The Engine:
Lotleth Troll, Grisly Salvage, Faithless Looting and Fauna Shaman get cards in the graveyard.
Vengevine, bloodghast, and gravecrawler come into play cheaply and efficiently.
That simple. Very consistent, very resilient.
Why this deck rocks:
This deck gets out of the gate fast using the graveyard to swarm in with creatures. The creatures are highly resilient to all forms of removal, and roll over any opponent that uses attrition to slow us down. Jund is probably the most dominant deck in modern right now. This deck trades Jund Midrange's spells for speed and creatures that bounce back from the graveyard.
An average hand for this deck plays out kind of like this:
Your opener is swamp, fetch, Lotleth Troll, Grisly Salvage, Gravecrawler, Violent Outburst, Geralf's Messenger.
T1: fetch, sac for tapped overgrown tomb.
T2: Swamp, Grisly Salvage, putting say, 1 Vengevine in your graveyard and a land into your hand.
T3: Play the land, Lotleth troll. Discard Gravecrawler, then play it. Get 1 Vengevine on the battlefield turn 3.
T4: From here on out, you keep regen mana up for lotleth. Play fauna shaman (A slow card in the deck) or messenger and keep the beats going. Lotleth can outclass goyfs rather easily, often as a combat trick.
The above example is rather slow. The deck has a consistent Turn 4 goldfish, often dealing over 30 damage by the end of turn 4.
Why these cards:
Numero Uno, Fauna Shaman is not as good as you think he is in this deck. He started as a 4 of but he's too slow. He might be fine as a 2 of, because he has nice tricks late game:Discard vengevine, get BBE. Play BBE, hit creature, Swing with BBE and VVine.
Vengevine, Bloodghast and Gravecrawler all have no problems being in your gy, and can work together to get large numbers of creatures on your board as early as turn 2 (T1: Faithless Looting, T2: play 2 1drops).
Is this a budget list (i.e. Why no Confidants/Tarmogoyfs?):
In the interest of disclosure, I don't own Confidants or Goyfs and would rather not play them. Still, I am not convinced that they are wholly better than the alternatives. For Confidant we play lots of 4 drops, and Grisly Salvage, while sometimes just cycling, can also be a draw 4 (1 to hand, 3 relevant cards to GY). Grisly and Goyf should be natural fits, but goyf himself does nothing if he's in the GY.
It may be that (Kinda like any modern deck with a forest) Goyf should be a 4 of, but some cockatrice Goyf testing has not convinced me that Goyf is necessarily a part of the decks optimal build.
Rafael Levy just brought Jundvine to the pro tour. We're in business baby. his list:
As you can see, the deck moves far closer to Levy's. We drop Bloodbraid Elf, trim mana, and bring in some imps. More 1 drops help us bring back VVine early game. However, I recommend keeping room for the Grisly Salvage, as it's mvp quality, binning recurrable creatures, fixing mana, etc.
In the board, 4 lightning bolts. There are lots of decks in this format (tron/scapeshift) where u want breakneck speed, and lightning bolt does 20 to 0 as fast as anything.
YMTC: We need a spikey red enchantment. My creations:
RR
Whenever a player taps a nonbasic land, [Card] deals 2 damage to them.
-or-
R
Whenever a player would gain life, flip a coin. If heads, that player loses that much life instead. If tails sacrifice [card] and that player gains that life as per usual.
Slower Dredgevine with heavier commitment to red? Your example has a one in ten chance of hitting a Vengevine. Why would you play this over a turn one City of Brass into Faithless looting, toss 2 dredgers, turn two dredge Four (slightly suboptimal) Cast Hedron Crab, Fetchland, hit another six, fetch up another shock and faitless again. Congratulations, you are now at 20 cards in deck, and have at least two Vines and Multiple other cards in the grave.
As for some of your choices, I can see this as trying to use the resilient creature base without going all in. Messanger seems a little tough on your mana base, and the ever popularity growing Moons.dec will completely destroy you. I would take the violent outbursts out for abrupts, possibly another BBE. I will openly say that the elf is second only to Gravecrawler in triggering vines. Shaman is good, but you have to either drop it or be committed to it. As a singleton it will do more inconstancy than good. You are using deathrite and lotleth. Thumbs up for you, using a extremely good but self destructive card, and a Boa with a twist I love both of the choices, and it reminds me of how I need to clear six slots in my own deck for such.
As for the more fiddly bits, as always the mana. your running less fetchable cards than fetches. That is an extremely risky thing to do. I would as always advocate the use of Life from the Loam.
TL;DR I can see this being a brother of Assault loam and modern dredge, but it needs a bit of work although it has more resilience to hate. It feels like an inbetween deck, like jund had an affair with Dredgevine and this is the baby someone has just now claimed instead of suggesting it on both threads for the nth time.
TL;DR 2 It seems okay
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"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
Thanks for the response. The list was edited while you were posting. I spent time saying why it's better to play this than Jund, but I should've talked about why this isn't Dredgevine.
You don't need to see a Vengevine to win. Vengevine is more like a bonus.
Lotleth is optimized in this list. Maybe it Should've been called LOLJund (R). Life from the loam seems awesome, but the thought of bloodbraiding into a LftL makes me throw up a bit in my mouth. Deathrite is almost always a BOP, and always has legit targets of some sort.
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YMTC: We need a spikey red enchantment. My creations:
RR
Whenever a player taps a nonbasic land, [Card] deals 2 damage to them.
-or-
R
Whenever a player would gain life, flip a coin. If heads, that player loses that much life instead. If tails sacrifice [card] and that player gains that life as per usual.
You don't need vengevine to win either. Loads of games are from beats or Gnaw to the Bone ragequits.
But yeah, Lily is going to be a star in this deck.
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"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
I'm a bit of a fan of Dreg Mangler instead of Geralf's Messenger in a Jund-coloured deck, since it's more aggressive and it's kinder on the mana base.
But then again, they bolt Geralf's M, he comes back, while they bolt Dreg Mangler, he's basically not coming back for the rest of the game (before you hit Dreg Mangler's Scavenge cost, you can hardcast Vengevines). Hmmm...
Squee, Goblin Nabob plays well with loltroll, toss in a Jaya Ballard, Task Mage and some other spellshapers to benefit from the fact that your running things that like to be discarded.
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"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
I'd throw in some Dark Confidants into the SB to fight the graveyard hate in G2/G3 and make you less dependent on it.
Overall though, I love the deck. It's like a masterpiece how all the cards work so beautifully together and how you can utilize Grisly Salvage and Faithless Looting to the best of their ability, but it doesn't go all-in with the graveyard. If they drop a Leyline or Relic, your deck just punishes them for diluting theirs with their hate. I love it!
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You like Super Smash Bros.? Melee or Brawl? Check this out! http://projectm.dantarion.com/
It's an updated version of Brawl into an epic, new game.
ZX: Jaya Ballard is an awesome suggestion. As for Squee, I don't like to run cards that are a) completely dependent on the graveyard b) not impactful on their own. In the right situation he seems great, but his 3 casting cost means he doesn't helpt much in getting vengevines into play or helping you out when you dont have lotleth.
Dark confidant in the board seems great. One of the great things in the deck is that I'm usually happy to see cards like grafdiggers cage. Gravecrawler and bloodghast do fine jobs of beating down, even without the gy.
Dreg mangler seems like a good replacement for geralf if we go in on Jaya baillard. As is, the deck has no double green/double red. This lets you hit geralf's really consistently. The singleton forest is usually feched up as a 4th mana source. With Jaya stretches the mana a bit, making it harder to hit green. Jaya also makes BBE a little less impactful the turn it hits the board (geralf has pseudo haste). However, Jaya's ability to incinerate and pick off blue flyers makes me intrigued. I'll do some testing. If we can hit double red without needing a more red heavy mana base (stomping grounds) then she seems great. Also: board vs merfolk/the 3/1faerie flyer/ U/Rcombo
I'm also testing sparkspitter
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YMTC: We need a spikey red enchantment. My creations:
RR
Whenever a player taps a nonbasic land, [Card] deals 2 damage to them.
-or-
R
Whenever a player would gain life, flip a coin. If heads, that player loses that much life instead. If tails sacrifice [card] and that player gains that life as per usual.
I'm giving this the 48 hours bump because the OP now has new information drawn in from Rafael Levy's list at the pro tour.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
YMTC: We need a spikey red enchantment. My creations:
RR
Whenever a player taps a nonbasic land, [Card] deals 2 damage to them.
-or-
R
Whenever a player would gain life, flip a coin. If heads, that player loses that much life instead. If tails sacrifice [card] and that player gains that life as per usual.
This should answer some of your questions about the deck. I still believe it's powerful, but after eggs, people will likely be upping their GY hate. I'm currently working on a BRW zombies list, so jundvine is no longer at the front of my testing. I will check back in here though, and i dont believe we've seen the last of jundvine at major tournaments. I recommend looking into grisly salvage. It's a pretty sick mana fixer/loltroll finder/vvine binner.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
YMTC: We need a spikey red enchantment. My creations:
RR
Whenever a player taps a nonbasic land, [Card] deals 2 damage to them.
-or-
R
Whenever a player would gain life, flip a coin. If heads, that player loses that much life instead. If tails sacrifice [card] and that player gains that life as per usual.
My Original list:
4x Bloodbraid Elf
4x Bloodghast
4x Deathrite Shaman
1x Jaya Ballard, Task Mage
2x Geralf's Messenger
4x Gravecrawler
4x Lotleth Troll
4x Vengevine
Instants and Sorceries
4x Grisly Salvage
4x Faithless Looting
3x Liliana of the Veil
1x Blood Crypt
1x Forest
2x Graven Cairns
4x Marsh Flats
2x Overgrown Tomb
2x Swamp
3x Twilight Mire
4x Verdant Catacombs
3x Torpor Orb
2x Obstinate Baloth
4x Abrupt Decay
3x Ancient Grudge
2x Lightning Bolt
1x Liliana of the Veil
The Engine:
Lotleth Troll, Grisly Salvage, Faithless Looting and Fauna Shaman get cards in the graveyard.
Vengevine, bloodghast, and gravecrawler come into play cheaply and efficiently.
That simple. Very consistent, very resilient.
Why this deck rocks:
An average hand for this deck plays out kind of like this:
Your opener is swamp, fetch, Lotleth Troll, Grisly Salvage, Gravecrawler, Violent Outburst, Geralf's Messenger.
T1: fetch, sac for tapped overgrown tomb.
T2: Swamp, Grisly Salvage, putting say, 1 Vengevine in your graveyard and a land into your hand.
T3: Play the land, Lotleth troll. Discard Gravecrawler, then play it. Get 1 Vengevine on the battlefield turn 3.
T4: From here on out, you keep regen mana up for lotleth. Play fauna shaman (A slow card in the deck) or messenger and keep the beats going. Lotleth can outclass goyfs rather easily, often as a combat trick.
The above example is rather slow. The deck has a consistent Turn 4 goldfish, often dealing over 30 damage by the end of turn 4.
Why these cards:
Numero Uno, Fauna Shaman is not as good as you think he is in this deck. He started as a 4 of but he's too slow. He might be fine as a 2 of, because he has nice tricks late game:Discard vengevine, get BBE. Play BBE, hit creature, Swing with BBE and VVine.
Vengevine, Bloodghast and Gravecrawler all have no problems being in your gy, and can work together to get large numbers of creatures on your board as early as turn 2 (T1: Faithless Looting, T2: play 2 1drops).
Is this a budget list (i.e. Why no Confidants/Tarmogoyfs?):
In the interest of disclosure, I don't own Confidants or Goyfs and would rather not play them. Still, I am not convinced that they are wholly better than the alternatives. For Confidant we play lots of 4 drops, and Grisly Salvage, while sometimes just cycling, can also be a draw 4 (1 to hand, 3 relevant cards to GY). Grisly and Goyf should be natural fits, but goyf himself does nothing if he's in the GY.
It may be that (Kinda like any modern deck with a forest) Goyf should be a 4 of, but some cockatrice Goyf testing has not convinced me that Goyf is necessarily a part of the decks optimal build.
Rafael Levy just brought Jundvine to the pro tour. We're in business baby. his list:
4x Gravecrawler
4x Diregraf Ghoul
4x Deathrite Shaman
4x Lotleth Troll
4x Bloodghast
3x Dredgescape Zombie
4x Stinkwood Imp
4x Vengevine
2x Abrupt Decay
4x Faithless Looting
3x Blasting Station
Land
4x Blackcleave Cliffs
3x Overgrown Tomb
1x Blood Crypt
4x Marsh Flats
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x basics
As Levy said, "we had lili's and messenger in the first version" before they got switched to imps and dredgescape zombies.
I recommend adopting the blasting station.
My Newest List:
4x Diregraf Ghoul
4x Bloodghast
4x Deathrite Shaman
3x Dredgescape Zombie
4x Gravecrawler
4x Lotleth Troll
4x Vengevine
2x Stinkwood Imp
Instants and Sorceries
4x Grisly Salvage
4x Faithless Looting
3x Blasting Station
4x Blackcleave Cliffs
1x Blood Crypt
1x Forest
4x Marsh Flats
2x Overgrown Tomb
2x Swamp
2x Twilight Mire
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Torpor Orb
1x Obstinate Baloth
4x Abrupt Decay
3x Ancient Grudge
4x Lightning Bolt
1x Liliana of the Veil
As you can see, the deck moves far closer to Levy's. We drop Bloodbraid Elf, trim mana, and bring in some imps. More 1 drops help us bring back VVine early game. However, I recommend keeping room for the Grisly Salvage, as it's mvp quality, binning recurrable creatures, fixing mana, etc.
In the board, 4 lightning bolts. There are lots of decks in this format (tron/scapeshift) where u want breakneck speed, and lightning bolt does 20 to 0 as fast as anything.
Whenever a player taps a nonbasic land, [Card] deals 2 damage to them.
-or-
R
Whenever a player would gain life, flip a coin. If heads, that player loses that much life instead. If tails sacrifice [card] and that player gains that life as per usual.
Fires Rf Salvation
As for some of your choices, I can see this as trying to use the resilient creature base without going all in. Messanger seems a little tough on your mana base, and the ever popularity growing Moons.dec will completely destroy you. I would take the violent outbursts out for abrupts, possibly another BBE. I will openly say that the elf is second only to Gravecrawler in triggering vines. Shaman is good, but you have to either drop it or be committed to it. As a singleton it will do more inconstancy than good. You are using deathrite and lotleth. Thumbs up for you, using a extremely good but self destructive card, and a Boa with a twist I love both of the choices, and it reminds me of how I need to clear six slots in my own deck for such.
As for the more fiddly bits, as always the mana. your running less fetchable cards than fetches. That is an extremely risky thing to do. I would as always advocate the use of Life from the Loam.
TL;DR I can see this being a brother of Assault loam and modern dredge, but it needs a bit of work although it has more resilience to hate. It feels like an inbetween deck, like jund had an affair with Dredgevine and this is the baby someone has just now claimed instead of suggesting it on both threads for the nth time.
TL;DR 2 It seems okay
"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
You don't need to see a Vengevine to win. Vengevine is more like a bonus.
Lotleth is optimized in this list. Maybe it Should've been called LOLJund (R). Life from the loam seems awesome, but the thought of bloodbraiding into a LftL makes me throw up a bit in my mouth. Deathrite is almost always a BOP, and always has legit targets of some sort.
Whenever a player taps a nonbasic land, [Card] deals 2 damage to them.
-or-
R
Whenever a player would gain life, flip a coin. If heads, that player loses that much life instead. If tails sacrifice [card] and that player gains that life as per usual.
Fires Rf Salvation
gets things to GY + opponent hand disruption.
But yeah, Lily is going to be a star in this deck.
"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
But then again, they bolt Geralf's M, he comes back, while they bolt Dreg Mangler, he's basically not coming back for the rest of the game (before you hit Dreg Mangler's Scavenge cost, you can hardcast Vengevines). Hmmm...
"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
Overall though, I love the deck. It's like a masterpiece how all the cards work so beautifully together and how you can utilize Grisly Salvage and Faithless Looting to the best of their ability, but it doesn't go all-in with the graveyard. If they drop a Leyline or Relic, your deck just punishes them for diluting theirs with their hate. I love it!
It's an updated version of Brawl into an epic, new game.
Dark confidant in the board seems great. One of the great things in the deck is that I'm usually happy to see cards like grafdiggers cage. Gravecrawler and bloodghast do fine jobs of beating down, even without the gy.
Dreg mangler seems like a good replacement for geralf if we go in on Jaya baillard. As is, the deck has no double green/double red. This lets you hit geralf's really consistently. The singleton forest is usually feched up as a 4th mana source. With Jaya stretches the mana a bit, making it harder to hit green. Jaya also makes BBE a little less impactful the turn it hits the board (geralf has pseudo haste). However, Jaya's ability to incinerate and pick off blue flyers makes me intrigued. I'll do some testing. If we can hit double red without needing a more red heavy mana base (stomping grounds) then she seems great. Also: board vs merfolk/the 3/1faerie flyer/ U/Rcombo
I'm also testing sparkspitter
Whenever a player taps a nonbasic land, [Card] deals 2 damage to them.
-or-
R
Whenever a player would gain life, flip a coin. If heads, that player loses that much life instead. If tails sacrifice [card] and that player gains that life as per usual.
Fires Rf Salvation
Whenever a player taps a nonbasic land, [Card] deals 2 damage to them.
-or-
R
Whenever a player would gain life, flip a coin. If heads, that player loses that much life instead. If tails sacrifice [card] and that player gains that life as per usual.
Fires Rf Salvation
This should answer some of your questions about the deck. I still believe it's powerful, but after eggs, people will likely be upping their GY hate. I'm currently working on a BRW zombies list, so jundvine is no longer at the front of my testing. I will check back in here though, and i dont believe we've seen the last of jundvine at major tournaments. I recommend looking into grisly salvage. It's a pretty sick mana fixer/loltroll finder/vvine binner.
Whenever a player taps a nonbasic land, [Card] deals 2 damage to them.
-or-
R
Whenever a player would gain life, flip a coin. If heads, that player loses that much life instead. If tails sacrifice [card] and that player gains that life as per usual.
Fires Rf Salvation