Jund has a lot of deepness in all card type sections. This deck is focused on being aggressive to punish slow opponents, and has enough interactive elements to disrupt synergistic decks and to survive against aggressive decks. The biggest priority is to gain board dominance and close out the game.
Nissa, Vital Force brings the pain. Her +1 is her best ability, but having the option to minus her for card advantage makes her useful in any situation.
Harnessed Lightning is an amazing removal spell that stands perfectly on its own. Live Fast turns the card into a hard removal in almost all cases.
Unlicensed Disintegration is perfectly fine as an easy to cast Murder, but Tireless Tracker can turn Disintegration into a beastly card.
Just seems like a pure midrange deck to me. One glaring spot I see is you seem pretty weak to Gideon. Your gonna have to account for him again. With no coco around he is already shaping up to be the best Planeswalker in standard again.
The second thing is what is captives objective? Only thing worth ramping to is chandra really and the rest can just be played up your curve.
Just seems like a pure midrange deck to me. One glaring spot I see is you seem pretty weak to Gideon. Your gonna have to account for him again. With no coco around he is already shaping up to be the best Planeswalker in standard again.
The second thing is what is captives objective? Only thing worth ramping to is chandra really and the rest can just be played up your curve.
Gideon is quite powerful. best way to deal with planeswalkers is to attack them. Tracker and Advocate can both attack into 2/2's very well, and Nissa can one shot him. whether Gideon is a problem remains to be seen for me, since it depends on the deck in question.
as for Captive, I have grown very fond of him. there are always ways to use mana between clues and card draw spells (and flipping the Captive itself, of course).
I'll give you captive on his use didn't think about the clues.
The thing with Gideon is and he is not hard at all to evaluate in the coming standard as there is no real tempo deck like coco around to pressure him is he will go into almost every white deck. Control, midrange, aggro all of them will want him. They may be able to attack into but on t4 you make a dude chump the tracker cause he'll be the biggest and let Advocateveryone hit and he's still there you get to untap with him and you don't know where stuff goes from there.
Right now your decks worst enemy it looks like to me is gw tokens....the deck is still here and will most likely be a dominant force again. Nissa, VoZ and gideon, AoZ are both problem cards for your deck it looks like.
I think you have a great start Imo deck looks good just sensitive those.
Also looking at it I'd add some number of ruinous paths not just for Walkers but for emrakul too. She's still gonna be everywhere to and you have no main board answers to her which means if she stick your most likely losing that game.
I'll give you captive on his use didn't think about the clues.
The thing with Gideon is and he is not hard at all to evaluate in the coming standard as there is no real tempo deck like coco around to pressure him is he will go into almost every white deck. Control, midrange, aggro all of them will want him. They may be able to attack into but on t4 you make a dude chump the tracker cause he'll be the biggest and let Advocateveryone hit and he's still there you get to untap with him and you don't know where stuff goes from there.
Right now your decks worst enemy it looks like to me is gw tokens....the deck is still here and will most likely be a dominant force again. Nissa, VoZ and gideon, AoZ are both problem cards for your deck it looks like.
I think you have a great start Imo deck looks good just sensitive those.
Also looking at it I'd add some number of ruinous paths not just for Walkers but for emrakul too. She's still gonna be everywhere to and you have no main board answers to her which means if she stick your most likely losing that game.
GW tokens is certainly possibly the worst match-up, assuming the deck is on a similar power level after rotation. depending on how big of a metagame share the deck ends up having I can accept conceding the MU.
I am shying away from double BB spells to ensure I can come fast out of the gates with fewer CIPT lands (and being able to cast spells on curve in general). I have considered playing maybe 1-2 or Paths. However, for now I am testing how the deck works without Paths, since I am not a huge fan of the card when I have access to Disintegration. I am currently not trying to beat any specific decks since I don't have guesses about what the format will look like - it could be very fast or very slow, I really don't know.
It's true just when I've been forming decks I don't necessarily aim to beat decks with it so.much as cards themselves. I just try to consider I have to beat gideon, emrakul, Kozilek's Return, Ishkana, and the new Nissa. These are all the first cArdsley I try to aim to beat more will come I'm sure.
oh another card which may could just reserve some sideboard slots cause most lists i've seen only play 1 or 2 but is skysoverign, the consul flagship. card is seriously undervalued imo and in any token or midrange deck with smaller creaatures makes this card insane.
Ruinous Path seems necessary and a manabase built around Harness Lightning and Live Fast can easily support Aether Hub, trimming a Game Trail and a Smoldering Marsh probably.
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One of these day I have to get myself organizized.
Ruinous Path seems necessary and a manabase built around Harness Lightning and Live Fast can easily support Aether Hub, trimming a Game Trail and a Smoldering Marsh probably.
I'm not sure if Ruinous Path is necessary. it could be. lightning and disintegration are both superior creature removal, and the best way to deal with planeswalkers is combat. Ruinous Path is only good as a way to kill Emrakul, but I'm not sure how relevant even that is going to be. You still have to be able to draw the Ruinous Path with your topdeck because the opponent can just use the path on your own permanents. Sure, Ruinous Path gives you some extra winning %, but I estimate that what you do *before* the opponent casts an emrakul is far more important. Transgress + Dark-Dwellers and simply outpacing the opponent have so far yielded me better results.
I have considered Aether Hub but there are some risks involved. You really don't want to spend extra energy on the land since that's what makes your lightnings so great. if the one energy the land gives you itself isn't enough to support your Hub and make you able to cast your spells, then I would rather not play the card, even though I do like lands that come into play untapped.
Maybe consider Aether Hub + Attune with aether for mana fixing??? In my experience with the Jund build pre-rotation sometimes double costs are hard to get (Don't believe the mana base was all that terrible)...
Ruinous Path is great against Planeswalkers with good protection, such as Gideon, Battle-Forged (rotating out, just setting an example) so maybe as sideboard (depending on local meta). Using Ruinous Path for creature removal, in my opinion, is overkill, unless no other alternative is available.
I'm guessing the biggest loss for Jund in standard is the rotation of Kolaghan's Command, which I'd love to have in mainboard against this artifact themed block.
I've been messing with my previous build and, by considering some stuff posted here, want to try the following list (need to mess with the mana, but won't till I get a chance to play it) of course I'll try the Aether Hub + Attune with aether, see if it doesn't slow the deck too much:
The Arlinn Kord > Kolaghan's Command change is the one that might surprise you, but I tried out the inclusion of Arlinn in some sideboard games and liked the flexibility of the card, so let's try that...
Hope to hear input from y'all... Cheers
I explicitly forwent double BB spells (besides 1+1 Kalitas) so that the manabase would work better. If you need Attune with Aether just to support Aether Hub then I wouldn't touch Hub at all. lay of the land is a bad card. It is absolutely fatal to make this deck too durdly because then the control/ramp decks will just decimate you.
I wouldn't refer back to pre-rotation for point of reference too much because new metagame means new context. however, just playtest with your ideas, that's the only way to know.
Any thought to Cultivator's Caravan over Ulvenwald Captive, T? Since your biggest haymakers (Nissa and Chandra) are 5+ mana, you get there just as fast with Caravan as Captive, but Caravan fixes colors better. Both of them give you the potential for a big body later -- Caravan obviously being more dependent on other cards to be at its best, but it has the upside of being resilient to sorcery-speed removal.
Could easily see Captive being the better pick, but since you aren't ramping into any 4-mana plays, I think Caravan might be worth a shot.
Any thought to Cultivator's Caravan over Ulvenwald Captive, T? Since your biggest haymakers (Nissa and Chandra) are 5+ mana, you get there just as fast with Caravan as Captive, but Caravan fixes colors better. Both of them give you the potential for a big body later -- Caravan obviously being more dependent on other cards to be at its best, but it has the upside of being resilient to sorcery-speed removal.
Could easily see Captive being the better pick, but since you aren't ramping into any 4-mana plays, I think Caravan might be worth a shot.
I could see the argument if only games played out smoothly like that. Nissa and Chandra are the biggest ramp targets, yes, but quite often you're looking to cast two 2-mana spells on t4, your lands come into play tapped, and so forth. also, the difference between "taking off" turn 2 vs turn 3 is quite huge. Lastly, there is a play we ramp for for t4 - Tireless Tracker. t2 captive t3 tracker + tapland is one of the most appealing lines Captive enables.
I have to disagree with the notion Caravan is a big body for the late game. it's only a big body if you have big bodies in play already! Captive's ability looks like flavor text, but in reality it is very real. the card is at its best when you are depleted of resources (an awesome trait for a mana ramp card) and works on its own unlike caravan. I don't dislike Caravan but on paper it ranks quite low for this particular deck, in my opinion.
only tracker's clue's enabling the unlicensed disintegration? totally see the smuggler copter or the caravan instead of the captive
Disintegration still kills a creature without any artifacts, you don't need enablers. I just explained why I am not interested in Caravan and I am not even going to touch Smuggler's Copter here, even though in general I love the card. I'm not going to give those cards any thought but other people are welcome to experiment, of course.
Decided to make Jund for the new standard. This is the decklist I've been slowly tuning and testing.
Sideboard still needs to be made, because it's unknown which decks will be any good.
I chose to run Incendiary Flow instead of Galvanic Bombardment mainly for the added reach and the fact it can hit planeswalkers.I'm also not sure about Chandra, although she is really good at applying pressure in a way that does not involve combat. I might give Arlin a shot in Chandra's place, see if it works out better.
Decided to make Jund for the new standard. This is the decklist I've been slowly tuning and testing.
Sideboard still needs to be made, because it's unknown which decks will be any good.
I chose to run Incendiary Flow instead of Galvanic Bombardment mainly for the added reach and the fact it can hit planeswalkers.I'm also not sure about Chandra, although she is really good at applying pressure in a way that does not involve combat. I might give Arlin a shot in Chandra's place, see if it works out better.
If you haven't tried out Harnessed Lightning yet I give it my highest recommendation, even if you run zero energy producing cards. Flow has it upsides but it's much, much worse as a creature removal at the end of the day.
I was originally playing a more aggressive, creature-based build that used Servant of the Conduit to power out turn-3 Kalitas or Woodland Wanderer and turn-4 Verdurous Gearhulk. The idea was to establish Servant on 2 and either curve out with big dudes and beatdown, or double-spell on turn-3 (Grasp/Advocate for instance) to break serve and then take over with 5-6 mana mythics.
I don't think that style is particularly viable right now. Servant usually stuck and was actually pretty good, since Thraben Inspector and Bomat Courier couldn't attack into it, and you could usually choose whether you wanted to trade it for an opposing threat or keep it and accelerate your bigger guys out. But Wanderer was the lynchpin of the strategy, and I don't think Wanderer is anywhere close to good enough right now. Aside from getting blown out by Unlicensed Disintegration or Declaration in Stone, even cards like Fairgrounds Warden and Reflector Mage make Wanderer a tempo black hole. Cutting Wanderer made its buddy Gearhulk much worse as well, since aside from drawing a 2-of Kalitas and jamming it on-curve (which is usually suboptimal anyway), you didn't have good targets for the Gearhulk.
Then somebody mentioned Goblin Dark-Dwellers to me, as part of a list of creatures with notable ETB effects, and it hit me that Dark-Dwellers might be the best stabilizer to play. Dark-Dwellers wants you to play more removal anyway, which where you already should be against the Rx Aggro decks; and if you have a removal spell in the graveyard then Dark-Dwellers becomes a very potent tempo play akin to a double-spell turn. I realized that Essence Extraction was probably maindeckable right now, so here we are.
The gameplan of this deck is to hold serve through the first couple of turns, using Sylvan Advocate and spot removal to keep things under control. Tireless Tracker can come down whenever you're ready to start accruing incremental advantage. Assuming you make it to turn 4-5 in a reasonable condition, Goblin Dark-Dwellers and Chandra, Flamecaller are superb for stabilizing you and turning the corner. Kalitas is also superb for this since you play enough spot removal to make Dark-Dwellers work, as is Noxious Gearhulk. Nissa, Vital Force slams the door shut, and also dominates grindier games with three relevant modes. This deck can close in a hurry, even though it doesn't pressure people very early. The removal suite is definitely skewed toward beating Chopper decks; I would consider the 'core' spells to be the four Disintegrations, two Ruinous Path, and four Harnessed Lightning, with Grasp of Darkness and Essence Extraction being extra goodies for aggro decks. In a metagame with more midrange and control decks, you could easily cut them for Transgress the Mind and more Ruinous Path or Painful Truths, or for more threats as you feel is correct.
In the sideboard I have some obvious inclusions -- Radiant Flames, Galvanic Bombardment, and the remaining Essence Extraction serve to bolster us against the aggro decks, Transgress the Mind gives us ways to attack the hand (and can also include Collective Brutality or Harsh Scrutiny, though Transgress is best for an open field like this). Ob Nixilis and Painful Truths give us the superb grindy game that Jund is known for, and Emrakul is nice as a 1-of to draw into for longer games that wins most of them immediately (think how THS-KTK Abzan decks would play Ugin in the sideboard). No one really expects Emrakul out of the board since there's no real setup for it, but it can cost eight mana, which is not unreasonable to hit in a long game given the card draw and 26 lands. Appetite for the Unnatural is a good 1-of and honestly might be an improvement over Naturalize, since the 2 life is basically always appreciated (obviously in aggro decks, but in longer matchups, that's another Live Fast, or two Ob Nixilis +1's, or most of a Painful Truths). I play it over Natural State despite the relative mana inefficiency because I don't want to get screwed by missing something like Fleetwheel Cruiser, Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, or Aetherworks Marvel to a CMC restriction.
Overall, this deck feels fine. Nothing fancy or special going on, just good cards with a coherent gameplan. I think Jund in this format is probably a deck that should look significantly different from week to week, even down to the mana base. For instance, my inclusion of double-black instants to combat Smuggler's Copter forces the deck toward a more controlling role, and forces the mana toward base-BR. In a more controlling metagame, I'd be playing Transgress the Mind, probably half the kill spells in the maindeck, and more threats, which would likely skew me toward base-GB and might even lead to me cutting Goblin Dark-Dwellers. The most important thing to remember about Jund is that you have a ton of excellent deckbuilding options, so you should take wide liberties with changing up even the more 'fundamental' aspects of your lists from week to week.
If you haven't tried out Harnessed Lightning yet I give it my highest recommendation, even if you run zero energy producing cards. Flow has it upsides but it's much, much worse as a creature removal at the end of the day.
With how populair Smuggler's Copter is, running more instant speed removal might be a good idea. I'll make the switch.
Sylvan Advocate wasn't really cutting it. It's not very useful against aggressive decks anymore. Everything in WR gets big enough to swing past Advocate, or at worst trade with it. And while it's a great rate in longer games, we have enough good options for cards in longer games as it is. I think Advocate would probably make the cut if Hissing Quagmire were still in the deck, but the shift to being base-BR splash-G made that untenable: you have to play Foreboding Ruins to increase the consistency of having turn-2 red for your red removal spells, since there's no red fastland in Standard for Jund, and once you factor in the superior Aether Hub and Blooming Marsh and necessary-evil Evolving Wilds, every other land besides the Ruins themselves has to reveal to the Ruins, which means no room for the Quagmires. And without the Quagmires, Advocate is a middling, easily-ignored/removed 2-drop early in the game, atrocious anytime between turn-4 and your sixth land drop, and just an efficient beater late in the game; it's still not bad, but there are better options.
That gave me more room for smallball interaction to help with Chopper aggro decks. I originally had the playset of Grasp in addition to the other instants, but having eight instants that could realistically only kill creatures with 4- toughness seemed like overkill and a good way to struggle against control decks. Grasp was fine and is still ok to play as a 4-of, but the higher basic count needed to facilitate Cinder Glade + Foreboding Ruins skewed me toward Harnessed Lightning, since it's easier on the mana base. Lightning is better against aggro decks anyway because it's more likely to bank energy and make your Hubs smoother, which is important since we usually want to board out Live Fast against aggro decks, but we don't want to get caught with too little energy to make Hubs work. Grasp has some notable targets that Lightning can't get unassisted (Kalitas, Avacyn, GGhulk), but Lightning is more likely to put you ahead for its use, and it's easier to cast, so it made the cut ahead of Grasp.
(It also gave me room to maindeck Transgress the Mind, which I don't think is a bad thing to play maindeck anymore. The Chopper decks have some high-impact 3+ drops in the main and it's good to great against everybody else anyway.)
Collective Brutality is an awesome compromise on this question too, btw. Being a sorcery sucks a bit, but you have enough removal for the Chopper. The flexibility of being able to use Brutality as a kill spell against aggro decks (and being able to pitch bad g1 cards or expensive cards you won't need in order to gain life) and a discard spell against control decks is a big deal. The escalate cost plays well in this type of deck because you're going to draw the wrong half of your deck sometimes, and Brutality at least lets you do something with the cards for 0 mana instead of having them rot in hand.
I also found Emrakul to be way too clunky, so I decided to pick up a different old favorite: Seasons Past. Resolving Seasons Past is lights out against control decks. I think Diabolic Tutor is an awful card and haven't tested it in conjunction with Seasons Past, but it is notable that the 4-spot on the curve is very light on action, and so it might be okay to play as a sideboard 1-of. I also added a second Ob Nixilis to the board, and made room by cutting the Painful Truths.
Finally, I cut Essence Extraction down to a 1-of main. I found that while it's a very nice card against aggro decks, the deck is already overflowing with 2-3 mana kill spell options, and that I would frequently just get crunched on mana because they kept squeezing 1-2 mana threats underneath me and made it hard to contain them. Radiant Flames obviously helps, but going to the full set of Galvanic Bombardment in the board was bigger; Shock kills a lot of their stuff, Bolt kills basically everything, and going higher than that is silly. Most importantly, you get to interact with them on turn 1, which means you don't fall behind as badly, and you can also double-spell as early as turn-3 or turn-4 with reliability, giving you a chance to catch up. I like 1 Essence Extraction in the main given where the metagame is right now, but I don't think the card is actually good enough given its cost and the cards with which it competes for deck space.
I don't think Radiant Flames is essential at all. I'd almost rather consider Kozilek's Return in its place if you want an effect like that. but Weaver of Lightning has to be the best anti-aggro tool.
I played my exact list two posts up to a 3-1 finish tonight at a weekly league. I lost to RW Vehicles narrowly -- felt like I could have won, but my draws didn't cooperate, as I drew all three six drops on a mull to five =( I beat a GW Tokens + Angels deck, an Abzan deck that was very similar to mine, and RB Aggro. Some thoughts:
- It sounds weird, but I might have too many ways to kill the Chopper. RW is a more diverse deck than something like RB and probably requires a little more finesse in card choices.
- Several people brought Aetherworks Marvel decks tonight and I couldn't beat any of them. I got lucky to dodge the deck the whole night, but I don't want to have to rely on ducking it forever. I'm thinking about incorporating a card like Hanweir Garrison in the sideboard for matchups where I need to close things out fast. Goblin Rabblemaster saw play in sideboards of midrange decks like this for similar reasons in the past, and I think Garrison is comparable, if less efficient. I also think Hanweir Garrison is probably good against decks like GW Tokens, which try to leverage Gideon and a pile of 0/1 Plants to protect him. It's a bit precarious because a Gideon emblem changes the math pretty sharply against you, Ishkanah trumps Hanweir Garrison (and would be a reasonable inclusion if the GW deck had a Delirium wrinkle), and the deck also plays stuff like Gisela and Avacyn that dgaf about Hanweir Garrison either... but you have removal to pace things against the Angels and slightly bigger tokens, and you can also just choose not to board Garrison in. Nissa and Chandra are pretty good against opposing planeswalkers anyway. Worth trying out though.
- Nissa's emblem is quite a bit better than I expected it to be. The wrinkle that I missed is that Nissa is actually pretty mediocre against aggro decks. She's a quick clock if you can afford to attack with the +1, but you frequently can't, and her +1 doesn't do anything if your opponent picks their spots with stuff like Fleetwheel Cruiser. They just never have to attack her down, which puts her in the spot where she'll be able to ult and she won't do anything otherwise. Her emblem, otoh, is actually pretty good against these decks, because it basically makes sure you won't get cheesed out of the game by drawing into a couple of extra lands when you needed to hit one last removal spell or whatever. I used her to this exact effect very well (although it helped that the first two lands I found after getting the emblem were Evolving Wilds -- why yes I'll take my Ancestral Recall...) and I think it's probably the best use, outside of something like rebuying a Goblin Dark-Dwellers with the -3. And obviously the emblem just wins a long game.
- Noxious Gearhulk is less good against aggro than I expected. It's basically like Goblin Dark-Dwellers, but you pay 1 more mana for 1 more power and 1-2 life, and the extra mana is by far the most impactful aspect of that exchange. I don't think I really want it in because Chandra already puts a strain on the 6-spot against aggro and is just so much better.
- Seasons Past was about what I expected it to be: auto-win against other PW-attrition style decks like this and a liability against fast decks and decks that go over me. I don't think the second is ever necessary though; I played two because the old Seasons Past decks did, but those decks were built around the Dark Petition - Seasons Past interaction and couldn't afford to have their Seasons Past hit by Transgress the Mind. I almost don't mind if my opponent takes Seasons Past with Transgress, since the answers for my permanents are so stretched thin as it is, and taking a Seasons Past too early means that they're just as likely to die to an unanswered Ob Nixilis or Chandra or whatever.
I think the updated list I'm going to play at tomorrow night's weekly tourney is this:
I don't think Radiant Flames is essential at all. I'd almost rather consider Kozilek's Return in its place if you want an effect like that. but Weaver of Lightning has to be the best anti-aggro tool.
Idk man, Advocate sucks really bad right now. Hissing Quagmire was a liability in testing for the most part -- Standard just isn't about grindy attrition wars where a manland is good, and Advocate doesn't do anything until you hit six lands, by which point just about anything else can close out a game just fine. I love me some Sylvan Advocate, but the format is so far away from Making Advocate Great Again.
Traverse is a cool option for fixing mana that I admit I didn't think about. I don't know if I'm going to try it out -- my deck is base-BR, so my first intuition is that I'm going to break even on fixing with it, rather than have it be a real solution. Definitely possible that it helps though, and Traverse turned on in the later game seems very powerful, so I think it's probably good in this shell, I'm just worried about trying it with the direction I ended up taking for my Jund list.
I think you might be right about Radiant Flames. I feel like I need some small sweeper to draw into, so I didn't cut them all from my list, but the games I've played against RW just haven't been games where Radiant Flames would be stellar. Good RW pilots can apply pressure without playing into it and know to do it against three-color decks packing red mana. It's possible that Chandra alone is enough to clean house (and she definitely gets more reliable as the 'sweeper' of choice if my opponents keep playing around Radiant Flames). I'm going to give your Weaver of Lightning tech a try, I didn't realize how many X/1's the Rx decks actually play. Always seemed like I was getting beat up by X/2s and X/3s, but the truth is that VanMeter's winning list played twelve X/1's, which makes me think Weaver can be good. It even blocks an unboosted Chopper which is sweet, and has some sick splash damage against Spirits.
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Standard: GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern: RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy: BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
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Not Jund Walkers, not Jund Delirium; just Jund cards.
2 Sylvan Advocate
4 Servant of the Conduit
4 Tireless Tracker
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
Planeswalkers:
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
2 Nissa, Vital Force
2 Chandra, Flamecaller
Other spells:
4 Harnessed Lightning
4 Unlicensed Disintegration
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
4 Transgress the Mind
2 Hissing Quagmire
2 Aether Hub
4 Evolving Wilds
2 Game Trail
3 Blooming Marsh
3 Mountain
5 Forest
2 Swamp
1 Smoldering Marsh
2 Painful Truths
1 Tears of Valakut
2 Essence Extraction
3 Weaver of Lightning
2 Dragonmaster Outcast
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Galvanic Bombardment
1 Key to the City
1 Nahiri's Wrath
Jund has a lot of deepness in all card type sections. This deck is focused on being aggressive to punish slow opponents, and has enough interactive elements to disrupt synergistic decks and to survive against aggressive decks. The biggest priority is to gain board dominance and close out the game.
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The second thing is what is captives objective? Only thing worth ramping to is chandra really and the rest can just be played up your curve.
Gideon is quite powerful. best way to deal with planeswalkers is to attack them. Tracker and Advocate can both attack into 2/2's very well, and Nissa can one shot him. whether Gideon is a problem remains to be seen for me, since it depends on the deck in question.
as for Captive, I have grown very fond of him. there are always ways to use mana between clues and card draw spells (and flipping the Captive itself, of course).
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The thing with Gideon is and he is not hard at all to evaluate in the coming standard as there is no real tempo deck like coco around to pressure him is he will go into almost every white deck. Control, midrange, aggro all of them will want him. They may be able to attack into but on t4 you make a dude chump the tracker cause he'll be the biggest and let Advocateveryone hit and he's still there you get to untap with him and you don't know where stuff goes from there.
Right now your decks worst enemy it looks like to me is gw tokens....the deck is still here and will most likely be a dominant force again. Nissa, VoZ and gideon, AoZ are both problem cards for your deck it looks like.
I think you have a great start Imo deck looks good just sensitive those.
Also looking at it I'd add some number of ruinous paths not just for Walkers but for emrakul too. She's still gonna be everywhere to and you have no main board answers to her which means if she stick your most likely losing that game.
GW tokens is certainly possibly the worst match-up, assuming the deck is on a similar power level after rotation. depending on how big of a metagame share the deck ends up having I can accept conceding the MU.
I am shying away from double BB spells to ensure I can come fast out of the gates with fewer CIPT lands (and being able to cast spells on curve in general). I have considered playing maybe 1-2 or Paths. However, for now I am testing how the deck works without Paths, since I am not a huge fan of the card when I have access to Disintegration. I am currently not trying to beat any specific decks since I don't have guesses about what the format will look like - it could be very fast or very slow, I really don't know.
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I'm not sure if Ruinous Path is necessary. it could be. lightning and disintegration are both superior creature removal, and the best way to deal with planeswalkers is combat. Ruinous Path is only good as a way to kill Emrakul, but I'm not sure how relevant even that is going to be. You still have to be able to draw the Ruinous Path with your topdeck because the opponent can just use the path on your own permanents. Sure, Ruinous Path gives you some extra winning %, but I estimate that what you do *before* the opponent casts an emrakul is far more important. Transgress + Dark-Dwellers and simply outpacing the opponent have so far yielded me better results.
I have considered Aether Hub but there are some risks involved. You really don't want to spend extra energy on the land since that's what makes your lightnings so great. if the one energy the land gives you itself isn't enough to support your Hub and make you able to cast your spells, then I would rather not play the card, even though I do like lands that come into play untapped.
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http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=11439737#post11439737
Reality is only what man allows it to be. Few shape it so that many may accept it.
4 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
3 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
4 Mountain
8 Swamp
2 Blighted Fen
4 Cinder Barrens
4 Foreboding Ruins
4 Smoldering Marsh
2 Harnessed Lightning
1 Unlicensed Disintegration
1 Oath of Liliana
4 Live Fast
3 Ruinous Path
4 Transgress the Mind
3 Essence Extraction
4 Galvanic Bombardment
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
1 Diabolic Tutor
2 Lost Legacy
3 Mind Rot
I tried this deck myself a week ago and I didn't like it. it's too slow and Chandra was poop. also, this thread is for Jund decks, not RB decks.
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I explicitly forwent double BB spells (besides 1+1 Kalitas) so that the manabase would work better. If you need Attune with Aether just to support Aether Hub then I wouldn't touch Hub at all. lay of the land is a bad card. It is absolutely fatal to make this deck too durdly because then the control/ramp decks will just decimate you.
I wouldn't refer back to pre-rotation for point of reference too much because new metagame means new context. however, just playtest with your ideas, that's the only way to know.
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Could easily see Captive being the better pick, but since you aren't ramping into any 4-mana plays, I think Caravan might be worth a shot.
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
I could see the argument if only games played out smoothly like that. Nissa and Chandra are the biggest ramp targets, yes, but quite often you're looking to cast two 2-mana spells on t4, your lands come into play tapped, and so forth. also, the difference between "taking off" turn 2 vs turn 3 is quite huge. Lastly, there is a play we ramp for for t4 - Tireless Tracker. t2 captive t3 tracker + tapland is one of the most appealing lines Captive enables.
I have to disagree with the notion Caravan is a big body for the late game. it's only a big body if you have big bodies in play already! Captive's ability looks like flavor text, but in reality it is very real. the card is at its best when you are depleted of resources (an awesome trait for a mana ramp card) and works on its own unlike caravan. I don't dislike Caravan but on paper it ranks quite low for this particular deck, in my opinion.
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Disintegration still kills a creature without any artifacts, you don't need enablers. I just explained why I am not interested in Caravan and I am not even going to touch Smuggler's Copter here, even though in general I love the card. I'm not going to give those cards any thought but other people are welcome to experiment, of course.
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I slotted in the Spark to try it. the slot could be anything, really. we were just 6 players but hopefully we get a nice amount of players next week.
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Sideboard still needs to be made, because it's unknown which decks will be any good.
I chose to run Incendiary Flow instead of Galvanic Bombardment mainly for the added reach and the fact it can hit planeswalkers.I'm also not sure about Chandra, although she is really good at applying pressure in a way that does not involve combat. I might give Arlin a shot in Chandra's place, see if it works out better.
1 Blooming Marsh
2 Hissing Quagmire
4 Smoldering Marsh
4 Game Trail
5 Forest
4 Swamp
1 Mountain
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Sylvan Advocate
4 Tireless Tracker
2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
Planeswalker
3 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
4 Unlicensed Disintegration
Sorcery
4 Incendiary Flow
3 Transgress the Mind
2 Collective Brutality
Enchantment
4 Oath of Nissa
If you haven't tried out Harnessed Lightning yet I give it my highest recommendation, even if you run zero energy producing cards. Flow has it upsides but it's much, much worse as a creature removal at the end of the day.
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3 Sylvan Advocate
3 Tireless Tracker
2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
1 Noxious Gearhulk
Planeswalkers (4)
2 Nissa, Vital Force
2 Chandra, Flamecaller
Instants (13)
4 Unlicensed Disintegration
4 Harnessed Lightning
3 Grasp of Darkness
2 Essence Extraction
3 Live Fast
2 Ruinous Path
Lands (26)
4 Aether Hub
4 Blooming Marsh
2 Foreboding Ruins
3 Cinder Glade
3 Evolving Wilds
5 Swamp
4 Mountain
1 Forest
2 Essence Extraction
2 Galvanic Bombardment
3 Radiant Flames
1 Appetite for the Unnatural
3 Transgress the Mind
2 Painful Truths
1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
1 Emrakul, the Promised End
I was originally playing a more aggressive, creature-based build that used Servant of the Conduit to power out turn-3 Kalitas or Woodland Wanderer and turn-4 Verdurous Gearhulk. The idea was to establish Servant on 2 and either curve out with big dudes and beatdown, or double-spell on turn-3 (Grasp/Advocate for instance) to break serve and then take over with 5-6 mana mythics.
I don't think that style is particularly viable right now. Servant usually stuck and was actually pretty good, since Thraben Inspector and Bomat Courier couldn't attack into it, and you could usually choose whether you wanted to trade it for an opposing threat or keep it and accelerate your bigger guys out. But Wanderer was the lynchpin of the strategy, and I don't think Wanderer is anywhere close to good enough right now. Aside from getting blown out by Unlicensed Disintegration or Declaration in Stone, even cards like Fairgrounds Warden and Reflector Mage make Wanderer a tempo black hole. Cutting Wanderer made its buddy Gearhulk much worse as well, since aside from drawing a 2-of Kalitas and jamming it on-curve (which is usually suboptimal anyway), you didn't have good targets for the Gearhulk.
Then somebody mentioned Goblin Dark-Dwellers to me, as part of a list of creatures with notable ETB effects, and it hit me that Dark-Dwellers might be the best stabilizer to play. Dark-Dwellers wants you to play more removal anyway, which where you already should be against the Rx Aggro decks; and if you have a removal spell in the graveyard then Dark-Dwellers becomes a very potent tempo play akin to a double-spell turn. I realized that Essence Extraction was probably maindeckable right now, so here we are.
The gameplan of this deck is to hold serve through the first couple of turns, using Sylvan Advocate and spot removal to keep things under control. Tireless Tracker can come down whenever you're ready to start accruing incremental advantage. Assuming you make it to turn 4-5 in a reasonable condition, Goblin Dark-Dwellers and Chandra, Flamecaller are superb for stabilizing you and turning the corner. Kalitas is also superb for this since you play enough spot removal to make Dark-Dwellers work, as is Noxious Gearhulk. Nissa, Vital Force slams the door shut, and also dominates grindier games with three relevant modes. This deck can close in a hurry, even though it doesn't pressure people very early. The removal suite is definitely skewed toward beating Chopper decks; I would consider the 'core' spells to be the four Disintegrations, two Ruinous Path, and four Harnessed Lightning, with Grasp of Darkness and Essence Extraction being extra goodies for aggro decks. In a metagame with more midrange and control decks, you could easily cut them for Transgress the Mind and more Ruinous Path or Painful Truths, or for more threats as you feel is correct.
In the sideboard I have some obvious inclusions -- Radiant Flames, Galvanic Bombardment, and the remaining Essence Extraction serve to bolster us against the aggro decks, Transgress the Mind gives us ways to attack the hand (and can also include Collective Brutality or Harsh Scrutiny, though Transgress is best for an open field like this). Ob Nixilis and Painful Truths give us the superb grindy game that Jund is known for, and Emrakul is nice as a 1-of to draw into for longer games that wins most of them immediately (think how THS-KTK Abzan decks would play Ugin in the sideboard). No one really expects Emrakul out of the board since there's no real setup for it, but it can cost eight mana, which is not unreasonable to hit in a long game given the card draw and 26 lands. Appetite for the Unnatural is a good 1-of and honestly might be an improvement over Naturalize, since the 2 life is basically always appreciated (obviously in aggro decks, but in longer matchups, that's another Live Fast, or two Ob Nixilis +1's, or most of a Painful Truths). I play it over Natural State despite the relative mana inefficiency because I don't want to get screwed by missing something like Fleetwheel Cruiser, Skysovereign, Consul Flagship, or Aetherworks Marvel to a CMC restriction.
Overall, this deck feels fine. Nothing fancy or special going on, just good cards with a coherent gameplan. I think Jund in this format is probably a deck that should look significantly different from week to week, even down to the mana base. For instance, my inclusion of double-black instants to combat Smuggler's Copter forces the deck toward a more controlling role, and forces the mana toward base-BR. In a more controlling metagame, I'd be playing Transgress the Mind, probably half the kill spells in the maindeck, and more threats, which would likely skew me toward base-GB and might even lead to me cutting Goblin Dark-Dwellers. The most important thing to remember about Jund is that you have a ton of excellent deckbuilding options, so you should take wide liberties with changing up even the more 'fundamental' aspects of your lists from week to week.
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
With how populair Smuggler's Copter is, running more instant speed removal might be a good idea. I'll make the switch.
3 Tireless Tracker
3 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
1 Noxious Gearhulk
Planeswalkers (4)
2 Nissa, Vital Force
2 Chandra, Flamecaller
Instants (11)
4 Unlicensed Disintegration
4 Harnessed Lightning
2 Grasp of Darkness
1 Essence Extraction
Sorceries (9)
2 Live Fast
2 Ruinous Path
2 Transgress the Mind
2 Collective Brutality
1 Seasons Past
4 Aether Hub
4 Blooming Marsh
2 Foreboding Ruins
3 Cinder Glade
3 Evolving Wilds
1 Forest
4 Mountain
5 Swamp
1 Appetite for the Unnatural
1 Collective Brutality
4 Galvanic Bombardment
1 Noxious Gearhulk
2 Ob Nixilis Reignited
3 Radiant Flames
1 Ruinous Path
1 Transgress the Mind
1 Seasons Past
Refined version of my last attempt.
Sylvan Advocate wasn't really cutting it. It's not very useful against aggressive decks anymore. Everything in WR gets big enough to swing past Advocate, or at worst trade with it. And while it's a great rate in longer games, we have enough good options for cards in longer games as it is. I think Advocate would probably make the cut if Hissing Quagmire were still in the deck, but the shift to being base-BR splash-G made that untenable: you have to play Foreboding Ruins to increase the consistency of having turn-2 red for your red removal spells, since there's no red fastland in Standard for Jund, and once you factor in the superior Aether Hub and Blooming Marsh and necessary-evil Evolving Wilds, every other land besides the Ruins themselves has to reveal to the Ruins, which means no room for the Quagmires. And without the Quagmires, Advocate is a middling, easily-ignored/removed 2-drop early in the game, atrocious anytime between turn-4 and your sixth land drop, and just an efficient beater late in the game; it's still not bad, but there are better options.
That gave me more room for smallball interaction to help with Chopper aggro decks. I originally had the playset of Grasp in addition to the other instants, but having eight instants that could realistically only kill creatures with 4- toughness seemed like overkill and a good way to struggle against control decks. Grasp was fine and is still ok to play as a 4-of, but the higher basic count needed to facilitate Cinder Glade + Foreboding Ruins skewed me toward Harnessed Lightning, since it's easier on the mana base. Lightning is better against aggro decks anyway because it's more likely to bank energy and make your Hubs smoother, which is important since we usually want to board out Live Fast against aggro decks, but we don't want to get caught with too little energy to make Hubs work. Grasp has some notable targets that Lightning can't get unassisted (Kalitas, Avacyn, GGhulk), but Lightning is more likely to put you ahead for its use, and it's easier to cast, so it made the cut ahead of Grasp.
(It also gave me room to maindeck Transgress the Mind, which I don't think is a bad thing to play maindeck anymore. The Chopper decks have some high-impact 3+ drops in the main and it's good to great against everybody else anyway.)
Collective Brutality is an awesome compromise on this question too, btw. Being a sorcery sucks a bit, but you have enough removal for the Chopper. The flexibility of being able to use Brutality as a kill spell against aggro decks (and being able to pitch bad g1 cards or expensive cards you won't need in order to gain life) and a discard spell against control decks is a big deal. The escalate cost plays well in this type of deck because you're going to draw the wrong half of your deck sometimes, and Brutality at least lets you do something with the cards for 0 mana instead of having them rot in hand.
I also found Emrakul to be way too clunky, so I decided to pick up a different old favorite: Seasons Past. Resolving Seasons Past is lights out against control decks. I think Diabolic Tutor is an awful card and haven't tested it in conjunction with Seasons Past, but it is notable that the 4-spot on the curve is very light on action, and so it might be okay to play as a sideboard 1-of. I also added a second Ob Nixilis to the board, and made room by cutting the Painful Truths.
Finally, I cut Essence Extraction down to a 1-of main. I found that while it's a very nice card against aggro decks, the deck is already overflowing with 2-3 mana kill spell options, and that I would frequently just get crunched on mana because they kept squeezing 1-2 mana threats underneath me and made it hard to contain them. Radiant Flames obviously helps, but going to the full set of Galvanic Bombardment in the board was bigger; Shock kills a lot of their stuff, Bolt kills basically everything, and going higher than that is silly. Most importantly, you get to interact with them on turn 1, which means you don't fall behind as badly, and you can also double-spell as early as turn-3 or turn-4 with reliability, giving you a chance to catch up. I like 1 Essence Extraction in the main given where the metagame is right now, but I don't think the card is actually good enough given its cost and the cards with which it competes for deck space.
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
If you are going down a slower route with your deck I'd try 1-2 Traverses. It really is a great fixer if you are not hell bent on curving out.
I'm still on the aggressive side of things; probably playing a combination of captives and servants (this might be too much):
2 Ulvenwald Captive
2 Painful Truths
I don't think Radiant Flames is essential at all. I'd almost rather consider Kozilek's Return in its place if you want an effect like that. but Weaver of Lightning has to be the best anti-aggro tool.
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- It sounds weird, but I might have too many ways to kill the Chopper. RW is a more diverse deck than something like RB and probably requires a little more finesse in card choices.
- Several people brought Aetherworks Marvel decks tonight and I couldn't beat any of them. I got lucky to dodge the deck the whole night, but I don't want to have to rely on ducking it forever. I'm thinking about incorporating a card like Hanweir Garrison in the sideboard for matchups where I need to close things out fast. Goblin Rabblemaster saw play in sideboards of midrange decks like this for similar reasons in the past, and I think Garrison is comparable, if less efficient. I also think Hanweir Garrison is probably good against decks like GW Tokens, which try to leverage Gideon and a pile of 0/1 Plants to protect him. It's a bit precarious because a Gideon emblem changes the math pretty sharply against you, Ishkanah trumps Hanweir Garrison (and would be a reasonable inclusion if the GW deck had a Delirium wrinkle), and the deck also plays stuff like Gisela and Avacyn that dgaf about Hanweir Garrison either... but you have removal to pace things against the Angels and slightly bigger tokens, and you can also just choose not to board Garrison in. Nissa and Chandra are pretty good against opposing planeswalkers anyway. Worth trying out though.
- Nissa's emblem is quite a bit better than I expected it to be. The wrinkle that I missed is that Nissa is actually pretty mediocre against aggro decks. She's a quick clock if you can afford to attack with the +1, but you frequently can't, and her +1 doesn't do anything if your opponent picks their spots with stuff like Fleetwheel Cruiser. They just never have to attack her down, which puts her in the spot where she'll be able to ult and she won't do anything otherwise. Her emblem, otoh, is actually pretty good against these decks, because it basically makes sure you won't get cheesed out of the game by drawing into a couple of extra lands when you needed to hit one last removal spell or whatever. I used her to this exact effect very well (although it helped that the first two lands I found after getting the emblem were Evolving Wilds -- why yes I'll take my Ancestral Recall...) and I think it's probably the best use, outside of something like rebuying a Goblin Dark-Dwellers with the -3. And obviously the emblem just wins a long game.
- Noxious Gearhulk is less good against aggro than I expected. It's basically like Goblin Dark-Dwellers, but you pay 1 more mana for 1 more power and 1-2 life, and the extra mana is by far the most impactful aspect of that exchange. I don't think I really want it in because Chandra already puts a strain on the 6-spot against aggro and is just so much better.
- Seasons Past was about what I expected it to be: auto-win against other PW-attrition style decks like this and a liability against fast decks and decks that go over me. I don't think the second is ever necessary though; I played two because the old Seasons Past decks did, but those decks were built around the Dark Petition - Seasons Past interaction and couldn't afford to have their Seasons Past hit by Transgress the Mind. I almost don't mind if my opponent takes Seasons Past with Transgress, since the answers for my permanents are so stretched thin as it is, and taking a Seasons Past too early means that they're just as likely to die to an unanswered Ob Nixilis or Chandra or whatever.
I think the updated list I'm going to play at tomorrow night's weekly tourney is this:
3 Tireless Tracker
3 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3 Goblin Dark-Dwellers
1 Noxious Gearhulk
Planeswalkers (4)
2 Nissa, Vital Force
2 Chandra, Flamecaller
Instants (11)
4 Unlicensed Disintegration
4 Harnessed Lightning
2 Grasp of Darkness
1 Essence Extraction
Sorceries (9)
2 Ruinous Path
2 Live Fast
2 Collective Brutality
2 Transgress the Mind
1 Seasons Past
4 Aether Hub
4 Blooming Marsh
2 Foreboding Ruins
3 Cinder Glade
3 Evolving Wilds
5 Swamp
4 Mountain
1 Forest
1 Appetite for the Unnatural
1 Collective Brutality
4 Galvanic Bombardment
3 Hanweir Garrison
1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
2 Radiant Flames
1 Transgress the Mind
2 Weaver of Lightning
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB
Idk man, Advocate sucks really bad right now. Hissing Quagmire was a liability in testing for the most part -- Standard just isn't about grindy attrition wars where a manland is good, and Advocate doesn't do anything until you hit six lands, by which point just about anything else can close out a game just fine. I love me some Sylvan Advocate, but the format is so far away from Making Advocate Great Again.
Traverse is a cool option for fixing mana that I admit I didn't think about. I don't know if I'm going to try it out -- my deck is base-BR, so my first intuition is that I'm going to break even on fixing with it, rather than have it be a real solution. Definitely possible that it helps though, and Traverse turned on in the later game seems very powerful, so I think it's probably good in this shell, I'm just worried about trying it with the direction I ended up taking for my Jund list.
I think you might be right about Radiant Flames. I feel like I need some small sweeper to draw into, so I didn't cut them all from my list, but the games I've played against RW just haven't been games where Radiant Flames would be stellar. Good RW pilots can apply pressure without playing into it and know to do it against three-color decks packing red mana. It's possible that Chandra alone is enough to clean house (and she definitely gets more reliable as the 'sweeper' of choice if my opponents keep playing around Radiant Flames). I'm going to give your Weaver of Lightning tech a try, I didn't realize how many X/1's the Rx decks actually play. Always seemed like I was getting beat up by X/2s and X/3s, but the truth is that VanMeter's winning list played twelve X/1's, which makes me think Weaver can be good. It even blocks an unboosted Chopper which is sweet, and has some sick splash damage against Spirits.
GW ~ Angels ~ WG
Modern:
RBW ~ Shadowmancer ~ WBR
Legacy:
BUG ~ Shadow Delver ~ GUB