I feel hesitant spending 40 dollars on manamorphose, I'm not even sure how legit it is.
It does look like Jund is back to where it was, which is disappointing. I do think it's tier 2 now though, as opposed to being garbage tier before the ban.
I'm not familiar enough with Mardu, but I think Shadow certainly looks well positioned again
Oh Manamorphose is legit. I was also hesitant to pull the trigger, but the deck is an absolute freight train when you cut some of the clunkier cards like Liliana for Manamorphose. I was playing on Monday, and on turn two with only a fetchland in the graveyard, I played manamorphose, which drew into Street Wraith, cycle Wraith and draw Bauble, crack Bauble, play a Grim Flayer and now I have delirium. It smooths out delirium really nicely, and also makes the deck much more resilient to Blood Moon and mana disruption.
Just an idea I had that I wanted to bounce off you guys. I could draft up a possible list but I am thinking like 4-6 4 drops and 23 lands with the 4 Steves. Seems fun.
I've been running 23 lands for the last 3 months. Seems stable as long as your gamplan doesn't revolve around a T4 BBE necesarily, wich is probably the reason why I liked it (let's face it, in blue control matches missing a turn 4 BBE is not that big of a deal most of the time). I was also running 6-7 3-drops, and cascades felt good all the same.
I've also been running Blood moon as a 2-of in the sideboard to complement with the Mages and I really liked it. It is a bummer to loose the ravines, tough, but it does restrict the opponent even further.
I liked the mana dork / land idea, but maybe Sakura Tribe elder is just too slow at the moment. Do share your thoughts if you try it, it would be a radical departure. I'll stick with my 3-BBE list for a while, I just have no better ideas as to where to go.
I am starting to think that Bloodbraid Elf feels bad in our deck mostly because it doesn't pair very well with Dark Confidant. They're both card advantage engines with no real synergy with each other. It feels bad flipping an Elf off of Bob and hitting Bob off of a cascade trigger doesn't always mean much.
I have tried the Jund list without BBE, which I did enjoy, but what if we went in the other direction? I'm thinking to support BBE maybe Sakura Tribe Elder could slot into the Bob slot to help cast it a turn earlier while also smoothing out the mana and letting us run a few more 4 drops. Maybe even run Blood Moon out of the sideboard.
Just an idea I had that I wanted to bounce off you guys. I could draft up a possible list but I am thinking like 4-6 4 drops and 23 lands with the 4 Steves. Seems fun.
I think BBE in particular is not big of a problem in conjunction to Bob. Its just that BBE often means its the only thing you do that turn and you need to hit something particular in order to be good. I personally think topdecking (or cascading into) Sakura would be way more devastating than topdecking Bob. Bob can at least potentially draw you into more spells. Sakura is topdecked just the same as topdecking a land. And thats already a big problem in Jund.
Kalitas is looking fantastic. I wonder if Jund should go back to just playing 2x 4 mana creatures again, or if it should play 2x BBE, 1x Kalitas, 1x Grim lamvamancer. I don't even know anymore.
Seems like a reasonable creature suite. I personally started with 3 BBE and 1 Lavamancer with Kalitas in the SB.
I feel hesitant spending 40 dollars on manamorphose, I'm not even sure how legit it is.
It does look like Jund is back to where it was, which is disappointing. I do think it's tier 2 now though, as opposed to being garbage tier before the ban.
I'm not familiar enough with Mardu, but I think Shadow certainly looks well positioned again
You can also use Manamorphose in Mardu. There is no concensus about it yet though. But you can see lists running anywhere between 0 and 4 copies of it.
I think BBE in particular is not big of a problem in conjunction to Bob. Its just that BBE often means its the only thing you do that turn and you need to hit something particular in order to be good. I personally think topdecking (or cascading into) Sakura would be way more devastating than topdecking Bob. Bob can at least potentially draw you into more spells. Sakura is topdecked just the same as topdecking a land. And thats already a big problem in Jund.
I think this sums up the BBE thing very well, great point. Another good observation about the Steve thing as well - this is why I wanted to toss the idea out there before I went ahead and took it to an FNM. In my small amount of testing with 4 drops in normal Jund lists I think Huntmaster has performed much better than BBE.
Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have. - René Descartes
I would turn that Mountain into a 4th Cliffs, the Brutality into a 4th Lili. Apart from that I like the mainboard, the decision to play only 2 BBEs is the way to go and makes the most sense at the moment.
For the past few weeks I was playing a relatively large league (14 rounds+top 8, I took first place) where I went with 3 BBE and a Chandra, Pyromaster alongside 24.5 lands (24 lands and a Nissa to search), was that 4 4 drops is too many. 3 would work much better.
Also, to the poster who suggested Sakura Tribe Elder earlier, Traverse the Ulvenwald is much better. I've been playing the Traverse since it was suggested as an alternative to the Nissa a few pages ago and I've been loving it. I have had very few issues in enabling Delirium.
I don't think we can speak of luck if clearly more aggro decks Top 8 lately than Control, Midrange or Combo.
I think I based my impression on reasonable data actually, which are not the MODO Leagues, but the GPs, SCG Opens and Online Challenges. And there you clearly see Jund performing badly atm. Humans and Hollow One consistantly show up in those last of those events, but Jund only at Hartford at top 16 once.
I think its not really a matter of innovation, which I explained before, Jund is a highly customizable deck, and if you don't adjust to a meta then I think you give away precious win% points for free.
Well, if Jund doesn't have 2 copies in every Top 8 but Humans and Hollow One does, how can we talk about a fair and balanced Modern format in that case? Clearly it means Jund is not as good compared to the other decks then.
I don't think racing is a viable plan against both Humans and Hollow One. Just because we are technically able to race, doesn't mean we should execute it against most decks. At this point you are mimicing a bad aggro deck. And Humans and Hollow One are both way faster to race, and I strongly believe if you choose racing as the plan in those matchups that you will misassign your own role in those matchups according to Who is the Beatdown.
So. I ran a "old Jund" build with main-deck Grim lavamancer and 2x Huntmasters and no BBE whatsoever and I liked it better at my local meta. (Lots of burn and Humans.)
I went 4-1 yesterday, with my loss being to a Tron.
Another personal choices also were:
Running 4 Bolts + 2 Pushes.
Running 3 Inquisitions + 2 Seizes.
Lili, the last hope main deck.
Landcount was 23.
I feel like cards like Lavamancer, Huntmaster and Kalitas are the way to go vs. Humans (And maybe Hollow one to an extent) as they have "staying power" and allow us to kill creatures recurrently, instead of relying on finding our removal. No matter what we do, Jund will always have less answers than decks like Humans and Hollowone have threats.
So cards that, if left alive, can give us answers every turn are the way to go.
Huntmaster offers us blockers when it flips one way, and kills threats when it flips the other. Also, if it gets bounced with Reflector Mage its o.k.
Lavamancer is just awesome if we find it early
Lili, last hope kills Ghasts and hierarchs, Nullifies incoming damage.
And so on.
I don’t think jund is tier 1, but I will say I think it’s the best fair/interactive deck in modern. The problem is that fair and interactive isn’t really on the menu anymore. I think jund is solidly tier 1.5, and the lack of results we’ve seen from it recently has a lot to do with people misidentifying what the real meta was and building their decks too greedily. That makes sense when your opponent is playing control/midrange, but not when they’re dumping a 4/4 on turn 1.
Aggro and combo is the new meta, and I think if jund players adjust accordingly we’ll see it rise back to the top. For instance, sweepers are criminally underplayed in jund sideboards. As long as Humans and Hollow One are the top decks I don’t see myself leaving home without 2 in the board, or some other 3-mana sweeper.
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Modern UMerfolk GBWMelira PodRIP GBW Abzan Midrange GBR Jund Midrange
So. I ran a "old Jund" build with main-deck Grim lavamancer and 2x Huntmasters and no BBE whatsoever and I liked it better at my local meta. (Lots of burn and Humans.)
I went 4-1 yesterday, with my loss being to a Tron.
Another personal choices also were:
Running 4 Bolts + 2 Pushes.
Running 3 Inquisitions + 2 Seizes.
Lili, the last hope main deck.
Landcount was 23.
I feel like cards like Lavamancer, Huntmaster and Kalitas are the way to go vs. Humans (And maybe Hollow one to an extent) as they have "staying power" and allow us to kill creatures recurrently, instead of relying on finding our removal. No matter what we do, Jund will always have less answers than decks like Humans and Hollowone have threats.
So cards that, if left alive, can give us answers every turn are the way to go.
Huntmaster offers us blockers when it flips one way, and kills threats when it flips the other. Also, if it gets bounced with Reflector Mage its o.k.
Lavamancer is just awesome if we find it early
Lili, last hope kills Ghasts and hierarchs, Nullifies incoming damage.
And so on.
I'll keep my BBE's on the shelf for now...
I like the sound of your build! As everyone else has mentioned I think our 4 drop slot is just starting to become like it was before - preference. If you like BBE then you can run those but some people might have interest in Huntmaster, Kalitas, Hazoret, etc. That's the appeal of the deck is that it can be built for how you want to play it.
Regardless of how Jund might be positioned I will find myself wanting to play it. Even if we have some more bad matchups than before I think we can still beat any deck with good play.
The Jund deck that won the MTGO challenge event was on 2x BBE, 1x kalitas, 1x Grim Lavamancer main, with 1x kalitas in the board as well.
Has anyone here tried Abrade in the board yet? I've been playing a bit of Jund Death's Shadow with 2x Abrade in the board, and it's been amazing. Great against Humans, great against Hollow Ones, and you just bring it in for any other matchup where you need more cheap removal, or artifact destruction. It's not a heavy impact sideboard card like what Jund is looking for, but it really impressed me in Jund DS so far so maybe it's worth a shot.
First off: this post was not against you delver, as you are always reasonable, and you write mostly the same thinkgs i think off.
No worries, I did not feel it was aimed against me or something, also my post wasn't meant to be a complaint about anything. Just wanted to through my 2c on this topic.
On my Luck argument, if there would be a deck that is truly op, and a lot of pros are playing it, than it there would be 4 or more copies in the top 8, in the hand of pros. But in Modern there are around 30 viable decks that you can win a tournement with, and that are nearly equal in power level. Befor the unban, jund was not one of these decks, but now it is. If half of the 30 decks make top 16 of a tournement it does not mean that the other half is bad, and 5 Tournements are not a significant sample sizefor that amount of decks.
I agree, there is no truly OP deck. But that would mean with upcoming relevant results, we will also see the other half of the 30 decks in top 8s somewhere. I am not sure its a matter of variance here. I personally think that Jund won't have results like Hollow One from the MOCS where of the top 15 decks 6 copies where occupied by Hollow One for example. At least not until the meta shifts a bit again. But thats just my opinion.
On the Point of Racing: Preassuring the opponent life total is very important in jund, as the thread of dying to a attack plus bolt puts the opponent under preassure, and when there is no clear line to victory we can capitalize on that. Most Aggro decks can not dissrupt an opponent game plan and close the game quick, that is the strength of a deck like jund. If you want to take total control of the game (wich was junds gameplan for a while in 2017), there are currently better decks than Jund (Mardu for example). We have the advantage of the curve of t1 Discard, t2 Goyf, t3 Double removal or Lili, turn 4 Elf, turn 5 Killing the opponent, wich currently no other midrange or control deck can do. We have a lot more lines od play in the deck that are equally as quick.
Well, ideally this is a good strategy, but the problem I have with this is, that according to my experience, either our own draws or also our own manabase doesn't support that. Also opponents put you on the backfoot so quickly now that more often than not you are forced to kill important creatures rather than developing your own board. And if the opposing threats are too overwhelming, we run out of removal or topdeck awkward cards like tapped lands or BBEs which kinda need to find a good spell at this point or otherwise its just a chump blocker. If I could consistantly execute the plan or turn 1 discard into turn 2 goyf/bob into turn 3 Lili or removal I would not be talking about it. But I found, that our problem now is that we cannot consistantly do that. And Modern as a format sets the bar really high for powerful things to do, where turn 1 discard into turn 2 goyf might not even be comparable to the best things to do in modern right now.
The only thing i do not agree on that bbe in a board stall is just a chump blocker, i think of him as the best card. Nearly all cascades are good, and 3 power hast can swing a board state so that hte opponent has to block unprofitable.
On a board stall, maybe yeah. But I was talking about being behind on board since the top decks in the format pressure you hard in that regard. And I think, if you miss on the cascade a 4 mana 3/2 wont turn the state into our favor.
Hey guys! Ive updated my list and was looking for some feedback. Ive been loving 25 lands the whole time. I know a lot here are saying 25 lands are "clunky". Hasn't been the case in my experience. Are we talking about the spells in those builds? I do realize the lands coming in tapped is an issue but seems prevalent in the 24 land builds as well. Ive decided to update my sideboard to hedge more against the humans deck. As I feel this can be a great matchup for us. Also while keeping Hollow one, Tron, and Bogles as the decks I'm looking for the most help after sideboarding. So far, especially against Humans online has been working out well. I'm going to be substituting fulminator for damping sphere. I was also considering cage instead of spellbomb. Otherwise, I'm feeling good about it for these matchups plus having game against other decks. Let me know what you guys think. Kept mainboard the same as more of my issues stemmed from not having enough answers post sideboard. Thanks!
Lost round 1 to nykthos-wave in game three off a topdecked genesis wave, and a great one at that. Beat UWR control, mono-red budget aggro, and storm on the way back. Overall the maindeck felt pretty great, the sideboard is alright but I don’t think it’s perfect.
What do people think of jund charm? I kinda want a third sweeper effect, but wasn’t sure how to implement it. Post-Dominaria, I’m thinking of this sideboard:
Thoughts? I feel like having 3 sweepers and a fatal push in the board might be overkill, but I really really despise losing to dorky creature decks, aggro, and just go wide strategies in general.
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Modern UMerfolk GBWMelira PodRIP GBW Abzan Midrange GBR Jund Midrange
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I feel hesitant spending 40 dollars on manamorphose, I'm not even sure how legit it is.
It does look like Jund is back to where it was, which is disappointing. I do think it's tier 2 now though, as opposed to being garbage tier before the ban.
I'm not familiar enough with Mardu, but I think Shadow certainly looks well positioned again
I've been running 23 lands for the last 3 months. Seems stable as long as your gamplan doesn't revolve around a T4 BBE necesarily, wich is probably the reason why I liked it (let's face it, in blue control matches missing a turn 4 BBE is not that big of a deal most of the time). I was also running 6-7 3-drops, and cascades felt good all the same.
I've also been running Blood moon as a 2-of in the sideboard to complement with the Mages and I really liked it. It is a bummer to loose the ravines, tough, but it does restrict the opponent even further.
I liked the mana dork / land idea, but maybe Sakura Tribe elder is just too slow at the moment. Do share your thoughts if you try it, it would be a radical departure. I'll stick with my 3-BBE list for a while, I just have no better ideas as to where to go.
I think BBE in particular is not big of a problem in conjunction to Bob. Its just that BBE often means its the only thing you do that turn and you need to hit something particular in order to be good. I personally think topdecking (or cascading into) Sakura would be way more devastating than topdecking Bob. Bob can at least potentially draw you into more spells. Sakura is topdecked just the same as topdecking a land. And thats already a big problem in Jund.
Seems like a reasonable creature suite. I personally started with 3 BBE and 1 Lavamancer with Kalitas in the SB.
That is true.
You can also use Manamorphose in Mardu. There is no concensus about it yet though. But you can see lists running anywhere between 0 and 4 copies of it.
I think this sums up the BBE thing very well, great point. Another good observation about the Steve thing as well - this is why I wanted to toss the idea out there before I went ahead and took it to an FNM. In my small amount of testing with 4 drops in normal Jund lists I think Huntmaster has performed much better than BBE.
On mobile, will try to edit and add the list.
Edit:
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Dark Confidant
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Collective Brutality
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Thoughtseize
3 Fatal Push
2 Kolaghan's Command
3 Lightning Bolt
1 Terminate
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Forest
1 Mountain
2 Overgrown Tomb
3 Raging Ravine
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
1 Treetop Village
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Collective Brutality
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Damnation
3 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
3 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Obstinate Baloth
1 Rakdos Charm
Don't like the sideboard
With hollow one around I think 3x ooze seems right
For the past few weeks I was playing a relatively large league (14 rounds+top 8, I took first place) where I went with 3 BBE and a Chandra, Pyromaster alongside 24.5 lands (24 lands and a Nissa to search), was that 4 4 drops is too many. 3 would work much better.
Also, to the poster who suggested Sakura Tribe Elder earlier, Traverse the Ulvenwald is much better. I've been playing the Traverse since it was suggested as an alternative to the Nissa a few pages ago and I've been loving it. I have had very few issues in enabling Delirium.
I think I based my impression on reasonable data actually, which are not the MODO Leagues, but the GPs, SCG Opens and Online Challenges. And there you clearly see Jund performing badly atm. Humans and Hollow One consistantly show up in those last of those events, but Jund only at Hartford at top 16 once.
I think its not really a matter of innovation, which I explained before, Jund is a highly customizable deck, and if you don't adjust to a meta then I think you give away precious win% points for free.
Well, if Jund doesn't have 2 copies in every Top 8 but Humans and Hollow One does, how can we talk about a fair and balanced Modern format in that case? Clearly it means Jund is not as good compared to the other decks then.
I don't think racing is a viable plan against both Humans and Hollow One. Just because we are technically able to race, doesn't mean we should execute it against most decks. At this point you are mimicing a bad aggro deck. And Humans and Hollow One are both way faster to race, and I strongly believe if you choose racing as the plan in those matchups that you will misassign your own role in those matchups according to Who is the Beatdown.
I went 4-1 yesterday, with my loss being to a Tron.
Another personal choices also were:
Running 4 Bolts + 2 Pushes.
Running 3 Inquisitions + 2 Seizes.
Lili, the last hope main deck.
Landcount was 23.
I feel like cards like Lavamancer, Huntmaster and Kalitas are the way to go vs. Humans (And maybe Hollow one to an extent) as they have "staying power" and allow us to kill creatures recurrently, instead of relying on finding our removal. No matter what we do, Jund will always have less answers than decks like Humans and Hollowone have threats.
So cards that, if left alive, can give us answers every turn are the way to go.
Huntmaster offers us blockers when it flips one way, and kills threats when it flips the other. Also, if it gets bounced with Reflector Mage its o.k.
Lavamancer is just awesome if we find it early
Lili, last hope kills Ghasts and hierarchs, Nullifies incoming damage.
And so on.
I'll keep my BBE's on the shelf for now...
Aggro and combo is the new meta, and I think if jund players adjust accordingly we’ll see it rise back to the top. For instance, sweepers are criminally underplayed in jund sideboards. As long as Humans and Hollow One are the top decks I don’t see myself leaving home without 2 in the board, or some other 3-mana sweeper.
UMerfolkGBW
Melira PodRIPGBW Abzan Midrange
GBR Jund Midrange
EDH
GBR Prossh
I like the sound of your build! As everyone else has mentioned I think our 4 drop slot is just starting to become like it was before - preference. If you like BBE then you can run those but some people might have interest in Huntmaster, Kalitas, Hazoret, etc. That's the appeal of the deck is that it can be built for how you want to play it.
Regardless of how Jund might be positioned I will find myself wanting to play it. Even if we have some more bad matchups than before I think we can still beat any deck with good play.
Has anyone here tried Abrade in the board yet? I've been playing a bit of Jund Death's Shadow with 2x Abrade in the board, and it's been amazing. Great against Humans, great against Hollow Ones, and you just bring it in for any other matchup where you need more cheap removal, or artifact destruction. It's not a heavy impact sideboard card like what Jund is looking for, but it really impressed me in Jund DS so far so maybe it's worth a shot.
On a board stall, maybe yeah. But I was talking about being behind on board since the top decks in the format pressure you hard in that regard. And I think, if you miss on the cascade a 4 mana 3/2 wont turn the state into our favor.
4x Bloodstained mire
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Blackcleave cliffs
2x overgrown tomb
1x blood crypt
1x stomping ground
3x raging ravine
1x Treetop village
1x twilight mire
2x swamp
1x forest
1x mountain
4x Tarmogoyf
4x bloodbraid elf
4x dark confidant
2x scavenging ooze
Spells 21
4x lightning bolt
4x liliana of the veil
3x inquisition of Kozilek
2x Thoughtseize
2x Terminate
2x maelstrom pulse
2x Kolaghan's Command
1x fatal push
1x abrupt decay
2x damping sphere
2x nihil spellbomb
1x scavenging ooze
1x kitchen dunks
1x thoughtseize
1x Golgari Charm
1x engineered explosives
2x collective brutality
1x liliana, the last hope
2x ancient grudge
1x fatal push
TappedOut
Would love to have more input to improve!
3 bloodstained mire
2 wooded foothills
4 blackcleave cliffs
2 overgrown tomb
1 blood crypt
1 stomping ground
2 swamp
1 forest
3 raging Ravine
1 treetop village
4 tarmogoyf
3 scavenging ooze
4 dark confidant
3 Bloodbraid Elf
1 grim lavamancer
4 inquisition of kozilek
2 thoughtseize
2 fatal push
3 lightning bolt
2 terminate
1 abrupt decay
2 kolaghan’s command
1 maelstrom pulse
3 fulminator mage
1 Kalitas, traitor of ghet
3 collective brutality
2 anger of the gods
2 nihil spellbomb
1 kolaghan’s command
1 ancient grudge
1 engineered explosives
1 fatal push
Lost round 1 to nykthos-wave in game three off a topdecked genesis wave, and a great one at that. Beat UWR control, mono-red budget aggro, and storm on the way back. Overall the maindeck felt pretty great, the sideboard is alright but I don’t think it’s perfect.
What do people think of jund charm? I kinda want a third sweeper effect, but wasn’t sure how to implement it. Post-Dominaria, I’m thinking of this sideboard:
Thoughts? I feel like having 3 sweepers and a fatal push in the board might be overkill, but I really really despise losing to dorky creature decks, aggro, and just go wide strategies in general.
UMerfolkGBW
Melira PodRIPGBW Abzan Midrange
GBR Jund Midrange
EDH
GBR Prossh