No Bob Multi Wrenn builds are actually the latest trend in Modern Jund builds, both online and in paper. As much as Wrenn and Six has tended to disappoint me in my testing of her in Jund, Bob matches up poorly against her, Lava Dart, and Gut Shot.
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- chaos021
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Aug 16, 20191
Posted in: Midrange
No Bob Multi Wrenn builds are actually the latest trend in Modern Jund builds, both online and in paper. As much as Wrenn and Six has tended to disappoint me in my testing of her in Jund, Bob matches up poorly against her, Lava Dart, and Gut Shot. -
Jun 21, 20191
Bearscape posted a message on Jeskai ControlPosted in: ControlQuote from chaos021 »
I'm curious if what y'all would think of for an updated Jeskai control list. Lightning Bolt is starting to look really appealing again, but it's been so long since I played, I'm not sure I'd trust anything I would put together. I've been playing a lot of Esper control, but that deck doesn't fit my play style. You don't really ever get to turn the corner and go on offense.
I'm on straight UW now since I think it's the best deck in the format right now (other than Hogaak of course), but I really miss my bolts. I experimented a bit with Geist of Saint Traft but then realized again that I just really loathe that card
As I said above I think the best way to approach Jeskai now is to look ath the UW Midrange decks and go from there, as adapting UW Control into Jeskai doesn't add that much and worsens your tron matchup. Restoration Angel has proven me time and time again that she is excellent right now, and I think that a build closer to Jeskai Flash could get some work done. We now also have Teferi Time Raveler to turn Spell Queller into a 2 for 1. -
Jun 19, 20192
BloodyRabbit_01 posted a message on Modern Esper Draw-GoBeing too cute has never worked out. Play four Path to Exile before messing with the other spot removal spells.Posted in: Control -
Jun 18, 20191
TomCourtenay posted a message on Jeskai ControlPosted in: ControlQuote from chaos021 »But why Search for Azcanta? I feel like Narset, Parter of Veils took that card out back to put it down like old yeller.
I like the flexibility of Azcanta : coming on turn 2, scrying to have smoother draws (finding lands) and multiple activations when you have 7 cards in the graveyard. However, you could simply replace the 2 Azcanta for Narset in the list and that would be good too
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Jun 16, 2019
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Bearscape posted a message on Jeskai ControlI think the days of Search for Azcanta are over with the printing of Narset. Maybe as a one of, but the floor on Narset is just so much better than SFAPosted in: Control -
Jun 9, 20193
Cody_X posted a message on Modern Esper Draw-GoTraditionally speaking, the deck has never wanted mainboard discard because you're trying to get to turn 20 before winning with rev > zenith.Posted in: Control
Things are a little bit different these days, but fundamentally, you are still trying to play a long game.
The nature of playing a pile of lands over everyone else in the format means you need to draw that many more cards in order to balance out on interaction for their threats.
The more cards you add that neither draw cards nor (reliably) answer something, the more you stress the card advantage you already have.
The nature of planeswalkers means that discard is probably better now than its ever been, but you are still fundamentally trying to play a long game, which discard doesn't work well with, not to mention the fact that thoughtseize causes lifeloss (while iok/duress miss a lot of important things we're scared of), discard doesnt require them to spend mana, and lets them spend their turn still deploying a threat, and of course the fact that a lot of the format is simply not that weak to discard, especially discard thats not on turn 1/2.
Its better in the board because its functional (but not great) in a lot of matchups (shadow, tron, etc) where some of our interaction is very bad (cryptic command, supreme verdict) so making the swap lets us keep the same amount of interaction post board. -
Jun 5, 20191
Lueseto posted a message on Modern Esper Draw-GoSeriously, this thing with the discord invites is what stops it from directly replacing all forums around. I hope they add an option to be able to browse through servers or something. When is salvation going down?Posted in: Control -
May 25, 20192
Spsiegel1987 posted a message on JundYou're trying to reinvent the deck a little too much, I think. If Jund restructures that much it'll be become Jund Loam because the deck of choice for Jund, not this.Posted in: Midrange
I wonder if Wrenn could even be a 3 of. He synergies nicely with LOTV on curve. Turn 2 play him, turn 3 LOTV it up. Something like -1 Land, -1 Bob, and -1 of something else. It'll deal with the "Do I want to play 4 Bobs with 4 BBE's in the deck."
Wrenn also works nicely in that little creatures swarm the board one can be pinged away and the other could be edicted. Replacing Bob straight up is not viable though, he's still our best CA in the deck.
I also like the idea that Raging Ravine's could come back to our hands in grindy matches.
I wouldn't add Grim Flayer, he's only making your deck super soft to GY hate at that point.
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May 24, 2019
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Spsiegel1987 posted a message on JundPosted in: MidrangeQuote from TundraYYC »What does everyone think of Wrenn and Six? Cut down to 23 land maybe, and run 2-3 of him? The retrace late game could be great if you have him on the field, pitch a land to cast a spell from grave, get the land back to play it for turn. Or do it the other way if you have no land to pitch, get a land then pitch it to cast a spell. Seems like he could be pretty decent. Biggest problem I see is there are already a lot of 2-drops that we want to play. Overall though, I see some potential in him.
I'm excited for this card as a 1 or 2 of. I think Jund players are dismissing it way too quickly. It's a grim lavamancer that creates CA advantage, a great ult, and pings away annoying creatures. For 2 mana. This should definitely be tested.
Is this DRS or LOTV? No. But "I think it warrants serious testing.
It's the first card in the set I've seen that's made me excited. I'm still not high on Force of Despair or Peatland until they prove otherwise.
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Feb 18, 201714
FlyingDelver posted a message on JundPosted in: Midrange
Welcome to Jund, the "Midrange King" of Modern!
Jund represents a hugely flexible and powerful deck, which can potentially beat any opponent, if the deck is well tuned. Because of its flexible nature, the deck can be tuned to fit in any almost any meta, which makes Jund always an excellent deck choice. Jund utilizes the most powerful and valuable spells of the format, each of all bursting with strength on their own. It combines the most effective disruption spells backed up by the most effecient removal spells with its characteristic powerful threats, which represents the perfect mix of tools to beat any opponent. Because of this, it basically has potentially at least a 50:50 winrate against any deck. This doesn't seem like a big deal, however, it basically means that there are nearly no bad matchups for Jund, a few good ones and it has at least a good chance against the rest of the field. This is a probability, which doesn't occur often in modern decks. Additionally, matchups get significantly easier after game 1 as there are very few ways to directly sideboard against Jund while Jund has access to three very strong sideboard colors that offer access to some devastating cards against all decks in the format.
Jund is a deck of interaction at heart. If you want to disrupt your opponent and prevent the opponent from proceeding their gameplan, then Jund is the right deck for you. However, typically games are very challenging, but in a good way. Utlizing our set of cards, which all have different purposes (basically controlling/disruptive cards and aggressive cards), to its best in a given matchup, is what makes not only each game unique and fun to play, but also creates challanging and skill oriented games, which is rewarding for skilled players.
Subsequently, knowledge is key in this deck. It rewards every player who is willing to practise and accommodate more and more knowledge of the modern format and its decks. Ultimately, if you know how to play against a given deck, you will be granted the most win-percentage to win and this couldn't be more true for Jund. Without further ado, let's Jund 'em out!
Below you can find the link to my discord channel, where everyone is invited to discuss about Jund. You can also discuss every other deck I made Primers for in there as well.
Modern Jund Discord: https://discord.gg/guSNj7s
Jund Compact SB Guide: https://docdro.id/7SatTzc
I have converted the Primer over to my website, which you can find here: Greatness At Any Cost.
Jund stems from a Shards of Alara – Zendikar standard deck. The concept of the standard Jund deck was to pull ahead of other decks through cards like Bloodbraid Elf, Blightning and Bituminous Blast while clearing the way for their aggressive threats with amazing removal like Lightning Bolt, Maelstrom Pulse and Terminate. Below is an example of a Jund Standard deck list, by David Reitbauer at the 2009 World Championships:
Jund - David Reitbauer - 2009 World ChampionshipsMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards Lands [25]
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Rootbound Crag
4 Savage Lands
3 Dragonskull Summit
2 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
3 Mountain
3 Swamp
2 Forest
Creatures [16]
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Putrid Leech
4 Sprouting Thrinax
2 Broodmate Dragon
2 Master of the Wild HuntPlaneswalkers [2]
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
Non-creature Spells [17]
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Blightning
3 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Bituminous Blast
2 Terminate
1 Burst LightningSideboard [15]
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
3 Duress
3 Great Sable Stag
2 Jund Charm
2 Thought Hemorrhage
1 Maelstrom Pulse
Jund had a lot of success in Extended. Extended Jund kept many of its Standard staples (Bolt, Bloodbraid Elf, Bituminous Blast, Putrid Leech and Maelstrom Pulse) but complemented these cards with powerful creatures like: Demigod of Revenge, Boggart Ram-Gang, Kitchen Finks, Volcanic Fallout and Anathemancer which made Jund a real powerhouse in the format that prayed upon the, then, menace of the format, Faeries.
Extended Jund - Charles Gindy - 2011 Grand Prix AtlantaMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards Lands [26]
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
3 Copperline Gorge
3 Lavaclaw Reaches
4 Raging Ravine
3 Savage Lands
4 Twilight Mire
2 Fire-Lit Thicket
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 MountainCreatures [22]
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Putrid Leech
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Demigod of Revenge
3 Anathemancer
3 Fauna Shaman
Non-creature Spells [12]
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Blightning
2 TerminateSideboard [15]
3 Deglamer
4 Thoughtseize
3 Volcanic Fallout
2 Obstinate Baloth
2 Shriekmaw
1 Terminate
The Standard and Extended Jund decks were very strong and when Modern arrived it wasn’t long before Modern Jund decks were putting up results. Although the concept from the Standard and Extended Jund decks changed very little, Modern Jund decks got some powerful upgrades in their disruption and creature packages. Thoughtseize, Inquisition of Kozilek and Punishing Fire quickly joined Tarmogoyf, Kitchen Finks and Dark Confidant to replace the mediocre cards from Standard and Extended Jund and bring the power level in line with Modern.
Modern Jund quickly made a name for itself as a 2 for 1 deck with cards like: Bloodbraid Elf, Kitchen Finks, Maelstrom Pulse, Punishing Fire (used in combination with Grove of the Burnwillows as repeatable removal and direct damage), Garruk Wildspeaker and in some cases even Blightning complementing the most efficient hand disruption and creature package available in the Modern format.
Garruk was quickly replaced by Liliana of the Veil as Junds Plainswalker of choice with the release of Innistrad in September of 2011 which complemented the 2 for 1 ethos of the deck and formed a combo with Punishing Fire to create serious card advantage over your opponent.
Jund would fairly regularly top 8 Modern Events but it wasn’t until November 2011 when Jund (played by Reid Duke) finally took its first 1st place at the 2011 Magic Online Championship finals against Countercat (played by Florian Pils). Although bizarrely, it wasn’t Jund that made it to the finals as Reid Duke swapped his Countercat deck he reached the finals with for Jund for the final showdown after both players were offered the decision to do so.
In December 2011 Punishing Fire got banned from the format stopping the synergy with Liliana of the Veil and balancing the deck. Although Jund lost the interaction with LotV, it did speed up the deck due to our creatures and Plainswalkers not getting outright destroyed by the first deck to assemble the combo with a Grove and 2 red mana sources – in the end, I don’t think anyone missed having the PF combo around too much.
Junds next major win came in August 2012 at the 2012 Players Championship at the hands of Yuuya Watanabe who took down Shouta Yasookas’ Eternal Command (then a brew deck) in [the finals] of the Modern section of the event.
In October 2012, with the release of Return to Ravnica, Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay quickly joined the Jund party with great success. Shortly after the release of DRS and Decay, still in October 2012, Pro tour Return to Ravnica had Jund take the 2nd (Yuuya Watanabe), 3rd (David Ochoa) and 6th (Willy Edel) places of the top 8, from that point on Jund was founded as the Modern Boogy man. Geralf's Messenger was the breakout card for Jund at the event, and was used for extra reach, however, was fairly mediocre with only Ochoa making it to the Top 8. Geralf’s were largely dropped from Jund following PT RTR.
Of course, trials still continued and only a few days after PT RTR, new breed of Jund, Lingering Jund, began to arise as the new Jund powerhouse as a result of Deathrite Shaman being able to make splashing for other colors much MUCH easier. Lingering Jund was designed to sure up weaker match-ups by splashing white in order to take advantage of Lingering Souls to sure up the then common Infect and Affinity game 1s and strengthen the mirror considerably (as it makes Liliana of the Veil a lot worse) as well as to gain access to some more potent sideboard cards such as: Rule of Law (for Storm and Eggs), Path to Exile (for extra amazing removal) and Stony Silence (Affinity and Eggs). It was at this stage where Jund became known as a “good stuff” or “goodstuff.dec” deck, due to its ability to splash for… well, good stuff.
Of course, Junds success from PTQ RTR was quickly followed by Jund winning Grand Prix Lyon in November 2012 a success that was followed closely with Jund taking both 1st and 2nd place at Grand Prix Toronto in December 2012. It was during GP Toronto that we came across a new form of Jund, Hellkite Jund. Willy Edel built his Hellkite Jund to ramp with Lotus Cobra into Thundermaw Hellkite to combat the new Jund builds playing Lingering Souls and it paid off with him taking 1st place in the final against Dan Jordan who played Lingering Jund - with his Hellkites in the SB.
Although Hellkite had proved it was strong against Lingering Jund, Lingering Jund remained the dominant version of Jund and led to Jund running Rakdos Charms and Olivia Voldaren as sideboard tech against the mirror. It worked well and in November 2012 Lingering Jund took 1st (Jacob Wilson) and 2nd (Josh Utter-Leyton) place at Grand Prix Chicago. Lingering Jund also dominated Grand Prix Toronto in December 2012 with Willy Edel picking up 1st place, Dan Jordan taking 6th place and Jon Stern taking 7th place. Grand Prix Bilbao followed in January 2013 and although Jund didn’t win the event it did feature six decks in the Top 16 at the event – including a 2nd (Lukas Jaklovsky) and 4th (Vasco Bonifacio) place finish.
Following Junds incredible win ratio of every pro level event in Modern and impressive results in the Pro Tour Qualifiers for Pro Tour San Diego Wizards were left with no alternative but to ban something from Jund – there were two choices: Bloodbraid Elf or Deathrite Shaman. Deathrite Shaman was heavily played in multiple decks at that time so, in February 2013 Wizards banned Bloodbraid Elf.
In March 2013 we got a glimpse of the newest Jund deck when Eric Froehlich took 3rd place at Grand Prix Detroit with A-Jund-I. Named so as it utilized Ajani Vengeant in the deck to stabilize against aggressive decks and basically act as removal/detain a threat (or permanent if opponent is behind on tempo), lifegain as well as offering Jund another must answer threat that doubles as an alternate win condition. Vengeant was of course supported by Lingering Souls and Path to Exile (in addition to Junds other removal and disruption) making sure Ajani gets in some real damage to the opposition.
With the release of M14 in July 2013, Scavenging Ooze and Chandra, Pyromaster were quickly picked up by Jund and in September of 2013 GP Detroit saw Jund take up 2nd (Reid Duke), 3rd (Ben Moir), 4th (Ben Stark) and 5th (Adam Jansen) places at the event. Jund continued its success with Jund taking 4th (Ben Tudman) at GP Brisbane and 3rd (Nazar Sotiriadi) at GP Antwerp in October 2013 before taking 3rd (Carlos Moral), 6th (Andrej Rutar) and 7th (Jeremy Dezani) place at GP Prague in January 2014. Junds success soon caught up with it and it led to a band of Deathrite Shaman In the February 2014 banned list announcement.
Courser of Kruphix joined Anger of the Gods and Chandra, Pyromaster at Pro Tour Born of the Gods in Feburary 2014 when Willy Edel reinvented Jund as a control deck that revisited the 2 for 1 roots of pre-Deathrite Shaman Jund. Andrew Huska used Edals Jund blueprint to take 2nd place at GP Minneapolis in May 2014.
Following GP Minneapolis, Jund has been performing fairly well in the Pro Tour Qualifiers for Khans of Tarkir and Star City Games Modern events racking up a number of top 8 finishes.
Most recently, Jund has taken another evolutionary step due to the metagame shifting away from Pod as being the deck to beat (the main reason to be running maindeck Anger of the Gods which, in turn, was the main reason to be running Courser). Andrew Boswell earned himself 2nd place at GP Boston in July 2014 after correctly predicting a greater influx of Affinity, Infect and Lingering Souls decks and adding Olivia Voldaren, Batterskull, Grim Lavamancer an additional Scavenging Ooze and additional removal over the typical Anger of the Gods and Courser slots as well as adjusting his sideboard to reflect this metagame shift. It worked out well but, unfortunately, Boswell lost in the finals to Robin Dolar playing BG Souls who managed to break the stalemated board with Lingering Souls.
With the release of Siege Rhino in Khans of Tarkir (September 2014) and the dominance of Burn during this period Jund took a nosedive and Abzan/Junk became the BGx deck of choice.
It wasn't until shortly after Dragon's of Tarkir arrived (March 2015) and with it the release of Kolaghan's Command that Jund had a resurgence in popularity. Jund had been steadily gaining numbers and at the next major event on the 28th of June at Grand Prix Singapore 2015 Keita Kawasaki took 3rd and Reid Duke placed 4th with Jund containing multiple copies of Kolaghan's Command.
Jund continued it's success with multiple Top8s at global PPTQ's, PTQ's, Super series' and TLA's before taking first place at SCG Modern Open Charlotte on the 22nd of August 2015 piloted by Joseph Herrera. Most recently, Jund has placed 2nd (Yuuta Takahashi), 4th (Matthew Tickel) and 5th (Jonathan Delano) at SCG Premier IQ Somerset 30th of August 2015.
Following August 2015, however, the metagame became fairly hostile to Jund. Bloom Titan, a deck Jund had a pretty bad match up against, exploded a bit in popularity and the presence of Tron and Scapeshift decks increased significantly as did Junks metagame share. Jund managed to make 3rd at Paraguay World Magic Cup Qualifiers (WMCQ), 2nd at the Chillian WMCQ, 7th and 8th at the Netherlands WMCQ, 7th at the Greek WMCQ, 7th at the WMCQ in Indonesia, 3rd at the WMCQ in Peru, 4th at the Belgium WMCQ and placed 1st and 5th at WMCQ Slovenia. Although some impressive results by the seems, Jund failed to top 8 most of the highly competitive WMCQs held.
At Grand Prix Oklahoma City (September) 2015 Jund narrowly missed Top 8 with Brad Nelson making 10th place. The next major Top 8 placing was at the SCG Premier IQ in Milwaukee where Jared Welsh made 5th place followed by Ming Wen taking 2nd at SCG Premier IQ Atlanta. Jund won SCG Premier IQ Kansas City piloted by Kyryll Shevchenko at the end of September 2015 but failed to place anywhere in the Top 16 at Grand Prix Pittsburgh 2015. We have to wait until SCG Premier IQ Denver 2015 where Chris Nemeth made 5th with Jund for its next showing at a competitive event though. Shortly after, Christopher Juliano piloted Jund to 3rd place at SCG Invitational Las Vegas.
Jund had a slow start to 2016 and on the 22nd of January two major things change in Modern. Firstly, Summer Bloom (good for us) and Splinter Twin get banned and Oath of the Gatewatch gets released bringing with it Eldrazi. Shortly thereafter Jund places 3rd (Dustin Green) at SCG Modern Atlanta. Erik Rose managed to sneak in another Top 8 showing for January placing 7th at SCG Modern Columbus before Eldrazi Aggro arrives to wear its crown as king of Modern.
It's during mid February where Eldrazi Aggro emerges as the deck to beat in the Modern format. Eldrazi Aggro dominates Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch, winning and taking 6 out of Top 8 positions. Jund manages to win the SCG Classic Philadelphia Jonathan Delano) with that being the only Top 8 appearance of Jund until the inevitable banning of Eye of Ugin on the 4th of April 2016.
With the Eldrazi beast tamed, the Oath of the Gatewatch card Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is discovered to provide the springboard Jund needs to keep it performing well at the top tables - effectively helping Jund against some of the problematic decks of the metagame (Burn, Affinity, Junk, the Mirror and even Tron) and giving us the edge over decks like Abzan CoCo which were even (if not slightly in their favor) before hand. The first major event following the Eldrazi ban was the Dutch Modern Open where Jessy Berghout steered Jund to 5th place (there were another three copies in the Top 16). The metagame was still very hostile to Jund though and as such Jund didn't place in either the SCG Classic or the SCG Invitational, both held in Columbus. Jund placed 7th at the StarCityGames.com Modern Open (Joshua Carlson) before wavering a bit and eventually taking 2nd at the MTGO Modern PTQ (Ztrman). Jund took 3rd place at BoM Annecy Main Event (Julien Henry) before David Biedermann won the MKM Series Frankfurt - Modern Main Event.
Despite the SCG Indianapolis metagame being a minefield for Jund, Dylan Jones still managed to make 7th place.
Grand Prix Los Angeles 2016 saw Javier Dominguez pilot Jund to 4th place and Grand Prix Charlotte 2016 saw two Jund lists in the Top 8; Mike Sigrist' list at 4th and Adonnys Medrano' list at 7th place(s). Jund Top 8ed a number of Qualifiers and Trials before StarCityGames.com Modern Dallas saw Jund take 3rd (Jared Tow). Rémi Fortier took Jund to another 3rd place at the Bazaar of Moxen 2016 - Strasbourg. Jund got 2nd at MKM Series Madrid (Jose Manuel Gómez Porral) before the 2016 World Magic Cup Qualifiers began.
Jund took 3rd (Chen Xinrong) and 6th place (Han Ziyu) at WMCQ China, placed 8th (David Reitbauer) and won (Lukas Mittendorfer) at WMCQ Austria. Jund had a few none placers before Alex Rodrigues won and Guilherme Merjam took 2nd at WMCQ Brazil. Jund then took 2nd (Gerardo Delia) and 8th (Andrea Bogno) at WMCQ Italy. WMCQ Argentina had Leonel Prieto take 4th with Jund and WMCQ Spain saw Jund hit both 4th (Pablo Pinach) and 6th place (Antonio Del Moral Leon) before Jund missed out placing in the French and Indonesian, Filipino and Dominican WMCQs. Jund made 8th place at WMCQ Japan (Tamada Ryouichi) and took 6th at WMCQ Bulgaria (Vasil Georgiev) but didn't make any showings at either South Korea or Denmark WMCQs. Jund also missed out at placing for SCG Classic - Worcester before taking 3rd (Deniz Kara), 4th (Ali Emre Cinar) and 5th (Oguz Tuna Mavus) at WMCQ Turkey, 1st (Mitchell Manders) and 2nd (Xandor Tollenaar) at WMCQ Netherlands.
In January 2017, Gitaxian Probe was banned and Golgari Grave-Troll was rebanned. In addition to this, a new defining premium removal spell in the form of Fatal Push was printed, for which reason Dredge and Infect declined in popularity, midrange decks became more popular, which also made Big Mana decks like Tron more popular. As it seemed, a big meta warp-up was caused due to the bans.
In May 2017, Reid Duke finished 4th during the Baltimore SCG Modern Open. It is a great finish and represents the everlasting strenght of Jund in any metagame.
In November 2017, Jund once again made a slight uptick in success and popularity. Since the printing of Push and an area of decks dodging the spell, more go-wide strategies have evolved against which Jund generally is a good option.
Big Mana decks and combo decks startet to rise again, which made Rabble-Jund the popular choice. It was a list only containing 23 lands and running up to 3 Goblin Rabblemaster, which provided a faster clock against noninteractive decks and provided Jund a good way to go wide. Hazoret the Fervent was a new addition to the Jund gauntlet going onward. It really proofed her strength in Jund.
on 12th of February an impactful B&R announcement struck the modern format. BBE and Jace have been unbanned. Especially Bloodbraid Elf is a card every Jund player wanted to see again in the modern format. Jund is now able to rise up in power and popularity again, and hopefully our bloodbraided queen can help us to reach our old strengths again.
On 29th of July 2018 Michael Olsen won the SCG Modern Open at Indianapolis. It showed that Jund could still compete with the other decks in the format and is a very well viable choice.
In October 2018, with the release of Guild of Ravnica, a powerful new tool was introduced to Jund: Assassin's Trophy. This card helped to keep up with the powerlevel of the modern format to be able to continue competing in a competitive manner.
Below you can see a visual timeline, showing the most important events in Jund's History, beginning from its creation, until the most recent events. This timeline should give readers a quick overview of important dates in Jund's history.
"Greatness, at any cost."
One of the most important aspects of playing Jund successfully, is to be able to pilot the deck according to the player's expected meta. Sometimes this means you have to change some cards in the deck, even if it might be odd. Don't be afraid to test "odd" things out by yourself. Jund is generally no deck, which has the perfect 75 cards at all times. However, there are certain guidelines for deck construction, which, over the past, have shown to be pretty helpful when it comes to deck construction. If you start from scratch with a Jund deck and haven't played it before, its recommended to stick to those guidelines at first and adjust accordingly afterwards.
The Landbase is the fundamental part of every deck, and for Jund this is no exception. Having a well tuned and working Landbase is the first key to success, and often times one of the most important ones when it comes down to deck piloting. We have high requirements for coloured mana in order to cast our spells, and therefore its extremeley important to have the correct landbase for the deck. The distribution of fetchlands is already of high importance. Why? Because by running an optimal configuration allows you to perfectly fetch for the basic lands we have in our deck (out of the 3 fetchlands stated below, each can get each shock dual anyway). Generally, considering colour requirements: black > green > red. The standard amount of lands for Jund has been 24 lands in the past. However, recently due to the unbanning of Bloodbraid Elf, the decks also shifted its landcount towards 25. Right now, we have approaches running 24 and 25 lands respectively. When building a manabase, always have these rules of thumb in mind:
- When deciding whether to run 24 or 25 lands, take a look at the spells you want to play. As a rule of thumb, I would recommend to mainly look at the three drops and four drops for a quick check. In general, if you have 7 or more three drops as well as 4 four drops then run 25 lands. If you have less than that (like 6 three drops and 4 four drops or 7 three drops and 3 four drops) then you can play 24 lands.
- 18 black sources minimum to consistantly cast Lilianas on turn 3. Having enough black sources to cast discard spells on turn 1 is implemented by that already.
- At least 14 green sources to cast any green spell/creature from turn 2 on. If you run Kitchen Finks in the SB, the requirement goes up to 18 sources. Keep that in mind,
- At least 14 red sources to cast Lightning Bolt from turn 1 on consistantly. If you run Anger of the Gods in the SB, the requirements goes up to 18 sources. Keep that in mind.
- Don't have to many lands in your decks that come into play tapped if you need certain untapped lands on a certain turn. I recommend 4 fastlands (not more) and 3 manlands (for a 24 landbase) and 4 manlands (for a 25 lanbase) respectively.
- For reference, read those articles from Frank Karsten: Landdrop article and Colour Requirements.
Among the lands, which are absolutely required to run this deck, are the following (considering a standard 24-25 land landbase):
Verdant Catacombs (4 copies)
This is Junds fetchland of choice. Fetches both of our basic lands and grants us access to our main duel land for mana fixing purposes. It also helps to pump up our Goyfs too. It can't fetch basic Mountains but most lists don't run basic mountains anyway. Absolutely play 4 copies of this land, there is no exception to this rule.
Bloodstained Mire (3-4 copies)
One half of our main secondary fetchlands for the deck. Almost as good as Catacombs as it can fetch all of our Shock lands as well as our basic swamps, it can't fetch up our basic forests though. Still this is the second best fetchland available to us, since requirements for black are generally higher than those of green. If you play a basic Mountain, then play 4 copies of this card. If you play 2 basic forests, then it is recommended to stick to 3 copies.
Wooded Foothills (1-2 copies)
This is the "worst" fetchland available to us, but still needed to get extra fetchlands able to fetch for a basic forest. Usually you can run 1-2 copies in a standard manabase. If you run a basic Mountain, then I would play 1 copy, wheras if you play 2 basic forest, you can play 2 copies instead (and run only 3 mires subsequentially).
Blackcleave Cliffs (4 copies)
Cliffs is outstanding for Jund (in the first 3 turns at least), It provides us with our most commonly required opening colors (black for discard, red for bolt) and fixes our mana throughout the game. The advantage to running Cliffs is that we don’t lose any tempo in the early game from our fixing and we don’t lose any life either. The disadvantage in using Cliffs is that once we have 3 mana in play, Cliffs enters the battlefield tapped. Always run 4 copies of this card. We want to cast Bolt and discard/push on turn 1 already. This is the best land to achieve that.
Raging Ravine (3 copies)
This is Junds main manland of choice in current Jund (it was formerly a split between Ravine and Treetop Village, but our red mana requirements have increased since those days). Ravine provides Jund with a huge uncounterable threat for when the game goes long (which is usually our main game plan). While Ravine costs a lot to activate, it grows every time it attacks and quickly takes over the game if left unanswered. Right now its recommended to run 3 copies.
Overgrown Tomb (2 copies)
One of our three main Shock lands for the deck, Tomb really helps at reaching those BB/GG costs in the deck and offers us easy access to our main plays like Turn 1 discard followed by turn two Tarmogoyf, etc. Since these two colours are needed the most, we want to generally run 2 copies of that land.
Blood Crypt (1 copy)
Another of the shock lands for the deck, Crypt allows us easier access to our BB/RR manacosts and is useful for getting us our turn 1 discard or turn 1 Bolt openings.
Stomping Ground (1 copy)
The final shock land for the deck, Grounds gives us better access to our GG/RR costs. It helps paying very little life if you fetch this land tapped and fetch or play a basic swamp. That way you can cast all our 1 and 2 cost spells.
Swamp (2 copies)
Our main basic land, can be fetched with any fetchland commonly run in Jund. Helps us not lose outright to Blood Moon/Magus of the Moon type effects and gives us lands to search up if one or two of our creatures get Path to Exiled or if a land of ours gets Ghost Quarterd. Run at least 2 basic swamps!
Forest (1-2 copies)
Our other must include basic land, can be fetched by Catacombs/Foothills and is useful for all the same reasons running basic swamps are. It is usually not recommended fetching for this land early in the game, but you really need it against Blood Moon/Field of Ruin/Path to Exile kind of effects. If you expect Blood Moon, then run 2 copies of this card. If you expect more Path/Field of Ruins, then run only 1 copy and a basic Mountain instead.
Mountain (0-1 copy)
Mountain can be included over the second forest if you want to hedge more against Field of Ruin decks. However, the upside is not very high and the downside can be quite devastating. If you expect many Field of Ruin type of effects, then you can run a basic Mountain over the second Forest in order to hedge against that. Keep in mind that you need to adjust your fetchland distribution accordingly.
Twilight Mire (0-1 copy)
This land is a potential card to run over a 9th fetchland in a 24 landbase. If you run 9 fetchlands in a 24 landbase, then don't run this card. Since the unbanning of BBE, Twilight Mire has become a great card again in Jund. In general, I totally recommend running that over any fifth fastland (which you can see from certain lists, but I think its wrong). You need 4 untapped lands on turn 4 due to BBE. So play Twilight Mire to help with that. The 2 downsides of this card are the problem of it not producing coloured mana on its own, as well as the nonbo with a potential Damping Sphere in the SB. So keep that in mind.
Treetop Village (0-2 copies)
Treetop Village is in theory the best manland available to us. However, the one big problem with it is its mana producing restrictions. With the trend to go up to 25 lands in Jund decks, this land makes a really good 25th one for the deck. With a cheap activation cost and a strong body, Treetop can really shift the advantage into your side. I would recommend running this card only in 25 landbases. For 24 landbases, the colour requirements are too tight and you cannot afford to play less than 3 Ravines in that one. So this is your 25th land naturally if you go to a 25 landbase.
Blooming Marsh (0-1 copy)
While sometimes included as a 1-of, Blooming Marsh can be a little bit tricky to play in Jund. BBE makes it so that we really want untapped lands, especially on turn 4. With the auto include of 4 Blackcleave Cliffs, playing this land would really shift chances in such a way, that awkward turns can occur if this land was topdecked on turn 4 for example. If you like it, you can run it, but I recommend running a Twilight Mire or the 9th fetchland over that slot instead.
Our creaturebase represent our powerful, valuable threats able to take over the game on their own and grind out the opponent. Jund utilizes the best/most efficient creatures available in the modern format to trump the opponent. Ideally, it is considered best to run about 14-15 creatures in a Jund deck.
Tarmogoyf (4 copies)
This is arguably the best creature in modern. With only 2 mana, you can get up to an 8/9 creature, which will be able to finish the game fast. It is absolutely crucial to run 4 copies in a competitive Jund deck, without any exceptions.
Dark Confidant (3-4 copies)
Dark Confidant, or “Bob” (The name Bob for Dark Confidant originally came from the name of its designer, Bob Maher), is the best source of card advantage in the format. With the decline of Aggro and Tempo decks from the format Bob has more than earned his spot in the core section back. Having a strong source of card advantage that can attack for 2 dmg or block if you're under pressure is phenomenal in the deck. Dark Confidant is almost always a "kill" or "die" card for your opponent as, unless they take him out straight away, you will bury your opponent is card advantage. In a standard list you will see 4 copies of Bob. Some variations are possible (like playing a split of Grim Flayer and Bob, but generally, Bob is preferred over anything similar. Bob can be unexciting in multiples, but its still a good early game tool to have against a variaty of decks.
Bloodbraid Elf (3-4 copies)
Bloodbraid Elf made a huge comeback in the modern format in February 2018. From historical viewpoints we can see, that BBE really helped Jund to compete at the toplevel, and nothing less was expected when the unbanning announcement hit the modern world. Bloodbraid Elf provides Jund with a very powerful threat, and is considered to be the best top ender in the manacurve for Jund. BBE almost always grants a 2-for-1 in cards exchange, which is one reason why she is incredibly powerful. The other reason is that you gain an incredible tempo advantage as well, as you immediatly get to cast the card you cascaded into. And all that while also getting to attack for 3 immediatly. She is great in attrition based games, she is great against control decks and she is also applicable in Combo and Big Mana matchups. However, BBE is quite inconsistant and unreliable against aggro decks. With linear aggression being at a high stake in the modern format, I would play less copies of her. All in all BBE is an endgame threat.
Scavenging Ooze (2-3 copies)
Scooze covers many bases in Jund, primarily Ooze acts as main deck graveyard hate against grave-centric decks and an answer to opposing Tarmogoyfs and Snapcaster Mages. While performing graveyard disruption on creatures, Ooze acts as both a tool for gaining life while becoming bigger and becoming a massive threat to our opponent, especially in the mid to late game if not dealt with early enough. Ooze thrives in the mid to lategame but is bad in the early game. Ooze is sometimes great, but can sometimes be mediocre overall. For this reason we do not run that many copies, the exact copy number depends simply on the metagame. For details please read the sideboard guide!
Grim Lavamancer (0-1 copies)
Lavamancer is a strong direct damage enabler that feeds of the cards in your graveyard. Lavamancer can quite often be a 2+ for 1, if he untaps, as he can often take out x/1s and x/2s as well as providing direct damage to an opponent or opposing Plainswalkers. I like Lavamancer, but I feel like he competes with Scavenging Ooze quite a bit and can severely weaken our Tarmogoyfs. All in all, he’s certainly a powerhouse once he gets going and can allow you to win the Goyf wars and gain added reach, etc. for no loss of card advantage, however, it is worth noting that his lack of synergy with other cards in the deck can be a disadvantage in the long term and makes opponents graveyard hate cards, that regularly get sided in against us, that much stronger. I would recommend running Grim Lavamancer in the SB.
Tireless Tracker (0-3 copies)
Tireless Tracker is an endgame grindmachine. If you play him on turn 4 alongside a fetchland, you almost guarantee 2 extra cards drawn immediatly. This card is really strong for control and midrange mirrors, as it draws a huge amount of cards and grows into a huge threat if unchecked. This card is clunky against combo and aggro though. It can certainly be seen as a virtual 4 drop, which means against aggro you would miss initial card draws in the early stage. This is an option to play instead of Bloodbraid Elf, or a mix of both. But don't play the card instead of Dark Confidant without knowing what you are doing. Bob is an early game tool for early CA, Tracker is a endgame wincon. So be careful about that.
Besides these core creature suite Jund has, many other options are possible, which are the following:
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
: Kalitas is currently the newest addition to Jund, but what an addition he is. Kalitas managed to fill up a lot of the gaps Jund had as vulnerabilities. He has a very relevant replacement effect of exiling any of our opponents' non-token creatures we kill while also providing us with a 2/2 Zombie token at the same time. Additionally, Kalitas is an non-boltable creature that provides us with a main deck lifegain. Kalitas also has the ability to grow huge throughout the span of a game by paying 2B and sacrificing a Zombie to place two +1/+1 counters him making the 2/2 Zombie tokens he provides great chump blockers and great sacrificial attackers if blocked to play havoc with an opponents' combat math and allow Kalitas to gain back chunks of life lost throughout the game in a single swing or block. All in all, Kalitas has provided Jund with a new tool to fight a large number of decks in the current metagame and has therefore earned his slot in the core section of Jund - until the time meta shifts away from Kalitas being an allstar that is. Generally speaking, Kalitas and Huntmaster (see below) kind of compete for the MB slot in Jund. Both have different applications but can basically be run in any meta. Kalitas is really shining in a creature oriented meta though. - Hazoret the Fervent :Hazoret really brought Jund a way to finish games fast as well as grind on the same basis. Hazoret does seem restrictive as she cannot attack or block if you have 2 or more cards in your hand, but this restriction can actually be circumvented by the nature of our deck. We use our cards quite early in the game and are happy to trade away our cards in order to get ahead in the game. Liliana of the Veil also helps accomplishing this. Once active, Hazoret can be a very potent topdeck which will get value right away. You can play her and attack on the same turn, and afterwards, you can turn useless topdecks into shocks which results in a big clock. Since she is indestructible, it is also hard to remove her and thus she provides a sticky threat. It is totally fine to run a copy of her in the main. However, the most obvious spot for her would be in the SB now.
- Grim Flayer
: Grim Flayer is a 2/2 with Trample that, if it connects, offers Jund the ability to manipulate the top three cards of our Library giving us the ability filter chaff into our graveyard and set up future draws. A strong ability with some evasion too but it's what happens to Flayer when we trigger Delirium (in other words, get four different card types in our graveyard) which pushes Grim Flayer into the realms of playability in Jund. When we reach Delirium Grim Flayer gets an additional +2/+2 making him a 4/4 Trample creature that when connects can filter the top three cards of our library - all for the low cost of BG. Although getting Delirium seems challenging we tend to turn on Delirium fairly regularly (in my testing) by turn 3-5 simply by just playing an average game of MTG - although that's not always the case and some people dislike Flayer for the, sometimes, problematic nature of switching on Delirium and the potential fragility of Delirium in the format. - Huntmaster of the Fells :Huntmaster of the Fells is another great option of a MB 4-drop for Jund. If you ever go into an unknown meta, this guy is for you. He provides the most flexibility and has application against anything. Its always safe to run him and thus we is always present in lists. Huntmaster can grind out control decks, as he provides multiple bodies which require multiple removals to get rid of. Huntmaster also provides value against aggro and creature oriented decks, as the lifegain granted is relevant as well as the extra bodies to block and the extra ping effects through flipping. This would be a perfect example of "Staying Power" as Reid Duke would call it.
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar
: Pia and Kiran Nalaar offer Jund some often needed evasion. Entering play with two 1/1 Flying Artifact Thopter tokens allows Jund to swing over the top of many blockers in the format making it the perfect tool to swing in overhead to take out troublesome Plainswalkers or just get in those last points of damage. It's Pia and Kiran Nalaar activated ability of paying 2R sacrificing an Artifact (most likely the Thopters - but noteworthy that you can sac any artifact we control in play) for 2 points of direct damage. This direct damage is useful for getting through those last points of damage to an opponent and/or Plainswalker or to finish off an opponents' threat. - Tasigur, the golden Fang : Tasigur is essentially what the love child of Tagmogoyf and Dark Confidant would look like (Ironically, who both essentially don't have great synergy with him, at least while he's not in play anyway). While at first Tasigur seems fairly underwhelming, he has the potential to really swing games in your favor. Due to Delve, he basically reads, exile 0-5 jank cards from your GY and pay the difference plus B to cast him. Once in play he he reads 2GG put the top 2 cards of your library into your graveyard and your opponent chooses the worst non-land card in your graveyard for you to get back, you return that card to your hand. The thing is, his Delve ability allows you to exile all the jank cards in your graveyard so you tend to force your opponents to, at least, give you back a mediocre card, either way Tas is pure card advantage and a 4/5 beatstick.
- Kitchen Finks
: Finks was a core staple in the deck until DRS was printed and when he was banned Scavenging Ooze was a huge hindrance to him but with the rise of Aggro decks Finks has risen in power again. Finks is almost always huge value play; when he enters play you gain 2 life, he has a relevant 3/2 body and has Persist so when he dies he come right back again to gain you another 2 life and a 2/1 body. Finks sees mostly SB play now, but its almost a staple in Jund's sideboards. - Olivia Voldaren : Olivia is a great creature that is useful in very grindy matchups in the format. Once you untap with her against a deck that has creatures she closes out a game for you fast. Having both flying and the ability to ping off your opponents' small creatures or ping and steal their bigger ones while increasing her power and toughness makes her a huge must answer threat. Especially for grindy matchups this card is a game-winning card. Right now Olivia is a great choice for maindecking, since Bolt is on an all-time low.
- Thrun, the last Troll : A 4/4 uncounterable creature with Hexproof that can regenerate itself. This is basically a fair decks worst nightmare. He can only die to edict effects, while being the only creature in play, via sweepers like Wrath of God, that don't allow regeneration, or from a sweeper when you don't have the mana up to regenerate him. Basically, he's really good versus decks that win via creatures and is extremely difficult to kill him due to regeneration. He is also a 4/4 so he represents a serious threat too. He sees SB play only.
Sometimes it is not clear to know which creature to run in Jund. Especially when it comes down to Ooze, Tracker, Bob, BBE and Grim Flayer. For this reason, here is a chart explaining the strengths and weaknesses of each creature in a given matchup. You can decide for yourself, according to your metagame, which creature you want more, or simply prefer more. Below in the yellow box, you can find the average performance of each creature among all matchups. It should give you insights about the overall performance of this chosen metagame.
In order to support our creatures and disrupt our opponents, Jund utilizes one of the best and most efficient removals and disruption spells available. These spells are crucial to the deck and therefore, for some spells, there is no flexibility possible as their powerlevel will always be great in the modern format.
Fatal Push (1-2 copies)
Right now, Fatal Push is one of the best removal spells in modern, if not the best. This removal spell rounds our other removals in Bolt and Trophy out quite nicely. The complete modern format has been restructured singlehandedly due to this card. Its cheap, its efficient, and hits a vast majority of creatures in the modern format. Remember that Revolt can be triggered with Fetchlands, for which reason we always want at least 8 fetchlands in our manabase. Depending on the meta, this card will more or less good be compared to Bolt. Overall you have to smartly adjust the numbers of your Bolt/Push split due to that.
Lightning Bolt (4 copies)
Bolt is an incredible removal spell and was usually the reason to play red over any other colour in a GBx deck. Bolt can have some tools which are not neclectable, it has reach and can deal with planeswalker. Also, bolt can help dealing with stuff Fatal Push can't deal that easy with, like boltable 3 drops. Depending on the prevalent meta, the powerlevel of Bolt becomes better or worse compared to Fatal Push. So always reconsider your Bolt/Push split alongside your expected metagame.
Inquisition of Kozilek (3-4 copies)
A very solid, but conditional, 1cmc discard spell. IoK allows you to take any nonland card with a cmc of 3 or less. Although there is no additional life cost to playing IoK like there is with Thoughtseize, there are a few match-ups that it’s bad against. Generally, 6 discard spells are playing in the MB of Jund. Among this 6 discard both IoK and TS should be played, most of the time either in a 4/2 split of IoK/TS or a 3/3 of both.
Thoughtseize (2-3 copies)
The most powerful 1cmc discard spell in the game. Allows you to take any nonland card in their hand and gives you information on their game plan. It can be suicidal though, costing an additional 2 life to cast. Generally, 6 discard spells are playing in the MB of Jund. Among this 6 discard both IoK and TS should be played, most of the time either in a 4/2 split of IoK/TS or a 3/3 of both.
Assassin's Trophy (2-3 copies)
With Guilds of Ravnica hitting the modern format, GBx decks got a huge tool for keeping up with the powerlevel of other decks in the format. Assassin's Trophy provides us a highly flexible tool which really improves game 1 against a bunch of matchups. You can destroy an opposing Urza land from Tron, you can more easily fight PWs from Control decks or answer any hard to answer permanents in the maindeck now. The downside is almost the same as Path, the only difference is that the land comes into play untapped. This tool should absolutely be in the main of every Jund deck now, but not as a 4 of as the drawback will a big proportion of the time a free bonus for your opponent as you also have to use Trophy as a simple Terminate/Decay sometimes.
Terminate (0-1 copies)
Unconditional instant speed creature removal for 2 mana, it’s probably the best straight creature removal spell we have access to in our colors. Its only weak point is that it does not get rid of indestructible creatures and is only partially good vs. sticky creatures like Kitchen Finks. With the printing of Assassin's Trophy this card falls out of favour now though. It is optional to run 1 copy of this card though.
Abrupt Decay (0-1 copy)
One of the strongest removal cards ever printed in MTG. It’s amazingly flexible and hits nearly all problematic permanents in the format. Furthermore, it’s uncounterable, and an instant - unfortunately, it doesn't hit manlands or cards with cmc of 4 or greater. Unless the uncounterable clause is relevent enough, then don't run Decay over Assassin's Trophy. The unconditional removal part of Trophy is usually better than the uncounterable clause of Decay.
Kolaghan's Command (2 copies)
Kolaghan's Command is one of the strongest spells Jund has gained since Decay. The main reason Kolaghan's Command so strong is it's flexibility against nearly every deck in Modern. Kolaghan's Command has four modes:
- Return target creature card from your graveyard to your hand.
- Target player discards a card.
- Destroy target artifact.
- Kolaghan's Command deals 2 damage to target creature or player.
From which you choose two modes. Oh! and it's at Instant speed too!! Yep, that's right, Instant speed discard, Affinities worst nightmare, and it just so happens to give us a massive advantage against grindy match ups too - what's not to love?
Maelstrom Pulse (0-1 copies)
The strengths of Pulse are in its ability to deal with problematic permanents and their multiples. Its weakness is that it’s a Sorcery and can’t hit Manlands. With the printing of Assassin's Trophy Pulse becomes weaker now. It is an option to keep in mind though.
Liliana of the Veil (3-4 copies)
The second best planeswalker ever printed (But the best in modern). Lillys’ -2 is strong against Aggro and Midrange, her +1 is solid against Control and Combo, her -6 is amazing against any deck, and you get all this for 3cmc. LotV is just a hugely flexible planeswalker that gives most decks nightmares when she lands. She’s almost always a 2(+) for 1 and is one of the only ways we have of taking out Hexproof, Regenerating or Protection from our removal creatures.
Liliana, the Last Hope (0-2 copies)
Being both a form of Liliana and with the same cmc as Liliana of the Veil has led to LtLH being unfavorably compared to LotV. While not being as strong as LotV in the deck, Last Hopes' +1 (giving a creature -2/-1 until our next turn) has the ability to kill some key creatures in the format and shrink other larger, more problematic, threats until our next turn, which is nothing to be taken lightly - although notably a dead ability against a few decks in Modern. Last Hopes' -2 (Put the top two cards of your library into your graveyard, then you may return a creature card from your graveyard to your hand) has synergy with our Goyfs and Scoozes (and Flayers, if you're running any) as well as giving us the ability to return a creature to our hand can really overwhelm an opponent over the course of a game. People testing Last Hope having said that they've managed to return and play trump creatures like: Bob, Pia and Kiran Nalaar, Goyf and Kalitas multiple times in a game which is incredibly back breaking for an opponent to have to deal with. Liliana, the Last Hopes' -7 (You get an emblem with "At the beginning of your end step, put X 2/2 black Zombie creature tokens onto the battlefield, where X is two plus the number of Zombies you control".) mounts up quickly over a few turns to churn out an army of 2/2 Zombies which will make quick work of an opponent from that point on - particularly if we've managed to accumulate a few triggers from Kalitas also. All in all, Last Hope offers us a cheap tool that can swing games against many decks in our favor if left on the battlefield for a few turns or longer.
Faithless Looting (0-4 copies)
At the unbanning of BBE Jund was a great deck immediatly. Everyone was hyped about BBE. As it turned out though, Jund eventually faces some major problems which really hit the deck hard: BBE is not really reliable. Jund often times finds themselves having the wrong kind of answers for their opponents. Jund lacks consistancy as a whole. For this simple reason, Mardu Pyromancer became a stronger midrange deck to choose actually. And also for this reason, people began to experiment with Looting in Jund. Technically it is almost always CA disadvantage, which basically works against the philosophy of the deck, but there is more ot it. There are builds out there who play about 3-4 Lootings now. The reason being that this card can gain us greatly needed card selection in the early game to find needed answers. Additionally, and that is where Looting really shines, in case of topdecked lands you can just flashback looting in order to immediatly dig for action. In a meta where linear aggression is prevalent (like Hollow One and Humans) go for a Looting build.
Like for the creatures, a chart showing the individual strengths of all common spells run in Jund are shown. This should help to evaluate the exact numbers of spells you want to run.
In order to have a starting point for building a Jund deck, here is a basic decklist template anyone can use to get a feeling which cards are generally played and more importantly, how often. This list is not meant to be perfect, nor is it meant to be the "best" solution for any meta, but, according to the latest results, the safest list for an unknown meta.
Note: Feel free to ask for any feedback on your own decklist in this threat. However, pls, always state the reasoning and the purpose of a specific decklist, otherwise we won't be able to help accordingly. The reason behind this is, that specific metas sometimes require odd card choices. However, every meta is different. Therefore it is important for us to know in which meta a certain deck will be played in order to help the most effective way possible.
Rules of Thumb
Here are some general rules of thumb when it comes to building the deck, which you should more or less stick to. Don't consider them to be strict like anything, you can break the rules to a certain extend, but especially for new players the rules are highly recommended to stick to.
- The Landbase consists of 24-25 lands. Among them, 8-9 cards make up fetchlands, 4 cards make up fastlands, 4 make up shocklands, 4 are basics and 3-5 are manlands. If you play 24 lands, stick with 3 manlands and 4 fastlands only. If you play 25 lands, you can either run 5 manlands or play 4 manlands and a Twilight Mire.
- The creaturebase is 14-15 creatures, whereas 14 is the most common number. 4 cards make up Tarmogoyf and 3-4 cards make up Dark Confidant as well as 3-4 Bloodbraid Elf. Then there are 3 Scavenging Oozes. The rest is flexible.
- How many Spells you want to run depends on your landbase and creaturebase together. So consider this formula: 60 - (Creatures + Lands) = Noncreature Spells. Among them there are 6 discard spells, 10-12 one mana spells (including the discard) and about 7-8 three mana spells. The rest is usually 2 mana spells.
All in all, here is a standard decklist which you can start to play with:
TemplateMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards Lands [25]
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
3 Raging Ravine
1 Treetop Village
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Twilight MireCreatures [14]
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Dark Confidant
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Bloodbraid Elf
Non-creature Spells [21]
1 Fatal Push
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
3 Assassin's Trophy
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Kolaghan's Command
1 Maelstrom Pulse
Alternatively, here is a good startingbuild for a Faithless Looting version (Build from Jaberwocki):
Faithless Looting buildMagic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards Lands [24]
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blooming Marsh
3 Raging Ravine
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 MountainCreatures [10]
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Scavenging Ooze
2 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
2 Bedlam Reveler
Noncreature Spells [26]
4 Faithless Looting
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
2 Fatal Push
2 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Kolaghan's Command
2 Liliana of the Veil
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
In this decklists, some things are more flexible than fixed (well, basically many things are flexible, except for 4 Tarmogoyf, 3-4 LoTV, 3-4 Bobs as well as 3-4 BBE fundamentally) so I'll go over those a little bit more to prevent confusion:
- Twilight Mire: This flexible land spot can basically be either a ninth fetchland (Bloodstained Mire or Wooded Foothills), depending if you want to mitigate awkward opening hands or not (since Twilight Mire can't produce coloured mana on its own). Twilight Mire has quite a few upsides though, as this land greatly helps for getting BB or GG to cast our difficult to cast threats (Liliana and Kitchen Finks). Alternatively, if your meta feels right for it, you could potentially run a fifth manland (in the 25 landbase only!) in this spot. Lastly, Damping Sphere which sees play in our sideboards makes Twilight Mire worse, which should be kept in mind.
- Flex Creature: 4-drops define our endgame and big grindy creatures, which are able to take over the game in certain situations. Right now, this spot is filled by Bloodbraid Elf, which has been banned a while ago. Generally we don't need extra 4 drops due to that. The problem is, the are no real amazing 4-drops like BBE out there anymore, which makes it so that 4-drops must be suited to the meta where they want to be played. The closest "universal" 4-drop, which can basically be played in every meta is Huntmaster of the Fells. Its the "safest" out of the options. If you expect a heavy creature oriented meta, then Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet is for you. Kalitas is a great card that recently got printed and popped up in Jund lists ever since. One last option I want to mention here as MB 4-drop option, is Pia and Kiran Nalaar. This card can be a great tool to deal with aggro decks and opposing grindier decks like Junk. PKN provides removal, grind and simply can go wide. Overall its a good card. However, lately, this card has fallen out of favor when it comes down to maindecking 4-drops. I can definitely see playing the card in the right meta though. Besides all these, you can chosse between Olivia Voldaren and Grim Lavamancer potentially. Hazoret the Fervent has also been a great new addition to the deck. I would personally recommend only considering BBE, Grim Lavamancer and Kalitas right now.
- Discard: For this category not many decisions are needed to make. Usually we either play a 4/2 split of Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize, favouring IOK here. Alternatively, you can go for a 3/3 split on both cards. There has been lists running a 4/2 split favouring Thoughtseize, which can also be useful if you feel that IOK doesn't find many targets in a given meta, but right now, I would recommend going for the 4/2 (favouring IOK) split, which is due to BBE hitting the modern format.
"You will scream out your innermost secrets to make it stop."
In Jund, when it comes to sideboarding, experience and knowledge are really key to it. There are many thing to consider, and in some cases, opinions differ on a specific sideboard decision. Because of this, I want to extract the most important aspects of sideboarding and write them down into an detailed guide here, which will hopefully help every new person and experienced player as well.
Sideboard-Index
- Affinity
- Burn
- Junk
- Jund
- Tron
- Death’s Shadow Aggro
- Eldrazi Tron
- RG Titanshift
- Counters Company
- Grixis Control
- Jeskai Control
- Gifts Storm
- Living End
- Grixis Shadow
- Dredge
- UW Control
- Humans
- Mardu Pyromacer
- UR Breach
- BR Hollow One
- RG Ponza
- Bogles
- Infect
- GW Company
- RG Eldrazi
- KCI
- Elves
- Bant Knightfall
- Bant Spirits
- Bridgevine
- Izzet Phoenix
- Hardened Scales
To get an idea of what to cut in which matchup, it’s important to recognize an opposing deck for what it is. For this purpose, I am going to categorize different deck types and will be dividing our deck into different categories of tools available for us, and then explain, what is good and what is bad.
The following kinds of decks are out there:
- Swarm aggro decks based on creatures (Zoo, Goblins)
- Aggro decks based on mostly non creature spells (Infect, Death’s Shadow, Burn, Grixis Shadow)
- Synergistic aggro decks (Affinity, Elves, Merfolk)
- Midrange decks based on goodstuff cards (Jund, Junk, Bant Eldrazi)
- Midrange decks including swingy/payoff cards (Abzan Company, Counters Company)
- Big Mana decks (Tron, RG Breach, RG Titanshift, Amulet Titan, Eldrazi Tron)
- Combo decks based on spells mostly (Ad Nauseam)
- Combo decks based on the GY (Goryo’s Vengeance, Living End, BR Hollow One)
- Control decks with an heavy endgame (Grixis Control, Jeskai Control, UW Control)
Of course, each deck functions somewhat differently and attacks the opponent on a different axis, so it is hard to throw them all into one box and then play the same way against them every time, this just does not work. Always, always knowledge is key in order to beat a deck. We just have to know what our opposing deck wants to do, in order to stop it. In addition, we have to know what the SB plan of our opposing decks will be. Only by knowing this, we can squeeze the most win percentage out of being up against a given deck.
Our deck has certain tools to interact with the opponent, which are the following:
- Targeted discard (IOK, TS, CB)
- Non targeted discard (Kolaghan’s Command, Liliana of the Veil)
- Single target removal (Bolt, Terminate, CB…)
- Edict effects (Liliana of the Veil)
- Mass removal (Anger of the Gods, Damnation, potentially Maelstrom Pulse)
- Burn (Bolt, KCommand, CB)
- Grindy cards (KCommand, LotV, four drops, LtlH, Ooze)
- Threats (Tarmogoyf, 4 drops, Ooze)
- CA engine (Bob)
- Graveyard Hate (Ooze, Nihil Spellbomb, Surgical Extraction)
- Land Destruction (Blood Moon, Fulminator Mage)
Our deck can attack the opponent on a lot of different axis, which gives us game against potentially every opponent. There is no single card which completely shuts down our strategy, which is the reason why Jund overall performs great.
Let’s see what (in general) is useful against which kind of deck:
This chart should generally show, which tools are good against which kind of strategy. Here is a little bit of explanation for each matchup:
- For Swarm aggro, discard is generally not the best thing we have, as these decks empty the hands rather quickly and doesn’t help with dealing with the threats the opponents have on board. Single target removal is okay, but not the greatest thing, we generally are seeking for big impactful mass removal cards like Damnation or Anger of the Gods. Of course, threats are very impactful in this matchup. Cards like Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet hold off opposing creatures, as they tend to be bigger than the creatures of the swarm aggro player.
- Spell based aggro decks as Infect and Death’s Shadow often only have few creatures, but more non-creature spells to support them. For this reason, targeted discard is great against them, as well as single target removal. Sweeper are less good here, but still reasonable, when the sweeper is not too over costed. A good example would be: Playing Anger of the Gods against Burn is ok, but Damnation is too clunky and therefore not wanted. This decks are rather fast, and can also be seen as combo decks in some way, so finding answers for their threats is crucial.
- Synergistic aggro decks shine when they can combine a lot of cards which all support each other, among these decks like Affinity or Elves are the best examples. Targeted Discard is not completely bad against them, as there are a few key cards, which you may be able to snatch off their hand. For example: If you can, you want to discard Collected Company from the Elves player’s hand. You also do want to snatch Cranial Plating or Etched Champion from the Affinity player’s hand. However, it does not mean we should increase the amount of discard by sideboarding, since those can still wreck you if you topdeck them later on.
- In Midrange mirrors value, attrition and great topdecking are the most important aspects. For this reason we certainly want to cut all cards which could be potential bad topdecks later in the game. Some people say that discard can be kept in in these mirrors, which might be also an alternative way to sideboard in these matchups. However, the way I see it, is that, even if discard sounds great theoretically (like to discard the opponents removal so that your tarmogoyf lives), I think more often than not discard is going to wreck you. The simple reason of this is, that discard is only good in the early game. You want to discard their most potent card against your hand right at the beginning of the game. Nevertheless, the start of the game is only a small part of the whole game. Midrange decks tend to be slower decks, which play longer games generally and in those matchups, ultimately, it comes down to which player topdecks best at the end of the game. For this reason, threats and grindy cards are of most value in these matchups.
- Midrange swingy decks tend to similarly work like good stuff midrange decks, but they do play payoff cards like Collected Company. The most present example these days would be Abzan Company. This decks uses mana dorks to quickly ramp into bigger threats, which are sticky most of the time, to outclass the opponent. Collected Company is a great card in this deck, especially combined with the manadorks. For this reason discard is good against these decks. However, only targeted discard! Non targeted discard can seriously wreck you due to shenanigans like Loxodon Smiter.
- Big Mana decks are generally very difficult for us to deal with. The best strategy we have is put up a fast clock so that our opponent can’t get to a point where the decks just steamrolls. In the early game these kind of decks are weak, so we have to use this fact as an advantage. Nevertheless, our deck is usually not fast enough to close out the games very fast, although cards like Lightning Bolt and Raging Ravine certainly help in this matchup. Targeted discard is great here, as well as burn and putting up a big threat.
- Combo spell based decks are decks like Ad Nauseam for example. The best thing we have against them is disruption combined with a fast clock. These decks can go off quite fast, but our job is to prevent or hinder the deck to combo off that fast. Each combo deck works differently, so figuring out how to disrupt the opponent is key here.
- Combo GY based decks are basically like spell based combo decks, but using the GY for their advantage. Obviously attacking their graveyard is important here, and for this reason, non-targeted discard is awful in this matchup. Targeted discard on the other hand, is much better.
- Control decks are generally decks, which are weak in the early game, but the longer the game goes, the easier it is for them to take over the game. As we are generally not that fast at closing out games, control decks can often times take the upper hand against us. The absolutely best thing we can do against them is trying to stick a Dark Confidant or Liliana of the Veil and start to dilute their resources. Targeted discard is phenomenal here, as hand information is incredibly useful here.
As a general advice for side boarding, always go for the question: “What can I cut from my main deck?” first rather than “What cards can I bring in?”. This applies to every matchup. For this reason, this guide is more focused on the cards to cut, whether on the cards to bring in, because generally, this is easier to determine.
Note: Before going into the detail analysis of each matchup, I wanted to stress, that the sideboarding suggestions are all listed according to priority. The first card in the list is the first card you should cut in this matchup, the second card should be cut secondly, and so on. Also, no exact numbers concerning how many copies of each card to cut is given. It generally wouldn't make much sense, since every list could potentially run different numbers of a given card in his/her deck. Thats why I found the priority approach to be better, and in addition, you can't just copy a sideboard suggestion and use it, which let's you sideboard more dynamicly. Here is an article by Reid Duke, which explains to determine a metagame:The Metagame
With that general knowledge we got now from the last section of the primer, we should be able to create our own guide to sideboarding. I believe one key to success in sideboarding is the right approach to it. I think for proper sideboarding, it is not adviseable to simply learn cuts and bring ins for each matchup and call it a day. I guarantee that you will more often than not face an unexpected matchup which you don't prepared for preemptively. In such a case, correct sideboarding warrants great success. I want you to look at a card and know what it fundamentally does for us and against which type of deck we want that. If you learn to think that way, you can figure out each matchup by yourself. I can show you how I do it and what has brought me best success in my experience playing the deck. I’ll always go with the approach of creating a gauntlet with the most popular sideboard cards. It is the same gaunlet you will find in the Sideboard Guide section of the primer by the way. In the last section, explaining general guidelines for sideboarding, you saw a more general and theoretical approach of evaluating different areas of attack for all matchups. This theory is taken up as a next step here, to create this gauntlet and divide it into its own sections of use. In the following box you will see the sideboard gauntlet.
Now, this is simply an accomodation of most often used sideboard cards. Its a pile of cards. Not very helpful as of now. However, as a next step, we are gonna divide this pile of cards into 5 fundamental sections of areas of attack. By doing so, we can already distinguish all cards from another and also see which cards are doing similar things. These are the fundamental areas of attack:
- Graveyard Hate: This category explains itself. All cards that interact with the GY fall into this one.
- Destruction: Cards for the pure sake of destroying specific problematic permanents, which goes beyond simple creature removal.
- Lifegain: Obviously all cards that gain certain amounts of life.
- Discard: Cards that discard cards from opponents hands.
- Grind: A special category, since it defines the philosophy of our deck. Every card you would want in attrition based games, fall into that category, including removal.
If we take those categories, we will be able to put every common sideboard card in one, or even more of those sections:
Fulminator Mage
Grim Lavamancer
Olivia Voldaren
Huntmaster of the Fells
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Collective Brutality
Engineered Explosives
Kozilek's Return
Damnation
Golgari Charm
Night of Souls' Betrayal
Liliana, the Last Hope
Angrath, the Flame-Chained
Maelstrom Pulse
Anger of the Gods
Ancient Grudge
Kolaghan's Command
Assassin's Trophy
Thrun, the Last Troll
Fulminator Mage
Kitchen Finks
Grim Lavamancer
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Olivia Voldaren
Huntmaster of the Fells
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Hazoret the Fervent
Nihil Spellbomb
Engineered Explosives
Damnation
Liliana, the Last Hope
Nissa, Vital Force
Angrath, the Flame-Chained
Maelstrom Pulse
Kolaghan's Command
Tireless Tracker
Assassin's Trophy
Now that we divided all cards among the sections we created, we have to see what types of decks there are, to see what tools available to us are effective against a given deck. The simplest way to divide decktypes is according to the following way:
- Aggro: The most fundamental way to play magic, the only purpose of playing that sort of deck is getting the opponent dead fast. Games involving an aggro deck tend to focus on the early game and is characterized by efficiency and tempo. Synergies are very important here to create an early big advantage from which the opposing deck should not recover or hold up to.
- Midrange: When talking about midrange, terms like value, attrition or good topdecks come to mind. Midrange decks don't seek to kill the opponent fast naturally, it wants to go over the top of other decks and outvalue or outgrind them. This type of deck focuses on mid game primarily, its where the deck shines the most.
- Control: Control decks have only one purpose in mind: Controlling everything the opposing player might want to do and prevent that. Control decks are reactive by nature and run very few actual winconditions. Control decks shine in the mid to late game, and have a weakness for the early game. Its goal is to go from the early into mid and late game quite fast.
- Combo: Combo is a weird type of deck. In a certain way, combo decks are like aggro decks, in which they want to kill the opponent fast, through a certain combination of cards though, rather than simply attacking with creatures. Its primary focus is the early to mid game, focusing on card synergy.
- Big Mana: Big Mana is one type of deck that assembles huge amounts of mana by assembling certain types of lands or a big amount of lands fast. Those decks then try to win through powerful overcosted spells which are hard to deal with. This kind of deck focuses on the mid and late game and also on synergy.
Now that we defined the basic types of decks, we will divide our sideboard gauntlet among the different types of decks:
Kitchen Finks
Grim Lavamancer
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Olivia Voldaren
Huntmaster of the Fells
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Collective Brutality
Engineered Explosives
Damnation
Anger of the Gods
Kozilek's Return
Night of Souls' Betrayal
Golgari Charm
Liliana, the Last Hope
Ancient Grudge
Kolaghan's Command
Maelstrom Pulse
Fulminator Mage
Grim Lavamancer
Olivia Voldaren
Huntmaster of the Fells
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Engineered Explosives
Hazoret, the Fervent
Damnation
Kitchen Finks
Nihil Spellbomb
Liliana, the Last Hope
Nissa, Vital Force
Angrath, the Flame-Chained
Maelstrom Pulse
Kolaghan's Command
Thrun, the Last Troll
Tireless Tracker
Assassin's Trophy
Thrun, the Last Troll
Kitchen Finks
Thoughtseize
Duress
Huntmaster of the Fells
Grim Lavamancer
Fulminator Mage
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Hazoret, the Fervent
Collective Brutality
Nihil Spellbomb
Golgari Charm
Maelstrom Pulse
Liliana, the Last Hope
Nissa, Vital Force
Angrath, the Flame-Chained
Kolaghan's Command
Tireless Tracker
Assassin's Trophy
And there you have it. We completely divided our gauntlet in different areas of attack as well as uses for each type of deck. This should help you to identify your best sideboard for your own metagame. For determining the own metagame, I suggest reading Reid Duke's article: The Metagame. Last but not least, here is a recommended sideboard for the overall meta, kept up to date (note that this SB is build in conjunction with the recommended maindeck mentioned in the last chapter):
To conclude, these are the general guidelines for sideboarding in a given game. However, in specific cases, specific strategies are needed. For this reason, I want to go over all matchups present in this meta right now and go into a little bit more detail. In order to do so, I want to introduce you to my concept of Priority Lists. Since GBx decks are fairly different from meta to meta, I design a gauntlet of most popular cards run in common decks. From that cards I create a list (the priority list) which contains cards I would cut in which matchup (and how often) and also in which order. The same goes for bringing in cards. If you dont have a certain card from that list in your 75, then simply skip it. Information on the matchup itself will be in the information text attached to the list. Next you can find the Gauntlet:
Board Out- Thoughtseize
- Liliana of the Veil
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Bloodbraid Elf (1-2)
- Scavenging Ooze (1)
Board In- Ancient Grudge
- Kolaghan's Command
- Kozilek's Return
- Damnation
- Engineered Explosives
- Grim Lavamancer
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Assassin's Trophy
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Night of Souls' Betrayal
- Anger of the Gods
- Collective Brutality
- Golgari Charm
- Fulminator Mage
Affinity is a synergistic aggro deck, which empties the hand blisteringly fast. Often times this deck drops their hand on turn 2 or 3 going into the top deck mode. For this reason, discard is usually not the best against them. In addition, this deck has several creatures, which are not real threats on its own (well except for Cranial Plating, this card turns every creature into a threat), but all work together to a difficult board of synergy, which we will have to deal with. Edict effects are the worst kind of removal we have against them, usually removing a lone Memnite won’t do much. Subsequently, Liliana of the Veil is one of the worst card against them we have. Mass removal and multiple single target removal is what we are looking for.
This deck runs no cards which have higher CMC than 3. For this reason, Inquisition of Kozilek is strictly better than Thoughtseize. Since we generally don’t want discard, we will cut all Thoughtseizes from our deck after game 1. I personally find IOKs sometimes very useful, as the affinity player tends to drop all his small cheap cards in the first turn, and will hold the payoff cards in the hand for another turn. Even if we are on the draw, snapping this payoff card is great. Still, I wouldn’t bring in more discard because of this. This is just a reason why some numbers of IOK are fine to keep in the MB. Next, cutting some Liliana of the Veil is the priority. In addition, to note, Ooze might seem like a bad card in that MU, since this deck does not use the GY. However, I really do not recommend cutting Ooze in that matchup. Why? Simply because the GY is not the important factor, but the life gain and the body of Ooze. Affinity plays many creatures, which tend to fill up the graveyard, so Ooze will often times grow to a giant ass threat. As Affinity is an artifact based synergy deck, obviously, we will bring all artifact hate in this MU. Next, Sweepers are what is needed. Three main choices do we have: Anger of the Gods, Damnation and Engineered Explosives. Sometimes you can also use cards like Golgari Charm and Night of Souls' Betrayal. After that, Fulminator is good to bring in, if you still have left some slots to bring in. Its decent, but quite slow, so priotize the other options mentioned first.
Your main gameplan is to be on defense the whole time until you can stabilize and control the board safely. Do not make heedless attacks if you could potentially get blown out by a topdecked Cranial Plating. Play it safe and remove every problematic card on sight (Overseer, Ravager, Champion, Plating) if possible. As for Ravager, it really is not worth it to let it live and target your removal spells on other creatures. If the opponent plays a turn 2 Ravager, and you have a Push in hand immediatly point it onto Ravager, unless there is something more problematic on the field. Dont let your opponent work with Ravager, it can get ugly quite fast.Board Out- Dark Confidant
- Thoughtseize
- Liliana, the Last Hope
Board In- Collective Brutality
- Kitchen Finks
- Duress
- Huntmaster of the Fells
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Grim Lavamancer
- Kozilek's Return
- Anger of the Gods
- Fulminator Mage
Burn generally is a spell based aggro deck. It still runs a fair amount of creatures nonetheless. Against this deck, you want to take as little dmg as possible, so be careful with fetching and thoughtseizing the opponent. Discard in the form of IOK and CB is great in this matchup, which can strip of a burn card from the opponents hand without taking dmg.
One of the most common misconceptions involveds around Thoughtseize vs. Burn. Its incredibly bad to leave TS in. But why is that? I often hear people arguing that TS is not as bad against Burn, because you can potentially snatch a Boros Charm or Atarkas Command, effectively gaining 2 life, right? Well, its not that simple.
I look at Burn as being a combo deck, which just has to resolve 6-7 spells in order to win the game. When taking each spell and creature into account, each spell will do 3 or sometimes 4 dmg to the opponent, so for 20 life --> 7 spells with 3 dmg per spell or 6 spells with two spells dealing 4 dmg are needed. Burn is a very consistant deck. It will more often than not draw the needed spells and just win. Now, when you are playing TS and taking Boros Charm out of the opponent’s hand, you annul the effect of Boros Charm which would have otherwise dealt 4 dmg to your face. But what you also did through this, is effective casting a free Shock on yourself. Combines this with a simple fetch you potentially did prior to this (even if you only fetched for 1) you effectively cast a free Lightning Bolt on yourself. So what did TS actually do for you? Nothing. You took Boros Charm, but bolted you alongside. You gave the opponent 1 of the 7 spells needed to kill you. (And to note, even if you don’t fetch for 1, you effectively cast a combo spell piece on yourself by casting TS, going down to 18 life and the burn player now just needs 6 instead of 7 3-dmg spells) So to conclude, if you TS the Burn player, you take away one spell they have but they simply have to draw one less spell alongside, which is just doing nothing.Board Out- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Thoughtseize
- Collective Brutality
- Liliana of the Veil (2 against Abzan)
- Blackcleave Cliffs (1 on the draw)
Board In- Angrath, the Flame-Chained
- Nissa, Vital Force
- Hazoret the Fervent
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Kolaghan's Command
- Olivia Voldaren
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar
- Huntmaster of the Fells
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Fulminator Mage
- Kitchen Finks
- Thrun, the Last Troll
- Damnation
- Assassin's Trophy
- Engineered Explosives
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Nihil Spellbomb
Playing against midrange decks ultimately comes down to who topdecks better, if you want to win or not. Therefore, what has worked for me in the past is that cutting all cards, which are potential bad top deck give you the best win % against Junk/Jund.
In general the rule is: Threat > Removal. Bring in all threats you have and afterwards extra removal. Of course, knowledge of the deck is also important to win the MU. For example, I rate Scavenging Ooze higher than Tarmogoyf in this MU, because Ooze can generally grow to a much bigger threat over time (grinding) and can strip away opposing Lingering Souls copies from the opposing Junk player for example. Speaking of Lingering Souls, it is basically correct to cut some LoTV if you expect Souls from the opponent. Besides this, CA in form of Dark Confidant is also highly important, try to bait removal spells by playing other stuff first and playing Bob afterwards, you really want Bob to live in these matchups. Of course, also, playing Tarmogoyf only when he is bolt proof against Jund is self-explanatory.Board Out- Fatal Push
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Terminate
- Scavenging Ooze
- Collective Brutality
- Lightning Bolt
Board In- Damping Sphere
- Assassin's Trophy
- Fulminator Mage
- Surgical Extraction
- Ancient Grudge
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Nissa, Vital Force
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Tron is our second worst matchup we can face (the worst being Valakut decks). Reid Duke is on the opinion that a good GBx pilot can win nearly half the matches against Tron. What is important in this MU? Generally, the best sequence we have against them is: Turn 1 discard Turn 2 goyf and then potential turn 3 Fulminaotr + Surgical and finish them off before they get to cast one of their threats. For this reason, slow and grindy cards are bad in this MU, they won’t grant the value they have. I would generaly advise to go for their threats with your discard spells rather than trying to choke them on their ability to find tron lands. (Unless they keep a hand without tron lands and just a Stirrings/Map or whatever).Board Out- Thoughtseize
- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Collective Brutality
- Lightning Bolt
Board In- Engineered Explosives
- Damnation
- Assassin's Trophy
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Fulminator Mage
- Hazoret the Fervent
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Kolaghan's Command
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Kitchen Finks
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Death’s Shadow aggro similarily works like spells based decks such as Burn and Infect. They can win out of nowhere with a giant Death’s Shadow with a Temur Battle Rage attached to it. Lately, Death’s Shadow decks kinda turned into a more grindy strategy, using a few of Jund’s best cards like LoTV or KCommand to have the ability to grind out the opponent. With the inclusion of Traverse the Ulvenwald and its piloting to be a easy to reach delirium deck its amazingly consistant. Discard is usually not very good here as the game is directed by attrition. You can treat the matchup just like a mirror matchup. Out of all option out there, Fulminator Mage, Nihil Spellbomb and Sweeper provide ok options to bring in. Death’s Shadow will dmg themselves quite a bit to grow Death’s Shadow, and thus fetching for many shocklands. Fulminator can potentially screw them quite hard. Please do only bring in Nihil Spellbomb as GY hate for the matchup, if you have it. All other cards (Surgical, Leyline) will be horrendus topdecks later in the game. Spellbomb only replaces itself, therefore you can run it.
Removal is king in that matchup, and cards that trade 2-for-1 most likely (Bloodbraid Elf, Liliana, the Last Hope) are great. Be careful with your lifetotal, chip in for dmg when you safely can but be aware of Temur Battle Rage at all times. After sideboarding they will board it out, so here you can focus more on grindy cards.Board Out- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Collective Brutality
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Kolaghan's Command
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Grim Lavamancer
Board In- Damnation
- Assassin's Trophy
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Hazoret the Fervent
- Damping Sphere
- Fulminator Mage
- Surgical Extraction
- Thoughtseize
- Kitchen Finks
Eldrazi Tron is a deck that combines the unfair elements of the tron lands with the big creatures of Eldrazi. This deck is a bit vulnerable to LD, but its not a blowout due to stuff like Mind Stone and them playing some number of Wastes Fulminator Mage is not automatically game over. Generally I would try to lower cards which are potential bad topdecks, so cutting some discard is good, however, leaving in TS to snap gaint ass threats like Ulamog is surely worth it. You want to draw your threats quickly to finish the opponent off. The key to this match are your hard removals (Path, Pulse...) combined with a 5/6 Tarmogoyf to hold off threats.The best card to bring in is Damnation. Fulminator might shut them off of Tron, if you get to hit a land and extract it with Surgical Extraction. On its own, Fulminator is not that impressive though. I personally value Damnation higher than any LD here because of these reasons. If you got those in, you can also bring in stuff like Finks and extra removal. Try not to play the long game against this MU. Generally, you want to close games as fast as you can, with Fulminator only buying you time. Hazoret is a really good card against them, since she is indestructible and can hold off most of their threats.Board Out- Abrupt Decay
- Fatal Push
- Kolaghan's Command
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Liliana, the Last Hope
Board In- Fulminator Mage
- Surgical Extraction
- Assassin's Trophy
- Collective Brutality
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Kitchen Finks
- Maelstrom Pulse
RG Valakut is the worst matchup for GBx decks. Generally, it doesn’t depend on the version, all are really bad, however its good to note that RG Titanshift is more consistant that Breach, but Breach can potentially be faster than Titanshift. Of course, like against every Big Mana deck, LD is important here. Fulminator is the best option. Bring in all copies you have. After this, bring in Kitchen Finks, which not only provide a relevant body to race the opponent, but also gains life which can potentially help getting out of the 18 life threshold for a 7 land shapeshift (also relevant against Breach) Bring in Duresses as well as Collective Brutalities. As an quick note on Abrupt Decay, it might be correct to leave those in to have an answer for Chalice of the Void, which is a card that Valakut decks sometimes run in their SB. If you expect this, maybe leave in Decay.
One note concerning Fulminator and Scapeshift: If the opponent plays Scapeshift and wants to sacrifice 7 lands, obviously destroy a land in response, so they can only sac 6 lands. If they scapeshift for 8 lands however, you can't deny the valakut triggers, as 7 lands will also be enough, however, you can reduce the dmg from 36 to 6, if you destroy one mountain in response to the valakut triggers (6 mountains and 2 Valakuts usually, which would normally grant 6 x 6 = 36 dmg). The other 5 mountains won't "see" the other 5 mountains required to deal damage, so those will fizzle. Only the land which was destroyed sees 5 other mountains in order to be triggered, which is just 6 dmg, 3 dmg from each valakut. Generally, if the Valakut player knows this as well, they will scapeshift for 7 mountains and only 1 Valakut generally. In that case its better to destroy one land pre-scapeshift, in order reduce dmg from 36 to 18. So its up to you to decide whether to take the risk of letting it resolve and potentially get rewarded or get screwed. If you would die to 18 dmg nonetheless, then its of course safe to just hope they mess up. You would die anyways otherwise.Board Out- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Liliana of the Veil (2 on the draw)
- Blackcleave Cliffs (1 on the draw)
Board In- Damnation
- Anger of the Gods
- Engineered Explosives
- Kozilek's Return
- Grafdigger's Cage
- Collective Brutality
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Assassin's Trophy
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Kitchen Finks
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Fulminator Mage
- Any grindy creature left
Counters Company is generally a midrange deck, which does contain some combo and go-wide elements in it. It is known for playing sticky creatures and big payoff spells like Collected Company or Chord of Calling to find those threats and junk up the battlefield. In order to do this fast, it plays manadorks along those bigger creatures. As for us, we can't compete with this race of creature build up onto the battlefield, since we don't run these payoff cards. For us it is important to snap those payoff cards before they get to resolve, which means: targeted discard. However, I would still treat this matchup like an attrition matchup, this means that cutting of some discard good. Since the deck is creature based, obviously, sweepers are phenominal here.
Liliana the Last Hope is usually very good in this matchup, because it can kill manadorks, shrink their threats while ticking up an heading towards a win condition on her own. Among the best cards available for us is definitely Damnation and Flaying Tendrils. It will deal with the majority of their threats without them coming back, which is really good value. Note though, that some lists play Sigarda, Host of Herons which could potentially shut down Liliana of the Veil, and you can only remove her with Damnation. Speaking of which, LotV can sometimes be very bad, as you can't plus her safely and also her edict effect can be mediocre if you face Voice of Resurgence or pesky manadorks. With the inclusion of Vizier of Remedies the deck became more combo centered, which can sometimes just get you. Remember that you should always kill Devoted Druid first before you kill Vizier, since Druid as a topdeck wont be able to get the combo online right away due to summoning sickness.Board Out- Fatal Push
- Terminate
- Abrupt Decay
- Lightning Bolt
- Scavenging Ooze
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Blackcleave Cliffs (1)
Board In- Thrun, the Last Troll
- Fulminator Mage
- Assassin's Trophy
- Collective Brutality
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Nissa, Vital Force
- Angrath, the Flame-Chained
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Kolaghan's Command
- Hazoret the Fervent
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Kitchen Finks
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar
- Huntmaster of the Fells
Jeskai Control has a really respectful and powerful endgame when unchecked. Jeskai mostly utilizes powerful Planeswalker like Jace, the Mind Sculptor and its signature manland Celestial Colonnade to finish opponents off. Jeskai is tough and challanging, but beatable through tight play and involement of BBE. Generally, if you want to increase your win percentage points against this MU, it not only comes down to sideboard correctly, it also depends on the piloting of the deck. Certain cards like additional copies of Maelstrom Pulse really help with dealing with those pesky planeswalkers. However, the biggest problem seems to be Snapcaster Mage and Jace, hands down. BBE, Dark Confidant, Liliana of the Veil and single target discard are your greatest friends, alongside hard to deal with threats. You need them to use their resources to deal with your stuff, and eventually being left with a Dark Confidant, Tarmogoyf or Liliana of the Veil will grant you the win. In theory. Practically, this can be though to do. You want to put them on the backfoot as soon and as often as you can. The help of BBE really goes a long way in that matchup. Cryptic Command is a respectable and powerful lategame weapon, which luckily got less good against us singlehandedly due to BBE. Cryptic is less good as they don't get to counter both BBE and the cascaded card, plus, bouncing BBE is an awful thing to do from their perspective. Lastly, Liliana, the Last Hope is a real great card, as recursion of creatures is relevant and her being a planeswalker is a hard to deal with threat which can win a game on her own. She is just a must answer card, because the control player is usually not fast enough to win beforehand. We also bring in Fulminator Mage and Finks, which are potential 2 for 1s and which will help diluting the Jeskai players answers so that eventually one threat of ours can stick. Be aware of Jace all the time. He can win the game very fast. It is a must answer card. One last interaction to note: If you have an uncontested Liliana of the Veil in your hand, you want to attack with your manland, but the opponent kept one card in his hand. So logically, you want to plus Liliana beforehand. If your own draw this turn is an excess land, consider to dont play it before plussing LoTV! Why? One devastating trick the opponent might be able to do is to bounce our most powerful permanent in response to the plus ability from Liliana with a surprise Cryptic Command. If they for example bounce Lili in response, we have to discard her as its the only card in hand. Unless we really don't need that extra land, discard it wont hurt us too much, to protect our Liliana or whatever else.Board Out- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Assassin's Trophy
- Kolaghan's Command
- Abrupt Decay
- Terminate
- Bloodbraid Elf (1-2)
Board In- Damping Sphere
- Leyline of the Void
- Grafdigger's Cage
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Surgical Extraction
- Collective Brutality
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Anger of the Gods
- Engineered Explosives
- Golgari Charm
Storm is a deck which has seen play in the past. Before the Gitaxian Probe ban, obviously this card was included in the deck and often builds using Pyromancer Ascension have been played. After the bans, a new version came up, including cards like the newly print Baral, Chief of Compliance and Gifts Ungiven. Pyromancer Ascension seemed to be disappeared as of now, the builds tend to focus more on Past in Flames now. So this means, our best cards against them are discard, GY hate and a quick threat. We also have a huge amount of single target removal to get rid of any Goblin Electromancer of Baral right away. Due to this, Storm usually is a good matchup. Removal is great, discard is great and a quick threat is great.
The reason to bring in Sweepers like EE, is because their biggest threat against us is an early Empty the Warrens. A huge amount of small creatures is hard for us to answer. Before that, however, extra discard and GY hate comes in, those are the main priorities. Don't sideboard too much here if you don't have anything to bring in. Usually siding 3-4 cards should be sufficient. We leave Maelstrom Pulse in also for the Tokens. Side out a couple of clunky removal like Decay, since experiences Storm players will side out all Electromancers and maybe Barals against you, to blank your removal. However, sometimes they could try to play mindgames and side them in and out, hoping you sided out removal. Be a little causios about this.Board Out- Fatal Push
- Abrupt Decay
- Kolaghan's Command
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Liliana of the Veil
Board In- Leyline of the Void
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Surgical Extraction
- Collective Brutality
- Damnation
- Assassin's Trophy
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Fulminator Mage
Living End is generally a very tough matchup for us. Removal from us will certainly be blanked at some point due to creatures returning to the battlefield through Living End. Since removal is a big proportion of our deck, many cards just won't do enough generally. Obviously grinding and going for a longer game is not the best idea here. The best thing we can do preboard is using targeted discard to snap all their cascaders which could potentially buy us enough time to finish them off quickly with an early Tarmogoyf. Hard mulligan for some GY hate interaction. Scavenging Ooze is an allstar in this matchup. Living End does not play much removal, which makes it so that Ooze often sticks for a while. If you combine this with discard for cascaders, then Ooze can potentially take over the game if you build up enough mana to exile every creature they cycle away. For graveyard hate, everything is good except Grafdigger's Cage. This does absolutely nothing against Living End, keep that in mind. I think generally Leyline of the Void and Nihil Spellbomb are more or less on the same powerlevel and if I expect much Living End decks going around, I would consider running either or both of these cards in the sideboard. Surgical Extraction is a card I really like against Living End, as you can extract Living Ends from the yard. But I would not use this as primary GY hate for that matchup as it can be weak and sometimes does only extract one creature when there is a Living End on the stack. Also be aware of Faerie Macabre. That card can screw extractions up. The reason why I would bring in Fulminator is because you can also make use of Living End potentially, by getting as many creatures into the GY as possible. Try to really hard mulligan for some kind of interaction with their GY.Board Out- Liliana of the Veil
- Assassin's Trophy
- Terminate
- Abrupt Decay
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Bloodbraid Elf (1)
Board In- Leyline of the Void
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Grafdigger's Cage
- Surgical Extraction
- Anger of the Gods
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Collective Brutality
- Liliana, the Last Hope
Dredge is a deck which operates heavily in the graveyard and can be very explosive in a way, that you likely face a 10-15 power creature army as early as turn 2 or onward if things go well for them. Killing their creatures one by one is one thing, but does not solve the problem at all. Bloodghasts and Prized Amalgams tend to return back to the battlefield rather easily, which requires other measurements to beat them. Obviously, our single target removal are quite bad here. They can still win you games for sure, but it just doesn't feel good pushing a Bloodghast. The graveyard is what's the scary part. Therefore any form of Graveyard hate is great here (Leyline of the Void > Nihil Spellbomb > Grafdigger's Cage > Scavenging Ooze > Surgical Extraction). Luckily we do have mainboard GY hate for the matchup: Scvenging Ooze. The problem with Ooze is, its very slow, and you can't exile all cards from the gy since we never got enough green mana to compensate for their dredging. Ooze is the nail in the coffin, but not the coffin itself. The goal here is to exile the right cards. When you do see only one dredger in the graveyard you want to exile the dredger, since you will prevent dredging most likely for the next draw step. If you see too many dredgers, this does not make much sense though. If, however, you see only a few creatures they can reanimate you want to exile the threats. Also, if they trigger a bloodghast, amalgam, creeping chill or narcomoeba, you want to exile it. If they don't have bloodghasts in the gy, but they dredged a narcomoeba and some amalgams, you want to exile the narcomoeba with its trigger on the stack in order to prevent amalgams hitting the battlefield. Next to gy hate, targeted painfree discard in early turns is decent against them. If you can snap Cathartic Reunions, Faceless Lootings or Shriekhorns, then you will slow the opponent down significantly. The last thing to keep in mind is their damage source in the form of Conflagrate and Creeping Chill. They will utilize Life from the Loam in order to gather a bunch of cards to discard to build up a huge conflagrate. A thing to note is that the spell is sorcery speed, which makes it so that the dredge player will have restricted possibilities to use it. But its still a threat which can potentially kill you out of nowhere, so always track life totals.
It is fine to bring in Damnation and Liliana the Last Hope since both can help reducing the clock of the dredged creatures and buy potential turns in order to set up a wall of blockers or simply win by yourself. Flaying Tendrils is of course the premium card to have for this matchup, and will always be welcomed. The matchup on its own is rather difficult and unfavoured, since half of your deck can get blanket or significantly leveraged in its powerlevel since they creatures of the dredge player will return again and again. That combined with its explosiveness often just means we have to operate with clunky hands and try to squeeze out wins.Board Out- Lightning Bolt
- Abrupt Decay
- Collective Brutality
- Grim Lavamancer
- Inquisition of Kozilek (2-3)
- Blackcleave Cliffs (1 on the draw)
Board In- Kitchen Finks
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Assassin's Trophy
- Damnation
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Engineered Explosives
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Kolaghan's Command
- Fulminator Mage
Grixis Death Shadow is one of the most popular versions of DS decks out there and its been quite successful recently. Playing this deck will require for you to decide, how to handle the matchup. You can either handle it as a tempo matchup and focus on finishing the game fast, or treat the deck like a grindy attrition based match, where you want to grind max. In my experience, changing the strategies depending on being on the play or draw grants the best results. Since the unbanning of BBE, this matchup is more or less favourable. If you are a skilled pilot, this matchup is usually favoured. Grixis Shadow's strengths ultimately are delve creatures and/or Snapcaster Mage. With your discard, in doubt, you want to target those cards. Do not burn your Trophies/Pulses on low impact snappies on the field, safe them for Tasigur or Gurmag Angler. LoTV is one of the best cards we have against them, for which reason you should watch out for Stubborn Denial.
Bringing in Gy hate is a good idea for that matchup. I personally like Nihil Spellbomb as my gy hate for that matchup, as it is not a bad topdeck. Next to this, removal and grindy cards are a good choice. Lastly, I think its not the worst to bring in Surgical, but I do think its not correct. The biggest argument for it is that the deck is very threatlight, and with Surgical you can extract those threats. But you can't guarantee hitting something relevant. Usually its a weak gy hate and a bad topdeck as well. I would keep my fingers from boarding it in.Board Out- Fatal Push
- Abrupt Decay
- Terminate
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Lightning Bolt
- Scavenging Ooze (1-2)
- Blackcleave Cliffs (1)
Board In- Fulminator Mage
- Nissa, Vital Force
- Angrath, the Flame-Chained
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Thrun, the Last Troll
- Assassin's Trophy
- Hazoret the Fervent
- Collective Brutality
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Maelstrom Pulse
UW Control can be of the tougher matchups for us, depending on the skilllevel of both players. BBE really helps to get ahead on CA though. The best thing we can do against the deck is attack their hand early and deploy a fast clock in the following turn. A more resiliant plan is to resolve a Liliana of the Veil and start stripping resources out of the UW Control player's hand. Kolaghan's Command is also really good vs Control, as it likely trades 2-for-1 at least. Try to really trade resources in your favor. The single card that makes the matchup favourable is BBE. It likely trades 2-for-1 as well and can go all the way sometimes.
Bringing in GY hate is not the best idea for that matchup. This deck often runs some copies of Rest in Piece by themselves and only a few Snapcaster. It shows that they don't rely on the graveyard like Grixis variants do. Bring in Fulminator for their Colonnades, Thrun for obvious reasons, LtLH as threat and recursion, as well as Finks for a sticky threat, and Pulse for their PWs and Detention Spheres. I would not board out all Terminates, if you expect Gideon Jura. One last interaction to note: If you have an uncontested Liliana of the Veil in your hand, you want to attack with your manland, but the opponent kept one card in his hand. So logically, you want to plus Liliana beforehand. If your own draw this turn is an excess land, consider to dont play it before plussing LoTV! Why? One devastating trick the opponent might be able to do is to bounce our most powerful permanent in response to the plus ability from Liliana with a surprise Cryptic Command. If they for example bounce Lili in response, we have to discard her as its the only card in hand. Unless we really don't need that extra land, discard it wont hurt us too much, to protect our Liliana or whatever else.Board Out- Thoughtseize
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Bloodbraid Elf (1)
- Dark Confidant (2-3 copies on the draw
- Liliana of the Veil (2 copies on the draw
less on the play)
less on the play)
Board In- Grim Lavamancer
- Anger of the Gods
- Damnation
- Engineered Explosives
- Kozilek's Return
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Kolaghan's Command
- Assassin's Trophy
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Collective Brutality
- Golgari Charm
- Kitchen Finks
- Olivia Voldaren
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar
- Huntmaster of the Fells
Humans is a deck that recently popped up due to probably its autowin against Storm. Its deck only consisting of creatures and Vials to bring them in fast. This deck similarily operates like a Death and Taxes deck, but focusing on the Human archetype here. Generally, it can be very annoying if you get overrun by massive creatures fast. The strategy to follow here is that you need to be conservative with your lifetotals at all times, be on defense and chip in for dmg only when you can safely do so. As for sideboarding, bring in every card you have access to that can kill a creature. LoTV is better on the play than on the draw. However, she is overall quite bad, so I would always board 2-3 copies out, all on the draw and maybe leave 1-2 copies in on the play.Board Out- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Thoughtseize
- Collective Brutality
- Liliana of the Veil (2-3)
Blackcleave Cliffs (1 OTD)
Board In- Nihil Spellbomb
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Nissa, Vital Force
- Angrath, the Flame-Chained
- Hazoret the Fervent
- Kitchen Finks
- Olivia Voldaren
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar
- Huntmaster of the Fells
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Night of Souls' Betrayal
- Damnation
- Anger of the Gods
- Kozilek's Return
- Engineered Explosives
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Kolaghan's Command
- Golgari Charm
Mardu Pyromancer is an attrition based deck, which can go-wide fast and create a good amount of CA thanks to cards like Bedlam Reveler and/or the synergy between Faithless Looting and Lingering Souls. The deck generally contains a lot of X/1 type of creatures, which means its very susceptible to small sweepers. Flaying Tendrils, Golgari Charm and EE come to mind. Since the deck uses Bedlam Reveler and has a good amoung to flashback cards in it, its highly susceptible to GY hate. So we want Nihil Spellbombs for sure. If we get to exile the GY and strand them with uncastable Revelers in their hand, we are usually in a good shape. Note that they do not run many hard removals, the have Terminate and Dreadbore only usually. Be aware of Blood Moon, it can catch you offguard sometimes. So grab your basics when you can. Normally I would not suggest to bring in NoSB in grindy matchups, however, this deck basically folds if that card hits the BF, for which reason it is totally worth it.Board Out- Fatal Push
- Terminate
- Lightning Bolt
- Blackcleave Cliffs (1)
Board In- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Collective Brutality
- Surgical Extraction
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Kolaghan's Command
- Kitchen Finks
- Thrun, the Last Troll
- Hazoret the Fervent
- Nissa, Vital Force
- Angrath, the Flame-Chained
UR Breach is essentially a Control deck which has a surprize finisher in the form or Through the Breach + Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. Basically it is easy to disrupt, since it is a 2 card combo. We have plenty of discard to stop them long enough, that our Tarmogoyfs can ride to victory. They typically dont have ways to kill a goyf, other than countering and bouncing it. I believe this matchup is favourable, the 2 things you have to keep in mind is Blood Moon and the combo. If you manouver through the games carefully you should be fine most of the time. Sometimes the combo can get ya, but thats variance and just the game. I think its more scary than it actually is.Board Out- Liliana of the Veil
- Abrupt Decay
- Bloodbraid Elf (1)
Board In- Leyline of the Void
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Grafdigger's Cage
- Surgical Extraction
- Damnation
- Collective Brutality
- Thoughtseize
- Anger of the Gods
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Assassin's Trophy
- Kozilek's Return
- Kolaghan's Command
- Ancient Grudge
BR Hollow One is a tough matchup for us in general. Their Burning Inquiry can screw our hand pretty badly possibly. On the other hand, since all discard is happening randomly, they can also just loose to their own deck, if they discard their key cards like delve threats and Hollow Ones. GY hate is good here, as well as targeted discard for their enablers, which are the mentioned Burning Inquiry as well as Goblin Lore. Sometimes you will face 2 Hollow Ones before you even put your first land into play, thats just the deck, we cant do much about it. Having extra hard removal in the form of KCommand or Ancient Grudge can help here, but its still tough. Usually the preboard games play out quite a bit differently than postboard games. Preboard, Tarmogoyf is your best card, as a 5/6 it can hold back any Hollow One or delve threat from the opponent and they can usually not remove it preboard. Postboard Hollow One will bring in cards like Big Game Hunter that is targeted against our goyfs. So watch out for the card, and be aware of certain Ooze shenanigans, as you can shrink the goyf in response to big game hunter, which could make them destroy one of their own threats, if they are big enough (BGH's abilitiy is a must!)Board Out- Fatal Push
- Terminate
- Abrupt Decay
- Lightning Bolt
Board In- Nissa, Vital Force
- Angrath, the Flame-Chained
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Collective Brutality
- Kolaghan's Command
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Kitchen Finks
- Assassin's Trophy
- Fulminator Mage
Grixis Control is another control variant like UW Control or Jeskai Control which uses powerful and impactful cards like Cryptic Command and Jace, the Mind Sculptor to get ahead in resources and grind us out. Grixis Control is a little different than the white based Control decks though. First of all, the inclusion of black leaves them out of Path, Detention Sphere and Celestial Colonnade. As first consequence through this, Abrupt Decay and Fulminator Mage get weaker in that matchup, but Kitchen Finks gets more powerful. Black grants them Fatal Push, Kolaghan's Command, Terminate and discard spells. Due to KCommand, GY hate from our side become a little bit better than against the other white based variants. I would include this facts in your priority for sideboarding. Against UW Control we keep Decay for Sphere. Against Grixis we cut it. Against UW and Jeskai we bring in all Fulminator and only then Spellbombs. As for Grixis, I like bringing in all Spellbombs first, and fill up left over slots with Fulminators. Besides that, the matchup is very similar to the other variants. Attack the GY more, and rely more on Finks. Rely less on Fulminator though. One last interaction to note: If you have an uncontested Liliana of the Veil in your hand, you want to attack with your manland, but the opponent kept one card in his hand. So logically, you want to plus Liliana beforehand. If your own draw this turn is an excess land, consider to dont play it before plussing LoTV! Why? One devastating trick the opponent might be able to do is to bounce our most powerful permanent in response to the plus ability from Liliana with a surprise Cryptic Command. If they for example bounce Lili in response, we have to discard her as its the only card in hand. Unless we really don't need that extra land, discard it wont hurt us too much, to protect our Liliana or whatever else.Board Out- Kolaghan's Command
- Collective Brutality
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Fatal Push (1)
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Scavenging Ooze
Board In- Thoughtseize
- Assassin's Trophy
- Golgari Charm
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Grim Lavamancer
- Hazoret the Fervent
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar
- Huntmaster of the Fells
Ponza is a prizon-deck style of a deck, that uses lock cards like Blood Moon or Trinisphere to lock the opponent out of the game. Besides that, Ponza goes after mana, which is an attackable point for every modern deck. However, land destruction spells cost at least 3 mana in modern, which makes the deck generally very slow and clunky. To leverage this fact, they run mana accelerators in the form of Bird of Paradise, Arbor Elf and Utopia Sprawl. With those cards a turn 2 Blood Moon is certainly possible. Now, because of this fact, the deck can potentially get us and lock us out of the game if they hit a turn 2 BM or start to destroy our lands from turn 2 on. Bloodbraid Elf from them can sometimes result in pretty impactful tempo swings. Luckily, we are not hopeless in this matchup. The first point is, that the deck can loose to itself sometimes. Drawing redundant copies of Blood Moon and their mana accelerators can hurt them pretty badly. Next, they can usually not deal with a reasonable sized Goyf. Goyf alone can be a decent wincon here. Liliana of the Veil is also fantastic in this matchup (dont get biased due to the double black, if she sticks, you are in a great shape). The plan for this matchup is to always kill the bird on turn 1. If they happen to have Utopia Sprawl (the scariest mana acceleration spell for us, since we cannot interact with it until turn 2) we need to have discard to take away their scariest threat which could come down on turn 2. Always fetch for basics, and only keep hands which can interact from turn 1 on. The key to beating this deck is usually surviving the first set of turns. If you then get to stick a Goyf or Liliana of the Veil, usually we will be able to win from there. They have a lot of bad topdecks as opposed to us. Deal with their initial threats, and then just play the Jund game.Board Out- Fatal Push
- Terminate
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Collective Brutality
- Kolaghan's Command
- Nihil Spellbomb
Board In- Engineered Explosives
- Assassin's Trophy
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Golgari Charm
- Damnation
- Anger of the Gods
- Kozilek's Return
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Kitchen Finks
- Fulminator Mage
Bogles is a matchup which usually was not very present in the meta, nor was it very good. With the unbanning of BBE and the rise of Jund, as well as its restructuring of the deck, Bogles became a respectable choice to beat up on Jund, as well as any potential JTMS decks. Now, Jund has a good way of interacting with Bogles, and therefore the matchup is not very hard in theory. Things like discard, LoTV, Decay and Pulse can help dealing with the giant threats Bogles slams onto the board quite fast. However, the most problematic card here is Leyline of Sanctity. It shuts off our best cards and only leaves us with a couple of Enchantment removal spells like Pulse and Decay. And since the latter has been cut down on copies, we dont have much interaction at all with Leyline on the BF. If you expect Bogles, try Engineered Explosives in the SB. Its a nightmare card for Bogles. While the card has a nonbo with BBE, it is still worth it to run if you want to beat Bogles. As for technical play, watch out for fetchlands, as they represent Dryad Arbor to nullify our Liliana of the Veil -2. As for sideboarding, usually, we have more cards to board out than cards to board in. Thats the reason you can board in Spellbomb, which may look odd at first glance. The GY exiling is not what we are looking for here, its the card draw. Compared to a useless LtLH its just a better card to bring in.Board Out- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Scavenging Ooze
- Bloodbraid Elf (1-2)
Board In- Grim Lavamancer
- Collective Brutality
- Kolaghan's Command
- Ancient Grudge
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Assassin's Trophy
- Kozilek's Return
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Golgari Charm
- Night of Souls's Betrayal
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Infect is a matchup were you really want to be able to play correctly against the opponent. If you don't keep your mind focused the whole time, Infect players can win out of nowhere without you even noticing it before it is to late. Generally, it is absolutely not the right thing to tap yourself out against Infect, unless you can safely do so. Generally, you can safely tap out if there is no infect threat on the opponent's side of the battlefield. The reason to tap out is probably to deploy a Liliana of the Veil or big 4 drop we draw, in order to start removing the Infect players resources. Its ok to take the risk and tap out, if you just be aware of it and know what you are doing. This will take practise and time will tell what to do in a given situation. Besides this, obviously targeted discard is amazing in this matchup. Taking some threats or pump spells alongside knowing what is in the opponents hand is absolutely great. For this reason we want to maximize all targeted discard we have. Generally, we wan to to the same with efficient removal. We want to be able to quickly remove all threats from the opponent, and, if we can remove the creatures at first sight (for example, if they tap out turn 2 for a Blighted Agent, immediatly Bolt it if you can). However, be careful here! There is one aspect which is very important: Almost never ever, attempt to kill infect creatures during combat. This will often end up in a crazy mess and you see yourself having 10 poising counters after the dust settles. Why? Because, due to their protection spells, they can make use out of their pump spells and actually turning the pump into poison counters. Its almost always better to just take the single poison counter from a 1/1 Inkmoth than forcing the issue and maybe tapping out for an Bolt and Terminate (maybe getting around one protection spell through this, but not the second one!). Just kill the creatures at the end of the turn, and force them to use their pump/protection spells, which will result in not being effective at all, its just a spell to protect the creature. You are fine with it. If you trade a Bolt for a Blossoming Defense, its absolutely fine at the end of turn. But not during combat! In short: Generally, during combat, let the infect player start the interaction. It effectively means you need one less card to deal with their cards. The person who begins the interaction is disadvantaged.Board Out- Inquisition of Kozilek (1-2)
- Blackcleave Cliffs (1 on the draw)
- Liliana of the Veil (1-2 on the draw)
- Kolaghan's Command
Board In- Damnation
- Anger of the Gods
- Engineered Explosives
- Assassin's Trophy
- Kozilek's Return
- Grim Lavamancer
- Grafdigger's Cage
- Collective Brutality
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Nissa, Vital Force
- Angrath, the Flame-Chained
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Kitchen Finks
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Fulminator Mage
- Any grindy creature left
GW Company, also known as GW Value Town which was made popular by Todd Stevens, is a midrange deck similar to Counters Company, but focusing on a more grindy approach, skipping any combos and also black as a colour, to simply focus on sticky and grindy threats both in green and in white colours. Compared to Counters Company, we have way more trouble dealing with the creatures. Cards like Knight of the Reliquary, Courser of Kruphix, Kitchen Finks and Voice of Resurgance all make our cheap Bolts and Pushes very awkward. In order to effectively deal with one of those threats cleanly, we often have to rely on our hard removal and miser removal like Terminate, Decay and Pulse. Due to that, we cannot effectively execute our gameplan in removing everything from the board, trading 1-for-1 and win through topdecks. GW Company is a deck that hardly cares about discard as well. They have so many 2-for-1 cards that we will most likely run out of resources before we can remove every threat they have. The presence of Collected Company is just the final straw for us. All in all the matchup is very hard for us. Clunky cards like KCommand and LoTV (due to the presence of mana dorks and sticky threats) are easy cuts for that matchup. After that, since it is an attrition based game, bad topdecks in the form of discard is what we should cut. Leaving in TS is alright though to snag devastating CoCos.Board Out- Liliana of the Veil
- Collective Brutality
- Inquisition of Kozilek (1-3)
Board In- Damnation
- Anger of the Gods
- Grim Lavamancer
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Assassin's Trophy
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Hazoret the Fervent
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Olivia Voldaren
- Kitchen Finks
- Fulminator Mage
RG Eldrazi emerged just before the unbanning of Jace and BBE as it won the last GP for the old banlist: GP Lyon. It is a deck not utilizing the tron lands, unlike Eldrazi Tron, but instead relies on Grove of the Burnwillows, Eldrazi Temple, Karplusan Forest and Nible Hierarch to generate mana. This deck can be very explosive as it generally wants to play turn 1 mana dork into turn 2 three drop or even four drop sometimes. We need to interact very early on in order to stop that. One mana removal is what I value very highly for that reason. Killing the dork on turn 1 will slow the opponent down quite a bit. Having multiple Fatal Pushs in the deck as well as Terminates help for this matchup. In general, Tarmogoyf is one of our best creature if we get it as big as 5/6, at which point it dodges Dismember and can block Reality Smasher. Since there are many creatures, some small ones some medium sized ones and some big ones, LoTV is not at its best here, particularly since they will bring in Baloths against you.Board Out- Collective Brutality
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Grim Lavamancer
- Terminate
- Lightning Bolt
- Liliana of the Veil
Board In- Ancient Grudge
- Kolaghan's Command
- Damping Sphere
- Leyline of the Void
- Surgical Extraction
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Assassin's Trophy
- Thoughtseize
- Duress
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Krark-Clan Ironworks Combo (short: KCI) is a Combo deck utilizing Krark-Clan Ironworks alongside recursion engines (Myr Retriever and Scrap Trowler in order to kill opponents using recursive Pyrite Spellbomb or generating loads of etb triggers with Shrine of Ish Sah. The deck is in general susceptible to discard and GY hate. Discard alone usually is doing it alone, since they have lots of card draw to draw their pieces they need again and they can bring back artifacts in their GY. In general, you don't want both KCI and Scrap Trawler to be on the BF at the same time. If possible, prevent this by destroying KCI with KCommand or killing the creature in response. Otherwise they could just go off and draw into their wincons they need. A good way to disrupt their combo is to exile their Artifacts with Ooze. It is slow, but if you combine it with discard and artifact destruction, then Ooze should be very effective.Board Out- Liliana of the Veil
- Bloodbraid Elf (1-2)
- Dark Confidant (1 on draw)
- Inquisition of Kozilek (1-2)
Board In- Grim Lavamancer
- Collective Brutality
- Anger of the Gods
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Engineered Explosives
- Kozilek's Return
- Damnation
- Golgari Charm
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Assassin's Trophy
- Grafdigger's Cage
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Kitchen Finks
Elves is essentially a combo deck using massive amounts of creatures in order to overrun their opponents through payoff cards like Ezuri, Renegade Leader. It is important to not fall behind and take lifetotals too loosely in this matchup, you can loose out of nowhere. Similar to the Humans matchup, always be on defense and get in for chip dmg if possible. But the most important goal in this matchup to kill payoff cards on sight. Those typically are: Ezuri, Regenade Leader, Elvish Archdruid or Heritage Druid. Always kill their Llanovar Elf on turn 1. It really slows them down significantly. We want to prevent them powering out all elves onto the bf quickly, since things can get very ugly then. Concerning sweepers, be aware of Chord of Calling and a possible Selfless Spirit. It can really blow you out and cost you the game.Board Out- Liliana of the Veil (2-3 on the draw)
- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Thoughtseize
Board In- Damnation
- Anger of the Gods
- Grim Lavamancer
- Assassin's Trophy
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Collective Brutality
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Huntmaster of the Fells
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar
- Olivia Voldaren
- Kitchen Finks
- Hazoret, the Fervent
Bant Knightfall is a deck which utilizes the Knight of the Reliquary + Retreat to Coralhelm combo to kill an opponent through a one turn kill. The combo is only really relevant in game 1 for us. Postboard, the deck will side the enchantments out and focus on grinding and playing a typical midrange game. In that sense the deck has many annoying threats which are hard to deal with such as Voice of Resurgance. Since they play many small creatures, and many of them being mana dorks, LoTV is quite bad in this matchup. Next you want to focus in removal and threats, play the simple midrange game and grind the opponent out. Therefore siding out discard makes sense.Board Out- Thoughtseize
- Liliana of the Veil (1-3 on the draw)
- Dark Confidant (2-3 on the draw)
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Nihil Spellbomb
Board In- Collective Brutality
- Anger of the Gods
- Damnation
- Grim Lavamancer
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Engineered Explosives
- Kozilek's Return
- Assassin's Trophy
- Grafdigger's Cage
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar
- Olivia Voldaren
Bant Spirits is a tempo deck which uses powerful flying threats to quickly overwhelm you with a bunch of almost unblockable creatures. The life total is a very important aspect in this matchup. Due to this, we need to get rid of cards that damage ourselves: Dark Confidant and Thoughtseize. We want to race their threats with our Tarmogoyfs and powerful 4 drops. Discard is needed in the form of IOK to don't get blown out by a Spell Queller if we want to deploy our powerful 4 drops. Be aware of Mausuleum Wanderer and Rattlechains shenanigans and kill them directly if you feel they harm you too much. The same thing goes for Selfless Spirit.Board Out- Bloodbraid Elf
- Liliana of the Veil
- Kolaghan's Command
- Abrupt Decay
Board In- Leyline of the Void
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Surgical Extraction
- Grafdigger's Cage
- Anger of the Gods
- Kitchen Finks
- Collective Brutality
- Damnation
- Engineered Explosives
- Mealstrom Pulse
- Kozilek's Return
- Grim Lavamancer
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Huntmaster of the Fells
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Bridgevine is a GY based combo deck similar to Hollow One. The strategy evolves around milling a fast Bridge from Below and Vengevine, getting a bunch of Zombies, reanimating Vengevine and then quickly kill the opponent with Goblin Bushwhacker. Compared to Hollow One, this deck is probably more explosive on average, but can't grind that well and resiliant. So the longer the game goes, the better of a chance we have of beating it. The deck is really suseptible to GY hate, in general it can't do anything really if there is a Leyline of the Void on our BF for example. Our best chance to win is by disrupt them early with discard (to snatch their enablers: Faithless Looting, Stitcher's Supplier, Cathartic Reunion and Insolent Neonate. Afterwards a quick Ooze can handle the GY pretty well. Besides a possible Walking Ballista they don't have removal for it game 1. So overall try to prevent explosive starts. And don't fall into the trap and try dealing with Bridges when its too late. If they have 1-2 cards left in hand and already 3-4 Zombies on the board, the dmg has already been done at this point, go for Looting, Gravecrawler and Vengevine instead then.Board Out- Dark Confidant
- Thoughtseize
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Lightning Bolt
Board In- Assassin's Trophy
- Fatal Push
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Damping Sphere
- Leyline of the Void
- Surgical Extraction
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Duress
- Collective Brutality
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Izzet Phoenix is a hybrid between a tempo based aggro deck and burn. It seeks to cast multiple spells a turn which fuels Arclight Phoenix and which is able to generate extra mana to enable explosive draws. By casting multiple spells a turn, the chance to recur an Arclight Phoenix is very high. By casting a high amount of cheap spells, this deck invests many resources for its payoffs. The way to beat this deck is preserving your lifetotals as much as possible and generally be able to answer Thing in the Ice and Crackling Drake asap. Often when they stay on the battlefield for one turn, you are in a loosing spot. This also means Lighting Bolt is very unreliable.Board Out- Liliana of the Veil
- Nihil Spellbomb
- Thoughtseize
- Bloodbraid Elf (1-2)
- Scavenging Ooze (1)
Board In- Ancient Grudge
- Anger of the Gods
- Damnation
- Leyline of the Void
- Engineered Explosives
- Liliana, the Last Hope
- Kozilek's Return
- Golgari Charm
- Kolaghan's Command
- Maelstrom Pulse
- Grim Lavamancer
- Collective Brutality
- Night of Souls' Betrayal
- Kitchen Finks
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
- Pia and Kiran Nalaar
- Huntmaster of the Fells
- Assassin's Trophy
- Fulminator Mage
Hardened Scales is a deck which looks very similar to Affinity and uses the same shell but adds a little twist to it by including more modular-based and counter-based creatures and playing Hardened Scales as the big enabler for the deck. If you compare Affinity to Hardened Scales it is pretty similar to Hollow One and Bridgevine. Hardened Scales has a potential for more explosiveness, but on average is pretty weak when no Hardened Scales is involved. Overall that makes Affinity much more resiliant as the hole deck functions as a big pile of synergy, wheras the Hardened Scales deck needs the enchantment in order to really go over the top. In that sense, discard can cripple them quite a bit. Scales is also susceptible to GY hate, as their modular triggers and their use of Hangarback Walker use the GY. However, both effects are only shut off by replacement effects, which we can only run in the form of Leyline of the Void or Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet or Anger of the Gods. In general, we want to board similar to Affinity, except that Leylines are a good option in addition to the rest.
"In nature, not a single bone or scrap of flesh goes to waste."
In this last section of the primer, I want to point out some aspects about technical play of certain cards, how to handle them and also covering some tips and tricks here. In Jund, sequencing is one of the most important aspects when it comes to playing the deck well. Really don't mess up stuff just because you did them in the wrong order. The following tips should help you avoid this, as I am confidant that these mistakes happened already before (myself included).
- Discard vs. Bolt?: The question is, if the opponent has played a turn 1 creature, should we use our turn 1 to bolt it or to play a discard spell? In most cases, always go for the bolt first. Turn 1 creatures in modern are often mana dorks or aggressive creatures which either help the opponent to quickyl ramp into much more threating stuff or to beat you down quickly. We should stop both those things by bolting the creature right away.
- Scavenging Ooze: When do you play ooze and when you activate its ability? If you expect a Lightning Bolt from you opponent to kill your ooze, then wait to play it until turn 4, where you should be able to safe the ooze in case he gets bolted right away by using the other two lands (have to be green) in order to pump ooze out of bolt range (but check creature count in graveyards first!). If you expect a bolt, and you correctly played ooze on turn 4, holding up 2 mana, don't fall into the trap and activate oozes ability at the end of the opponents turn. In response to the first activation ooze is again succeptible to bolt, keep that in mind! And also, please, if you have enough mana, its of course correct to activate oozes ability at the end of the opponents turn to use up the left untapped lands and to exile something, but always, always, activate the ability once and wait for the confirmation of the opponent that it resolves. After that you can still activate it a second time. If you activate the ooze all at once with all lands you have, it can still get bolted if all those abilities are on the stack.
- Tarmogoyf: When should you play Tarmogoyf? Tarmogoyf should always be played when he is bolt proof (against decks where you expect bolt). Note that this is done the easiest way by turn 1 fetch + discard (putting 2 types into the GY) followed up by a turn 2 goyf. Your 2/3 goyf, if he gets bolted right away, will, due to state based effects, be a 3/4 upon the bolt's resolution, which doesn't kill the goyf! Also, if you want to attack with your goyf on a given turn, and have a Liliana of the Veil on the board which you also want to activate on that turn, activeate her first, which might make the goyf bigger through her discard.
- Tarmogoyf vs. Dark Confidant: Sometimes the question comes up, what should I play fist on turn 2, Goyf or Bob? Well, generally speaking, it depends on the matchup of course. If you expect much removal from a given deck, then play the creature first which you value the least. If you don't expect much removal and need e.g. a fast clock (e.g. against Tron) then play Goyf first. As we disrupt our opponent's gameplans, you generally wanna play Bob first to start your CA engine. However, if Bob is valued greatly in a given matchup, then play less important stuff first so that you eventually can stick a bob. In matchups where its about tempo, speed and efficiency, play the creature what you need in a given scenario.
- Kolaghan's Command: One of the nicest interactions we can have with KCommand and our opponent, is when the opponent is in topdeck mode and draws his card for the turn. In the draw step, you can actually cast KCommand and let the opponent discard the freshly drawn card right away, often times effectively time walking yourself. Also, know the interaction of Kolaghan's Command with an opposing Spellskite: If you want to destroy Spellskite (destroy target artifact) and also want to deal 2 dmg to another opposing creature, spellskite can redirect the 2 dmg from Kolaghan's Command also to itself. Be aware of this.
- Kolaghan's Command and Regeneration: How does KCommand interact with regeneration? This might be a strange thing to ask, but it could matter in specific cases. Lets say you are facing Affinity and your opponent has both a Steel Overseer and Welding Jar on the BF. You would like to kill the Overseer because otherwise you will be dead to the added counters on the next turn. One nice way of doing that through the Welding Jar is by using KCommand. Cast it and choose deal 2 dmg as well as destroy target artifact on the Overseer. If the opponent pops the Welding Jar to give the Overseer a regeneration shield, then KCommand still destroys it. Kinda makes sense, but note the important nuances of this interaction: This is only possible because the "destroy artifact" mode comes before the "deal 2 dmg" mode. If the order of those modes are switched, then the Overseer would survive! And the reason of this is, that state-based actions are not performed during the resolving of a spell as well as the fact, that regeneration removes all dmg applied. So, if the Overseer has a regeneration shield on it and it first gets "destroyed" then the shield will pop and it regenerates the Seer. If you deal now 2 dmg to it afterwards, the 2 dmg will be marked on the Seer after the spell resolves and it will die. However, if it would be the other way round, and you deal 2 dmg to the seer first, it would not be destroyed right away, as it only "marks" 2 dmg and waits for state based actions to resolve. If the actual destruction comes after the dmg, the regeneration shiled will pop, and now it will clear all dmg marked to the creature, resulting in a surviving Overseer. So remember, the ordering of how the modes are applied matters (which is simpy the order of how they are listed in the spell)
- Liliana of the Veil: You really don't need to activate Liliana's abilities every turn. Its totally fine to just let Liliana stay if you need all the cards in your hand.
- What to take with discard on turn 1?: This is question, which is very hard to answer. If you play Jund for a long time, you will get a feeling for what to take in given matchup. In short, it depends on the cards you have in your hand (e.g. if I have removal for a creature in my opponents hand, its not necessarily needed to discard the creature), on the cards which are on the battlefield (is my opponent manascrewed? Do I need to take an expensive card out of my opponent's hand? Or does my opponent have a powerful spell which interacts with a permanent on the field which could harm me (Like Become Immense + an Infect creature)) as well as the strategy of the opponent's deck (taking key cards for a certain combo etc.). Its hard to find the correct decision, but practise and experience do help a lot for this! As a general order of priority, I would suggest the following:
- Take the card you can't deal with
- Take the card that's next on the opponents manacurve
- Take removal that kills Dark Confidant
- Fetchlands: Generally, Verdant Catacombs is our best fetchland since it can get both our basic lands. If it comes down to getting any shockland in our deck, its doesn't matter which fetchland to use. So, if your intentions are to get a shockland anyway, then always use other fetchlands first for that. Think about the colour requirements we have in our deck. We want to have double black on turn 3 for liliana basically. Don't mess this up by fetching for the wrong lands in the first few turns and then you are stranded with a couple of tapped black mana sources (like a Blackcleave Cliffs) which prevent you from casting a potentially needed LotV. I would recommend that you start thinking through your fetching sequencing during looking at the opening hand. Does my hand get all colours I need in time? Does it produce a mana every turn? Do lands enter the BF tapped at some point? When is the best option to play my tapped lands (e.g. Raging Ravine)? Fetchland have become a lot more valuable due to Fatal Push and Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Safe them if you are not wanting to thin your deck!
- Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet + Anger of the Gods: I think that some people might not know the interaction of Kalitas and Anger of the Gods. If you have Kalitas on board and play Anger of the Gods, with the intention of exiling the opponents board and getting a bunch of tokens, then I have to let you down here. If two replacement effects occur at the same time, the owner of the cards which the effects both have an effect on gets to choose which effect will take place! So, simply said, your opponent owns the creatures and therefore the opponent decides which exiling effect will take place. Obviously they will choose the one from Anger to prevent you getting a bunch of tokens from Kalitas.
- Discard or Raging Ravine first?: If you are up against an unknown opponent, always go for turn 1 discard if you can. It doesn't matter all that much if your next land drop is just a tapped raging ravine, but discard is such an important tool to us to win the game against many decks, so don't just let the opponent do what they want to do and start interacting as early as possible.
- Raging Ravine: You can activate Raging Ravine mutliple times. This way, its gets multiple +1/+1 counters for each activation when attacking.
- Maelstrom Pulse: Little interaction here, but Maelstrom Pulse kills both Wurmcoil Engine Tokens at once.
- Fatal Push: You are able to target any creature with Fatal Push, not only possible ones due to the current revolt status. So Fatal Push can target a Tasigur for example. But due to its if clause, the creature just won't be destroyed. Most of the time this is not of technical interest, but sometimes you might need to get an instant into the graveyard to maybe make your goyf bigger than opposing tasigurs. So Fatal Push checks the CMC only upon resolution.
- Liliana, the Last Hope: Liliana can help you win through an Ensnaring Bridge, since you can shrink your own creatures to be able to attack. Another thing is, if you somehow get to activate Lilis +1 on an Inkmoth Nexus or Blinkmoth Nexus remember that the -2/-1 effect remains until your next turn. That means, when you pass back to your opponent, the Nexi will turn into lands again and stay. However, during that turn, if the opponent decide to activate that Nexus again, it will die as a result of state based effects. Keep that in mind.
- Engineered Explosives: If you want to cast EE for 1, but your opponent has a Chalice on 1, you can just pay 2 mana of the same colour to get the same result. Similar to this, if you opponent has a Thalia, Guardian of Thraben in play, if you announce X=1 with EE, but paying 2 different colours of mana for the taxing cost, you will still get 2 counters on EE.
- Bloodbraid Elf: Remember that the spell you cascaded into resolves first while BBE is still on the stack. This can sometimes be very nice, if you hit a discard spell to protect your BBE from removal, but can also be devastating if you hit LoTV and your opponents bolts her while BBE is still on the stack. Since we can't protect Lili from bolt by plussing her (PW abilites only at sorcery speed) means that is a little bit of a weak point.
- Liliana of the Veil + Cryptic Command: Be very careful when you plus Lili against a Control deck when you are emtpy handed. In response to her activation, they can Cryptic bounce Lili, which results in we having to discard her. That can also happen to any other permanent which might be important for us (like Ravine).
- Liliana of the Veil + Raging Ravine: Those 2 cards make up a really good combo against reactive decks. Especially Control decks. If we want to attack with Ravine but want to protect it from a removal spell we can plus Liliana beforehand to get a card out of our opponents hand. This is especially powerful when both players are in topdeck mode. In such a case, plussing LoTV is often the correct play, even if you could ulti her for a bunch of lands. Unless we really want to hit a specific land (like Search for Azcanta or Celestial Colonnade) plussing Lili will be best against Control.
- Terminating the Colonnade: If you want to kill an opposing Celestial Colonnade, do it at the beginning of combat. If the opponent wants to counter it using a Mana Leak by tapping the Colonnade, they can at least not attack that turn.
- "Thoughtseize You" by Reid Duke. A great article evolving around what to take with discard, which is one of the key disciplines when playing Jund. Every Jund player should have read this article.
- "Who's the Beatdown" by Michael Flores. This is the article which is considered to be the fundamental article of magic. Maybe its the best article in the whole history of competitive Magic. Its about your role in the current status of the game. Knowing when you need to attack and when you need to defend, is crucial when playing Jund, yet any deck even. There are also follow up articles, "Eight Core Principles of Who's the Beatdown" also by Michael Flores, as well as "Who's the Beatdown II" by Zvi Mowshowitz. Both these articles are also great reads and I can only recommend reading them.
- "Technical Play" by Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa. Its a really great article about the term Technical Play itself and what it encompasses.
- "The False Tempo Archetype" by Gerry Thompson. This is a great article about the tempo archetype and how it is easy to misunderstand them and therefore play badly against them.
- "Level One: The Full Course" by Reid Duke. Its pretty basic stuff linked here, but its still worth mentioned and to have a look at. I specifically want to point out "The Metagame", which is a great article describing how to identify, handle and fight a certain metagame in magic. Specifically for Jund, this is very important to understand.
- "How many coloured manasources do you need to consistantly cast your spells?" by Frank Karsten: A great article I personally refer to many times. When building a manabase, this is fundamentally important, but is often overlooked by many people. Manabases tend to get greedier and greedier over time, which might lead to frustration due to easily avoidable losses caused by a bad manabase. Don't be that guy, always put enough coloured sources in your deck! An update to the original article was also made: "How many mana sources do you need to consistantly cast your spells - a guilds of ravnica update" by Frank Karsten. This is the new version of the mana source article and should be referred to when talking about mana bases.
- "How many lands do you need to consistantly hit your land drops?" by Frank Karsten, is a follow up article in the "How many?" series which is a great and important tool to have in mind when it comes down to basic deckbuilding.
- "Tempo and Card Advantage" by Eric: When playing Jund, we are often dealing with the term "Card Advantage". But what does it actually mean and how can you abuse it? Read this article for more information about it. Further there is an article by Michael Flores which explaines Virtual Card Advantage and when it is mistaken as Card Advantage: "The End of Virtual Card Advantage" by Michael Flores.
- "Playing to win versus playing not to loose" by PVDR: This article is closely related to "Who's the Beatdown", and explains, what you should do, in order to win a difficult match in time. Some matches will end in extra turns, and often times you have the option to play for the win or play not to loose. Great read there.
- "Tight Plays" by Jeremy Neeman: A great article explaining the term "Tight Play" what is often referred to by us Junders. Another great article is about taking risks at the right time: "Risky Move" by Jeremy Neeman. Both articles are also very useful and important when playing Jund.
- "6 Tips to Play Faster" by PVDR, a great article which helps to avoid get timed often. Sometimes we tend to go into extra turns, for which reason this is useful information.
- "Thoughtseizes and Fatal Pushes, Part I" by Reid Duke, is a series of articles that evaluate how to best utilize Thoughtseize and Fatal Push in the current state of modern (As of end 2017) this is generally a great way to enhance ones piloting ability and interesting read.
- "Understanding Standings, Part I: Tournament Structure (The Basics)" by Reid Duke, is a series of articles that explains how a typical tournament is executed. It is imperative to know how standings, pairings etc. work, to know best how you can advance and finish with a better record.
- "3 Tips to Mulligan Smarter" by PVDDR, is a great article about mulligan decisions. He explains in a sufficient way, why mulliganing is never only a matter of which 7 seven or lower cards you have in your hand, but also a huge matter in other contexts as well.
- "Sideboarding traps: Boarding in narrow cards too often" by LSV, is directed to all people feeling the need to always bring in Surgical against basically any deck. This is a standard article every GBx player should have in mind.
- "What did happen and what could happen" by Reid Duke, is a mind opening article for every long time Junder. Maybe at some point you startet autopiloting the deck and didn't give decicions enough time to reconsider? Give this article a read.
- "How many copies of any given card should you put in your deck" by Frank Karsten, is a follow up article to the "how many" series Frank made and talks about how many copies of a given card you need to have in order to draw one or multiples by a given turn. Very important resource when it comes to deckbuilding!
- "Creating a Fearless Magical Inventory" by Sam Stoddard, is a really great article showing the trap an experienced player can fall into. Ego can be a very bad thing, and really hurt your gameplan. I really recommend giving this article a read.
- "Coping With Loosing" is a podcast with sports psychologist Will Jonathan, Lance Austin and BBD. Its a great article to understand everything about loosing and its state in the game.
- The articles of Will Jonathan are a great source of understanding everything about the personal mental game within magic. They explain how you should deal with things such as bad luck, loosing, ego and sportsmanship. Great resource which is certainly helpful beyond magic as well.
- "How many games do you need for statistical significance" by Frank Karsten, is another article in the "How many" series. It greatly shows that results should always been taken with a grain of salt, and when talking about matchup win%, one should really have a feeling what 5 % up or down means. You may be surprized.
- "Getting a read isn't enough" by Reid Duke. This article greatly illustrates a good pathway how to deal with mental game information you might have gathered over the course of a game. Very valuable information and a must read. Also have a look at the follow up article: "How to smell blood and level up your game".
- "Building A Consistant Manabase" by me, FlyingDelver. This article uses the numbers of Frank Karsten and explains how to build a consistant and proper manabase for a GBx deck. Also visit the other articles from MTGRock.com for more awesome stuff.
- "The Tireless Tracker Misconception" by FlyingDelver. This article discusses the issue of what it really means to replace Dark Confidant with Tireless Tracker. It shows that this swap is not as simple as someone might think.
At this point, I want to hugely thank our predecessor and former preserver of our Jund guide LEH. LEH provided amazing work on the guide, and I am honored, that LEH offered me to take over the primer. With great motivation I want to continue LEH's great work and want give big credit for what LEH did! Thank you! Also, huge thanks to Shodai who made the header for the primer!
The link to the old Jund Primer can be found here: LEH's Jund Primer
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I'm wrong. https://discord.gg/znSgCc
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EDIT: Ah ok. I would have to cut a Trophy.
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4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Dark Confidant
3 Scavenging Ooze
Planeswalkers (4)
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Instants(11)
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Assassin's Trophy
2 Kolaghan's Command
1 Fatal Push
Sorceries (6)
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
3 Raging Ravine
1 Treetop Village
1 Twilight Mire
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Stomping Ground
1 Blood Crypt
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Nissa, Vital Force
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Fulminator Mage
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Anger of the Gods
3 Collective Brutality
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Surgical Extraction
I probably didn't need the basic Mountain in retrospect. What I noticed in the run up to the GP was that everyone seemed to be expecting a huge rise in big mana decks (specifically Tron) to combat Dredge. To beat a potential rise in Tron, people seemed to leaning heavily on aggro. I didn't really get it since I hadn't seen Tron numbers rising online or anywhere else. I did see a huge uptick in Burn and UR Phoenix decks though. I didn't see people playing the mono-red Phoenix variants but I was aware of them as well. That's why Kitchen Finks and Huntmaster seemed particularly useless. They do next to nothing impactful in other matches and aren't all that overwhelming against what I'm expecting. Collective Brutality, however, was a boss, and it was amazing throughout day 1. Day 2 the metagame shifted a bit. Even without a rise in aggro, I just don't think Kitchen Finks and Huntmaster are all that good any more. There isn't a single match up where I'm thinking, "Man, I wish I had a Finks right now." I really don't understand why Jadine is all aboard with it, and I'm glad it's kicking ass for her. That's just one train I refuse to get on until something changes.
2
I would also consider at least 1 Grafdigger's Cage in your sideboard. There has been a resurgence of Collected Company decks as well as a high number of decks casting things from the graveyard (Dredge, Bridgevine, UR & mono-red Phoenix, Mardu Pyro and Snapcaster decks).
I'm really not sure why you're so high on Kolaghan's Command. I've rarely made good use of more than 1 per game unless I was playing against Affinity.
A huge two-thumbs-up for two Alpine Moon. I could've used them way more than the Nissa, Vital Force and Surgical Extraction that languished in my sideboard. I'm almost convinced that we shouldn't try to interact with graveyard strategies reactively. I feel a third Anger of the Gods makes more sense than ever sleeving up the first Surgical Extraction even if you're terrified of Dredge or UR (or mono-red) Phoenix.
Finally, I very much prefer the 25-land builds by a wide margin. I tested 24-land builds in the run up to GP Atlanta, and the consistency issues with openers and the initial few draws reared its ugly head again. I think I just prefer conservative consistency than slightly more explosive openers.
2
Day 1 was 6-2. Ended up 9-6.
Both of my losses on day 1 were TitanShift. Day 2 I surprisingly lost to Humans twice, G Tron (just couldn't get the aggro starts) and Bant spirit (was really tight and just came down to top decks in game 3.