I ended up getting 3rd, losing to Jeskai in the semis. I’ll do a longer post about it at some point tomorrow, but this deck still has some serious teeth.
DeFish, why did you decide to cut Anger of the Gods from the SB? I like that Languish hits more stuff and ignores Selfless Spirit, but I love AotG at 3cmc. Being able to clear a board that early is a huge motivation to play it for me. In fact, it was one of the main reasons I was so interested in your 3c list (along with the fact that it feels a lot more like Jund, which I’m particularly partial to). I’ve been running 3x AotG in my Jund SB and all three have more than earned their keep. The card seems like the only way I can get ahead in the Spirits and Humans MU’s. Obviously you did great without it, I’m just curious about your line of thought in foregoing it for this recent tourney.
I’m going to have to go do a little reconnaissance at my LGS to see if it’s as fair as y’all’s and if I need to include the U for Stubby-D. I haven’t been up there in awhile, and the meta seems to really ebb and flow. No telling what everyone’s on.
Looking forward to that write up.
And sorry about the results, Siegel. It really do just be like that sometimes tho.
My problem with LOTV in this deck (and metagame) is just like you said: when she's bad, she's awful. She's near useless against Spirits, Affinity, Tron, and barely a Tribute to Hunger against Burn. She's only ok against Humans but mostly if you're on the offensive. I've played 1-2 copies in quite a few competitive events and I was disappointed to see 90% of the time. I dropped her when I started running manamorphose and haven't looked back. It gives the deck more of a "Exarch Twin" feel than an "Aggressive Jund" feel. It streamlines the approach: disrupt, fatty, protect, lethal
So I've been thinking about this since I have GDS and Goyfs from the old Suicide version, but no LoTV and have been curious if the 4C lists are viable without LoTV? Can I see your list?
I posted my list right on the page previous to this one. Its a manamorphose list with only 3x blue and 3x red cards in the main deck.
----
Question for everyone. Anyone tried Engineered Explosives for the sideboard? It seems a bit narrow to me, but i opened a foil one from UMA and initially I just thought of selling it, but I know I've seen it used in a lot of GDS sideboards. Rarely in Traverse decks though. Any thoughts?
After Peter Hollman won his SCG Open on 4-Color Shadow, I was interested in giving the archetype another try after spending most of this year on Grixis. I've historically had better results on Traverse than Grixis, but with Grixis being the accepted "better" deck that just seemed like the one you were supposed to play. Returning to Traverse reminded me of a few things I'd somewhat forgotten:
- Tarmogoyf is a great Magic card
- Consistently deploying a threat on turn 2 is a big deal in a lot of matchups
- The Jund removal suite is still amazing
- The 4-Color mana base is a huge liability over a 3 color one
I hate losing games of Magic because I can't cast my spells. The inconsistency of the 5-Color Traverse manabase was the reason I originally switched to Grixis, and while the 4 color manabase is more consistent than 5 color, you will still lose some number of games because you either drew the wrong spells to go with your lands, you had to take too much damage getting all of your colors online, or your lands produced a combination of mana that's too restrictive on your given hand. These are issues that the 3 color versions of the deck very rarely encounter, and the power level of all of the Shadow decks is so high that just being able to cast your spells when you want to is going to win a lot of games. For that reason, I wanted to explore just how necessary Stubborn Denial is, and determine if just straight Jund would be a viable alternative to Grixis.
My testing on MTGO showed that I was definitely making some matchups more difficult by not running Stub, namely Burn and Jeskai. However, the matches I lost to both decks were in part to mistakes made in sideboarding (forgetting to bring in Abrade against Burn in case of Ensnaring Bridge), or partially due to play error. While I think both decks aren't great matchups, I think that they're still winnable and you have several avenues to victory in both of them. Aside from that, I felt like my matchups against land-based decks (Tron, Valakut, Amulet) got substantially better because I had 5 ways to interact with their lands, and 3 Surgicals to seal the game from there. Running more Liliana of the Veil made my fair matchups a bit better, and having consistent access to my colors and an improved removal suite made my creature-based matchups better.
I arrived at the above list after a few iterations on the sideboard, and while it's mostly stock I did take a few liberties:
- No Dismember, 2 Terminate - I like Dismember in Grixis because they need to cast multiple spells a turn and the difference between 1 and 2 mana in that deck is enormous. However, Traverse (4 color and Jund) tends to only play 1 or 2 spells a turn because it doesn't play many cantrips, so I think you can afford to spend an extra mana to upgrade to the ability to kill anything through regeneration. This is a tougher sell in 4 color because of Terminate's mana requirements, so this feels like a real draw to Jund.
- 3 Liliana of the Veil - The way people rag on her sometimes, you'd wonder why we even play her. I think LotV is incredible in this deck because of the way Jund Shadow likes to exchange resources. While she usually isn't the MVP against Spirits or Tron, she's an important role player and there are still multiple decks that struggle a lot to deal with a resolved Liliana. In particular, she swings the Grixis Shadow matchup by a huge margin if she resolves. The store the tournament was at is my LGS, and knowing that people usually play fair decks at the IQs I felt confident that I'd want 3.
- No Anger of the Gods, 1 Languish - The short answer is, you just don't need it. My build has access to such an absurd amount of single-target removal, I would often find myself casting my Angers to answer a single threat anyway. Given that, I felt that I could go down to only 1 sweeper, and since I have 3 Surgicals I felt like it didn't need to be an Anger. I think the logic behind Languish in this deck is pretty reasonable, and it's exactly the kind of card I like as a 1-of in my sideboard.
The Tournament
So all in all, the Jund version of the deck didn't seem strictly worse than 4-Color, and I took the above list to play yesterday. It was a pretty light turnout of 32 people, which was good for 5 rounds.
Round 1- Hardened Scales (2-0, 1-0 overall)
I think Hardened Scales is slightly in our favor, the same way traditional Affinity was slightly in Jund's. They have hands that can just invalidate your ability to interact, but for the most part you can kill the things that matter and attack past the remains. My strategy in this matchup is exactly that, focusing my discard and removal on their creatures, establishing a threat, and just tempoing them out of the game because they can't profitably block. This was what I did to win game 1. Hardened Scales itself can sometimes be a liability for them, as drawing too many can leave them too threat-light to actual take advantage of the payoff. My opponent ran into that issue in game 2, where he had 3 Hardened Scales in play but was drawing creatures so in-frequently that I was able to answer all of them. Unfortunately, I could answer everything because I was drawing nothing but removal, and on turn 5 I resolved Ghor-Clan Rampager and finally got my clock on. Rampager would end up dealing all 20 points of damage to my opponent, though I would eventually draw other threats that my opponent was just forced to chump block.
Sideboard
-3 Liliana of the Veil
-2 Street Wraith
+2 Abrade
+2 Assassin's Trophy
+1 Languish
Your main deck already does pretty much everything you want to be doing in this matchup, so I just like to cut Liliana and make myself a little less vulnerable to Walking Ballista.
Intermission - At this point I walked around to see what everyone was playing, and I didn't see a single person on KCI, Spirits, or Humans. Instead, every other seat had somebody playing Jeskai or Jund. While I expected a more fair meta, the end result was even more extreme than I anticipated, and I found myself wondering if I should have played a Choke instead of the second Liliana, the Last Hope after all. At this point, I also noticed another person on Death's Shadow with 4 colors and some very pretty foils, and after his match finished up I got to meet Spsiegel1987 in person for the first time, which was cool. The world's a real small place.
Round 2 - Storm (2-0, 2-0 overall)
While not as decisive a matchup as Grixis Shadow vs Storm, Storm is nevertheless a matchup I'm happy to see. There's really not even much to say because both games played out exactly the way they're supposed to, with me stripping his hand and then beating down with a big idiot. Liliana was key in both games, and I think that without Stubborn Denial you really have to be careful how many you cut because of matchups like this one.
Sideboard
-1 Kolaghan's Command
-2 Terminate
-1 Fatal Push
-1 Street Wraith
-1 Liliana of the Veil
The above is what I did on the draw, on the play I would remove a second Street Wraith and leave in the third Liliana. On the draw though, tapping out for her can sometimes be risky.
Round 3 - Blue Moon (2-1, 3-0 overall)
Historically, the U/R color pair in Modern has had difficultly dealing with Tarmogoyf. My strategy in this matchup is actually to play very conservatively with my life total and leverage the power of Tarmogoyf to push damage through. I like to go really long against Blue Moon because their answers line up so poorly with your threats, while you can discard their Jace's and force them to attempt the very difficult dance of burning you out without getting punished by Death's Shadow. You can't go that long if you shock yourself too much, so I actually fetch a lot of tapped shock lands in this matchup, I ended game 2 at 14 life and Game 3 at 11.
Going into this round, I knew my opponent was on a U/R deck that included Crackling Drake, so naturally I put him on Izzet Phoenix. I was able to leverage discard into multiple Death's Shadows early on, but ended up being too aggressive with my life total in turns 1/2 (before I realized he was on Moon and not Phoenix), and ended up giving him a window to burn me out, which he gladly took. Games 2 and 3 both played out the same way, with me fetching early Swamp and Forest and curving discard into Tarmogoyfs while keeping my life total high. I think I cast a single Death's Shadow in both sideboarded games. I was also able to land Lilianas in both games, which is another historically difficult card for U/R to deal with. Overall, the half of your deck that you share with traditional Jund does all of the heavy lifting in this matchup, so there's really no need to take the deal that Death's Shadow offers.
I like trimming a bit on my removal, but I knew my opponent was on Crackling Drake and also thought it would be reasonable for them to bring in Thing in the Ice, so I didn't go too nuts. That read turned out to be correct, and for game 3 I brought the third Fatal Push back in and took out the second Brutality. I don't think K-Command really does anything, since it doesn't kill their creatures and they don't kill yours, and I like making myself a little harder to burn out.
Intermission - Pairings go up and I'm the first seed, with 2 other people at 3-0, and one person with 7 points. So if I get paired against the other 3-0 I'm very likely to be able to double draw into top 8, but one of us is going to get paired down.
Round 4- G Tron (2-0, 4-0 overall)
I got paired down. Fortunately, Tron is one of the decks that my build just steamrolls if I don't get punked out by a turn 3 Wurmcoil. I honestly don't remember a ton about this match because my other match against Tron in top 8 was so much more memorable. I did keep an interesting hand in game 2 of Inquisition, Tarmogoyf, Battle Rage, 2 Street Wraith, 2 fetchlands. My reasoning was that I had all of the aggression I could want, and if Street Wraith found any sort of relevant interaction I had a very good shot at winning, and if it found another threat then I could guarantee a turn 4 kill. I almost got punished by a turn 3 Karn, but one of those Wraiths found me a Thoughtseize on my turn 2 and I was able to close from there.
Sideboard
-3 Fatal Push
-1 Kolaghan's Command
-2 Terminate
-3 Liliana of the Veil
-1 Ghor-Clan Rampager
It always feels good to board in 2/3 of your sideboard. My plan is to interact with my opponent's lands while Tarmogoyf invites them to sign the match slip, so everything that doesn't further that comes out.
Round 5 - U/W Control (ID, 4-0-1 overall)
I could not draw this match fast enough. I strongly believe that U/W and Jeskai are the worst matchups for this deck, so I was happy to avoid playing the matchup yet and hope that he ended up on the other side of the top 8 bracket. I grabbed a much needed power nap in my car while waiting for the round to finish.
Intermission - I'm first seed going into top 8 playing a deck with 8 discard spells. Today will be my day!
Quarterfinals - Tron (2-0, 5-0-1 overall)
The same opponent I faced in round 4, he was able to just barely squeak into top 8. Game 1 we both end up mulliganing to 5, but oh boy what a 5 I had - Death's Shadow, Death's Shadow, Thoughtseize, fetchland, Overgrown Tomb. My scry shows a Street Wraith, and I'm starting to think this deck might be good. Combining the above with a Tarfire to my face puts my opponent to 6 on my turn 3, and we go to game 2. Unfortunately, my opponent mulligans to 5 and I keep the nuts on 7, with 2 fetchlands, Shadow, Surgical, Fulminator, Assassin's Trophy, and Thoughtseize. My cards do what they do and my opponent never really gets a chance, but does put up a great fight for a mull to 5. The reason I have so many cards for this matchup is because even when it mulligans, it will still beat you if you fail to interact with it enough. Also notable from this game was my opponent boarding in Surgical Extraction as a way to counter my Surgicals, which he did do. While it didn't save him in that game, it was something I hadn't previously considered, and might make me reconsider waiting until my opponent's draw step to Surgical a Tron piece unless I know that the coast is clear.
Sideboard
Same as before.
Semifinals - Jeskai Control (1-2, 5-1-1 overall)
Ah crap. I think that Jeskai is the single hardest matchup for Jund Shadow, slightly edging out U/W because of their ability to burn you out. Against U/W, you can buy a lot of time by interacting with their threats via discard, Fulminator Mage, and Assassin's Trophy, and they really can't do a ton to punish you for going too low on life. However, they'll pretty much always have more threats than you have answers, so eventually something will usually stick and end the game in their favor. Jeskai can also do this, but they have the added option of burning you out. We can't interact on the stack, so this gives them some very real inevitability, especially in game 1. This is largely how my game 1 plays out, with me drawing few creatures but managing to get a Liliana into play. She starts ticking up, and my opponent lands a Teferi. Both planeswalkers stayed in play for something like 7 turns, with Teferi -3ing multiple times while my opponent tries to stave off a Liliana ult with burn. This is another area where Jeskai is harder than U/W, because U/W has very few answers to a resolved planeswalker in game 1. Eventually, my opponent is able to pull ahead with Teferi and Hieroglyphic Illumination, and I concede. Game 2 was the idiot parade, and steady stream of Tarmogoyfs had my opponent dead very quickly. Game 3 I was able to come out of the gate swinging with discard into Tarmogoyf while my opponent was dealing with mana problems. However, my opponent was able to answer the Goyf and I ended up flooding pretty badly, which gave him time to fix his mana and find a Geist of St. Traft, which then closed the game.
Sideboard
-2 Street Wraith
-3 Fatal Push
-2 Temur Battle Rage
+2 Assassin's Trophy
+3 Fulminator Mage
+2 Liliana, the Last Hope
I actually think I boarded incorrectly here. In addition to the above, I heavily weighed cutting my 2 Tarfires for 2 Collective Brutality. I decided not to because Tarfire can clean up a Jace or Teferi that's had to immediately minus, but I think this is incorrect. I think that being able to strip their answers and have an extra tool in balancing my life total is worth more than being able to answer a more specific scenario in the matchup. In the future I'll also look to -2 Tarfire and +2 Collective Brutality.
Overall I had a lot of fun, the deck was straight fire. I felt extremely in control of all of my matchups except for Jeskai, which, while one of the deck's worst matchups, is still very winnable. The only matchup where I might have been happy to have Stubborn Denial was Jeskai, and even then I think that I would turn to something like Choke first.
Jund vs Grixis vs 4-Color
At this point, I think that Jund and Grixis are both great choices, and I would not play 4 color. My reasoning comes down to consistency, both in playstyle and in execution.
Jund Shadow plays like an extreme version of traditional Jund, and can win games by trading resources 1-for-1 to get into a top deck war because your individual cards either answer theirs or are more powerful. Jund Shadow's creatures are enormous (my Tarmogoyfs yesterday routinely had 5 or 6 power), and will typically outmuscle anything else on the battlefield. This all enables Jund Shadow to play a midrange game that is both highly proactive and interactive, and at the same level of mana efficiency as the top linear decks of the format.
If Jund Shadow is the version of the deck that put all of its points into Strength, Grixis is the one that put them all into Dexterity. While Jund Shadow generally just bulldozes its way through games, Grixis takes a more refined approach with even higher mana efficiency and the ability to interact in the only way Jund Shadow can't, the stack. This allows it to play a more tempo-oriented game, with early discard spells clearing the way to resolve a key threat. They'll then typically ride this single threat to victory, using a combination of discard, removal, and countermagic to prevent the opponent from mounting a counterattack. This flexibility comes at a cost though, and while Grixis is better at protecting its threats than Jund, it's worse at consistently finding and deploying them.
I'm sure you're all aware of all of this, but the reason I'm spelling it out here is to highlight that these decks do have somewhat different plans, even if a lot of the cards are the same. These different plans inform the subtle differences in how you play both decks, and in some of the card choices. The 4-Color version of the deck tries to allow for both, and offers the ability to both out-muscle and out-tempo your opponent with the best cards the archetype has to offer. However, this flexibility comes at the cost of consistency. The 4th color isn't free in a deck running 18 lands, and having to decide which of your colors you're just not going to have access to for the foreseeable future is a common enough occurrence. Additionally, the deck plays cards that serve very conflicting gameplans. Liliana of the Veil typically does not pair well with countermagic, and Tarmogoyf costing 2 mana can sometimes mean you won't be able to hold up a Stubborn Denial to protect it. Additionally, Tarmogoyf isn't always guaranteed to turn on Stubborn Denial. I think that the power level and efficiency of both 3-color versions of the deck is so high that your best chance at winning is to just embrace what your deck wants to do. I don't think the addition of Stubborn Denial wins enough games to offset the fail rate that it introduces to the deck.
Couldn't agree more with your last paragraph and congrats to the result.
Played a similar event yesterday in Europe with Grixis Shadow and made Top 8 as well (we decided to split the prices).
Can't talk about Jund Shadow specifically, but totally agree with your points on the 4-color version. Grixis DS feels amazing in the current format but I probably love Stubborn Denial too much in order to try a nonblue version.
You talking about the constricting mana very much happened to me against Hardened Scales. I had a very large shadow and two Goyfs looking at tokens from my opponent.
I very much needed 2x green mana, one for traversing Ghor-Clan and the other to play him on Shadow. I couldn't do that, my mana was too messed up. My opponent had Ballista on 1 so I needed it right then and there.
I think you made a great decision in playing DSJ instead.
Ghor-Clan seemed really questionable to me in the 4-Color version of the deck. I'm pretty sure Peter Hollman ran into the exact scenario you're describing on coverage when he was against Dredge. I'm not super convinced I want Rampager in straight Jund, either.
I'm gladto hear you feel that way. I added it back into my list because it's been the "thing to do" with the resurgence of dredge and prevalence of humans & Spirits. But during the PTQ season earlier this year i developed a disdain for the card because i drew it naturally sometimes and it was terrible, and also rarely found myself needing to traverse for it. Literally only one time that i recorded did i actually need to traverse for it, and it actually wasn't in my list that day so i lost that match against D&T.
Maybe Ghor-Clan is actually obsolete? I personally keep an extra TBR in my sideboard for matches like that
I'm not sure it's "obsolete" so much as "was never that great to begin with". I think that the card serves a unique purpose in very specific situations, but is often a dead card outside of those situations. Like you said, you'll remember the games where you Traversed for it and it made the difference in winning the game, but that just doesn't seem to happen very often. I love having access to 2 Battle Rage, but I'm not entirely sure that I need access to a third version of that "push through damage" effect.
This is what I'm looking to play going forward until something about the meta changes:
Primarily a GDS player here but I’m finally acquiring the the 8 cards (tarmo and catacombs) needed to make this version. Not sure which one I will like more or is better in the end. I’ve avoided getting some staples for too long and convinced myself to get them. Can’t hurt owning another set of fetches and best green creature all around, right? Plus I would be much closer to GB Rock then.
What decks is this version great against would one say?
Commander GUR Maelstrom Wanderer BWU Sydri, Galvanic Genius BGB Meren of Clan Nel Toth WGW Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith RRR Feldon of the Third Path WWW Heliod, God of the Sun
Im noticing a lot more GDS players in pick-up games online, so I'm thinking that is due to combat the Phoenix decks. It's unfortunate because I'm certain Traverse Shadowis better against Phoenixthan GDS, but i think GDS might be better against us Traverse players. I'm having a tough time winning a match against them. We might need more Kolaghan's Command in the sideboard to help here. LOTV was particularly underwhelming actually so im not sure about her either
I've been super confused about the Terminates in the MD and then playing Assassin's Trophy in the SB. Terminate seems redundant and clunky -- are there that many Gurmag Anglers in your meta? Lilly seems to clean up a lot of what you'd want Terminate to hit.
The few changes from my previous list were out of a desire to improve my fair matchups, since the deck seems to handle unfair decks very well already. While Ooze and Tracker both seemed appealing on paper, I was consistently disappointed by both cards and won't be running them again in the future. The tournament itself had 65 people, which was good for 6 rounds. Overall, my matchups were:
Top 8
Jund (2-0, 5-1-1 overall)
Humans (1-2, 5-2-1 overall)
I'm still learning how to approach the Jund and Grixis Shadow matchups, but neither matchup is nearly as bad as it was when Grixis Shadow was first emerging last year. The current builds of Grixis are far less grindy, and the matchup feels a lot more manageable when they aren't playing 4 Fatal Push and 4 Snapcaster Mage as a baseline in the main deck.
@lugger to answer your question from 2 weeks ago, I think that Assassin's Trophy is at its worst when you're using it as a removal spell, so if it wasn't Terminate it would at least be Dismember, not Trophy. Additionally, I think that getting to play Terminate is one of the upsides of this deck over 4-color, and since you aren't running countermagic you just need to play the best removal spells that you can. I don't think the format is in a place where I need to answer a lot of enchantments/planeswalkers in game 1, and my current main deck has been consistently strong enough that I haven't felt much need to tinker with it.
Edit- Just remembered that it was Titanshift I played against in round 2. Lost game 1, won games 2/3 because this deck sideboards like a monster in that matchup.
Not great. I didn’t like the play patterns it forced me into with my lands, and I don’t think the deck floods out consistently enough to make Tracker worth it. I’m in the middle of a league with a copy of Phyrexian Arena in the sideboard, and it just came up huge in a game 3 against Jund.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki
I’m going to have to go do a little reconnaissance at my LGS to see if it’s as fair as y’all’s and if I need to include the U for Stubby-D. I haven’t been up there in awhile, and the meta seems to really ebb and flow. No telling what everyone’s on.
Looking forward to that write up.
And sorry about the results, Siegel. It really do just be like that sometimes tho.
BRGJUNDGRB---BRHOLLOW ONERB---BGELVESGB---BRGLIVING ENDGRB---GWBOGLESWG
EDH:
BRGKARRTHUS, TYRANT OF JUNDGRB
I posted my list right on the page previous to this one. Its a manamorphose list with only 3x blue and 3x red cards in the main deck.
----
Question for everyone. Anyone tried Engineered Explosives for the sideboard? It seems a bit narrow to me, but i opened a foil one from UMA and initially I just thought of selling it, but I know I've seen it used in a lot of GDS sideboards. Rarely in Traverse decks though. Any thoughts?
Draft My Cube!
I would personally at least one EE in my modern tool-box
1x Blood Crypt
4x Bloodstained Mire
1x Forest
2x Overgrown Tomb
1x Stomping Ground
1x Swamp
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Wooded Foothills
Artifact (4)
4x Mishra's Bauble
Planeswalker (3)
3x Liliana of the Veil
Instant (10)
3x Fatal Push
1x Kolaghan's Command
2x Tarfire
2x Temur Battle Rage
2x Terminate
4x Death's Shadow
1x Ghor-Clan Rampager
4x Street Wraith
4x Tarmogoyf
Sorcery (12)
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Thoughtseize
4x Traverse the Ulvenwald
2x Abrade
2x Assassin's Trophy
2x Collective Brutality
3x Fulminator Mage
1x Languish
2x Liliana, the Last Hope
3x Surgical Extraction
After Peter Hollman won his SCG Open on 4-Color Shadow, I was interested in giving the archetype another try after spending most of this year on Grixis. I've historically had better results on Traverse than Grixis, but with Grixis being the accepted "better" deck that just seemed like the one you were supposed to play. Returning to Traverse reminded me of a few things I'd somewhat forgotten:
- Tarmogoyf is a great Magic card
- Consistently deploying a threat on turn 2 is a big deal in a lot of matchups
- The Jund removal suite is still amazing
- The 4-Color mana base is a huge liability over a 3 color one
I hate losing games of Magic because I can't cast my spells. The inconsistency of the 5-Color Traverse manabase was the reason I originally switched to Grixis, and while the 4 color manabase is more consistent than 5 color, you will still lose some number of games because you either drew the wrong spells to go with your lands, you had to take too much damage getting all of your colors online, or your lands produced a combination of mana that's too restrictive on your given hand. These are issues that the 3 color versions of the deck very rarely encounter, and the power level of all of the Shadow decks is so high that just being able to cast your spells when you want to is going to win a lot of games. For that reason, I wanted to explore just how necessary Stubborn Denial is, and determine if just straight Jund would be a viable alternative to Grixis.
My testing on MTGO showed that I was definitely making some matchups more difficult by not running Stub, namely Burn and Jeskai. However, the matches I lost to both decks were in part to mistakes made in sideboarding (forgetting to bring in Abrade against Burn in case of Ensnaring Bridge), or partially due to play error. While I think both decks aren't great matchups, I think that they're still winnable and you have several avenues to victory in both of them. Aside from that, I felt like my matchups against land-based decks (Tron, Valakut, Amulet) got substantially better because I had 5 ways to interact with their lands, and 3 Surgicals to seal the game from there. Running more Liliana of the Veil made my fair matchups a bit better, and having consistent access to my colors and an improved removal suite made my creature-based matchups better.
I arrived at the above list after a few iterations on the sideboard, and while it's mostly stock I did take a few liberties:
- No Dismember, 2 Terminate - I like Dismember in Grixis because they need to cast multiple spells a turn and the difference between 1 and 2 mana in that deck is enormous. However, Traverse (4 color and Jund) tends to only play 1 or 2 spells a turn because it doesn't play many cantrips, so I think you can afford to spend an extra mana to upgrade to the ability to kill anything through regeneration. This is a tougher sell in 4 color because of Terminate's mana requirements, so this feels like a real draw to Jund.
- 3 Liliana of the Veil - The way people rag on her sometimes, you'd wonder why we even play her. I think LotV is incredible in this deck because of the way Jund Shadow likes to exchange resources. While she usually isn't the MVP against Spirits or Tron, she's an important role player and there are still multiple decks that struggle a lot to deal with a resolved Liliana. In particular, she swings the Grixis Shadow matchup by a huge margin if she resolves. The store the tournament was at is my LGS, and knowing that people usually play fair decks at the IQs I felt confident that I'd want 3.
- No Anger of the Gods, 1 Languish - The short answer is, you just don't need it. My build has access to such an absurd amount of single-target removal, I would often find myself casting my Angers to answer a single threat anyway. Given that, I felt that I could go down to only 1 sweeper, and since I have 3 Surgicals I felt like it didn't need to be an Anger. I think the logic behind Languish in this deck is pretty reasonable, and it's exactly the kind of card I like as a 1-of in my sideboard.
The Tournament
So all in all, the Jund version of the deck didn't seem strictly worse than 4-Color, and I took the above list to play yesterday. It was a pretty light turnout of 32 people, which was good for 5 rounds.
Round 1- Hardened Scales (2-0, 1-0 overall)
I think Hardened Scales is slightly in our favor, the same way traditional Affinity was slightly in Jund's. They have hands that can just invalidate your ability to interact, but for the most part you can kill the things that matter and attack past the remains. My strategy in this matchup is exactly that, focusing my discard and removal on their creatures, establishing a threat, and just tempoing them out of the game because they can't profitably block. This was what I did to win game 1. Hardened Scales itself can sometimes be a liability for them, as drawing too many can leave them too threat-light to actual take advantage of the payoff. My opponent ran into that issue in game 2, where he had 3 Hardened Scales in play but was drawing creatures so in-frequently that I was able to answer all of them. Unfortunately, I could answer everything because I was drawing nothing but removal, and on turn 5 I resolved Ghor-Clan Rampager and finally got my clock on. Rampager would end up dealing all 20 points of damage to my opponent, though I would eventually draw other threats that my opponent was just forced to chump block.
Sideboard
-3 Liliana of the Veil
-2 Street Wraith
+2 Abrade
+2 Assassin's Trophy
+1 Languish
Your main deck already does pretty much everything you want to be doing in this matchup, so I just like to cut Liliana and make myself a little less vulnerable to Walking Ballista.
Intermission - At this point I walked around to see what everyone was playing, and I didn't see a single person on KCI, Spirits, or Humans. Instead, every other seat had somebody playing Jeskai or Jund. While I expected a more fair meta, the end result was even more extreme than I anticipated, and I found myself wondering if I should have played a Choke instead of the second Liliana, the Last Hope after all. At this point, I also noticed another person on Death's Shadow with 4 colors and some very pretty foils, and after his match finished up I got to meet Spsiegel1987 in person for the first time, which was cool. The world's a real small place.
Round 2 - Storm (2-0, 2-0 overall)
While not as decisive a matchup as Grixis Shadow vs Storm, Storm is nevertheless a matchup I'm happy to see. There's really not even much to say because both games played out exactly the way they're supposed to, with me stripping his hand and then beating down with a big idiot. Liliana was key in both games, and I think that without Stubborn Denial you really have to be careful how many you cut because of matchups like this one.
Sideboard
-1 Kolaghan's Command
-2 Terminate
-1 Fatal Push
-1 Street Wraith
-1 Liliana of the Veil
+2 Collective Brutality
+1 Languish
+3 Surgical Extraction
The above is what I did on the draw, on the play I would remove a second Street Wraith and leave in the third Liliana. On the draw though, tapping out for her can sometimes be risky.
Round 3 - Blue Moon (2-1, 3-0 overall)
Historically, the U/R color pair in Modern has had difficultly dealing with Tarmogoyf. My strategy in this matchup is actually to play very conservatively with my life total and leverage the power of Tarmogoyf to push damage through. I like to go really long against Blue Moon because their answers line up so poorly with your threats, while you can discard their Jace's and force them to attempt the very difficult dance of burning you out without getting punished by Death's Shadow. You can't go that long if you shock yourself too much, so I actually fetch a lot of tapped shock lands in this matchup, I ended game 2 at 14 life and Game 3 at 11.
Going into this round, I knew my opponent was on a U/R deck that included Crackling Drake, so naturally I put him on Izzet Phoenix. I was able to leverage discard into multiple Death's Shadows early on, but ended up being too aggressive with my life total in turns 1/2 (before I realized he was on Moon and not Phoenix), and ended up giving him a window to burn me out, which he gladly took. Games 2 and 3 both played out the same way, with me fetching early Swamp and Forest and curving discard into Tarmogoyfs while keeping my life total high. I think I cast a single Death's Shadow in both sideboarded games. I was also able to land Lilianas in both games, which is another historically difficult card for U/R to deal with. Overall, the half of your deck that you share with traditional Jund does all of the heavy lifting in this matchup, so there's really no need to take the deal that Death's Shadow offers.
Sideboard
-2 Street Wraith
-1 Fatal Push
-1 Kolaghan's Command
+2 Assassin's Trophy
+2 Collective Brutality
I like trimming a bit on my removal, but I knew my opponent was on Crackling Drake and also thought it would be reasonable for them to bring in Thing in the Ice, so I didn't go too nuts. That read turned out to be correct, and for game 3 I brought the third Fatal Push back in and took out the second Brutality. I don't think K-Command really does anything, since it doesn't kill their creatures and they don't kill yours, and I like making myself a little harder to burn out.
Intermission - Pairings go up and I'm the first seed, with 2 other people at 3-0, and one person with 7 points. So if I get paired against the other 3-0 I'm very likely to be able to double draw into top 8, but one of us is going to get paired down.
Round 4- G Tron (2-0, 4-0 overall)
I got paired down. Fortunately, Tron is one of the decks that my build just steamrolls if I don't get punked out by a turn 3 Wurmcoil. I honestly don't remember a ton about this match because my other match against Tron in top 8 was so much more memorable. I did keep an interesting hand in game 2 of Inquisition, Tarmogoyf, Battle Rage, 2 Street Wraith, 2 fetchlands. My reasoning was that I had all of the aggression I could want, and if Street Wraith found any sort of relevant interaction I had a very good shot at winning, and if it found another threat then I could guarantee a turn 4 kill. I almost got punished by a turn 3 Karn, but one of those Wraiths found me a Thoughtseize on my turn 2 and I was able to close from there.
Sideboard
-3 Fatal Push
-1 Kolaghan's Command
-2 Terminate
-3 Liliana of the Veil
-1 Ghor-Clan Rampager
+2 Abrade
+2 Assassin's Trophy
+3 Fulminator Mage
+3 Surgical Extraction
It always feels good to board in 2/3 of your sideboard. My plan is to interact with my opponent's lands while Tarmogoyf invites them to sign the match slip, so everything that doesn't further that comes out.
Round 5 - U/W Control (ID, 4-0-1 overall)
I could not draw this match fast enough. I strongly believe that U/W and Jeskai are the worst matchups for this deck, so I was happy to avoid playing the matchup yet and hope that he ended up on the other side of the top 8 bracket. I grabbed a much needed power nap in my car while waiting for the round to finish.
Intermission - I'm first seed going into top 8 playing a deck with 8 discard spells. Today will be my day!
Quarterfinals - Tron (2-0, 5-0-1 overall)
The same opponent I faced in round 4, he was able to just barely squeak into top 8. Game 1 we both end up mulliganing to 5, but oh boy what a 5 I had - Death's Shadow, Death's Shadow, Thoughtseize, fetchland, Overgrown Tomb. My scry shows a Street Wraith, and I'm starting to think this deck might be good. Combining the above with a Tarfire to my face puts my opponent to 6 on my turn 3, and we go to game 2. Unfortunately, my opponent mulligans to 5 and I keep the nuts on 7, with 2 fetchlands, Shadow, Surgical, Fulminator, Assassin's Trophy, and Thoughtseize. My cards do what they do and my opponent never really gets a chance, but does put up a great fight for a mull to 5. The reason I have so many cards for this matchup is because even when it mulligans, it will still beat you if you fail to interact with it enough. Also notable from this game was my opponent boarding in Surgical Extraction as a way to counter my Surgicals, which he did do. While it didn't save him in that game, it was something I hadn't previously considered, and might make me reconsider waiting until my opponent's draw step to Surgical a Tron piece unless I know that the coast is clear.
Sideboard
Same as before.
Semifinals - Jeskai Control (1-2, 5-1-1 overall)
Ah crap. I think that Jeskai is the single hardest matchup for Jund Shadow, slightly edging out U/W because of their ability to burn you out. Against U/W, you can buy a lot of time by interacting with their threats via discard, Fulminator Mage, and Assassin's Trophy, and they really can't do a ton to punish you for going too low on life. However, they'll pretty much always have more threats than you have answers, so eventually something will usually stick and end the game in their favor. Jeskai can also do this, but they have the added option of burning you out. We can't interact on the stack, so this gives them some very real inevitability, especially in game 1. This is largely how my game 1 plays out, with me drawing few creatures but managing to get a Liliana into play. She starts ticking up, and my opponent lands a Teferi. Both planeswalkers stayed in play for something like 7 turns, with Teferi -3ing multiple times while my opponent tries to stave off a Liliana ult with burn. This is another area where Jeskai is harder than U/W, because U/W has very few answers to a resolved planeswalker in game 1. Eventually, my opponent is able to pull ahead with Teferi and Hieroglyphic Illumination, and I concede. Game 2 was the idiot parade, and steady stream of Tarmogoyfs had my opponent dead very quickly. Game 3 I was able to come out of the gate swinging with discard into Tarmogoyf while my opponent was dealing with mana problems. However, my opponent was able to answer the Goyf and I ended up flooding pretty badly, which gave him time to fix his mana and find a Geist of St. Traft, which then closed the game.
Sideboard
-2 Street Wraith
-3 Fatal Push
-2 Temur Battle Rage
+2 Assassin's Trophy
+3 Fulminator Mage
+2 Liliana, the Last Hope
I actually think I boarded incorrectly here. In addition to the above, I heavily weighed cutting my 2 Tarfires for 2 Collective Brutality. I decided not to because Tarfire can clean up a Jace or Teferi that's had to immediately minus, but I think this is incorrect. I think that being able to strip their answers and have an extra tool in balancing my life total is worth more than being able to answer a more specific scenario in the matchup. In the future I'll also look to -2 Tarfire and +2 Collective Brutality.
Overall I had a lot of fun, the deck was straight fire. I felt extremely in control of all of my matchups except for Jeskai, which, while one of the deck's worst matchups, is still very winnable. The only matchup where I might have been happy to have Stubborn Denial was Jeskai, and even then I think that I would turn to something like Choke first.
Jund vs Grixis vs 4-Color
At this point, I think that Jund and Grixis are both great choices, and I would not play 4 color. My reasoning comes down to consistency, both in playstyle and in execution.
Jund Shadow plays like an extreme version of traditional Jund, and can win games by trading resources 1-for-1 to get into a top deck war because your individual cards either answer theirs or are more powerful. Jund Shadow's creatures are enormous (my Tarmogoyfs yesterday routinely had 5 or 6 power), and will typically outmuscle anything else on the battlefield. This all enables Jund Shadow to play a midrange game that is both highly proactive and interactive, and at the same level of mana efficiency as the top linear decks of the format.
If Jund Shadow is the version of the deck that put all of its points into Strength, Grixis is the one that put them all into Dexterity. While Jund Shadow generally just bulldozes its way through games, Grixis takes a more refined approach with even higher mana efficiency and the ability to interact in the only way Jund Shadow can't, the stack. This allows it to play a more tempo-oriented game, with early discard spells clearing the way to resolve a key threat. They'll then typically ride this single threat to victory, using a combination of discard, removal, and countermagic to prevent the opponent from mounting a counterattack. This flexibility comes at a cost though, and while Grixis is better at protecting its threats than Jund, it's worse at consistently finding and deploying them.
I'm sure you're all aware of all of this, but the reason I'm spelling it out here is to highlight that these decks do have somewhat different plans, even if a lot of the cards are the same. These different plans inform the subtle differences in how you play both decks, and in some of the card choices. The 4-Color version of the deck tries to allow for both, and offers the ability to both out-muscle and out-tempo your opponent with the best cards the archetype has to offer. However, this flexibility comes at the cost of consistency. The 4th color isn't free in a deck running 18 lands, and having to decide which of your colors you're just not going to have access to for the foreseeable future is a common enough occurrence. Additionally, the deck plays cards that serve very conflicting gameplans. Liliana of the Veil typically does not pair well with countermagic, and Tarmogoyf costing 2 mana can sometimes mean you won't be able to hold up a Stubborn Denial to protect it. Additionally, Tarmogoyf isn't always guaranteed to turn on Stubborn Denial. I think that the power level and efficiency of both 3-color versions of the deck is so high that your best chance at winning is to just embrace what your deck wants to do. I don't think the addition of Stubborn Denial wins enough games to offset the fail rate that it introduces to the deck.
Played a similar event yesterday in Europe with Grixis Shadow and made Top 8 as well (we decided to split the prices).
Can't talk about Jund Shadow specifically, but totally agree with your points on the 4-color version. Grixis DS feels amazing in the current format but I probably love Stubborn Denial too much in order to try a nonblue version.
I very much needed 2x green mana, one for traversing Ghor-Clan and the other to play him on Shadow. I couldn't do that, my mana was too messed up. My opponent had Ballista on 1 so I needed it right then and there.
I think you made a great decision in playing DSJ instead.
e
Maybe Ghor-Clan is actually obsolete? I personally keep an extra TBR in my sideboard for matches like that
Draft My Cube!
This is what I'm looking to play going forward until something about the meta changes:
1x Blood Crypt
4x Bloodstained Mire
1x Forest
2x Overgrown Tomb
1x Stomping Ground
1x Swamp
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Wooded Foothills
Sorcery (12)
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Thoughtseize
4x Traverse the Ulvenwald
1x Assassin's Trophy
3x Fatal Push
2x Tarfire
2x Temur Battle Rage
2x Terminate
Creature (13)
4x Death's Shadow
1x Grim Flayer
4x Street Wraith
4x Tarmogoyf
Artifact (4)
4x Mishra's Bauble
Planeswalker (3)
3x Liliana of the Veil
2x Abrade
1x Assassin's Trophy
1x Choke
2x Collective Brutality
3x Fulminator Mage
1x Kolaghan's Command
1x Languish
1x Liliana, the Last Hope
3x Surgical Extraction
BRGJUNDGRB---BRHOLLOW ONERB---BGELVESGB---BRGLIVING ENDGRB---GWBOGLESWG
EDH:
BRGKARRTHUS, TYRANT OF JUNDGRB
Spell based combo decks are going to pop their head out as a result of Izzet, no?
What decks is this version great against would one say?
GURB Grixis/Jund Shadow
RBG Dredge
xUx U Ballista Tron
Commander
GUR Maelstrom Wanderer
BWU Sydri, Galvanic Genius
BGB Meren of Clan Nel Toth
WGW Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith
RRR Feldon of the Third Path
WWW Heliod, God of the Sun
Draft My Cube!
I've been super confused about the Terminates in the MD and then playing Assassin's Trophy in the SB. Terminate seems redundant and clunky -- are there that many Gurmag Anglers in your meta? Lilly seems to clean up a lot of what you'd want Terminate to hit.
1x Blood Crypt
4x Bloodstained Mire
1x Forest
2x Overgrown Tomb
1x Stomping Ground
1x Swamp
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Wooded Foothills
Sorcery (12)
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Thoughtseize
4x Traverse the Ulvenwald
3x Fatal Push
2x Kolaghan's Command
2x Tarfire
2x Temur Battle Rage
2x Terminate
Creature (13)
4x Death's Shadow
1x Ghor-Clan Rampager
4x Street Wraith
4x Tarmogoyf
Artifact (4)
4x Mishra's Bauble
Planeswalker (2)
2x Liliana of the Veil
1x Ancient Grudge
2x Assassin's Trophy
2x Collective Brutality
3x Fulminator Mage
1x Languish
1x Liliana, the Last Hope
1x Scavenging Ooze
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Tireless Tracker
The few changes from my previous list were out of a desire to improve my fair matchups, since the deck seems to handle unfair decks very well already. While Ooze and Tracker both seemed appealing on paper, I was consistently disappointed by both cards and won't be running them again in the future. The tournament itself had 65 people, which was good for 6 rounds. Overall, my matchups were:
Swiss
Grixis Shadow (2-1, 1-0 overall)
Titanshift (2-1, 2-0 overall)
Burn (2-1, 3-0 overall)
Jund (1-2, 3-1 overall)
Tron (2-0, 4-1 overall)
Grixis Shadow (ID, 4-1-1 overall)
Top 8
Jund (2-0, 5-1-1 overall)
Humans (1-2, 5-2-1 overall)
I'm still learning how to approach the Jund and Grixis Shadow matchups, but neither matchup is nearly as bad as it was when Grixis Shadow was first emerging last year. The current builds of Grixis are far less grindy, and the matchup feels a lot more manageable when they aren't playing 4 Fatal Push and 4 Snapcaster Mage as a baseline in the main deck.
@lugger to answer your question from 2 weeks ago, I think that Assassin's Trophy is at its worst when you're using it as a removal spell, so if it wasn't Terminate it would at least be Dismember, not Trophy. Additionally, I think that getting to play Terminate is one of the upsides of this deck over 4-color, and since you aren't running countermagic you just need to play the best removal spells that you can. I don't think the format is in a place where I need to answer a lot of enchantments/planeswalkers in game 1, and my current main deck has been consistently strong enough that I haven't felt much need to tinker with it.
Edit- Just remembered that it was Titanshift I played against in round 2. Lost game 1, won games 2/3 because this deck sideboards like a monster in that matchup.
Abzan Traverse / Traverse Shadow / UR Kiki