminator Mage
2 Kitchen Finks
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Golgari Charm
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Collective Brutality
If I see an uptick in Humans, I will add a 2nd Lavamancer to the sideboard instead of the Last Hope.
Artifact decks are not played an awful lot at my store currently, but I will always respect these decks. Therefore I am not going to cut a Grudge anytime soon.
I have been playing with 2 Spellbombs for quite some time now and they have never disappointed me. Leyline is a card I have not been a big fan of outside
Legacy.