I think you've done a great job of articulating the challenges of Jund in the current landscape of Modern. The best "solution" I've settled on to mitigate these issues is to play 6 discard spells, 4 Bolt/2 Push, 2x Maelstrom Pulse, 4x BBE, 4x Bob, and 3x Scooze (and of course 4x Goyf). This "package" confers the most well-rounded suite of threats and answers with a broad range of applicability, while also maxing out on some of the most powerful cards we have access to.
One of the key things I've learned from watching Reid play is to be patient and know when to pick your spots. He has many opportunities to play more aggressively to close out games, but instead he lets his advantage build. Scavenging Ooze in particular is the tool that lets us play the long game in many troublesome matchups.
Overall, I don't think Jund is in a bad spot. While it may not excel in an aggressive meta like Jeskai Control, we are capable of winning games in most matchups, even those where Jeskai struggles (Tron). Bloodbraid Elf is our best tool in both catching up and closing out games, and I am a very strong advocate for playing 4. In summary, my philosophy is to play the most versatile and powerful cards we have access to, and accept that we are simply not meant to win every match.
FD "I am questioning that perspective a little bit I have to say. If we look at the basic way of beating another deck (according to Patrick Chapins theory) you either have to go bigger than your opponent, or kill them faster. I think, killing Hollow One, Humans, Affinity faster is just not going to work. We are way behind on that race. And consequently it makes no sense to play the aggro role against those matchups, its a classic misinterpretation of Who is the Beatdown."
J "I play Jund very aggressively, always trying to turn the corner against decks like Humans and Affinity as soon as possible. I know I don't have forever, that sooner or later I'll run out of removal spells and their synergies will start to pile up and become unstoppable. I need to win before that happens."
"Playing Jund is a delicate balancing act. You must match your level of aggression with the level of disruption that you happen to draw, with the understanding that eventually, no matter how well you draw, you will be overpowered. Your goal is to end the game before that point is reached, and that often involves taking some risks. You'll find yourself trading damage against Affinity or Humans and not taking a strict control role to the matchup because you know if you don't you risk losing to a Mantis Rider or Cranial Plating off the top in a few turns"
She's not suggesting trying to become a "Pseudo-Beatdown", she's just saying we don't have forever and we need to get in damage whenever we can to close the game before our disruption peters out.
FD "And that means we need specific answers for their gameplan in a short period of time (since we want to go under them quickly) and that's exactly where we fall apart atm. In a short period of time we often don't draw the disruptive elements we need and suddenly we are on the backfoot. Try to be the aggressor in that case then. To conclude, I don't think Jadine is wrong, in fact I think its spot on, but I think the deck does not provide the consistency for that type of approach. We just lose to ourselves."
J "To bring all this back to where we started: Jund is a disruptive aggro deck. Like Grixis, it must split its focus between disrupting unfair decks and disrupting more aggressive decks. Unlike Grixis, it doesn't get to play any card selection to help it find the right disruptive pieces for the match at hand. Jund is completely dependent on the cards it draws, and that is its big weakness.The strength of Jund is that on their own merits, its cards are better than everyone else's."
She agrees that selection is a problem, but offers the age old adage of "our single cards are better than everyone else's" as compensation.
In the comments she does mention that Grim Flayer may be an answer to that problem.
J "To summarize: Play Jund more assertively and more aggressively and it will perform better for you. Current Jund doesn't play all that much like Jund used to, largely because the format doesn't allow for nearly as many turns to pass before every deck in the format becomes insulated from hand disruption. You must be attacking."
"Given the correct approach to playing Jund, is it good? It's fine. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking to pick up a new deck, but if you're familiar with the deck and don't want to switch, I don't think you're making a heinous mistake. The power level of the deck just isn't very high, and as a result the deck is not forgiving of errors, but it's certainly capable of winning plenty of matches."
All of the quotes in bold are Jundine's. I can personally recommend signing up for premium, even if just for a month to get ahold of her articles. There's plenty of other good stuff on there too. I didn't want to quote from the article too much but sometimes it's easier than paraphrasing. It's a long article anyway and that was really a small percentage of the total text.
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I think Jadine is spot on, like I mentioned, but I disagree with one minor point which is actually quite meaningful. She says that Jund's individual cards are better than everyone elses. I think thats not true anymore. And I think if you follow my interpretation of Jund's state this is very clear. Jadine also says it herself: "Unlike Grixis, it doesn't get to play any card selection to help it find the right disruptive pieces for the match at hand. Jund is completely dependent on the cards it draws, and that is its big weakness." Why should now every card be better than our opponents if we depend on having the right disruptive pieces? That means for each and every matchup and even for each situation, we potentially have the right disruptive pieces, but depend on drawing them. And for the rest? I think here the cards aren't better than our opponents cards. I have often lost against aggro decks with a bunch of removal in hand. It was just that I had Fatal Push which could not kill anything (because revolt was missing) and bolt would have won. Exactly those kind of situations don't convince me that the individual powerlevel of our cards are higher than those of the opponents. And even if this might be true, I don't see a reason why I should care about that? The individual powerlevel thing is only relevant if both players are in topdeck mode. In almost every other situation you have to deal with the opponents deck synergy, which trumps our individual power level anyway. And as Jadine correctly stated, we won't grind to topdeck mode anymore.
Some of those claims are a little too overarching for my taste. We won’t grind our opp’s to topdecks anymore, e.g. We certainly can and still do. But sure, there’s a lot of CA and ways to refill a hand running around too. And our removal is some of the best in the game. What are we lacking? Path? The problem is the format is fast AND diverse right now, forcing us to have a wide variety and consider more, say, Push over Terminate. If it slows down just a little (which it seems to be doing) we can afford to run slower and broader removal. And our permanents are certainly more powerful than others’ in a vacuum. I will argue that all day, as well as the attainability of said vacuum.
Maybe your recent playtesting is much more extensive than I’m giving you credit for, but it seems like you’ve just had a string of bad luck lately. It is Magic after all. I don’t seem to be having the same problem, but then again, I’m sure I’ve played a lot fewer games as of late.
I agree with you completely about what problems Jund is currently facing, both internal and external. I’m pretty sure most everyone does. I just don’t agree with how detrimental you think they are.
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3rd place finishes for Jund in both the Classic and the Open. Encouraging, to say the least. Not surprised to see Humans, Jeskai, Mardu Pyromancer, and Hollow One up there as well. Freakin’ Caleb Scherer, taking the Classic “by Storm” (see what I did there?). That dude loves that deck.
You know what's not encouraging? Watching that semifinal match where Jund got blown out in game 1, and in game 2, I wondered how he got that far. Jeskai used to be a pretty decent match for Jund without and pure card draw.
Actually I think that's pretty encouraging. To me, it means that guy was terrible at playing jund and still somehow managed to top 4 a big tournament. That usually means good things about your deck.
I guess I should be less harsh on the guy, it’s a long day and easy to make mistakes. Still, I feel unphased by watching jund lose to jeskai while being played quite poorly.
You know what's not encouraging? Watching that semifinal match where Jund got blown out in game 1, and in game 2, I wondered how he got that far. Jeskai used to be a pretty decent match for Jund without and pure card draw.
He kept a 2 land hand in game 2, where his 2 lands were Ravines....no black source for disruption, no way to get a clock, and then I'm pretty sure he was stuck on 2 lands for a few more turns.
Someone in chat tried to tell me it was a 'fine hand to keep' but...no, that was a terrible hand to keep against UWR, and meanwhile Rosum ran hot, and curved out hard on him.
That game didnt say anything about the match up at all imo.
So I just started watching the match. Its obvious that there made some wrong decisions which might have decided the match. However, its a feature match and nervousness can strike you there. Its important to keep that in context. And I would also not argue that the whole road to the top 4 was made through plays like this. I don't think that would have brought him to the top 4. It might be similar to Jadine's "camera curse", from which you could easily judge she is a bad player, because she basically always looses on cam. But we all know its actually not like that.
You know what's not encouraging? Watching that semifinal match where Jund got blown out in game 1, and in game 2, I wondered how he got that far. Jeskai used to be a pretty decent match for Jund without and pure card draw.
That game didnt say anything about the match up at all imo.
That game didn't but my testing has. With Jeskai control, I've been taking power dumps on GBx decks. All forms of them. It's not even close most of the time. I don't know what happened, but I distinctly remember facing GBx decks was something I wanted to avoid in years past if I didn't have Sphinx's Revelation or Ancestral Vision. Now, it seems like it just doesn't matter, and I don't really know what changed.
So I just started watching the match. Its obvious that there made some wrong decisions which might have decided the match. However, its a feature match and nervousness can strike you there. Its important to keep that in context. And I would also not argue that the whole road to the top 4 was made through plays like this. I don't think that would have brought him to the top 4. It might be similar to Jadine's "camera curse", from which you could easily judge she is a bad player, because she basically always looses on cam. But we all know its actually not like that.
I actually think Jadine plays fine on camera. Most of the time, she just has had bad luck. I can't say I understand the pressure of being on camera, but high levels of anxiety don't make me forget how to do what I do. Can you honestly tell me you would've kept that hand in game 2 because you were super nervous about something?
On another point, I'm just having trouble finding a form of Jund that isn't just a dumpster fire right now. Even in the games I'm winning, it feels like a ridiculous struggle. It really makes me sad when I'm struggling to close out a match in which I'm favored! I was literally sad with Modern for about a month because of this.
The difference is that Jadine usually plays really tight, and every time she gets on camera she gets super unlucky either through pairings or bad draws. This Jund player played a Bob over a goyf on turn 2 knowing that his opponent had electrolyze in hand, followed by casting scooze with a tapped tomb knowing his opponent had snap in hand. That's just really sloppy play all around given that he had complete information.
I've been tinkering with my decklist and I think I finally have a 60 that I really really like. I had already cut bobs from the maindeck, but the 32nd place jund list from the SCG event convinced me to go deeper on the tireless tracker plan:
Honestly, Tireless Tracker does feel nuts the more I play with him. Bloodbraid Elf is an excellent play for tempo and a good way to catch up in a game, but if you're looking to play the long game Tireless Tracker is perhaps better than both BBE and Confidant at grinding your opponent out. I was inspired to cut Bob from the results of some side events at GP DC. I played against Mardu and Humans (going 0-2) with 3 Bobs and he just felt really bad. Mardu just took him off the table or out of my hand asap for no value, and Humans just ran over me before I could safely deploy Bob anyways. I then cut my bobs for extra BBEs, Tasigur, and Scoozes and went 3-1-2 (two IDs).
The deck felt so much better overall, I beat two mardu decks + burn and lost to affinity with hazoret in the board which single-handedly stole g3. Inspired me to cut damnation for a languish in the board. Importantly it kills Hazoret, but it can also be a plague wind.
I think really everyone just needs to git gud. This thread has gotten a little... stale and demoralizing lately. The deck has never had a bunch of incredibly good MU’s or done super powerful linear things. That’s never been what Jund does (except when we had DRS and BBE). That’s the whole point of the deck. It has a chance against most of the field. It rewards pilot skill. The deck is obviously fine in the meta right now. It keeps placing, it keeps popping up on lists, it keeps getting played. If a deck isn’t working for me, I don’t get all doom and gloom and assume the meta has left it, I decide I need to git gud. I try to improve on either my list or piloting or both. ESPECIALLY with Jund. It’s customizable and EXTREMELY dependent on having a competent pilot. I’m saying stuff we all know. This thread is just usually a little more live than this. Seems like there’s more whining than construction.
Edit: Speaking of construction, can someone explain the 2x Dismember in Wood’s SB to me?
Nope not really. I mean it kills the usual terminate targets, but perhaps aside from hazoret I don’t see what you’d be dismembering that you couldn’t terminate. Maybe because it’s a way to kill a turn one hollow one when on the draw?
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Hmm.. didn’t think about Hazoret. And yeah, I guess you could off a Hollow One, but it sucks taking the same four damage you would if it’d gotten to attack. That’s a really weird SB inclusion.
The trip Kitchen Sinks were interesting as well.
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I actually think Jadine plays fine on camera. Most of the time, she just has had bad luck. I can't say I understand the pressure of being on camera, but high levels of anxiety don't make me forget how to do what I do. Can you honestly tell me you would've kept that hand in game 2 because you were super nervous about something?
On another point, I'm just having trouble finding a form of Jund that isn't just a dumpster fire right now. Even in the games I'm winning, it feels like a ridiculous struggle. It really makes me sad when I'm struggling to close out a match in which I'm favored! I was literally sad with Modern for about a month because of this.
What I can think of is that in a grindy matchup like this, already being a game behind, he wanted to take a risk and keep the 7 card hand since he had more cards through that. Obviously its wrong, but if you are nervous and the fact that you are already a game behind bothers you too much you can make dumpster decisions like that. I have done that also in the past, in the early days of playing Jund, I would keep a hand and immediatly that feel of regret snaps in. So I could potentially understand that. But sure its just wrong, as an outstanding point of view that is easy to determine.
I have the exact same experience chaos. One thing I find quite interesting is the new article from Reid at CFB: https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/what-did-happen-and-what-could-happen/ Maybe thats exactly the reason for us long time Junders to have bad exp with the deck. It seems newer people here have better exp overall than older pilots.
I think really everyone just needs to git gud. This thread has gotten a little... stale and demoralizing lately. The deck has never had a bunch of incredibly good MU’s or done super powerful linear things. That’s never been what Jund does (except when we had DRS and BBE). That’s the whole point of the deck. It has a chance against most of the field. It rewards pilot skill. The deck is obviously fine in the meta right now. It keeps placing, it keeps popping up on lists, it keeps getting played. If a deck isn’t working for me, I don’t get all doom and gloom and assume the meta has left it, I decide I need to git gud. I try to improve on either my list or piloting or both. ESPECIALLY with Jund. It’s customizable and EXTREMELY dependent on having a competent pilot. I’m saying stuff we all know. This thread is just usually a little more live than this. Seems like there’s more whining than construction.
Edit: Speaking of construction, can someone explain the 2x Dismember in Wood’s SB to me?
Believe me, we long time Junders know all that. I can't say I am a very very long pilot of playing the deck myself, but I did play it long enough that I am certain I had way better feelings about the deck in the past. If you played Jund in the era where Gitaxian Probe was still legal, and when Infect was one of the best decks then you know how good it feels to play Jund. It was a fantastic exp at that time. Ever since then, the struggle tends to increase for my part. I am sorry if I personally sound demoralizing, but its just that I am unfortunately. I am clueless about how to best approach Jund atm. And I hate that, given that I have quite a responsibility of providing a good primer. I need some time to focus again is what I decided on, so I can't construct much at the moment. But I have to say, given the fact that lots of long time and good Junders (chaos or Ayiluss for example) feel the same way about that, I think there must be something to it.
I think a big issue with the jeskai matchup is search for azcanta. That card is nuts and will single-handedly run you out of a match if you’re not careful. It also forces you to leave in cards like decay or pulse that you might otherwise want to cut post-board. The last time jund was a deck, that card didn’t exist. Now it does, and I’d encourage everyone to take it quite seriously.
But all that aside, I have no qualms with my UW matchups. Granted cockatrice doesn’t always have the best players, but I win at least 60-75% of matches against control. Tracker is a house in the matchup.
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I think really everyone just needs to git gud. This thread has gotten a little... stale and demoralizing lately. The deck has never had a bunch of incredibly good MU’s or done super powerful linear things. That’s never been what Jund does (except when we had DRS and BBE). That’s the whole point of the deck. It has a chance against most of the field. It rewards pilot skill. The deck is obviously fine in the meta right now. It keeps placing, it keeps popping up on lists, it keeps getting played. If a deck isn’t working for me, I don’t get all doom and gloom and assume the meta has left it, I decide I need to git gud. I try to improve on either my list or piloting or both. ESPECIALLY with Jund. It’s customizable and EXTREMELY dependent on having a competent pilot. I’m saying stuff we all know. This thread is just usually a little more live than this. Seems like there’s more whining than construction.
Edit: Speaking of construction, can someone explain the 2x Dismember in Wood’s SB to me?
Jund actually isn't fine, but you're entitled to your opinion. The party you keep missing is that there are opponents. What I am literally running into are a bunch of opponents who seem to have advantages against me. At some point,shouldn't I have an advantage against some one else? The few times I do,the struggle is still there to even keep an even board our at least not fall behind to much. That points to something being wrong, but you keep rolling with your rose-tinted glasses.
Anyone else trying Grim Flayer? I've been having pretty good success with him since trying Reid's "fast jund" list from last month. While we're on the subject of Jeskai, he really excels in that matchup. I usually play Bob first to demand an answer, by the time they've removed bob delirium is online and you can easily stick a goyf or flayer and run away with the game. This might be confirmation bias but I've found his card selection to be extremely relevant, if they allow him to stick around for a trigger, you can usually find a decay, pulse, or fulminator (post side) to deal with it.
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One of the key things I've learned from watching Reid play is to be patient and know when to pick your spots. He has many opportunities to play more aggressively to close out games, but instead he lets his advantage build. Scavenging Ooze in particular is the tool that lets us play the long game in many troublesome matchups.
Overall, I don't think Jund is in a bad spot. While it may not excel in an aggressive meta like Jeskai Control, we are capable of winning games in most matchups, even those where Jeskai struggles (Tron). Bloodbraid Elf is our best tool in both catching up and closing out games, and I am a very strong advocate for playing 4. In summary, my philosophy is to play the most versatile and powerful cards we have access to, and accept that we are simply not meant to win every match.
J "I play Jund very aggressively, always trying to turn the corner against decks like Humans and Affinity as soon as possible. I know I don't have forever, that sooner or later I'll run out of removal spells and their synergies will start to pile up and become unstoppable. I need to win before that happens."
"Playing Jund is a delicate balancing act. You must match your level of aggression with the level of disruption that you happen to draw, with the understanding that eventually, no matter how well you draw, you will be overpowered. Your goal is to end the game before that point is reached, and that often involves taking some risks. You'll find yourself trading damage against Affinity or Humans and not taking a strict control role to the matchup because you know if you don't you risk losing to a Mantis Rider or Cranial Plating off the top in a few turns"
She's not suggesting trying to become a "Pseudo-Beatdown", she's just saying we don't have forever and we need to get in damage whenever we can to close the game before our disruption peters out.
FD "And that means we need specific answers for their gameplan in a short period of time (since we want to go under them quickly) and that's exactly where we fall apart atm. In a short period of time we often don't draw the disruptive elements we need and suddenly we are on the backfoot. Try to be the aggressor in that case then. To conclude, I don't think Jadine is wrong, in fact I think its spot on, but I think the deck does not provide the consistency for that type of approach. We just lose to ourselves."
J "To bring all this back to where we started: Jund is a disruptive aggro deck. Like Grixis, it must split its focus between disrupting unfair decks and disrupting more aggressive decks. Unlike Grixis, it doesn't get to play any card selection to help it find the right disruptive pieces for the match at hand. Jund is completely dependent on the cards it draws, and that is its big weakness.The strength of Jund is that on their own merits, its cards are better than everyone else's."
She agrees that selection is a problem, but offers the age old adage of "our single cards are better than everyone else's" as compensation.
In the comments she does mention that Grim Flayer may be an answer to that problem.
J "To summarize: Play Jund more assertively and more aggressively and it will perform better for you. Current Jund doesn't play all that much like Jund used to, largely because the format doesn't allow for nearly as many turns to pass before every deck in the format becomes insulated from hand disruption. You must be attacking."
"Given the correct approach to playing Jund, is it good? It's fine. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking to pick up a new deck, but if you're familiar with the deck and don't want to switch, I don't think you're making a heinous mistake. The power level of the deck just isn't very high, and as a result the deck is not forgiving of errors, but it's certainly capable of winning plenty of matches."
All of the quotes in bold are Jundine's. I can personally recommend signing up for premium, even if just for a month to get ahold of her articles. There's plenty of other good stuff on there too. I didn't want to quote from the article too much but sometimes it's easier than paraphrasing. It's a long article anyway and that was really a small percentage of the total text.
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Maybe your recent playtesting is much more extensive than I’m giving you credit for, but it seems like you’ve just had a string of bad luck lately. It is Magic after all. I don’t seem to be having the same problem, but then again, I’m sure I’ve played a lot fewer games as of late.
I agree with you completely about what problems Jund is currently facing, both internal and external. I’m pretty sure most everyone does. I just don’t agree with how detrimental you think they are.
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Tournament Results
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BRGKARRTHUS, TYRANT OF JUNDGRB
I guess I should be less harsh on the guy, it’s a long day and easy to make mistakes. Still, I feel unphased by watching jund lose to jeskai while being played quite poorly.
UMerfolkGBW
Melira PodRIPGBW Abzan Midrange
GBR Jund Midrange
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GBR Prossh
Mardu Pyromancer
Grixis Shadow
Traverse Shadow
Jund
Abzan
The Rock
He kept a 2 land hand in game 2, where his 2 lands were Ravines....no black source for disruption, no way to get a clock, and then I'm pretty sure he was stuck on 2 lands for a few more turns.
Someone in chat tried to tell me it was a 'fine hand to keep' but...no, that was a terrible hand to keep against UWR, and meanwhile Rosum ran hot, and curved out hard on him.
That game didnt say anything about the match up at all imo.
Spirits
That game didn't but my testing has. With Jeskai control, I've been taking power dumps on GBx decks. All forms of them. It's not even close most of the time. I don't know what happened, but I distinctly remember facing GBx decks was something I wanted to avoid in years past if I didn't have Sphinx's Revelation or Ancestral Vision. Now, it seems like it just doesn't matter, and I don't really know what changed.
I actually think Jadine plays fine on camera. Most of the time, she just has had bad luck. I can't say I understand the pressure of being on camera, but high levels of anxiety don't make me forget how to do what I do. Can you honestly tell me you would've kept that hand in game 2 because you were super nervous about something?
On another point, I'm just having trouble finding a form of Jund that isn't just a dumpster fire right now. Even in the games I'm winning, it feels like a ridiculous struggle. It really makes me sad when I'm struggling to close out a match in which I'm favored! I was literally sad with Modern for about a month because of this.
I've been tinkering with my decklist and I think I finally have a 60 that I really really like. I had already cut bobs from the maindeck, but the 32nd place jund list from the SCG event convinced me to go deeper on the tireless tracker plan:
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Raging Ravine
1 Treetop Village
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Stomping Ground
1 Blood Crypt
2 Forest
2 Swamp
2 Grim Flayer
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Tireless Tracker
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
2 Bloodbraid Elf
SPELLS (20)
4 Liliana of the Veil
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Fatal Push
2 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Terminate
1 Abrupt Decay
Honestly, Tireless Tracker does feel nuts the more I play with him. Bloodbraid Elf is an excellent play for tempo and a good way to catch up in a game, but if you're looking to play the long game Tireless Tracker is perhaps better than both BBE and Confidant at grinding your opponent out. I was inspired to cut Bob from the results of some side events at GP DC. I played against Mardu and Humans (going 0-2) with 3 Bobs and he just felt really bad. Mardu just took him off the table or out of my hand asap for no value, and Humans just ran over me before I could safely deploy Bob anyways. I then cut my bobs for extra BBEs, Tasigur, and Scoozes and went 3-1-2 (two IDs).
The deck felt so much better overall, I beat two mardu decks + burn and lost to affinity with hazoret in the board which single-handedly stole g3. Inspired me to cut damnation for a languish in the board. Importantly it kills Hazoret, but it can also be a plague wind.
UMerfolkGBW
Melira PodRIPGBW Abzan Midrange
GBR Jund Midrange
EDH
GBR Prossh
Mardu Pyromancer
Grixis Shadow
Traverse Shadow
Jund
Abzan
The Rock
Edit: Speaking of construction, can someone explain the 2x Dismember in Wood’s SB to me?
BRGJUNDGRB---BRHOLLOW ONERB---BGELVESGB---BRGLIVING ENDGRB---GWBOGLESWG
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BRGKARRTHUS, TYRANT OF JUNDGRB
UMerfolkGBW
Melira PodRIPGBW Abzan Midrange
GBR Jund Midrange
EDH
GBR Prossh
The trip Kitchen Sinks were interesting as well.
BRGJUNDGRB---BRHOLLOW ONERB---BGELVESGB---BRGLIVING ENDGRB---GWBOGLESWG
EDH:
BRGKARRTHUS, TYRANT OF JUNDGRB
What I can think of is that in a grindy matchup like this, already being a game behind, he wanted to take a risk and keep the 7 card hand since he had more cards through that. Obviously its wrong, but if you are nervous and the fact that you are already a game behind bothers you too much you can make dumpster decisions like that. I have done that also in the past, in the early days of playing Jund, I would keep a hand and immediatly that feel of regret snaps in. So I could potentially understand that. But sure its just wrong, as an outstanding point of view that is easy to determine.
I have the exact same experience chaos. One thing I find quite interesting is the new article from Reid at CFB: https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/what-did-happen-and-what-could-happen/ Maybe thats exactly the reason for us long time Junders to have bad exp with the deck. It seems newer people here have better exp overall than older pilots.
Believe me, we long time Junders know all that. I can't say I am a very very long pilot of playing the deck myself, but I did play it long enough that I am certain I had way better feelings about the deck in the past. If you played Jund in the era where Gitaxian Probe was still legal, and when Infect was one of the best decks then you know how good it feels to play Jund. It was a fantastic exp at that time. Ever since then, the struggle tends to increase for my part. I am sorry if I personally sound demoralizing, but its just that I am unfortunately. I am clueless about how to best approach Jund atm. And I hate that, given that I have quite a responsibility of providing a good primer. I need some time to focus again is what I decided on, so I can't construct much at the moment. But I have to say, given the fact that lots of long time and good Junders (chaos or Ayiluss for example) feel the same way about that, I think there must be something to it.
But all that aside, I have no qualms with my UW matchups. Granted cockatrice doesn’t always have the best players, but I win at least 60-75% of matches against control. Tracker is a house in the matchup.
UMerfolkGBW
Melira PodRIPGBW Abzan Midrange
GBR Jund Midrange
EDH
GBR Prossh
Jund actually isn't fine, but you're entitled to your opinion. The party you keep missing is that there are opponents. What I am literally running into are a bunch of opponents who seem to have advantages against me. At some point,shouldn't I have an advantage against some one else? The few times I do,the struggle is still there to even keep an even board our at least not fall behind to much. That points to something being wrong, but you keep rolling with your rose-tinted glasses.