With Bant Spirits (AKA Spooky Company) on the rise, is it a good time to dust off Thundermaw Hellkite for the sideboard?
I thought about this too. The problem is, we need to have some permanent effects on the board state, and Thundermaw isn’t going to kill much, if anything. We need to kill spirits, and/or block spirits. The dragon will ensure 5 damage gets through, but not much else. By turn 5 I feel like we’ll be too much on the back foot already to go offensive with something like Thundermaw. Maybe I’m looking at it all wrong, I dunno. I haven’t playtested it so I don’t even have anecdotal evidence, much less empirical evidence, to support that stance. I think I like Stormbreath Dragon more than Thundermaw Hellkite in that role. It has protection from most of the spirits so it makes a good defensive creature as well as a substantial threat (especially when monstrous) and it’s immune to Path to Exile and Reflector Mage, their only forms of removal and pseudo-removal. But I dunno, maybe I’m all wrong and tapping down their team and swinging for the fences with a Goyf and Thundermaw is enough after playing an aggressive game or getting in enough chip damage during prior turns.
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I think right now the only option to have is just looting. But this kinda means we need to cut Bob. We would want to play delve threats or Bedlam Reveler. Discovery is a nice cards as its a preordain in our colours, but 2 mana is just way to much. Its hard to compete on the long term without help.
For me there are 3 strong categories which are essentially the best decks in the modern format, and all those evolve around one of 3 cards: Ancient Stirrings, Looting and Noble Hierarch.
I was trying developing a 24 lands kinda manabase with basic count of 2 swamps, 1 forest and 1 mountain. This choice of basic land best play against field of ruin, less painful but its moderate consistant colour fixing. Just want to get you guys some input on it.
The list has 18 black source, 17 green source and 18 red source.
"only option" no, just one option not the only one. Just go to BG is an option too or just continue to play jund because the deck already works without be a top deck.
About looting, a simple idea may be just take mardu list, remove lingering souls (because it's bad actually) and "replace" it by tarmogoyf and play something close to that ?
Would have been done already if it were that easy.
Jund would need a gigantic restructuring. I tried thinking about it but the creature base looked way too dependent on the graveyard, even if you went like 4x Goyfs, 3x Flayer, 3x Scooze and 4x Bedlam.
Tried thinking about Sultai and as of now have no idea what that would do better without an extremely slow clock.
Kalitas in Jund's maindeck seems like a good choice right now.
Grim Flayer is just way to unrealiable and bad to be played imo. It gets blocked by almost anything and you don't want to be attacking when you want to defend against aggro on average. This in combination with the fact that delirium is just way to hard to consistantly have active, this is a hard pass for me.
Going to a Mardu list and replacing Souls with GOyf unfortunaltey doesnt work. I have tried it actually. You need some kind of payoff in order to make the front side of Looting appealing. And when thats missing often thats a big liability.
Been reading this thread for ages it seems, playing jund for about 2 years now, but this is my first time posting. I think that the biggest problem is that we're all still treating bloodbraid elf as an auto include in our lists because she's unbanned now and she used to be so powerful. The problem to me is that our deck lacks consistency, and BBE does nothing to solve this problem. She's a decent body with a random chance to get you a free LotV and that's about the best you can expect from her. Half of the time by turn 4 her p/t is no longer relevant and it feels real bad to cascade into a thoughtseize when you're low on life or the opponent has an empty hand or a fatal push on an open board. The random nature of cascade plays directly against the consistency were looking for and so BBE seems like a deck building trap. I've cut all 4 of them for a combination of huntmaster of the fells and kalitas, and I couldn't be happier with the changes. Each of these 4 drops do much more to advance our board state and pose an actual threat to the opponent once we've slowly built an advantage in the earlier turns.
As a side note, a couple grim flayer work extremely well with Bob, and I don't think should be overlooked with how easy it is to turn on delirium, or swing on an open board to manipulate our topdecks, grow the tarmogoyf, or make a Bob trigger painless.
In regards to faithless looting, I've tested out 2-3 copies in my 60 and it seems like what flyingdelver has been saying about the deck needs to be entirely redesigned around maximizing the potential of looting with delve creatures, which would come at the expense of tarmogoyf. It competes in the one drop slot with all our discard and removal, and generally felt like the wrong decision to play looting until later in the game when you can play it the same turn as a threat or removal spell.
All in all, I'm feeling that my current build of jund is a lot more potent and consistent when compared with the seemingly "stock" bloodbraid list I was running previously. I'd love some feedback on this from anyone else who has tried it however, I can't take my mtgo and local game store wins as absolute proof of concept after all. I'm very interested in seeing what else I can learn
Cutting BBE is certainly not off the table and might be the correct move. At least one copy should be exchanged by Kalitas for sure. About Huntmaster, I think this card slowly gets in the unplayable category for me. The fact that he hardly does something to help against the opposing flying creatures is a real problem for me. The same thing goes for Finks lately. I don't want a 4 mana or 3 mana gain 2 life and then do nothing more really.
I personally am liking Pia and Kiran Nalaar quite a bit. It actually does something as it blocks opposing flyers, and can serve as extra removals which we need. Also works well with LtLH and KCommand.
I disagree about delirium being easily activated. Grim Flayer is in general a card that works pretty well when you are ahead, but is incredibly bad when you are behind and dont have delirium. I think one can be really biased on Flayer depending on the personal experience. But I wouldnt count on him as an active filtering tool for our deck, as its too inconsistant.
Been reading this thread for ages it seems, playing jund for about 2 years now, but this is my first time posting. I think that the biggest problem is that we're all still treating bloodbraid elf as an auto include in our lists because she's unbanned now and she used to be so powerful. The problem to me is that our deck lacks consistency, and BBE does nothing to solve this problem. She's a decent body with a random chance to get you a free LotV and that's about the best you can expect from her. Half of the time by turn 4 her p/t is no longer relevant and it feels real bad to cascade into a thoughtseize when you're low on life or the opponent has an empty hand or a fatal push on an open board. The random nature of cascade plays directly against the consistency were looking for and so BBE seems like a deck building trap. I've cut all 4 of them for a combination of huntmaster of the fells and kalitas, and I couldn't be happier with the changes. Each of these 4 drops do much more to advance our board state and pose an actual threat to the opponent once we've slowly built an advantage in the earlier turns.
As a side note, a couple grim flayer work extremely well with Bob, and I don't think should be overlooked with how easy it is to turn on delirium, or swing on an open board to manipulate our topdecks, grow the tarmogoyf, or make a Bob trigger painless.
In regards to faithless looting, I've tested out 2-3 copies in my 60 and it seems like what flyingdelver has been saying about the deck needs to be entirely redesigned around maximizing the potential of looting with delve creatures, which would come at the expense of tarmogoyf. It competes in the one drop slot with all our discard and removal, and generally felt like the wrong decision to play looting until later in the game when you can play it the same turn as a threat or removal spell.
All in all, I'm feeling that my current build of jund is a lot more potent and consistent when compared with the seemingly "stock" bloodbraid list I was running previously. I'd love some feedback on this from anyone else who has tried it however, I can't take my mtgo and local game store wins as absolute proof of concept after all. I'm very interested in seeing what else I can learn
So basically, Jund should just become a worse version of another graveyard-based deck?
Cutting BBE is certainly not off the table and might be the correct move. At least one copy should be exchanged by Kalitas for sure. About Huntmaster, I think this card slowly gets in the unplayable category for me. The fact that he hardly does something to help against the opposing flying creatures is a real problem for me. The same thing goes for Finks lately. I don't want a 4 mana or 3 mana gain 2 life and then do nothing more really.
I personally am liking Pia and Kiran Nalaar quite a bit. It actually does something as it blocks opposing flyers, and can serve as extra removals which we need. Also works well with LtLH and KCommand.
So basically, Jund should just become a worse version of another graveyard-based deck?
I don't think that's the right direction for the deck, which maybe I may have seemed to be misunderstood as saying when i talked about faithless looting. I think for looting to work, the entire deck has to be restructured, and to me i don't think it would help it to be any better than the other looting decks at all.
Thanks for welcoming me! I appreciate the reply to the points i was making, and i can absolutely see how grim flayer's success or failure is entirely dependent on each persons individual track record with it. I can say that there were times where i wasn't thrilled to see the card, but i can say the same about scavenging ooze, and even bob from time to time. I think it would be foolish to run it as a full playset, but the 2 of has been working out pretty well for me as another creature that hits the board early in the game and gets itself out of bolt range after activating delirium, while complimenting other cards in our deck well. Obviously your mileage may vary, but i think its a solid card to run a few of.
I agree with Huntmaster not doing anything to stop fliers, but i feel overall its a bigger threat than bloodbraid elf, and can really help in grindy matchups, where you can abuse flipping it back and forth to your advantage. I've also played with Olivia and hazoret in the 4 drop slot and all have performed very well, so its difficult nailing down exactly which 4 drops are going to be the better going forward. Kalitas is definitely the best of the options we have here though.
I may need to test a bit more with Pia and Kiran Nalaar, but i haven't been terribly impressed with the card in other decks i've tried it in. Perhaps this may be a better shell for it after all.
Unban Stoneforge Mystic, Punishing Fire, Deathrite Shaman, Birthing Pod, and Splinter Twin. I’m ready. Let’s do this. But all joking aside, I think the format could handle all that just fine. I’m serious. It would go nuts for a second there, but it would stabilize. And if something got out of hand and stayed out of hand, just clean it up on a subsequent ban-list update like Golgari Grave-Troll.
I think right now the only option to have is just looting. But this kinda means we need to cut Bob. We would want to play delve threats or Bedlam Reveler. Discovery is a nice cards as its a preordain in our colours, but 2 mana is just way to much. Its hard to compete on the long term without help.
For me there are 3 strong categories which are essentially the best decks in the modern format, and all those evolve around one of 3 cards: Ancient Stirrings, Looting and Noble Hierarch.
Why the need to go "all-in" on Looting if you're looking to include it? Why not just jam 3 copies into a stock list and make sure you're also playing 3-4 K-Command? Helps a tad with card velocity, helps filter the "wrong half" of the deck, and is an easy 3-of to side out in games 2 and 3 of almost every match. I'd treat it as a game 1 only boost.
DRS would absolutely warp the format. I think generally if something is too powerful for legacy, there is a good chance it'll be too powerful in modern too
Edit : though to be fair id love to be able to jam it in jund and go wild for a bit lol
Graveyard creature, a mana accelerant for turn 2 LOTV and turn 3 BBE...
POD has the risk of being too good
Punishing Fire invalidates an entire archetype.
Sorry if I derailed this thread, I know you guys were having productive talk before I listed my grievances
There’s a lot of really solid artifact removal that didn’t exist when Pod was around. Mainboard stuff. I don’t see it being a problem.
I won’t try and argue the same for PF and DRS. I will jokingly point out that they (PF and DRS) destroy each other, so they shouldn’t be a problem if both are unbanned, right?
All I’m saying is I think the format could actually absorb every one of those unbannings, not that it would actually be a great or optimal idea. Twin would be a nice unban though, for real. It would simultaneously put a hurtin’ on these linear Aggro decks that are hurting us and give us (and Control) something to prey on. And it’s a joke that SFM is still locked up.
I don’t think you derailed anything. We talk about the same stuff all the time. Seriously. It’s nice to break it up every once in awhile. Wild speculation can be fun.
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There’s been an observable cycle for awhile now. The conversation is of minor deckbuilding considerations like manabases and SB cards and the like, then someone points out some very apparent and valid shortcomings of Jund (if it wasn’t you it would be someone else), then the apparent lack of card selection leads to (sometimes fun) brainstorming about a Looting build, until someone or everyone simultaneously bursts that bubble with the also valid point that it would just be a worse Looting/graveyard deck than the others. To me the fun part comes after that when, defeated after exhaustively looking at currently available options, we talk about what cards theoretically need to be printed or unbanned to give us an edge. Still, while all of this is happening, people are winning games and placing in large tournaments with good ol’ regular Jund lists.
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Graveyard creature, a mana accelerant for turn 2 LOTV and turn 3 BBE...
I can respect that. I was living a hypothetical dream for a moment. It just seems that Modern is more interactive than Legacy, and for some reason, they want to make creatures matter in Legacy all of a sudden. Maybe this isn't forum for ban list talk. I think I was warned about that once.
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I thought about this too. The problem is, we need to have some permanent effects on the board state, and Thundermaw isn’t going to kill much, if anything. We need to kill spirits, and/or block spirits. The dragon will ensure 5 damage gets through, but not much else. By turn 5 I feel like we’ll be too much on the back foot already to go offensive with something like Thundermaw. Maybe I’m looking at it all wrong, I dunno. I haven’t playtested it so I don’t even have anecdotal evidence, much less empirical evidence, to support that stance. I think I like Stormbreath Dragon more than Thundermaw Hellkite in that role. It has protection from most of the spirits so it makes a good defensive creature as well as a substantial threat (especially when monstrous) and it’s immune to Path to Exile and Reflector Mage, their only forms of removal and pseudo-removal. But I dunno, maybe I’m all wrong and tapping down their team and swinging for the fences with a Goyf and Thundermaw is enough after playing an aggressive game or getting in enough chip damage during prior turns.
BRGJUNDGRB---BRHOLLOW ONERB---BGELVESGB---BRGLIVING ENDGRB---GWBOGLESWG
EDH:
BRGKARRTHUS, TYRANT OF JUNDGRB
For me there are 3 strong categories which are essentially the best decks in the modern format, and all those evolve around one of 3 cards: Ancient Stirrings, Looting and Noble Hierarch.
Stirrings: Tron, KCI, Scales
Looting: Dredge, Hollow One, Phoenix decks
Noble: Spirits, Humans
The list has 18 black source, 17 green source and 18 red source.
3x Blackcleave Cliffs
1x Blood Crypt
4x Bloodstained Mire
1x Forest
1x Mountain
2x Overgrown Tomb
3x Raging Ravine
1x Stomping Ground
2x Swamp
1x Twilight Mire
4x Verdant Catacombs
1x Wooded Foothills
Would have been done already if it were that easy.
Jund would need a gigantic restructuring. I tried thinking about it but the creature base looked way too dependent on the graveyard, even if you went like 4x Goyfs, 3x Flayer, 3x Scooze and 4x Bedlam.
Tried thinking about Sultai and as of now have no idea what that would do better without an extremely slow clock.
Kalitas in Jund's maindeck seems like a good choice right now.
Going to a Mardu list and replacing Souls with GOyf unfortunaltey doesnt work. I have tried it actually. You need some kind of payoff in order to make the front side of Looting appealing. And when thats missing often thats a big liability.
As a side note, a couple grim flayer work extremely well with Bob, and I don't think should be overlooked with how easy it is to turn on delirium, or swing on an open board to manipulate our topdecks, grow the tarmogoyf, or make a Bob trigger painless.
In regards to faithless looting, I've tested out 2-3 copies in my 60 and it seems like what flyingdelver has been saying about the deck needs to be entirely redesigned around maximizing the potential of looting with delve creatures, which would come at the expense of tarmogoyf. It competes in the one drop slot with all our discard and removal, and generally felt like the wrong decision to play looting until later in the game when you can play it the same turn as a threat or removal spell.
All in all, I'm feeling that my current build of jund is a lot more potent and consistent when compared with the seemingly "stock" bloodbraid list I was running previously. I'd love some feedback on this from anyone else who has tried it however, I can't take my mtgo and local game store wins as absolute proof of concept after all. I'm very interested in seeing what else I can learn
Cutting BBE is certainly not off the table and might be the correct move. At least one copy should be exchanged by Kalitas for sure. About Huntmaster, I think this card slowly gets in the unplayable category for me. The fact that he hardly does something to help against the opposing flying creatures is a real problem for me. The same thing goes for Finks lately. I don't want a 4 mana or 3 mana gain 2 life and then do nothing more really.
I personally am liking Pia and Kiran Nalaar quite a bit. It actually does something as it blocks opposing flyers, and can serve as extra removals which we need. Also works well with LtLH and KCommand.
I disagree about delirium being easily activated. Grim Flayer is in general a card that works pretty well when you are ahead, but is incredibly bad when you are behind and dont have delirium. I think one can be really biased on Flayer depending on the personal experience. But I wouldnt count on him as an active filtering tool for our deck, as its too inconsistant.
So basically, Jund should just become a worse version of another graveyard-based deck?
My lazier answer is to just play a Shadow deck that plays out how Jund wants to play out.
If you want a flyer, why not use Olivia?
I don't think that's the right direction for the deck, which maybe I may have seemed to be misunderstood as saying when i talked about faithless looting. I think for looting to work, the entire deck has to be restructured, and to me i don't think it would help it to be any better than the other looting decks at all.
Thanks for welcoming me! I appreciate the reply to the points i was making, and i can absolutely see how grim flayer's success or failure is entirely dependent on each persons individual track record with it. I can say that there were times where i wasn't thrilled to see the card, but i can say the same about scavenging ooze, and even bob from time to time. I think it would be foolish to run it as a full playset, but the 2 of has been working out pretty well for me as another creature that hits the board early in the game and gets itself out of bolt range after activating delirium, while complimenting other cards in our deck well. Obviously your mileage may vary, but i think its a solid card to run a few of.
I agree with Huntmaster not doing anything to stop fliers, but i feel overall its a bigger threat than bloodbraid elf, and can really help in grindy matchups, where you can abuse flipping it back and forth to your advantage. I've also played with Olivia and hazoret in the 4 drop slot and all have performed very well, so its difficult nailing down exactly which 4 drops are going to be the better going forward. Kalitas is definitely the best of the options we have here though.
I may need to test a bit more with Pia and Kiran Nalaar, but i haven't been terribly impressed with the card in other decks i've tried it in. Perhaps this may be a better shell for it after all.
My 60 for reference :
2 Swamp
2 Forest
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodstained Mire
3 Raging Ravine
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Stomping Ground
1 Blood Crypt
1 Treetop Village
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Dark Confidant
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Grim Flayer
2 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Planeswalkers:
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Assassin's Trophy
2 Thoughtseize
2 Fatal Push
1 Seal of Fire
BRGJUNDGRB---BRHOLLOW ONERB---BGELVESGB---BRGLIVING ENDGRB---GWBOGLESWG
EDH:
BRGKARRTHUS, TYRANT OF JUNDGRB
Graveyard creature, a mana accelerant for turn 2 LOTV and turn 3 BBE...
POD has the risk of being too good
Punishing Fire invalidates an entire archetype.
Sorry if I derailed this thread, I know you guys were having productive talk before I listed my grievances
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
Edit : though to be fair id love to be able to jam it in jund and go wild for a bit lol
There’s a lot of really solid artifact removal that didn’t exist when Pod was around. Mainboard stuff. I don’t see it being a problem.
I won’t try and argue the same for PF and DRS. I will jokingly point out that they (PF and DRS) destroy each other, so they shouldn’t be a problem if both are unbanned, right?
All I’m saying is I think the format could actually absorb every one of those unbannings, not that it would actually be a great or optimal idea. Twin would be a nice unban though, for real. It would simultaneously put a hurtin’ on these linear Aggro decks that are hurting us and give us (and Control) something to prey on. And it’s a joke that SFM is still locked up.
I don’t think you derailed anything. We talk about the same stuff all the time. Seriously. It’s nice to break it up every once in awhile. Wild speculation can be fun.
BRGJUNDGRB---BRHOLLOW ONERB---BGELVESGB---BRGLIVING ENDGRB---GWBOGLESWG
EDH:
BRGKARRTHUS, TYRANT OF JUNDGRB
BRGJUNDGRB---BRHOLLOW ONERB---BGELVESGB---BRGLIVING ENDGRB---GWBOGLESWG
EDH:
BRGKARRTHUS, TYRANT OF JUNDGRB
I can respect that. I was living a hypothetical dream for a moment. It just seems that Modern is more interactive than Legacy, and for some reason, they want to make creatures matter in Legacy all of a sudden. Maybe this isn't forum for ban list talk. I think I was warned about that once.