@tempest753 : i can only agree with that, "vraska improve consistency" sure but it's a turn 4... that's my problem x).
If you can show me the match-up where she is really good and why, maybe i will test it.
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- FlyingDelver
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Apr 9, 20191
Tempest753 posted a message on The Rock@yrielPosted in: Midrange
The 3 tombs was because I tried Delver’s manabase (and thank you btw Delver for your suggestion) and a couple of games in, I found it was very easy to run out of fetchable green mana so I did the next best thing. Could just be sample size issues, I’ll give the 5-fetch setup another shot.
The thing with the Vraska is that it’s flood insurance essentially. I feel like the way I lose most games with BGx decks is flooding. If you think about it, you simply have more lands than most other modern decks, no cantrips, and slightly less 2-for-1 power than UW, so flooding more often than other modern decks is a pretty logical outcome. Manlands help, but 2/2s and 3/3s aren’t effective enough when the flood gets real bad. Another potential solution is to play more trackers, but I feel like trackers in multiples get clunky very quickly.
Vraska + tracker, however, is an awesome synergy (since she can basically pop clues for free). And that problem Delver and I had fights over a year ago about finding the cards you need when you need them? She does that too, albeit in the late game only. I know the card doesn’t look like much, but I feel like my deck has become considerably more consistent every time I’ve played it (and I usually live plenty long enough to do so). -
Apr 9, 20191
@KJuhlin :Posted in: Midrange
the manabase of you bw deck is just ok, not grindy but not great too.
I can only advice you the nice article written by FlyingDelver on BGX manabase, he is a little not enough grindy for me but for sure his manabase are safe.
Maths say 18 black sources to cast a liliana turn 3.
About GQ, you talk about 2 specific scenarios :
-blood moon, it's not played a lot and Rock have no problem to deal with when you have 6 basics and 4/5 fetchs.
-valakut, a scenario where you have 3 GQ and your opponent cast scapeshift when he have to know it not works. Moreover if you have 3 field of ruin instead you can just activate it one turn before to do samething, not need to do it in response to scapeshift.
About Tron, sure GQ is far better when your opponent does tron online on the play, sure. If you want only fight tron with your lands, just run ghost quarter. Field of ruin is just better when you look other than these specific scenario cases because you don't loose a land, the only main advantage is that and with tracker, ooze and manlands it matters a lot.
Agree, BG can manage all tron threats even if it's really hard obviously.
I agree too if you are afraid of tron match-up, GQ seems better in your BW but the 4 trophy in BG give you a good MU.
@tempest :
3 overgrown tomb ? you love pain
!
I never tried this vraska but my only thought about here is too high cost for not really unique effect as kalitas can bring. It's just a too fair card or me.
Vraska not really help against spirits and humans where LotV is already average. I don't see any match-ups except mirror where vraska seems insane. -
Apr 8, 2019
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FlyingDelver +1Posted in: Midrange
@KJuhlin statistics not agree at all with you,
15 black sources to cast 5 Lilianas is grindy.
Ghost quarter have advantage for sur but it's not really an huge advantage to can destroy your own land, with field of ruin you can just destroy opponent land and take a swamp. -
Feb 10, 2019
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Great Article. With running 23 lands. Many times I have a hand with bob and discard. The discard takes the removal and then bob lives one turn to draw me into the 3rd land on curve. Tracker is great (i play both) but Bob is guaranteed card if he lives. He doesn't ask for anything more.Posted in: Midrange -
Jan 27, 20191
About shuffling all 15 sb cards into main deck is a bit similar to what Reid Duke did in his online match up. He will add relevant SB cards to his MB and started cutting any dead weight cards from his Mb to his Sideboard.Posted in: Midrange
Sweet article FlyingDelver. -
Jan 19, 20191
Grim_Flayer posted a message on The RockPosted in: MidrangeQuote from FlyingDelver »@Grim_Flayer First of all congrats to your live league, it is really enjoyable to watch you play, keep it up!
Concerning the Amulet matchup, the thing to keep in mind is that they will and should board out Amulets against you after game 1. The reason is, that as we are not a very fast deck, they don't need to be fast either (as Amulet essentially only generates tempo and acceleration). So, I would personally not bother about Amulets after Game 1. However, this is not a complete clear thing to do also from the AMulet players perspective. Some people still might bring them in. In such as case I like to keep Decays if you run them. Decays are more reliable than Push to kill an Azusa, and Decay can also kill Scout and the Amulet if they really leave them in. I think from our deck the weakest cards are Push and Scooze. Push does kill Scout and Azusa, but I think most of the time those are not the realy problematic cards. The cards you loose to is the Titan itself or Hornet Queen. We want all our TS, Trophies, LoTV and ideally Damnation for potential killing of the endgame threats. The goal of Amulet is just to go bigger than we do in chaining titans. We want to disrupt them and drop a fast goyf before they can cast Hornet queen.
I would probably keep CB, as you can kill Azusa, Scout and also take Pacts/Stirrings potentially.
EE is only really appealing to clear up Hornet Queen Tokens imo. Other than that I think EE is not worth it.
Push is rather weak, but not sure how many to cut. I think somewhere around 1-2 copies to cut is correct. I guess having access to a couple copies is nice.
Yeah I would cut Kalitas and 1 Ooze also.
The matchup is unfavourable for us though.
Good luck!
Thanks for the kind words my dude, and thanks even more for all the great work you’ve done and continue to do here! I’d probably still be struggling with the learning curve of this deck if it wasn’t for your primer and posts.
Sounds like we’re on the same page with regard to how to approach the Amulet matchup. I’m definitely leaving in my Decay; I agree that it’s a high value card. Interesting insight about high level Amulet players siding out the namesake card; that affirms my decision to omit EE.
Yeah, Push is a tricky one to evaluate. I can agree that cutting 1-2 seems correct, depending on what else you have to bring in (and also depending on how well you know the opponent’s exact build, for instance if you resolve a Surgical G2 and then play G3).
Damnation makes sense. I don’t have one in my current 75, but I think I would have brought one in if I’d had access to it. I can also agree that the matchup is unfavorable, but I don’t think it’s all that bad post-Trophy. G1 we have our usual combination of clock and disruption that serves us well against most combo decks (although their big mana-style inevitability is a countervailing factor) and post-side we improve immensely with access to Fulminator and some other great tools.
After Trophy, it feels like no matchup is consistently all that bad for us (except maybe Living End lol). -
Dec 16, 2018
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Thanks for the input on the grixis shadow matchup, I followed @yriel and @kastermester advice and was able to beat them 2-0, obviously it's a really small sample size since it's only one match but i'll keep on following the sideboard plan for future matches.Posted in: Midrange
I was able to 5-0 a league, my list can be found here: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1522038#paper
Some tweaks I made before the league were: Adding another fatal push to the main because I felt the card had become better with an increase in ur phoenix and spirits decks online. I ended up cutting my 2 copies of anger of the gods because I didn't really feel like I needed them all too much, I added the fourth LOTV and the fourth fatal push in the board as replacements. The MTGO replay is bugged so I'd usually go into more detail but I'm just gonna write the matchups from memory. My matchups were:
W: 2-0 vs Hollow One
W: 2-0 vs Dredge
W: 2-1 vs Dredge
W: 2-1 vs UB Mill
W: 2-0 vs Bant Spirits
My opponent lead on flameblade adept on turn one, so i played a cliffs, passed and then bolted the adept when he cast inquiry. Fortunately they didn't put any hollow ones into play I so played goyf and passed. My opponent played another flameblade and passed so I IOk'ed a gobline lore and pushed the adept. I was able to finish the game with the goyf and I guess I got pretty lucky since my opponent didn't get any free hollow one's into play.
For the postboard game: -3 LOTV, -1 BBE, -1 ooze, -3 push, +2 NS, +2 SE, +2 CB, +1 Cage, +1 AG
I remember killing an adept with bolt, my opponent inquiries and discard phoenix, land, land and I discard a trophy, land and spellbomb, but I drew another one so I exile their GY and they just pass. I play goyf into goyf and they concede.
Match 2 I'm up against dredge and I IOK away a faithless looting leaving them with shriekhorn. They dont mill a dredger and put a narcomeba into play. I'm able to land ooze with 3 activation per turn and I'm able to exile away all the relevant dredgers so they concede game one.
For the postboard game: -3 AT, -3 LOTV, -2 push and +1 cage, +2 NS, +2 SE, +1 Kalitas, +2 CB
Turn one my opponent loots and put imp and land into GY, I surgical it away and find that their hand is pretty weak, plus I have 2 goyfs in hand. My opponent is able to get 2 bloodghasts on board and tries racing me but I already have double goyf beating them down and the double bolt for the win.
Match 3 I'm up against dredge again and I can't really remember all the details for this game one but I thought It was looking pretty rough for me until I drew ooze, exiled all relevant dredgers and then used my removal for his creatures which I were able to exile and they scooped.
For the postboard game: -3 AT, -3 LOTV, -2 push and +1 cage, +2 NS, +2 SE, +1 Kalitas, +2 CB
Game two I mull to five looking for some form on GY hate and they're able to get double amalgam plus a bloodghast so I scoop.
Game three my opponent mulled to 5 and kept on drawing naturally to try and discard a big dredger, but I landed a bob on turn two which drew me into goyfs and an ooze so by the time my opponent was able to discard to hand size they were already dead.
Match 4 I'm up against UB Mill, and I IOK away a fatal push, land bob and get a goyf into play while making sure not to crack my one fetch so they can't archive trap me and turn on their visions of beyond.
For the postboard game I side pretty light since it feels like a good matchup: -3 push, +2 CB and +1 LOTV.
I don't remember too much other than removing a hedron crab, then my opponent lands another, and eventually field of ruin's my land so we have to search, casts trap and visions, lands other crab and i'm dead. I decide to add back +2 push to deal with the crab.
Game three my opponent mulls to five and I take an ensnaring bridge, land bob, play goyf and my opponent concedes.
Match 5 I'm up against bant spirits. I play a cliffs and pass, they lead on noble which I push and then I TS away a company. I land a goyf, they tap out and play drogskol which I immediately bolt, and land another goyf which both end the game quickly.
For the postboard game I: -2 bob, -2 lotv, -2 TS and +2 CB, +1, +1 cage, +1 EE
My opponent leads on noble again so I push it. They tap out for supreme phantom so on my turn I bolt it and land a cage. Turn three they play drogskol so I bolt it and land a bob at a pretty healthy life total of 15. My opponent reflector mages bob so I take 2, play goyf which they spell queller and then they land a drogskol. I'm able to play bob after taking a hit, a I reveal push and draw another push so I'm able to push the captain and ten the queller, get my goyf back and my opponent uses their last card to path goyf. We trade hits with each other, bob draws me land into land and my opponent is able to land geist. At this point I'm at 4 and they're at 7 so I'm hoping not to reveal a BBE. Bob reveals explosives and draws me into ravine, I wipe their board, attack for 2 and play ravine. My opponent draws and scoops.
Sorry if my report doesn't have as much detail in some spots, I would go back and watch the replays but everytime I try to it says there's an error and a window keep on popping up and blocks the middle of the screen while the replay is going on. Feel free to ask any questions, FlyingDelver's SB guide was super helpful to make sure I was boarding correctly. -
Dec 5, 20183
shocker_nation posted a message on The RockAn awesome primer. Many thanks. Love having a place where Rock enthusiests can get together and ask questions, debate, and improve. Rock, Jund, Abzan.., all part of the same family.Posted in: Midrange
I would recommend both new and experienced to tune into Mtg Grim Flayer on Youtube and watch the matchups and play patterns. It is incredibly good content for the Modern Rock player. - To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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https://discordapp.com/invite/guSNj7s
And my website: https://www.greatnessatanycost.com/
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https://www.mtgsalvation.com/articles/49777-the-end-of-an-era
Cheers,
FlyingDelver
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I would rephrase that a little bit because it might be a bit confusing for newer players. The way its phrased here would suggest that you want to activate the looting before they draw their card for the turn. Obviously, you can't respond to the normal card drawn in the draw step, as drawing your normal card is not a trigger and the draw step starts with players drawing a card without anyone getting priority.
I know what you mean and the combo is correct to work here, but I would just say: Activate the loot effect in your opponents draw step.
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I have a new project running, which is to convert the primers to my new webpage: https://www.greatnessatanycost.com/
There you can find the Amulet Titan SB Guide!
14
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:
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 Hunt
2 Garruk Wildspeaker
Non-creature Spells [17]
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Blightning
3 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Bituminous Blast
2 Terminate
1 Burst Lightning
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.
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 Mountain
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 Terminate
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.
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.
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:
Among the lands, which are absolutely required to run this deck, are the following (considering a standard 24-25 land landbase):
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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, 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 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.
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!
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 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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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:
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
All in all, here is a standard decklist which you can start to play with:
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 Mire
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):
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 Mountain
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:
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:
Our deck has certain tools to interact with the opponent, which are the following:
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:
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.
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.
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Olivia Voldaren
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
1 Hazoret the Fervent
Noncreature Spells
1 Duress
1 Thoughtseize
1 Collective Brutality
1 Leyline of the Void
1 Fatal Push
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Kozilek's Return
1 Damnation
1 Golgari Charm
1 Night of Souls' Betrayal
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Nissa, Vital Force
1 Angrath, the Flame-Chained
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Damping Sphere
1 Assassin's Trophy
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:
If we take those categories, we will be able to put every common sideboard card in one, or even more of those sections:
Nihil Spellbomb
Grafdigger's Cage
Surgical Extraction
Anger of the Gods
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Leyline of the Void
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
Collective Brutality
Kitchen Finks
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Huntmaster of the Fells
Thoughtseize
Duress
Collective Brutality
Kolaghan's Command
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:
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
Thoughtseize
Duress
Collective Brutality
Hazoret, the Fervent
Nihil Spellbomb
Grafdigger's Cage
Surgical Extraction
Ancient Grudge
Leyline of the Void
Fulminator Mage
Surgical Extraction
Hazoret the Fervent
Maelstrom Pulse
Kolaghan's Command
Duress
Thoughtseize
Collective Brutality
Ancient Grudge
Damping Sphere
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):
2 Fulminator Mage
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Collective Brutality
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Damnation
1 Duress
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Nissa, Vital Force
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:
1 Tarmogoyf
1 Dark Confidant
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Bloodbraid Elf
1 Grim Lavamancer
Noncreature Spells Maindeck
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Thoughtseize
1 Fatal Push
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Terminate
1 Assassin's Trophy
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Collective Brutality
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Olivia Voldaren
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Pia and Kiran Nalaar
1 Hazoret the Fervent
1 Duress
1 Thoughtseize
1 Collective Brutality
1 Leyline of the Void
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Damnation
1 Kozilek's Return
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Golgari Charm
1 Night of Souls' Betrayal
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Nissa, Vital Force
1 Angrath, the Flame-Chained
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Damping Sphere
1 Assassin's Trophy
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
less on the play)
less on the play)
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.
- Inquisition of Kozilek
- Thoughtseize
- Collective Brutality
- Liliana of the Veil (2-3)
Abrupt DecayBlackcleave Cliffs (1 OTD)
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.
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.
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!)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- Take the card you can't deal with
- Take the card that's next on the opponents manacurve
- Take removal that kills Dark Confidant
Now this order might me interchanged, for example if Dark Confidant is key in a given matchup, its almost always correct to just take the removal right away to deploy bob. There is actually a great article of Reid Duke on SCG talking about Thoughtseizing the opponent, so its very much worth it to check it out: Thoughtseize YouThe link to the old Jund Primer can be found here: LEH's Jund Primer
9
Abzan represents a relative of the well known Jund deck, which all together with the Rock complete the GBx trifecta of Modern. GBx essentially is any midrange deck having green and black as their main colour. Whether the deck splashes for a third colour (like red in Jund or white in Abzan) or not (like in The Rock), all those 3 versions are considered to be GBx decks. In this primer, Abzan is presented and described. GBx decks are powerful and streamlined decks, which basically all have one property in common: They can beat any opponent if the deck is well built and well piloted. In other words, if you put in enough effort, the deck becomes a flexible weapon suited for almost any metagame. Let alone this makes the deck a powerful choice to run. The deck is characterized by so-called goodstuff cards, which are basically strong individual cards, not relying on other cards or any synergies. Each card can operate on its own and get you further ahead in the game. One key to the success of this deck is interaction. If you want to interact with your opponent, stop them from executing their gameplan and win the game with some powerful threats, then Abzan is the right choice for you. Since you have to interact with your opponent in every single game, games tend to offer different experiences for the players. Abzan is not a deck which just works with itself and does the same thing every game. Decision making processes and skill are very crucial to be successfull with playing this deck. Abzan has access to powerful sideboard options and Lingering Souls, which is by far the biggest argument to run Abzan over any other GBx deck.
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 Abzan. Without further ado, let's Junk 'em out!
Below you can find the link to my discord channel, where everyone is invited to discuss about Abzan. You can also discuss every other deck I made Primers for in there as well.
Modern Abzan Discord: https://discord.gg/guSNj7s
I have converted the Primer over to my website, which you can find here: Greatness At Any Cost.
Throughout Magic's history, several decks stand out for having clever or humorous names. Abzans original name is "Junk". The name Junk has become fairly popular in recent years in reference to this particular style of deck. In recent magic history, the name "Junk" was then replaced with "Abzan" after Wizards revealed a more defining name to the wedge color in Khans of Tarkir, similar to shard colors from the Alara block. Since then, the deck has taken the name Abzan, but is still often referred to as Junk.
Decks with the name "Junk" didn't follow a very close trend as some other decks may have over the years, but it was the most popular name of the Green/Black/White GWB wedge up until its recent renaming. A deck like Junk doesn't really have a solid strategy or plan, it's just a pile of good cards usually. Thus the name Junk was really the best way to describe it. It is arguable that Junk does seem to kind of fit the color description as well, but its perfectly okay to call it by its other names.
Junk/Abzan has had many different iterations in the past and continues to be a fairly popular color combination even in recent standard seasons. Past iterations have included Abzan Control from KTK/THS standard, Junk reanimator from RTR/INN standard season, Treefolk builds, to Tooth and Nail builds, all the way back to stax builds. The modern variant is mainly independent of other past abzan decks (excluding its legacy variants which can be very similar), but glimpses of it's standard iterations do appear in it. Modern Junk's greatest element is control, while also having a fair amount of aggro element to it and little to no combo elements. Most builds of the deck have little synergy and do not have a linear game plan.
Underneath you can see popular decklists from Standard Junk and Modern Junk decks. The last one shows a decklist which became popular when Junk was renamed to Abzan and one of its signature creatures Siege Rhino has been printed.
3 Forest
2 Gavony Township
2 Godless Shrine
2 Isolated Chapel
4 Overgrown Tomb
3 Sunpetal Grove
4 Temple Garden
4 Woodland Cemetery
Creatures [22]
4 Angel of Serenity
2 Arbor Elf
4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
1 Craterhoof Behemoth
2 Fiend Hunter
2 Lotleth Troll
3 Restoration Angel
4 Thragtusk
4 Grisly Salvage
2 Lingering Souls
3 Mulch
4 Unburial Rites
1 Garruk Relentless
2 Acidic Slime
1 Centaur Healer
4 Deathrite Shaman
1 Garruk Relentless
2 Renounce the Guilds
1 Sever the Bloodline
3 Sin Collector
1 Unflinching Courage
2 Caves of Koilos
3 Forest
2 Llanowar Wastes
1 Mana Confluence
2 Plains
4 Sandsteppe Citadel
4 Temple of Malady
1 Temple of Silence
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Windswept Heath
Creatures [16]
4 Courser of Kruphix
2 Elvish Mystic
4 Siege Rhino
4 Sylvan Caryatid
2 Wingmate Roc
4 Abzan Charm
3 Hero's Downfall
4 Thoughtseize
2 Utter End
2 Ajani, Mentor of Heroes
3 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
3 Bile Blight
3 Drown in Sorrow
1 Duneblast
1 End Hostilities
1 Liliana Vess
1 Mass Calcify
2 Murderous Cut
2 Nissa, Worldwaker
1 Unravel the Aether
In Modern, Abzan took a big uptick in popularity when Siege Rhino was printed and it made the deck the choice over Jund at that time. However, Abzan colours were still missing important cards like a GB fastland and a good removal spell compared to Lightning Bolt. Luckily those were printed in Kaladesh and in Aether Revolt. Those 2 cards made Abzan really compete with Jund and actually pushed it over the top. Underneath are sample decklists from Moderns Abzan decks.
1 Forest
1 Godless Shrine
2 Marsh Flats
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Plains
2 Stirring Wildwood
2 Swamp
1 Temple Garden
2 Treetop Village
1 Twilight Mire
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Vault of the Archangel
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Windswept Heath
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Siege Rhino
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Noncreature Spells [23]
4 Abrupt Decay
1 Dismember
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Lingering Souls
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Path to Exile
4 Thoughtseize
4 Liliana of the Veil
3 Aven Mindcensor
1 Batterskull
2 Damnation
1 Feed the Clan
2 Fulminator Mage
1 Path to Exile
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
3 Stony Silence
1 Forest
1 Godless Shrine
3 Marsh Flats
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Plains
3 Shambling Vent
1 Swamp
1 Temple Garden
2 Twilight Mire
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Windswept Heath
Creatures [14]
1 Anafenza, the Foremost
4 Grim Flayer
3 Noble Hierarch
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Collective Brutality
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Lingering Souls
1 Murderous Cut
4 Path to Exile
3 Thoughtseize
4 Liliana of the Veil
2 Mishra's Bauble
1 Collective Brutality
1 Damnation
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Fulminator Mage
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Stony Silence
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Zealous Persecution
2 Blooming Marsh
2 Forest
1 Godless Shrine
4 Marsh Flats
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Shambling Vent
2 Swamp
1 Temple Garden
2 Treetop Village
1 Twilight Mire
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Windswept Heath
Creatures [13]
4 Dark Confidant
2 Grim Flayer
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Tireless Tracker
2 Abrupt Decay
4 Fatal Push
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Lingering Souls
2 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Thoughtseize
4 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Collective Brutality
2 Damnation
1 Duress
3 Fulminator Mage
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Stony Silence
2 Blooming Marsh
1 Forest
1 Godless Shrine
2 Marsh Flats
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Swamp
1 Plains
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Temple Garden
1 Treetop Village
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Windswept Heath
Creatures [11]
4 Grim Flayer
1 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Siege Rhino
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Collective Brutality
3 Fatal Push
2 Path to Exile
1 Grisly Salvage
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Lingering Souls
3 Thoughtseize
3 Traverse the Ulvenwald
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
4 Mishra's Bauble
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Damnation
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
2 Fulminator Mage
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Shriekmaw
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Nihil Spellbomb
The Landbase is the fundamental part of every deck, and for Abzan 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 > white. The standard amount of lands for Abzan is 23-24 lands for the standard build. In the past, 24 lands was pretty much the standard amount for lands to run in Abzan. However, recently, more and more lists tend to run only 23 lands. The Noble Hierarch build did only run 22 lands, which was popular in 2016-2017. And lastly, there is a Traverse build which runs only 19-20 lands. Before I start going into detail, one highly important thing to mention will be added. When building a manabase, the most important aspect of it is consistancy. You want to be able to cast that Liliana on turn 3, cast a discard spell on turn 1 and so on. As a general guideline (taken from Frank Karsten's Article: "How many lands do you need to consistantly cast your spells?") we need:
Please always consider this numbers when building a manabase for Abzan. The one compromise you can do is going down to 18 black sources, which is sometimes edgy, but sufficient. Note that Fetchlands count as all colours and multiple Field of Ruins count as about one of each colour of your basic lands you have. Among the lands, which are absolutely required to run this deck, are the following (considering a standard 24 land landbase or a traverse 19-20 land landbase):
This is Abzans fetchland of choice. Fetches the 2 most important basic lands and grants us access to our main dual land for mana fixing purposes. It also helps to pump up our Goyfs too. It can't fetch basic Plains, which is actually quite uncommon to run nowadays. Absolutely play 4 copies of this land, there is no exception to this rule.
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. Play the full 4 copies, since we do run Push and need more black than ever.
This is the "worst" fetchland available to us, but sometimes we still need to get extra fetchlands able to fetch for a basic forest. It is most common to run 1 copy, but since most builds are running 23 lands now, you can get away without it and just play the 8 black fetchlands. Sometimes a second copy is run over the fourth Marsh Flats, but I would advise against that.
Since Blooming Marsh has been printed, it saw more and more play in Abzan manabases. This was one needed card to help having a more stable manabase, just like Jund has with Blackcleave Cliffs. Since the most important colours are black and green, and we don't want to cast Path to Exile in the early turns, Blooming Marsh is the perfect fastland for us to have. It was a nice addition to the deck. The optimal number to run is 2-3 copies.
This is one of Abzans main manland of choice in current builds (formerly the main manland was Stirring Wildwood, but since Shambling Vent was printed, it pretty much replaced it partly, since black mana is more important for the deck). Vent provides Abzan a uncounterable threat for when the game goes long (which is usually our main game plan). While Vent costs quite a bit to activate, it gives back precious lifepoints every time it attacks and therefore can take the game in your favor against aggressive strategies and burn if left unanswered. Right now its recommended to run 1-3 copies, with 1-2 copies being the most common choice.
This was formerly Abzans main manland of choice. Since Vent was printed, usually this manland is run less often now, but usually is seen as a 1-of at least. Although only producing the least important colours, Wildwood provides Abzan a threat which is a decent attacker and can hold off flying threats from the opponent, which can sometimes be useful. However, typically the lifegain and black producing properties is more important that Vent is run more often. In builds where you play minimal white cards, Wildwoods is often not included.
Rated in raw powerlevel this is probably the best manland available to the GBx strategies. It is a powerful threat, uncounterable, cheap to activate and tramples over chump blockers. In the past, this manland helped greatly to clock the opponents fast to not give them a chance to claw back into the game. However, one big problem with this land is the mana. It only produces green mana, which is often very tough for a three coloured deck. In the past no copies of that card was run for that reason. Just lately though, builds became popular which do skim on white cards to not be that susceptible to the mana restrictions from Treetop Village. If you decide to run such a build, a few copies of that manland really help to finish your opponents fast.
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.
Another of the shock lands for the deck, Shrine allows us easier access to our BB/WW manacosts and is useful for getting us our turn 1 discard or a later cast Path or Lingering Souls. It is the best land if to support Lingering Souls as well as serving to get BB for Liliana of the Veil.
The final shock land for the deck, Garden gives us better access to our GG/WW 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 in the deck, therefore, even if it doesn't produce our main colour, is still very important against aggressive strategies which attack your lifetotal fast.
Our main basic land, can be fetched with any fetchland commonly run in Abzan except Windswept Heath. 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!
Our other must include basic land, can be fetched by Catacombs/Heath 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/Ghost Quarter effects.
A basic plains is usually run to help playing around Blood Moon, since typically we are quite susceptible to that card. In builds, where white cards are run in less amounts, often there is no plains included in the manabase.
This leaves us with about 23 lands, which are generally considered to be pretty standard right now. However, you can make a decision between some number of flexible lands to run in your deck as well:
Our creaturebase represent our powerful, valuable threats able to take over the game on their own and grind out the opponent. Abzan utilizes the best/most efficient creatures available in the modern format to trump the opponent. Ideally, it is considered best to run about 13 creatures in a Abzan deck, however, sometimes this number varies from 11 to 14.
This is arguably the best creature in modern historically. 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 Abzan deck, without any exceptions.
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 available to us. 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 todays a standard list you will see 4 copies of Bob. In the past, Bob was not really run in Abzan, as it is more a Jund card, but recently it did take over in Abzan builds and became the number one CA engine of choice. That being said, if you run him, run 3-4 copies, or just run no copy at all.
Scooze covers many bases in Abzan, 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 is sometimes great, but can sometimes be mediocre overall. For this reason we do not run that many copies, the exact number depends simply on the metagame. For details please read the sideboard guide!
Grim Flayer instantly became a staple in Abzan builds since its great interaction with Lingering Souls. In the past, Grim Flayer was compared to Dark Confidant, and it has been said that the latter was more of a Jund thing, wheras Grim Flayer was more an Abzan thing. However, recently Abzan builds began to run both cards in different mixtures. Generally Dark Confidant sees a little bit more play. Usually Dark Confidant and Grim Flayer make up about 6-7 creature slots in the deck. Sometimes you see a 3/3 split, but most common is a 4/2 split in favor of Bob. This card helps to pressure the opponent fast and also filter through the top of our library to basically never have bad drawsteps again. It is a must have card in Abzan decks.
Tireless Tracker is a grind machine on its own and can grow into a gigantic threat. Its basically all we ever want from a creature. However, it is quite slow and very vulnerable in the first turns. Usually it is correct to play Tracker as a virtual 4-drop, ensuring a Clue Token with the landdrop on turn 4. If you play a fetchland on that turn, you can potentially ensure 2 Clues right away, which is amazing. However do not fetch preemptively, since opponents can cast a removal spell in response to the fetch trigger and then you wont get a clue from the land hitting the battlefield off of the fetchland. Most lists nowadays run 1-2 copies in the deck.
While Siege Rhino helped to push Abzan above other midrange decks in the format, the card has fallen out of favour a little bit. In the "centralized list", generally made popular by the MTGO grinder "Butakov", 2 copies are still run. More and more lists tend to cut down on white cards to have a more focused gameplan which doesnt involve Rhino. Sometimes the card is great, but sometimes the card is just too slow. If you want to run the card, I would generally not succeed 2 copies.
Besides these core creature suite Abzan has, many other options are possible, which are the following:
In order to support our creatures and disrupt our opponents, Abzan 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.
Strong, cheap, flexible and efficient. Right now, Fatal Push is one of the best removal spells in modern, if not the best. With only 1 mana, it can kill the biggest threats in the modern format, it is needed to play this card in the deck. 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 and Clues, for which reason we always want at least 8 fetchlands in our manabase.
In general, Path is probably the best removal spell in modern when looking at its raw powerlevel. it gets around indestructible, persist, unearth and all dying effects and doesnt care about manacost or power/toughness, all for one mana. Singlehandedly due to this reason, Path is needed to run in certain metas. Before Fatal Push was printed, this was the removal spell of choice for the Abzan deck. However, since the printing of Push, Path sees less play now. And the reason is that Path has a big disadvantage of ramping your opponent. In terms of CA and attrition factors, this does not go well along our main strategy: Cutting opponents down on resources. This is sometimes taken very seriously that no copy of Path is run in the maindeck. One of the most prominent players who does this is Reid Duke. That being said, its not wrong to run Path or not to run it. You have to decide for yourself if you want to run it or not. Generally, I would not run more than 2 copies. Typically 0-2 copies are very common.
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 Abzan. 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.
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 Abzan. 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.
In theory the powerlevel of Traverse is very high. When active, it adds a good amount of flexibility to your deck. However, delirium is a very unreliable mechanic (it depends on the deck and on the matchup, sideboarding etc.) for which reason you cannot just jam the card in the deck and play it. You have to support it to a certain extent. This is the reason there is a Abzan Traverse build. It operates like a normal Abzan deck but adds the elements of having certain silverbullets (creature based) in the deck which can be tutored by traverse. However, this version does not want to go all-in into the strategy also, for which reason we play 3 copies only.
Bauble is one of the most common enablers or supporters for a delirium or traverse based strategy. Therefore it is needed if you want to play the Abzan Traverse build. Bauble is an artifact, making it easier to reach delirium and make traverse an active card. As the card cantrips, it is not that bad of a card to run in a value oriented deck. You can neatly combine Bauble's information to help with discard decisions, or combined with fetchlands, to shuffle unwanted cards away.
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 Abzan deck now, at least as a 3 of, if not a 4 of.
While sometimes very clunky, CB is a very flexible card and has great synergy with Lingering Souls. Usually, if you play the card maindeck, you dont want more than 1 copy, as its raw powerlevel is not that high compared to other cards. If you want flexibility though, you can consider the card. Most commonly this card is run the SB though.
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. Trophy makes this card fall out of favor a little bit. Its an option to keep in mind.
Lingering Souls is the single one card that pushes Abzan over Jund. This card is just pure CA and an incredibly grindy card, which almost always will trade at least 2-for-1. Therefore this card really shine in midrange and attrition mirrors, against aggressive strategies and against Control. If you face a lot of those decks in your meta, play the full playset and be happy. If you have a decent amount of Combo and Big Mana decks in your meta, you might want to consider going down to 3 copies, as Souls is unexciting in those matchups.
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 Trophy being introduced to modern, Pulse falls a little out of favor. It is fine as a 1 of though. Its a good option to keep in mind.
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. Run at least 3 copies, but most common is 4 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, Scoozes, Souls and Flayers 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. 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.
A few conditional and flex spot type of spells are also available to us:
In order to have a starting point for building an Abzan 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 lists 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.
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.
Basically 2 different decklists are common right now. First we have the Abzan Traverse build, which was made popular by Leonardo Giucci at GP Sao Paulo (note that the Sideboard Template is in the respective sideboard section of the primer) and the other is a list cutting down on white cards which was made popular by Reid Duke. All in all, here are the standard decklists which you can start to play with:
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Marsh Flats
2 Windswept Heath
2 Blooming Marsh
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
1 Temple Garden
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Plains
1 Treetop Village
1 Shambling Vent
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Grim Flayer
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Walking Ballista
1 Siege Rhino
Non-creature Spells [30]
3 Fatal Push
2 Path to Exile
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
3 Traverse the Ulvenwald
3 Assassin's Trophy
1 Collective Brutality
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Mishra's Bauble
3 Lingering Souls
In this decklist, some things are more flexible than fixed (well, basically many things are flexible, except for 4 Tarmogoyf) so I'll go over those a little bit more to prevent confusion:
The next template is a version which cuts down on white cards to have a less painful manabase:
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Marsh Flats
1 Windswept Heath
3 Blooming Marsh
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
1 Temple Garden
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Plains
1 Twilight Mire
1 Treetop Village
2 Shambling Vent
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Dark Confidant
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Anafenza, the Foremost
3 Tireless Tracker
Noncreature Spells [23]
4 Fatal Push
2 Path to Exile
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
3 Assassin's Trophy
1 Collective Brutality
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
3 Lingering Souls
Also in this decklist, some things are more flexible than fixed so I'll go over those a little bit more to prevent confusion:
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:
Our deck has certain tools to interact with the opponent, which are the following:
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 Abzan 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:
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.
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.
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Shriekmaw
1 Knight of Autumn
1 Duress
1 Thoughtseize
1 Collective Brutality
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Flaying Tendrils
1 Damnation
1 Golgari Charm
1 Night of Souls' Betrayal
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 Stony Silence
1 Zealous Persecution
1 Damping Sphere
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:
If we take those categories, we will be able to put every common sideboard card in one, or even more of those sections:
Nihil Spellbomb
Grafdigger's Cage
Surgical Extraction
Flaying Tendrils
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Fulminator Mage
Kataki, War's Wage
Flaying Tendrils
Zealous Persecution
Shriekmaw
Collective Brutality
Engineered Explosives
Stony Silence
Damnation
Golgari Charm
Night of Souls' Betrayal
Liliana, the Last Hope
Maelstrom Pulse
Reclamation Sage
Eidolon of Rhetoric
Gaddock Teeg
Damping Sphere
Knight of Autumn
Collective Brutality
Kitchen Finks
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Knight of Autumn
Thoughtseize
Duress
Collective Brutality
Thrun, the Last Troll
Fulminator Mage
Kitchen Finks
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Shriekmaw
Zealous Persecution
Nihil Spellbomb
Engineered Explosives
Damnation
Liliana, the Last Hope
Maelstrom Pulse
Tireless Tracker
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:
Now that we defined the basic types of decks, we will divide our sideboard gauntlet among the different types of decks:
Kitchen Finks
Zealous Persecution
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Stony Silence
Kataki, War's Wage
Flaying Tendrils
Collective Brutality
Engineered Explosives
Damnation
Reclamation Sage
Shriekmaw
Night of Souls' Betrayal
Golgari Charm
Liliana, the Last Hope
Maelstrom Pulse
Knight of Autumn
Fulminator Mage
Zealous Persecution
Shriekmaw
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Flaying Tendrils
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Engineered Explosives
Damnation
Kitchen Finks
Nihil Spellbomb
Liliana, the Last Hope
Maelstrom Pulse
Thrun, the Last Troll
Tireless Tracker
Thrun, the Last Troll
Kitchen Finks
Thoughtseize
Duress
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Fulminator Mage
Collective Brutality
Nihil Spellbomb
Golgari Charm
Maelstrom Pulse
Liliana, the Last Hope
Tireless Tracker
Reclamation Sage
Gaddock Teeg
Thoughtseize
Duress
Collective Brutality
Gaddock Teeg
Nihil Spellbomb
Grafdigger's Cage
Surgical Extraction
Stony Silence
Kataki, War's Wage
Reclamation Sage
Eidolon of Rhetoric
Damping Sphere
Knight of Autumn
Fulminator Mage
Surgical Extraction
Damping Sphere
Maelstrom Pulse
Stony Silence
Duress
Thoughtseize
Collective Brutality
Gaddock Teeg
Damping Sphere
Reclamation Sage
Knight of Autumn
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:
2 Damnation
3 Stony Silence
2 Collective Brutality
2 Fulminator Mage
1 Damping Sphere
1 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Duress
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Collective Brutality
2 Stony Silence
2 Fulminator Mage
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
2 Damnation
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
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:
1 Tarmogoyf
1 Dark Confidant
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Grim Flayer
1 Siege Rhino
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Tasigur, the golden Fang
1 Walking Ballista
Noncreature Spells Maindeck
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Thoughtseize
1 Fatal Push
1 Path to Exile
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Collective Brutality
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Lingering Souls
1 Mishra's Bauble
1 Traverse the Ulvenwald
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Shriekmaw
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
1 Knight of Autumn
1 Duress
1 Thoughtseize
1 Collective Brutality
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Damping Sphere
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Flaying Tendrils
1 Damnation
1 Golgari Charm
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Stony Silence
1 Zealous Persecution
1 Damping Sphere
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: Flaying Tendrils, Damnation and Engineered Explosives.
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.
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 is great in this matchup, especially IOK 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. Generally, 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.
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.
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).
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 (Lingering Souls, 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.
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.
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.
Abzan 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.
Jeskai Control has a really respectful and powerful endgame when unchecked. Jeskai mostly utilizes powerful Planeswalker and its signature manland Celestial Colonnade to finish off. Jeskai is a pain in the ass to deal with. 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 Cryptic Command, hands down. 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. I think its generally a good idea to not seek long games, try not to outgrind them, as you will just loose. I think deploying a quick threat after counters/removal are taken out of their hands with discard, will grant more win percentage than going for a longer game. You want to put them on the backfoot as soon and as often as you can. The help of Lingering Souls really goes a long way in that matchup. You can avoid getting timewalked less often by cards like Remand/Cryptic Command by running less clunky spells. 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. The biggest threat in the late topdeck war is their manland, and Fulminator is great here at dealing with it cleanly.
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.
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. 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.
Dredge is a deck which operates on 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/Nihil Spellbomb. 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. 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 or amalgam 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 discard in early turns is decent against them. If you can snap Cathartic Reunions, Faceless Lootings or Insulent Neonates, then you will slow the opponent down significantly. The last thing to keep in mind is their damage source in the form of Conflagrate. 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.
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. Depenging on the skills of each player, this matchup is more or less favourable. If you are a skilled pilot, this matchup is usually favoured due to Lingering Souls. Grixis Shadow's strenghts ultimately are delve creatures and/or Snapcaster Mage. With your discard, in doubt, you want to target those cards. Do not burn your Paths/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
Bringing in Gy hate is a good idea for that matchup. Generally, Leyline is the best hate we have in terms of effectiveness when you manage to have it on the bf as early as the start of the game. However, there is more to it. Leylines are completely devastating topdecks. Keep that in mind if you want to board them in. I personally like Nihil Spellbomb more as my gy hate for that matchup, as it is not a bad topdeck. I am personally willing to sacrifice the possibility of having Leyline on the board at the start by reducing the number of bad topdecks later in the game. 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.
UW Control can be of the tougher matchups for us, depending on the skilllevel of both players. Reid Duke called that matchup a highly favourable one though. The deck has multiple sweepers to wipe away our threats, counters to counter our threats and Spreading Seas to deny us our mana. 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. Tireless Tracker 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 Lingering Souls. 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 Paths, as you can hit Gideon Jura with that card and also at least kill Snapcaster and Colonnade.
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.
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.
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.
BR Hollow One is a bad 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 Path or Murderous Cut can help here, but its still bad. We are just soo slow and our interaction does not particularly line up very well with their deck. This sideboard strategy showed here is from Reid Duke. In this plan cutting all LoTV is the strategy. I think the stronger plays this deck can make is early Hollow Ones and early delve threats, I am less worried about the small threats where LoTV is bad against, since we have got plenty of targeted removal for them. I feel like LoTV seems good to have here to stop those stronger plays from them. But thats left for further investigation at this point.
Lantern Control is in general not a bad matchup. Reid Duke calls this a close, but favourable matchup. We have a silverbullet card in the form of Stony Silence, and our big threats and many permanent removals make the matchup very winnable. Often we only need one removal for an Ensnaring Bridge and then we can attack for lethal with out powerful threats. Things can get dicy when you get locked down early or if the opponent has Whir of Invention as backup. Usually our discard prevent this, but Leyline of Sanctity can sometimes stop this. This matchup is better with Jund, but with Abzan still winnable at least.
- Take the card you can't deal with
- Take the card that's next on the opponents manacurve
- Take removal that kills Dark Confidant
Now this order might me interchanged, for example if Dark Confidant is key in a given matchup, its almost always correct to just take the removal right away to deploy bob. There is actually a great article of Reid Duke on SCG talking about Thoughtseizing the opponent, so its very much worth it to check it out: Thoughtseize You5
The Rock represents one of the possible variants of known GBx decks. GBx essentially is any midrange deck having green and black as their main colour. Whether the deck splashes for a third colour (like red in Jund or white in Abzan) or not, all those 3 versions are considered to be GBx decks. In this primer, The Rock is presented and described. GBx decks are powerful and efficient decks, which basically all have one property in common: They can beat any opponent if the deck is well tuned and well piloted. In other words, if you put in enough effort, the deck becomes a flexible weapon suited for almost any metagame. Let alone this makes the deck a powerful choice to run. The deck is characterized by so-called goodstuff cards, which are basically strong individual cards, not relying on other cards or any synergies. Each card can operate on its own and get you further ahead in the game. One key to the success of this deck is interaction. If you want to interact with your opponent, stop them from executing their gameplan and win the game with some powerful threats, then Rock is the right choice for you. Since you have to interact with your opponent in every single game, games tend to offer different experiences for the players. The Rock is not a deck which just works with itself and does the same thing every game. Decision making processes and skill are very crucial to be successfull with playing this deck.
The deck is defined by its natural "One for one" approach. By trading with your opponents, you can advance by thin margins step by step, until your endgame threats take over the game. The Rock is a deck that has a big advantage over the three colour version in its ability to interact with the opponents lands. Ghost Quarter and Field of Ruin are both well supported in a two colour manabase. In addition to that, Rock's big advantage is the almost painfree manabase, which really helps getting an advantage over any aggressive strategies.
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 The Rock. Without further ado, let's Grind 'em out!
Below you can find the link to my discord channel, where everyone is invited to discuss about Rock. You can also discuss every other deck I made Primers for in there as well. If you are interested in an downloadable compact SB Guide in printform, you can also find that in my discord!
Modern Rock Discord: https://discord.gg/guSNj7s
Rock Compact SB Guide made by me: https://docdro.id/NC1bINa
I have converted the Primer over to my website, which you can find here: Greatness At Any Cost.
Throughout Magic's history, several decks stand out for having clever or humorous names. Golgari as guild is just the colour combination for this deck though. While some people refer to this deck as "Golgari Midrange", its most recognizable name is "GB Rock" or simply "The Rock". The deck got its name by its creator Sol Malka, which used to play a green black midrange deck in Standard (formerly known as Type 2) around the Urza block. The deck utilized mana acceleration tools like Llanowar Elves or Birds of Paradise which helped accelerating quickly into card advantage generating cards like Yavimaya Granger or Yavimaya Elder. Those cards should help clearing the path to the endgame finisher Phyrexian Plaguelord which took over games all on himself.
There is a common misconception that Sol Malka typically referred to the Plaguelord as "The Rock", which is not true. Sol actually does reference Deranged Hermit as "The Rock". Also the "Millions" refers to Deranged Hermit which was able to produce a big amount of tokens. He said that Phyrexian Plaguelord refers to being the "Undertaker" though: Link.
Decks with the name "The Rock" didn't follow a very close trend as some other decks may have over the years, but it was the most popular name of the Green/Black GB wedge up until now. A deck like Rock doesn't really have a single strategy or plan, it's just a pile of good cards usually. Thus the Rock decks differed from block to block completely.
4 Treetop Village
2 Dust Bowl
6 Swamp
11 Forest
Creatures [25]
4 Birds of Paradise
1 Llanowar Elves
4 Albino Troll
3 Yavimaya Elder
4 Yavimaya Granger
4 Deranged Hermit
1 Woodripper
4 Phyrexian Plaguelord
4 Duress
2 Vampiric Tutor
1 Tranquil Grove
3 Rapid Decay
2 Diabolic Servitude
The biggest shift of the Rock was when it was transferred to Extended and Apocalypse brought Pernicious Deed and Spiritmonger to the archetype. Michael Pustilnik won the GP Las Vegas 2001 with a Rock deck.
4 Bayou
2 Dust Bowl
8 Forest
5 Swamp
4 Treetop Village
Creatures [22]
4 Birds of Paradise
1 Phyrexian Plaguelord
4 Spike Feeder
2 Spike Weaver
4 Spiritmonger
3 Wall of Roots
4 Yavimaya Elder
1 Choke
4 Duress
1 Living Death
4 Pernicious Deed
2 Phyrexian Furnace
1 Reccuring Nightmare
2 Vampiric Tutor
1 Choke
3 Diabolic Edict
1 Dust Bowl
2 Emerald Charm
1 Massacre
1 Phyrexian Furnace
1 Rank and File
1 Stench of Evil
1 Tsunami
2 Uktabi Orangutan
1 Volrath's Stronghold
As Cabal Therapy, Eternal Witness or Ravenous Baloth were printed, they quickly got adopted in the Rock decks.
8 Forest
6 Swamp
3 Treetop Village
4 Llanowar Wastes
1 Dust Bowl
1 Volrath's Stronghold
Creatures [20]
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Wall of Blossoms
3 Ravenous Baloth
3 Eternal Witness
3 Sakura-Tribe Elder
2 Troll Ascetic
1 Withered Wretch
3 Smother
3 Vampiric Tutor
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Pernicious Deed
1 Recurring Nightmare
1 Cranial Extraction
1 Chainer's Edict
3 Naturalize
3 Duress
4 Engineered Plague
1 Rude Awakening
2 Chainer's Edict
2 Coffin Purge
Some lists also had different takes by including powerful equipments like Sword of Fire and Ice or Umizawa's Jitte.
Soon enough with the printing of powerful dual lands in the form of Shocklands with the support of fetchlands, splashing a third colour was more easy to do. Lists started to adapt a little white here and there, which should mark first little steps into the Junk midrange deck category.
4 Windswept Heath
2 Polluted Delta
2 Yavimaya Coast
1 Watery Grave
1 Temple Garden
1 Swamp
1 Plains
1 Island
5 Forest
4 Overgrown Tomb
Creatures [16]
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Eternal Witness
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
1 Withered Wretch
1 Ravenous Baloth
1 Loxodon Hierarch
1 Genesis
1 Carven Caryatid
4 Putrefy
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Gifts Ungiven
3 Smother
3 Living Wish
2 Pernicious Deed
1 Duress
1 Haunting Echoes
1 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Withered Wretch
2 Naturalize
2 Duress
1 Carven Caryatid
1 Dimir House Guard
1 Eternal Witness
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Loxodon Hierarch
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
1 Viridian Shaman
1 Stabilizer
1 Llanowar Wastes
The deck began to evolve and ignited the possibility to create new archetype, such as Junk or Abzan and later Jund by different splashing colours. Rock overall remains a solid strategy still up to this day and with the printing of Field of Ruin it got some new tools to play around with.
The Landbase is the fundamental part of every deck, and for Rock 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. I often see people not paying enough attention to the landbase! We have high requirements for coloured mana in order to cast our spells, and therefore its extremeley important to have the required amounts of mana sources for the deck. The Rock utilized an advantage of being able to run colourless lands which can destroy opposing lands. By doing so though, the manabase gets really tight! And you don't want to stumble due to an improper manabase. Live by this mantra in mind:
Please read through my article "Building A Consistant Manabase" at MTGRock.com, it explains every detail needed to build a proper manabase for Rock. I will only state the most important facts here to keep things simple. Generally, considering colour requirements: black > green. The standard amount of lands for Rock is 23-25 lands. Whether to run 23 or 25 lands, simply depends on the manacurve. Before I start going into detail, one highly important thing to mention will be added. When building a manabase, the most important aspect of it is consistancy. You want to be able to cast that Liliana on turn 3, cast a discard spell on turn 1 and so on. As a general guideline (taken from Frank Karsten's Article: "How many lands do you need to consistantly cast your spells?") we need:
Please always consider this numbers when building a manabase for Rock. Among the lands, which are absolutely required to run this deck, are the following:
This is Rocks fetchland of choice. Fetches the 2 basic lands and grants us access to our dual land for mana fixing purposes. It also helps to pump up our Goyfs too. Absolutely play 4 copies of this land, there is no exception to this rule.
Marsh Flats sometimes sees play as additional fetchland, sometimes as a one of, sometime as a two of. Technically it doesn't matter which black fetchland you choose here. It can't get basic Forest though, for which reason we always want to maximize Verdant Catacombs first before playing this land. This land helps to add both a black and green source to our manasources, which is a needed thing to have if you want to run many colourless lands or Treetop Villages.
This land sees sometimes play, but only as a one of usually. Its a different fetchland which is able to fetch for a basic forest as well. Technically it doesn't matter which green fetchland you choose for this slot. But always max out first on Catacombs. This land helps to add both a black and green source to our manasources, which is a needed thing to have if you want to run many colourless lands or Treetop Villages.
Blooming Marsh is an auto 4-of for our deck. We need to have access to painfree green and black for any turn between turn 1 and 3. It really helps casting our spells on time and while also retaining lifetotals against aggressive strategies. In any manabase of Rock you want 4 copies of this land.
Hissing Quagmire is our main creature land we are running. The reason for that is actually purely based on mana sources. We need the black sources for our deck in order to support colourless lands as well. Usually for that reason you see about 3 to 4 copies in the deck. It is possible to run fewer copies and more treetop villages, if you decide to cut down on colourless lands. But always, follow the rules about basic mana sources and basic manabase construction from my article.
Treetop Village is the best manland available to any GBx deck. However, as it only produces one colour (and also not the maincolour, which is always black) its quite tough to play in more than 2 or 3 copies. It puts too much pressure on the manabase. However, it is possible to run up to 3-4 copies of that card if you reduce the amount of colourless lands you run. But do not mix both. You don't want to be erring on the greedy side of things. And its up to you if you want to sacrifice colourless lands in order to have more treetops.
The big reason why fetchlands are so good. The shockland is a solid unconditional land, which always helps with developing our mana. We don't want too many copies of this land as the damage taken adds up, but 2 copies is a fine number which is the total standard.
Since we are only a two colour deck, basics can be played in a bigger amount compared to other GBx decks. Especially if we play Field of Ruin in our deck, a proper amount of basics is required. However, even if we don't play FoR, at least play 3 Swamps in your deck. If you play FoR, at least play 4 copies. Sometimes it is seen to run 5 copies to make sure we have 18 black sources total. The most common number for the standard build is 4 copies though.
The second basic we need to have in our deck. In general we always want 2 copies of this land. This is overall enough to be fetched a reasonable number of times, but not too much to get screwed in the opening few turns, as a basic Forest is not the best land to have here.
Twilight Mire is another fantastic tool to have in our manabase. It is a bit awkward in the opening hands and in the early turns, but really powerful when we have one or two other lands to go with it. Twilight Mire is especially strong in the Rock, as all our other lands enable Twilight Mire except for the colourless lands only. You can decide to not run it, but usually you will find one copy being played.
Having a description of 0-4 copies might sound a bit strange at first. But as the desire to run colourless lands are quite different, you can basically decide to not run any of them if you wish, or decide to run only 1-2 copies, play the full playset, or go with Ghost Quarter instead. One remark should be given here though. Overall it is pretty much impossible to support 4 Field of Ruins in a 24 landbase only. You need to have 25 lands in order to fulfill your mana source requirements. Field of Ruin as a land really shines in attrition based matchups where utility lands and creature lands are being played. FoR is also decent enough against Big Mana strategies as well. But for that purpose specifically, Ghost Quarter is usually stronger.
Having a description of 0-4 copies might sound a bit strange at first. But as the desire to run colourless lands are quite different, you can basically decide to not run any of them if you wish, or decide to run only 1-2 copies, play the full playset, or go with Field of Ruin instead. One remark should be given here though. Overall it is pretty much impossible to support 4 Ghost Quarter in a 24 landbase only. You need to have 25 lands in order to fulfill your mana source requirements. Ghost Quarter as a land really shines in Big Mana matchups where speed and early interaction matters a lot. It is also pretty strong against some aggro or combo strategies, as it doesn't require any activation cost as opposed to FoR.
Our creaturebase represent our powerful, valuable threats able to take over the game on their own and grind out the opponent. Rock 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 Rock deck, however, sometimes this number varies.
This is arguably the best creature in modern historically. 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 Rock deck, without any exceptions.
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 available to us. Bob especially shines in matchups where the opponent is trying something unfair. This way you have a great tool to dig for answers and disruption to prevent that from happening. 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 todays a standard list you will see 4 copies of Bob. It is possible to run only 3 copies in Rock, which would be a small hedge against aggressive strategies. Here drawing multiple Bobs can be hurting. However, having one copy in aggro matchups is still fine! Except for Burn of that matter.
Scooze covers many bases in Rock, 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, 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 is sometimes great, but can sometimes be mediocre overall. For this reason we do not run that many copies, the exact number depends simply on the metagame. For details please read the sideboard guide!
Tireless Tracker is a grind machine on its own and can grow into a gigantic threat. Its basically all we ever want from a creature. However, it is quite slow and very vulnerable in the first turns. Usually it is correct to play Tracker as a virtual 4-drop, ensuring a Clue Token with the landdrop on turn 4. If you play a fetchland on that turn, you can potentially ensure 2 Clues right away, which is amazing. However do not fetch preemptively, since opponents can cast a removal spell in response to the fetch trigger and then you wont get a clue from the land hitting the battlefield off of the fetchland. Please, please, always remember, Tracker =/= Bob. In my article "The Tireless Tracker Misconception" you can read all about that.
Kalitas is a strong creature which shines against GY based creature combo decks such as Dredge, aggro decks in general as well in midrange mirrors. He is only weak to control and to a certain extent against Big Mana. Specifically against Tron he is still alright though, as he is able to deal with a Wurmcoil Engine pretty easily for example. Its a nice option to run, but not a must. If you decide to run it, cut a Tireless Tracker for it.
Besides these core creature suite Rock has, many other options are possible, which are the following:
In order to support our creatures and disrupt our opponents, Rock 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.
Strong, cheap, flexible and efficient. Right now, Fatal Push is one of the best removal spells in modern, if not the best. With only 1 mana, it can kill the biggest threats in the modern format, it is needed to play this card in the deck. 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/GQ and Clues. Since we do not have any other comparable one mana removal spell, we need to have 4 copies of this card for creature based matchups.
A very solid, but conditional, CMC 1 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 Rock. 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.
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 Rock. 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.
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 Rock deck now, at least as a 3 of, if not a 4 of.
While sometimes very clunky, CB is a very flexible card that we need in our deck to supplement the lack of cheap removal spells. It helps against aggro, burn, control, combo. I think it is correct to play at least 1 copy maindeck, but you can run up to 2 copies if you want.
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. Trophy makes this card fall out of favor a little bit. Its still a good enough card to run. Sometimes you can even run 2 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 Trophy being introduced to modern, Pulse falls a little out of favor. It is fine as a 1 of though and most of the time you will see it as a 1 of in decklists. But its fine to skip or transfer to the SB now.
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 potent 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. LoTV is a card that you sometimes want close to none copies of in certain matchups. This is especially true for go-wide strategies. If you expect many of those, it is better to just run 3 copies. Otherwise run the full 4.
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, Scoozes 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, Kalitas, Goyf and Tracker 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. 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.
A few conditional and flex spot type of spells are also available to us:
In order to have a starting point for building a Rock 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 lists 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.
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.
Here is a link to my personal current decklist, which I keep updated as often as possible: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/1440365#paper
Basically 2 different standard decklists are common right now. First we have the general FoR build, which seems to be the most used one and standard one of the two and the other is the most current list of the creator of Rock himself, Sol Malka. All in all, here are the standard decklists which you can start to play with:
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Blooming Marsh
2 Overgrown Tomb
4 Swamp
2 Forest
3 Hissing Quagmire
1 Treetop Village
3 Field of Ruin
1 Twilight Mire
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
3 Scavenging Ooze
2 Tireless Tracker
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Non-creature Spells [22]
4 Fatal Push
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
3 Assassin's Trophy
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Collective Brutality
1 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
The next template is the current version of Sol Malka
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Marsh Flats
1 Windswept Heath
4 Blooming Marsh
2 Overgrown Tomb
3 Swamp
2 Forest
3 Hissing Quagmire
3 Ghost Quarter
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
3 Scavenging Ooze
1 Eternal Witness
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
2 Tireless Tracker
Noncreature Spells [22]
2 Fatal Push
2 Mishra's Bauble
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
1 Traverse the Ulvenwald
3 Assassin's Trophy
2 Collective Brutality
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Maelstrom Pulse
3 Liliana of the Veil
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:
Our deck has certain tools to interact with the opponent, which are the following:
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 Rock 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:
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.
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.
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Obstinate Baloth
Noncreature Spells
1 Duress
1 Thoughtseize
1 Collective Brutality
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Leyline of the Void
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Flaying Tendrils
1 Damnation
1 Golgari Charm
1 Choke
1 Deathmark
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Cast Down
1 Gaze of Granite
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Damping Sphere
1 Nissa, Vital Force
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:
If we take those categories, we will be able to put every common sideboard card in one, or even more of those sections:
Nihil Spellbomb
Grafdigger's Cage
Surgical Extraction
Flaying Tendrils
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Leyline of the Void
Fulminator Mage
Choke
Flaying Tendrils
Deathmark
Cast Down
Collective Brutality
Engineered Explosives
Damnation
Golgari Charm
Gaze of Granite
Liliana, the Last Hope
Maelstrom Pulse
Damping Sphere
Slaughter Pact
Collective Brutality
Kitchen Finks
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Obstinate Baloth
Thoughtseize
Duress
Collective Brutality
Thrun, the Last Troll
Fulminator Mage
Kitchen Finks
Nissa, Vital Force
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Obstinate Baloth
Slaughter Pact
Nihil Spellbomb
Engineered Explosives
Damnation
Liliana, the Last Hope
Maelstrom Pulse
Tireless Tracker
Deathmark
Gaze of Granite
Cast Down
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:
Now that we defined the basic types of decks, we will divide our sideboard gauntlet among the different types of decks:
Kitchen Finks
Cast Down
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Slaughter Pact
Deathmark
Flaying Tendrils
Collective Brutality
Engineered Explosives
Damnation
Gaze of Granite
Obstinate Baloth
Golgari Charm
Liliana, the Last Hope
Maelstrom Pulse
Fulminator Mage
Deathmark
Obstinate Baloth
Nissa, Vital Force
Flaying Tendrils
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Engineered Explosives
Damnation
Kitchen Finks
Nihil Spellbomb
Liliana, the Last Hope
Maelstrom Pulse
Thrun, the Last Troll
Tireless Tracker
Gaze of Granite
Cast Down
Thrun, the Last Troll
Kitchen Finks
Thoughtseize
Duress
Nissa, Vital Force
Fulminator Mage
Collective Brutality
Nihil Spellbomb
Golgari Charm
Maelstrom Pulse
Liliana, the Last Hope
Tireless Tracker
Choke
Obstinate Baloth
Thoughtseize
Duress
Collective Brutality
Leyline of the Void
Nihil Spellbomb
Grafdigger's Cage
Surgical Extraction
Damping Sphere
Fulminator Mage
Surgical Extraction
Damping Sphere
Maelstrom Pulse
Duress
Thoughtseize
Collective Brutality
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:
2 Damnation
1 Collective Brutality
1 Nissa, Vital Force
2 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Deathmark
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Duress
1 Choke
1 Damping Sphere
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Fulminator Mage
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Duress
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Damnation
1 Golgari Charm
1 Slaughter Pact
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:
1 Tarmogoyf
1 Dark Confidant
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Grim Flayer
1 Eternal Witness
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Noncreature Spells Maindeck
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Thoughtseize
1 Fatal Push
1 Cast Down
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Collective Brutality
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Assassin's Trophy
1 Mishra's Bauble
1 Traverse the Ulvenwald
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Tireless Tracker
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Obstinate Baloth
1 Duress
1 Thoughtseize
1 Collective Brutality
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Leyline of the Void
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Flaying Tendrils
1 Damnation
1 Golgari Charm
1 Choke
1 Deathmark
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Cast Down
1 Gaze of Granite
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Damping Sphere
1 Nissa, Vital Force
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 hardly cards which have higher CMC than 3. For this reason, Inquisition of Kozilek is mostly 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. Four main choices do we have: Flaying Tendrils, Damnation and Engineered Explosives or Gaze of Granite.
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.
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 is great in this matchup, especially IOK 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. Generally, 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.
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.
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).
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 (Lingering Souls, 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.
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.
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.
Abzan 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.
Jeskai Control has a really respectful and powerful endgame when unchecked. Jeskai mostly utilizes powerful Planeswalker and its signature manland Celestial Colonnade to finish off. Jeskai is a pain in the ass to deal with. 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 Cryptic Command, hands down. 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. I think its generally a good idea to not seek long games, try not to outgrind them, as you will just loose. I think deploying a quick threat after counters/removal are taken out of their hands with discard, will grant more win percentage than going for a longer game. You want to put them on the backfoot as soon and as often as you can. The help of Lingering Souls really goes a long way in that matchup. You can avoid getting timewalked less often by cards like Remand/Cryptic Command by running less clunky spells. 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. The biggest threat in the late topdeck war is their manland, and Fulminator is great here at dealing with it cleanly.
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.
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. 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.
Dredge is a deck which operates on 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. 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 or amalgam 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 discard in early turns is decent against them. If you can snap Cathartic Reunions, Faceless Lootings or Insulent Neonates, then you will slow the opponent down significantly. The last thing to keep in mind is their damage source in the form of Conflagrate. 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.
Grixis Death Shadow is one of the most popular versions of DS decks out there and its been quite successful recently. I think we are the control player in this matchup as we do generally grind a bit more. Depenging on the skills of each player, this matchup is more or less favourable. Grixis Shadow's strenghts 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. Generally, Leyline is the best hate we have in terms of effectiveness when you manage to have it on the bf as early as the start of the game. However, there is more to it. Leylines are completely devastating topdecks. Keep that in mind if you want to board them in. I personally like Nihil Spellbomb more as my gy hate for that matchup, as it is not a bad topdeck. I am personally willing to sacrifice the possibility of having Leyline on the board at the start by reducing the number of bad topdecks later in the game. Next to this, removal and grindy cards are a good choice.
UW Control can be of the tougher matchups for us, depending on the skilllevel of both players. The plan is to get as many 2-for-1s as possible. A very resiliant plan is to resolve a Liliana of the Veil and start stripping resources out of the UW Control player's hand for that reason. Tireless Tracker is also really good vs Control, as it likely trades 2-for-1 at least. Try to really trade resources in your favor. Assassin's Trophy does help to not die to an resolved PW on an empty board quite a bit.
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, Nissa for having access to a grind machine, LtLH as threat and recursion, and Pulse for their PWs and Detention Spheres.
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.
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.
Ponza is a deck which can get us sometimes, if we happen to be on the draw and don't have early interaction. The fact that Blood Moon and Chalice is not the best against us the matchup is usually favourable. If we survive the first few turns either by having discard spells or removal for their mana creatures, then we are in a good shape. Often a Tarmogoyf alone can win the matchup as Ponza has a hard time dealing with it. When it comes down to a topdeck war, we are also miles ahead as Ponza has a huge number of dead draws. Overall this matchup is very favourable.
BR Hollow One is a bad 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 Path or Murderous Cut can help here, but its still bad. We are just soo slow and our interaction does not particularly line up very well with their deck. This sideboard strategy showed here is from Reid Duke. In this plan cutting all LoTV is the strategy.
Bogles is usually a favourable matchup, as we have many great ways to interact with the opponent. The only thing that is pretty much dead against them is our targeted removal. Their scariest card out of the SB is Leyline of Sanctity, which shuts off our discard spells and LoTV edict effects. With Assassin's Trophy being introduced into the gauntlet, we have more ways to deal with a Leyline now. The sideboarding is fairly unspectacular as we have very obvious choices for cards to cut.
Infect is a very favourable matchup in general. Due to the amount of live cards we have, and them being really impactful, Infect has a hard time winning through our interaction. They have some scary tools though. There is the possibility to face a Shaper's Sanctuary which makes our removal spells less of a problem for them. Another thing to keep in mind is Spellskite which can protect their infect creatures. Lastly, you should expect Invisible Stalker out of the sidebaord, which is able to dodge all our targeted removal spells. With Stalker, they also shift their strategy to not kill via Infect, but via regular damage instead.
Against Infect, you need to be aware of the fact that usually fighting over a creature mid-combat is wrong. The first person to initiate is gonna be disadvantaged. Generally, if you have a removal spell for a creature, either do it on your own turn, or at the end of the opponents turn, so that pump and protection spells won't kill you. Often times you are actually trading a removal spell for a protection spell, which is very fine! Its a 1-for-1 exchange, and if you can make sure that you can prevent them from killing you with a single removal spell, then its fine to trade a second removal spell for a protection spell. And you should not be too scared about taking a few poison counters. Play mindful and conservatively, don't risk anything unneccesarily, and you should be fine.
GW Company, or also known as GW Value Town, is a midrange deck which seeks to grind out opponents with resiliant and sticky creatures, as well as powerful utility lands and impactful spells like Collected Company. For that reason, the matchup is usually very tough for us. We are naturally seeking for 1-for-1 trades and then win with impactful CA engines like Tracker or Bob, but GW Company has many creatures which naturally trade 2-for-1 like Voice of Resurgance. For that reason we are in a tough spot if we cannot establish a solid CA engine. For that reason strong sweepers like Damnation can really help to get ahead in the game. But overall it is tough fighting through all their grindy creatures.
KCI is a resiliant and fast artifact based combo deck, which evolves around the engine card Klark-Clan Ironworks. The goal of this deck is to create infinite loops which all evolve their engine creatures Scrap Trawler and Myr Retriever. The interaction to notice here is that during casting a spell (like a Chromatic Sphere), when you have both those mentioned creatures on the BF, you can use KCI to pay for the spell and sacrifice both those creatures for the spell. This creates a situation where both creatures enter the GY at the same time and therefore Myr Retriever is able to recur the Scrap Trawler who just went into the GY alongside Myr Retriever. Scap Trawler is then able to recur the Myr and as well as another artifact, as Scap Trawler generates 2 triggers, one from itself and one from the Myr when sacrificing them to KCI. That way you can recur Mox Opal or another 1 mana artifact, which enables to get infinite mana with Opal and draw infinite cards with a Chromatic Star or Sphere. The deck is susceptible to GY hate for that reason. The goal is to disrupt their combo with discard and a fast clock, as well as GY hate and potential removal spells for their artifact creatures. Also note, post sideboarding most KCI decks will have Sai, Master Thopterist as alternative wincon in the deck. For this reason, having all a healthy amount of removal is surely not wrong.
Elves is a creature based swarm decks with combo elements in it. While single creatures of their deck are not very scary, multiples of them can quickly overwhelm you. Especially when payoff cards like Ezuri, Renegade Leader or Elvish Clancaller are involved. Fighting them with our one for one removal spells will be a hard mission to accomplish, as this deck runs so many creatures. This deck can basically win out of nowhere, as one overrun pump from Ezuri quickly turns a bunch of elves into a deadly horde. In addition to that this deck often splashes for black to support Shaman of the Pack which provides fearful reach. In order to beat this deck, we need to be careful of our lifetotals at all times. Generally we don't loose life in incremental ways, which a normal aggro deck would do, but if we fall below a certain lifetotal (which may differ) you can be dead by one swing or one Shaman of the Pack trigger. Sweepers and recurring removal in the form or Liliana, the Last Hope are phenominal in this matchup. Basically the go-to strategy for sideboading against this deck is to get every card that can kill a creature and bring it into the maindeck. The only exception would be Liliana of the Veil, she is mostly too expensive for your troubles and you are trading down on mana and tempo, which is really bad. She gets better on the play though.
Bant Spirits is a tempo based aggro control deck which is able to establish a quick clock through cards like Supreme Phantom or Geist of Saint Draft while disrupting the opponent with cards like Mausoleum Wanderer, Spell Queller or Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. Being very careful with our removal spells against them is very crucial. You need to play around Spell Queller if possible and accomplish to keep the board as clean as possible. For that reason I think having cheap interaction in the form of IOK is very important. If you clunk up your deck too much, Spell Queller becomes to impactful and we get tempoed out. Cards like Selfless Spirit make our removal spells worse, except for Collective Brutality and Liliana, the Last Hope. This is one big reason why those cards are strong in that matchup. CB has a nice bonus of getting to discard a Collected Company alongside removing a creature. Dark Confidant and LoTV are cards which are weak on the draw, but good to strong on the play. I would side out more or all copies out on the draw for that reason. We don't want to miss our landdrops against an tempo driven aggro deck, for which reason we keep our lands, even if we are on the draw.
Izzet Phoenix is a tempo based aggro deck similar to delver decks. 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 problematic cards to watch out are Thing in the Ice and Crackling Drake which can easily win the game by themselves if they stay on the battlefield for one turn or so. Therefore we want to have multiple ways of destroying those threats. The deck is usually very threat light, which means discard can help to punch a hole in their sequencing which gives us a big advantage.
- Take the card you can't deal with
- Take the card that's next on the opponents manacurve
- Take removal that kills Dark Confidant
Now this order might me interchanged, for example if Dark Confidant is key in a given matchup, its almost always correct to just take the removal right away to deploy bob. There is actually a great article of Reid Duke on SCG talking about Thoughtseizing the opponent, so its very much worth it to check it out: Thoughtseize You2
https://mtgrock.com/2019/01/14/play-patterns-advanced-sideboarding/
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Concerning the Amulet matchup, the thing to keep in mind is that they will and should board out Amulets against you after game 1. The reason is, that as we are not a very fast deck, they don't need to be fast either (as Amulet essentially only generates tempo and acceleration). So, I would personally not bother about Amulets after Game 1. However, this is not a complete clear thing to do also from the AMulet players perspective. Some people still might bring them in. In such as case I like to keep Decays if you run them. Decays are more reliable than Push to kill an Azusa, and Decay can also kill Scout and the Amulet if they really leave them in. I think from our deck the weakest cards are Push and Scooze. Push does kill Scout and Azusa, but I think most of the time those are not the realy problematic cards. The cards you loose to is the Titan itself or Hornet Queen. We want all our TS, Trophies, LoTV and ideally Damnation for potential killing of the endgame threats. The goal of Amulet is just to go bigger than we do in chaining titans. We want to disrupt them and drop a fast goyf before they can cast Hornet queen.
I would probably keep CB, as you can kill Azusa, Scout and also take Pacts/Stirrings potentially.
EE is only really appealing to clear up Hornet Queen Tokens imo. Other than that I think EE is not worth it.
Push is rather weak, but not sure how many to cut. I think somewhere around 1-2 copies to cut is correct. I guess having access to a couple copies is nice.
Yeah I would cut Kalitas and 1 Ooze also.
The matchup is unfavourable for us though.
Good luck!
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Mardu Pyromancer represents a flexible and powerful deck, which can potentially grind out any opponent, if the deck is well tuned. Because of its grindy nature, the deck operates best in slower metas and creature driven metas. However, over the past years the colour combination has gotten more and more tools to fight combo and big mana matchups as well. It is an excellent deck choice. Mardu Pyromancer shines in one specific aspect very much: It is a very consistant deck, including a high amount of card selection while still performing well in the card advantage aspect of the game. This deck creates high synergy between combining the most effective disruption spells backed up by the most effecient removal spells with its characteristic powerful threats, which can bury the opponents in card advantage. Besides all this, it is also extremely efficient, most spells in the deck cost 1 or 2 mana only. And if that was not enough, the deck can get some free wins singelhandedly through Blood Moon. With having access to white, Mardu Pyromancer gets powerful sideboard options, which can help to beat any opponent in a given meta. It is highly customizable in that sense.
Mardu Pyromancer is a deck of interaction at heart. If you want to disrupt your opponent and prevent the opponent from proceeding their gameplan, then Mardu Pyromancer 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. Besides all that, the manabase in this deck is pretty painfree, which helps naturally against all aggressive strategies in the modern format.
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. In fact, this deck could be treated as being a control deck as well, besides its midrangy nature. Often, games play out that way. However, this deck does not lack on winconditions like control decks do. Therefore its a perfect way to be able to play control-ish strategies combined with midrange elements as well. 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 Mardu Pyromancer. Without further ado, let's go ahead!
Below you can find the link to my discord channel, where everyone is invited to discuss about Mardu. You can also discuss every other deck I made Primers for in there as well.
Modern Mardu Pyromancer Discord: https://discord.gg/guSNj7s
One of the many problems Mardu had, was its inability to establish a realible and fast clock. The missing of Tarmogoyf really hurt there, and in the past, people always tried to replace Tarmogoyf with any similar creature in red, black or white. Cards like Hero of Bladehold, or Brimaz, King of Oreskos where among the most common ones. However, as you can imagine, both cards just didn't replace the strength of a classy Tarmogoyf. And basically every creature played in Mardu always kept diving into the token aspect of the colour combination. Mardu as a clan, typically is a great token deck. Obviously it has access to every card a typical BW Token deck has access to, as well as one of the "powerful 2 drop" cycle in red: Young Pyromancer. This always meant Mardu could go wide, but hardly big. And in the past this led to the so-called "X-1" problem, which means, that most of the creatures typically run in Mardu had only one toughness (any token, YP, Dark Confidant, Abbot of the Keral Keep) and this meant Mardu was very susceptible to any kind of sweeper. As Tron back in the days ran Pyroclasm Mardu was completely blown out by that. Even if it sounds crazy, it was the truth.
To summarize, Mardu historically was a good go-wide deck, with a real good ability to grind, but it lacked a good clock and was very susceptible to sweepers. All that combined meant it had an abysmal Tron matchup (which already was a very tough beat for a modern deck at that time) and was generally weak to fast combo decks. However, over the time, powerful new tools where printed for the archetype, which started to strengthen the deck.
The first dab in the Pyromancer kind of strategy was probably through the BR Blitzkrieg strategy. Basically this version was a Blood Moon deck utilizing similar cards like Mardu as their red and black spells, but leaving out on white completely and go in for the full Blood Moon plan. Finishers like Demigod of Revenge was commonly seen. A similar iteration to the Blitzkrieg deck was the Rat Moon deck, which looked pretty close to a now Mardu Pyromancer version. It still played no white spells and had the full 4 Blood Moon, but had Bedlam Reveler already in it.
Speaking of which, I think the most important printing the deck has gotten access to is Bedlam Reveler. Although Mardu didn't explode in popularity right away, it did take a few years before one name frequently kept popping up in magic online leagues 5-0 finishes: Selfeisek. Selfeisek managed to achieve many 5-0 runs before anybody knew about the deck in the first place. By that, a new version of the deck was used, which essentially was the first version of Mardu Pyromancer. Originally, more white was played (to be able to include Lightning Helixes) and more creatures (typically a pair of Monastery Swiftspear) was played by Selfeisek. Interestingly enough, while most Pros and most people playing the deck now dropped both those mentioned cards for good, Selfeisek keeps getting some 5-0 results and still holds on to Helixes.
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Marsh Flats
3 Mountain
2 Sacred Foundry
1 Swamp
3 Wooded Foothills
Creatures [10]
4 Bedlam Reveler
2 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Young Pyromancer
1 Burst Lightning
1 Dreadbore
4 Faithless Looting
2 Forked Bolt
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Lightning Helix
4 Lingering Souls
2 Terminate
3 Thoughtseize
1 Blood Moon
2 Blood Moon
1 Dragon's Claw
2 Fatal Push
1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Pithing Needle
1 Shattering Spree
2 Wear / Tear
Mardu Pyromancer really got heavy fame during the Pro Tour Rivals of Ixalan, which was the first modern Pro Tour after a long time. Famous Pros like Gerry Thompson played the deck to a great record, which caught some attention. Unfortunately, this short period of fame was again interrrupted by the shortly after unbanning of Bloodbraid Elf and Jace the Mind Sculptor. People immediatly switched back to Jund and blue based control decks, which let Mardu Pyromancer sink again in popularity. As the modern format warped, a few particular really strong decks started to became popular, namely Humans as well as Hollow One. Due to the high consistancy and linear gameplan, a deck like Jund playing BBE or a deck playing Jace just wasn't good enough. People did realize that it is important to interact as early as possible and a 4 drop which is dependant on RNG (BBE) was not good enough to keep up with that linear gameplan. So Mardu slowly took up some steam again. Mardu Pyromancer is a highly consistant deck, which can operate on a low land count and is able to efficiently interact with the opponent. All this combined led Mardu Pyromancer to the position it is today, probably the best midrange deck in the modern format like basically never before. Below are some top finishing decklists with different versions:
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Marsh Flats
3 Mountain
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Swamp
Creatures [8]
4 Bedlam Reveler
4 Young Pyromancer
Noncreature Spells [32]
2 Collective Brutality
1 Dreadbore
4 Faithless Looting
2 Fatal Push
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lingering Souls
1 Manamorphose
1 Terminate
3 Thoughtseize
2 Blood Moon
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Anger of the Gods
2 Collective Brutality
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Liliana of the Veil
2 Molten Rain
2 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Surgical Extraction
2 Wear / Tear
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Marsh Flats
2 Mountain
1 Plains
1 Sacred Foundry
2 Swamp
Creatures [8]
4 Bedlam Reveler
4 Young Pyromancer
3 Collective Brutality
1 Dreadbore
4 Faithless Looting
3 Fatal Push
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Lingering Souls
3 Thoughtseize
3 Blood Moon
1 Collective Brutality
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
3 Surgical Extraction
3 Wear / Tear
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Marsh Flats
2 Mountain
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Swamp
Creatures [8]
4 Bedlam Reveler
4 Young Pyromancer
Noncreature Spells [32]
4 Faithless Looting
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
2 Fatal Push
1 Manamorphose
1 Dreadbore
1 Terminate
2 Collective Brutality
4 Lingering Souls
3 Kolaghan's Command
1 Liliana of the Veil
2 Blood Moon
1 Collective Brutality
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Goblin Rabblemaster
2 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
3 Molten Rain
1 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Wear // Tear
The Landbase is the fundamental part of every deck, and for Mardu Pyromancer 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: red > black > white. Among the lands, which are absolutely required to run this deck, are the following (considering a standard 20 land landbase):
This is the decks fetchland of choice. Fetches both of our most important basic lands and grants us access to our shock lands for mana fixing purposes. It can't fetch basic plains but most lists don't run basic plains anyway. Absolutely play 4 copies of this land, there is no exception to this rule.
One half of our main secondary fetchlands for the deck. Almost as good as Bloodstained Mire as it can fetch all of our Shock lands as well as our basic swamps, it can't fetch up our basic mountains though. Still this is the second best fetchland available to us, since requirements for fetching for swamp are generally higher than fetching for mountains due to Blood Moon. Play at least 3 copies, but many lists do run the full 4 copies as well.
This is the "worst" fetchland available to us, but still a good option to get extra fetchlands able to fetch for a basic plains and mountain. Since red is the most important colour in the deck, this land is sometimes run to be able to fetch for a basic mountain more often. So it comes down whether you want an extra mountain fetching land or if you are fine with 4 Marsh Flats. So, run this in place of the fourth Marsh Flats if you run it.
Cliffs is outstanding for Mardu (in the first 3 turns at least), It provides us with our most commonly required opening colors (black for discard, red for bolt/looting) and fixes our mana throughout the game. The advantage to running Cliffs is that we don’t lose any life in the early game from our fixing. The disadvantage in using Cliffs is that once we have 3 mana in play, Cliffs enters the battlefield tapped. However, this is effect is highly mitigated by the fact that the deck operates quite fine on 3 lands only. Absolutely play 4 copies of this land, there is not exception to this.
Blood Crypt is the best shock dual available for us naturally. Both our most important colours (red and black) is covered through this land. 2 copies is a no brainer due to this.
Since the deck is still a 3 colour deck, we need access to our 3rd colour as well. Naturally, having a shock which combines red with white makes the most sense. I would not suggest running Godless Shrine, since red is so important it can sometimes screw you over. However, some people still prever to run one Shrine over the second Foundry. Another option is to play a basic plains.
One of our main basic lands, can be fetched with Bloodstained Mire and Marsh Flats. Helps us to mititage life-loss from our own lands and to be able to cast black spells under an active Blood Moon. Concerning basic and its purpose, this one is the most imporant one to have, so absolutely play 2 copies of swamps.
Since this deck is largely a red deck, mountain is very important to have. Usually it is somewhat costly to have a one mana type only producing land in the deck, but since the largest portion of spells in the deck is red, we can more or less safely run 2 mountains. That way, you have more mitigation towards Ghost Quarter and Field of Ruin effects, while also being able to mitigate life-loss from our own manabase.
Basic plains is an option to have, which is less commonly seen though. If you are high on the Blood Moon plan (especially if you run 3 copies maindeck) you should consider this land. Blood Moon is in general not very punishing for ourself (which is the reason why we run it in the first place) but it can prevent you from casting your white spells at times. If you feel you want to help with that potential problem, then go ahead and run 1 basic plains instead of the second Sacred Foundry. However, note that you loose one importan red source if you do so. Since the deck is mainly a red deck, this can screw you in other ways. So there are arguments for both sides of the coin.
Our creaturebase represent our powerful, valuable threats able to take over the game on their own and grind out the opponent. The creaturebase offers no real flexibilty, since the whole decks strategy is manifested on the creaturebase. Ideally, it is considered best to run about 8-9 creatures in a Mardu Pyromancer deck.
The namesake of the deck. Young Pyromancer (YP) greatly benefits from the high spell count in the deck, essentially adding the effect: "Create a red 1/1 elemental token" to every spell you cast. This card is a grind machince. If it sticks to long on the battlefield, you will most likely win on its own. The only weakness the card has is its comparable low clock and its low impactfulness if you have YP not backed up by a bunch of spells. However, the latter rarely is the case. Play the full playset of this creature.
This is the big payoff card and also a pretty big threat on its own. The whole concept of creating a Faithless Looting engine generally comes with a card disadvantage. However, Bedlam Reveler completely makes up for this. By binning spells into our GY through Looting, Reveler gets cheaper and lets us cast him sooner. Sometimes as early as turn 3. At that point, usually Reveler is one of the last cards in hand, which completely mitigates the discard aspect of its effect, and often times this turns Reveler into a 2 mana 3/4 prowess with an Ancestral Recall attached to it. Pretty good right? Additionally, binning cards through Reveler is often also not that problematic also, if you look at flashback cards like Lingering Souls or Faithless Looting.
Hazoret really brought Mardu Pyromancer 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. Faithless Looting 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 common spot for her would be in the SB.
Rabblemaster is another option to run maindeck. The reason to run Rabblemaster particularly is due to it being a fast clock while not being susceptible to GY hate. It is a great way to hedge against some strategies which involve attacking us from the GY angle. Rabblemaster overall shines against non-interactive decks like Big Mana and Combo. Usually we lack a clock against those decks, but Rabblemaster can really help us out there. If you expect some number of those decks running around (or some GY hate) then consider running this card in the main. Alternatively, it also sees play in the SB.
In order to support our creatures and disrupt our opponents, Mardu Pyromancer 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 and helps executing the main strategy of the deck.
Looting is probably the best card in the deck. It is our engine card, our way to maintain consistancy and dig for answers/threats. It does everything we want: Draw more cards and help either casting Lingering Souls faster or help to fuel Bedlam Reveler. As this spell only costs 1 mana, it really helps keeping up with the pace of the modern format. Often it is referred to being Modern's Brainstorm. While this sounds like a bold statement, in some way this is very true for this deck. While technically Looting does not provide card advantage (CA) on its own, it creates virtual CA in the form of binning flashback cards, fueling reveler or simply dumbing dead cards against a given opponent. And everyone who played with Brainstorm before, knows how powerful the card is. Now, the real sick strength of Looting lies in its ability to be flashbacked. Ever faced situations before when you are in desperate need for something good (either a removal spell or a potent threat off the top) but happen to draw a freaking land? With Looting in the yard, you basically get to choose the best of the top 2 cards in your library. And since the deck has so many cheap spells, the flashback cost of Looting is also not too problematic either. Absolutely run 4 of this card, every other number is plain wrong.
In the beginning, Fatal Push was the best removal spell in the format since its printing. 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. However, due to its strenght, decks try to avoid being susceptible to Push by playind either CMC 3+ creatures (revolt is not that easy to enable) or play bigger threats overall which are push proof. Nevertheless, there are still good targets for Push, and running a couple of it is definitely worth it. Typicall you will see 1-2 copies of it. Depending on your meta you can up this amount and therefore lower the amount of Terminates you run. Ideally, you want to run as many pushes as possible, simply because they are cheaper, so run as many copies of it as your meta allows the restriciton of Push to not be a liability. If you feel you want more unconditional removal, then stick to 1-2 copies.
While shortly interupted by Fatal Push, Lightning Bolt is again the best removal spell in modern. Its fantastic against all creature decks, hugely flexible in the ability to steal games or dealing with planeswalkers and only costs one mana. There is no reason to run any less than 4 copies of that card.
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, 7 discard spells are playing in the MB of Mardu Pyromancer. Among this 7 discard both IoK and TS should be played, most of the time in a 4/3 split of IoK/TS. Sometimes you'll see 4 TS over the 4 IoK, but since this deck already runs 7 discard spells (this is a high number) 3 TS is usually good enough. It basically means you will see the card about once per game, which usually lets you deal with one important thing that IoK doesn't hit. Most of the time, IoK is simply better in modern though.
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, 7 discard spells are playing in the MB of Mardu Pyromancer. Among this 7 discard both IoK and TS should be played, most of the time in a 4/3 split of IoK/TS.
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. Nonetheless its a staple in our deck and very powerful. Technically you can run no terminates if you value the strenght of Dreadbore more in the deck, but I would recommend sticking to 1 copy at the start.
Effectwise Dreadbore is often times a better Terminate since the ability to kill PWs is usually more important than preventing creature from being regenerated. However, since it is sorcery speed it can get awkward sometimes. I would still play 1 copy at least due to its flexibilty. Compared to a deck like Jund, which runs Maelstrom Pulse maindeck, we also should have a clean way to deal with problematic PWs in the maindeck. You can even go up to 2 copies and drop terminate completely if you feel the sorcery speed is not hindering you too much.
Collective Brutality (CB) is a very strong and flexible spell, which usually comes with a cost, if you want to escalate the spell. However, since the main strategy of the deck is to empty our hands, fuel the GY with spells, and drop a fast reveler, this perfectly fits our bill. All modes can be relevant, and there is hardly a matchup where its bad (most important one would be Tron). Also, it acts as a discard outlet for Lingering Souls, especially in cases where we don't have white mana available. I would run between 2 and 3 copies of that card in the main. However, run at least 3 copies in the whole 75. There are some people which run Lightning Helix instead of CB. In that case usually CB is run in the sideboard.
Although being less common, sometimes Lighting Helix is run over CB maindeck. Most importantly Selfeisek pretty much always runs them up to this point. The reason for that is that Helix is overall great vs aggro, and is a better topdeck later in the game. A midrange deck should have a good aggro matchup, for which reason Helix makes perfect sense. It is a little weaker against cobo and control though, since you are lacking the discard mode there. Another aspect is the white mana casting cost. Alongside Blood Moon and the fact that the deck mostly splashes for Souls only, means that by running Helix you have a greater dedication to white mana, which should be kept in mind as well. Overall though it is preference.
Manamorphose as a card seems very odd to run in our deck at first glance. However, there are certain great Mardu Pyromancer players (like Gerry Thompson for example) which love the card. Essentially it can be seen as a free cantrip, filtering for your mana (if you need white for Souls for example) and fuels your Bedlam Reveler quite well as well. Technically it does really contribute to our main strategy. However, deck space is quite limited and I think you cannot overload on the card too much. Often times it can also get quite awkward on what mana to produce with manamorphose, as you don't know what you will draw. Sometimes this may result in unspend mana, which can also hurt you. But I think running 0-1 copies makes sense and can really help powering out revlers, which is the strongest thing we can do. This card is overall optional, most lists run 0-1 copies though.
Kolaghan's Command is one of the strongest spells Mardu Pyromancer has access to. The main reason Kolaghan's Command is so strong is it's flexibility against nearly every deck in Modern. Kolaghan's Command has four modes:
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? Combine this with a died reveler in the yard and get full value from reveler again, its insane CA for us. I would say Mardu Pyromancer is the deck in modern which utilizes KCommand as a spell the best.
Lingering Souls is another payoff card we have access to, besides Reveler. It is a fantastic tool to make your Looting powerful and your games grindy to overwhelm your opponent. It is one of the best tools to fight control. There are some decks which basically loose to it singlehandedly (like Affinity or Infect). In a typical list, this is the only white card you run in the mainboard. And since the card can also be cast without white mana at all (using its flashback ability from the GY) the deck can certainly operate without any white mana at all. At heart Mardu Pyromancer is a deck which is a red/black deck splashing white for Souls and some SB cards. However, Souls as a card is really powerful and is absolutely justified in this deck.
Blood Moon is a very polarizing card. Either you love it (when you play it yourself) or you hate it when you face it with a deck that is susceptible to it. Mardu as a deck can very well utilize Blood Moon. The main colour is red anyway, and the secondary colour of black can easily be covered by one simple swamp for the most part. As for the white splash, it really is only for Souls and SB cards. As for souls, you can also cast it through discarding it and flashbacking it. So especially maindeck, Blood Moon works really well in this deck. However, there is another reason why it is recommended to play Blood Moon maindeck: Its the surprize factor as well as the missing removal for it in game 1. Opponents might keep a hand against you which isn't able to fetch for basics, as they potentially don't know what you are playing, and Blood Moon really shines here. It can even easily get decks that are normally considered to be less susceptible to Blood Moon. And of course there are matchups which can be singlehandedly won by Blood Moon. It really helps against Tron game 1. It can just get a free win for which reason Blood Moon is a powerful and in my mind a big factor why this deck is performing well at the moment.
The second best planeswalker ever printed. 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. However, the nature of her being a PW means you have limited slots for her. You cannot just run 4 copies. The deck as a whole needs instants and sorceries, in order to play cheap Bedlam Reveler. Its the main goal of the deck. Liliana should therefore just be a grindy and disruptive tool supporting your gameplan, not your actual main gameplan. I think it is fine to run 1 PWs in the main. But I would not go over that number. And for this you have the option of either running Liliana of the Veil, Liliana, the Last Hope or a different card. Alternatively, she also sees play in the SB. Small go wide creatures usually make LoTV worse. So if you expect many of those, maybe skimp on her.
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. She really shines in the mirror, against grindy decks and against aggro decks, as 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 (like combo and big mana or control). 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 amazing synergy with our Bedlam Revelers 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: Reveler or Young Pyromancer 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. 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. You can run 1-2 or no copy in the maindeck. Alternatively she also sees play in the SB.
Nahiri as a PW is in general very powerful. She naturally fits our gameplan with her plus ability and can act as a random removal for anything pesky (especially the enchantment removal is otherwise not present in our maindeck, despite a potential LoTV ulti of course) So overall she is a good option. However, she still doesn't see overwhelmingly much play. You can see her as a one of sometimes. The thing is that she is quite expensive, dives more into white as a requirement in the maindeck, and doesn't really help with our bad matchups. Overall she can be chosen, but often times more flexible and cheaper PWs like Liliana of the Veil or Liliana, the Last Hope are played.
In order to have a starting point for building a Mardu Pyromancer 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.
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.
All in all, here is a standard decklist which you can start to play with (selfeisek's newest version):
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Marsh Flats
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Swamp
1 Plains
2 Mountain
4 Young Pyromancer
4 Bedlam Reveler
Non-creature Spells [32]
4 Faithless Looting
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
2 Fatal Push
1 Forked Bolt
2 Lightning Helix
1 Terminate
1 Dreadbore
1 Nahiri, the Harbinger
2 Blood Moon
3 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lingering Souls
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:
Our deck has certain tools to interact with the opponent, which are the following:
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 Mardu Pyromancer 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:
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.
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.
1 Hazoret the Fervent
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
1 Goblin Rabblemaster
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Noncreature Spells
1 Collective Brutality
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Leyline of the Void
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Damping Sphere
1 Wear // Tear
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Molten Rain
1 Anguished Unmaking
1 Zealous Persecution
1 Blood Moon
1 Fatal Push
1 Stony Silence
1 Crackling Doom
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:
If we take those categories, we will be able to put every common sideboard card in one, or even more of those sections:
Nihil Spellbomb
Leyline of the Void
Surgical Extraction
Anger of the Gods
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Fulminator Mage
Grim Lavamancer
Liliana of the Veil
Wear // Tear
Molten Rain
Collective Brutality
Engineered Explosives
Anguished Unmaking
Zealous Persecution
Fatal Push
Crackling Doom
Liliana, the Last Hope
Anger of the Gods
Kolaghan's Command
Ensnaring Bridge
Goblin Rabblemaster
Stony Silence
Blood Moon
Damping Sphere
Collective Brutality
Kambal, Consul of Allocation
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Thoughtseize
Liliana of the Veil
Collective Brutality
Kolaghan's Command
Crackling Doom
Fulminator Mage
Kambal, Consul of Allocation
Grim Lavamancer
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Anguished Unmaking
Hazoret the Fervent
Nihil Spellbomb
Engineered Explosives
Anger of the Gods
Liliana, the Last Hope
Liliana of the Veil
Kolaghan's Command
Fatal Push
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:
Now that we defined the basic types of decks, we will divide our sideboard gauntlet among the different types of decks:
Grim Lavamancer
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Collective Brutality
Engineered Explosives
Anger of the Gods
Zealous Persecution
Liliana of the Veil
Kolaghan's Command
Ensnaring Bridge
Fatal Push
Crackling Doom
Liliana, the Last Hope
Fulminator Mage
Grim Lavamancer
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
Engineered Explosives
Hazoret, the Fervent
Nihil Spellbomb
Liliana, the Last Hope
Liliana of the Veil
Kolaghan's Command
Fatal Push
Anguished Unmaking
Crackling Doom
Grim Lavamancer
Fulminator Mage
Molten Rain
Blood Moon
Hazoret, the Fervent
Collective Brutality
Nihil Spellbomb
Liliana of the Veil
Liliana, the Last Hope
Kolaghan's Command
Anguished Unmaking
Wear // Tear
Kambal, Consul of Allocation
Collective Brutality
Hazoret, the Fervent
Nihil Spellbomb
Leyline of the Void
Surgical Extraction
Wear // Tear
Kambal, Consul of Allocation
Liliana of the Veil
Goblin Rabblemaster
Damping Sphere
Stony Silence
Fulminator Mage
Molten Rain
Blood Moon
Surgical Extraction
Hazoret the Fervent
Wear // Tear
Kolaghan's Command
Goblin Rabblemaster
Liliana of the Veil
Collective Brutality
Stony Silence
Damping Sphere
Kambal, Consul of Allocation
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:
1 Nahiri, the Harbinger
3 Molten Rain
2 Pithing Needle
1 Thoughtseize
1 Blood Moon
1 Wear // Tear
2 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
4 Leyline of the Void
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 this deck is fairly different from meta to meta, I designed a gauntlet of most popular cards run in this deck. From that cards I created 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:
1 Young Pyromancer
1 Bedlam Reveler
1 Hazoret the Fervent
Noncreature Spells Maindeck
1 Faithless Looting
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Thoughtseize
1 Fatal Push
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Terminate
1 Dreadbore
1 Manamorphose
1 Lightning Helix
1 Forked Bolt
1 Collective Brutality
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Lingering Souls
1 Blood Moon
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Goblin Rabblemaster
1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation
1 Hazoret the Fervent
1 Zealous Persecution
1 Anguished Unmaking
1 Damping Sphere
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Collective Brutality
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Leyline of the Void
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Blood Moon
1 Molten Rain
1 Fatal Push
1 Crackling Doom
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Stony Silence
1 Wear // Tear
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, Blood Moon might seem like an okay card in that MU, since this deck has a lot of creature lands. However, I really do not recommend keeping BM in that matchup. Why? Simply because we really want to be able to cast Lingering Souls. I believe one Lingering Souls does a lot more than shutting off some manlands with BM. As Affinity is an artifact based synergy deck, obviously, we will bring all artifact hate in this MU. Next, Sweepers are what is needed. Two main choices do we have: Anger of the Gods and Engineered Explosives.
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.
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 (in game 1). Discard is great in this matchup, especially IOK which can strip of a burn card from the opponents hand without taking dmg.
Burn is a pretty dicey matchup for us. Some people think its unfavourable, but I think its about 50/50 like Jund/Junk. Our clock is indeed slower, but we have more impactful cards for the burn matchup (more CB and Kambal is a beast). What you are looking for in your opening hand is a hand containing either of the following spells: Bolt, Push, CB or Kambal. If you hand doesn't contain anything fo the spells, its likely that you should mulligan the hand.
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. Generally, 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.
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 opposing 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 our Lingering Souls copies from the graveyard for example. Speaking of Lingering Souls, it is basically correct to cut some LoTV if you expect Souls from the opponent. Lastly, I think cutting Blood Moon against the deck is correct. I get the argument that you can get them with their pants down and shut off their manlands, but overall, it is a bad topdeck if you are facing a bunch of Tarmogoyfs. Now I don't think its completely wrong to keep BM, but I personally would go with the minimize your bad topdecks plan.
Tron is our worst matchup we can face. What is important in this MU? Generally, the best sequence we have against them is: Turn 1 discard Turn 2 YP and then turn 3 Fulminator/Molten Rain + Surgical or Blood Moon 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).
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 tempo-based strategy, using cards like Manamorphose to quickly draw through the deck in order to quickly find a big threat. With the inclusion of Traverse the Ulvenwald and its ability to easily reach delirium the deck is amazingly consistant. With Mardu Pyromancer, our best option is to stick a Young Pyromancer, which allows us to generate a huge load of chump blockers. This is a good strategy to grind your opponent out, giving you time to develop a strong board and deal with every opposing threat. They do not want to enter the lategame, but we do. So do everything possible to prolong the game and get ahead of your opponent.
Removal is king in that matchup, and cards that trade 2-for-1 most likely (LoTV, 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.
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 (Terminate, Dreadbore...) combined with YP tokens to hold off threats.The best card to bring in is Blood Moon. It can shut them off coloured mana if they have no Wastes or Mindstones. 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 Blood Moon higher here because of these reasons. If you got those in, you can also bring in stuff like LoTV 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/Blood Moon only buying you time. Hazoret is a really good card against them, since she is indestructible and can hold off most of their threats while finishing them fast.
RG Valakut is one of the worst matchups for Mardu Pyromancer. Generally, it doesn’t depend on the version, all are 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. Blood Moon is the best option. Bring in all copies you have. After this, bring in Fulminator, which not only provide a relevant body to race the opponent, but also helps with the LD topic. Bring in Collective Brutalities.
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.
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 Anger of the Gods and Ensnaring Bridge. 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 we cannot remove her through removal unfortunately. 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.
Jeskai Control has a really respectful and powerful endgame when unchecked. Jeskai mostly utilizes powerful Planeswalker like Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria and its signature manland Celestial Colonnade to finish opponents off. Jeskai is tough and challanging, but ultimately a good matchup since our CA is very high. 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 Dreadbore really help with dealing with those pesky planeswalkers. However, the biggest problem seems to be Snapcaster Mage, RIP and Jace/Teferi, hands down. Souls, Bedlam Reveler, Liliana of the Veil and single target discard are your greatest friends, alongside hard to deal with threats (like YP). You need them to use their resources to deal with your stuff, and eventually being left with a Reveler 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. 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 Blood Moon, which are potential 2 for 1s and which will help restricting the Jeskai players mana 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: 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.
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 (Well, we haven't the best, but its alright).
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. Side out a couple of clunky removal like Dreadbore, 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.
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 YP. Hard mulligan for some GY hate interaction. Leyline is an allstar in this matchup. Living End does not play much removal, which makes it so that leyline often sticks for a while. If you combine this with discard for cascaders, then Leyline can potentially take over the game. 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. Lastly, Bridge is a really good card to have since it prevents them from killing you. But ultimately its similar to Leyline.
Dredge is a deck which operates on 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 > Surgical Extraction >). With Surgical, 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 or amalgam 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 discard in early turns is decent against them. If you can snap Cathartic Reunions, Faceless Lootings or Insulent Neonates, then you will slow the opponent down significantly. The last thing to keep in mind is their damage source in the form of Conflagrate. 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 Liliana the Last Hope since she 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. Anger of the Gods 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. YP creating chump blockers though really help to generate needed time.
Grixis Death Shadow is one of the most popular versions of DS decks out there. 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 we have a great source of creating needed time (YP), this matchup is more or less favourable. If you are a skilled pilot, this matchup is usually favoured. Grixis Shadow's strenghts ultimately are delve creatures and/or Snapcaster Mage. With your discard, in doubt, you want to target those cards. Do not burn your Pushs/Terminates 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.
UW Control can be of the tougher matchups for us, depending on the skilllevel of both players. Reveler/Souls 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 Souls. 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, Hazoret for obvious reasons (sticky threat), LtLH as threat and recursion, and Wear // Tear for their Azcanta/SS and Detention Spheres. I would not board out all Terminates, if you expect Gideon Jura. 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.
Humans is a deck that recently popped up due to its consistant linear strategy of providing a real clock while being disruptive at the same time. 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.
Well, the mirror. This is an intense grindfest. The game often swings back and forth and ultimately it comes down to how many bedlem revler you draw. Looting therefore is really powerful since it lets you dig deeper to find your revelers. Generally, play YP only if you can guarantee a token or if you pari it with discard. You need to squeeze the max out of every card and a simple 1 for 1 trade isnt enough. Bring in all GY hate you have, this is very important. Also bring in Surgical if you have it. Normally, in any grindy matchup, Surgical is really bad, but this particular matchup is special, as it so heavily centered around the GY. If you get to extract Revelver or Looting/Souls, it gets very hard to win for your opponent. Lastly, Hazoret is a bomb in that matchup, because usually the opponent is not able to remove Hazoret effectively.
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 YP/Reveler/Souls can ride to victory. I believe this matchup is favourable, the 2 things you have to keep in mind is cryptic 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 it looks more scary than it actually is.
BR Hollow One is a tough matchup for us in general. However, I believe we are slightly favoured. 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 Wear // Tear can help here, but its still tough. Usually the preboard games play out quite a bit differently than postboard games. Young Pyromancer is a very important card in that matchup. Generally, it mitigates the sheer endless grinding possibility of Hollow One due to their Bloodghasts/Phoenixes and eventually hardcast Street Wraiths. Hollow One as a deck can grind pretty hard, most people don't see that. Thats why this deck is strong overall, it has the possibility of having explosives starts to overwhelm the opponent, but if that doesn't work, they can just switch to grinding mode. We generally can grind harder though. Souls/YP and Revelver holds strong against their recursive threats. So the most important thing to do is survive the early game. You can cut one Reveler as a hedge against Leyline of the Void.
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, Blood Moon 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 compared to the other white based variants. I would include this facts in your priority for sideboarding. 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 Hazoret. Rely less on Fulminator though. One last interaction to note: If you have an uncontested Liliana of the Veil in your hand, and the opponent kept one card in his hand. So logically, you want to plus Liliana. 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.
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 that susceptible to their cards. We are mostly cold to a turn 2 BM and we can operate on a low land count if they destroy 1-2 lands. The next 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. Liliana of the Veil is 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 likely cannot kill it consistantly if not with Wear // Tear) 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 YP/Reveler 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 grindy game.
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. Due to us playing mostly 2 EE in the SB this matchup is not that tough. Things like discard, LoTV, Wear // Tear and Bridge can help dealing with the giant threats Bogles slams onto the board quite fast. But EE is really a nightmare card for Bogles. As for technical play, watch out for fetchlands, as they represent Dryad Arbor to nullify our Liliana of the Veil -2.
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 a clock, in order to start removing the Infect players resources or kill them. 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 want to do 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.
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, Dreadbore and Unmaking. Due to that, we cannot effectively execute our gameplan in removing everything from the board, trading 1-for-1 and win through CA. 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 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.
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, Hazoret is one of our best creature as it can block Reality Smasher. Just be aware of Dismember though. 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.
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 playing hard to deal with threats like Wurmcoil Engine. The deck is in general susceptible to discard/destruction and GY hate. Discard alone usually is not very good, since they have lots of card draw to draw their pieces they need again and they can bring back artifacts from their GY. In general, you don't want both KCI and Scrap Trowler 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 Spellbombs/Leylines or Surgicals. However, still, the most important thing to have against the deck is a fast clock. A turn 2 YP is therefore always a strong play. There is an article out there showing how to beat KCI: Click.
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.
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.
Bant Spirits becomes more popular due to the printing of Supreme Phantom which granted the archetype a powerful 2 drop lord. In general, this deck has some tempo elements in it through cards like Spell Queller, Rattlechains and Collective Company. Due to this, we don't want to necessarily rely on clunky grindy spells, since one timely Spell Queller can be a huge blowout. We want max efficiency and therefore a low curve. Thats also the reason I like discard spells in the matchup, you can interact with their flashcards in a cheap way. Since most of their threats are flying, you cant rely on YP to jam the board and generate enough blockers. I would try to play carefully and be on the defense most of the time. Be aware of Mausoleum Wanderer and Rattlechains shenanigans. Usually it is correct to directly bolt the Wanderer if you feel it harms you. The same goes for Selfless Spirit. The reason we bring in Wear // Tear is due to them having RIP and Worship in the SB, which they might bring in against you. Lastly, Manamorphose is quite bad since they have Thalia in their sideboard. Plus it can get hit badly by Wanderer and Queller.
Bridgevine is a deck which entered the scene of competitive modern magic through Stitcher's Supplier. This enabler quickly enables their strategy in milling a bunch of Bridges from Below or Vengevines, in order to create a bunch of 2/2 zombies or bring vengevines back. Their clock is quite fast since they do run Goblin Bushwhacker in order to give their creatures haste and a buff to quickly kill the opponent. Compared to a deck of Hollow One it can be more explosive, but in my mind lacks a bit of grinding ability in the lategame (at least if you get to remove the Bridges from the GY, which is not too hard). However, their plan is to quickly overwhelm the opponent before they get to deal with the bridges and vengevines. Typically it doesn't matter for them if the bridges get exiled alongside a possible chump block from your side if it means you are either already dead or dead in the next 1-2 turns. So this matchup is all about surviving the early game. The longer the game goes, the better of a chance we do have, since we can easily deal with their recurring Gravecrawler. The problem is that our 1/1s from YP do not match well with their 2/2s. Discard is really good vs. them (except for Thoughtseize), which could slow them down, as its all about the enablers. Targets are Looting, Insulate Neonate, Stitcher's Supplier and Cathartic Reunion mostly. Also of course GY hate (Leyline especially) is great alongside a cheap way to deal with their tokens: EE. One intersting interaction to have in mind is if you face opposing Leyline of the Voids: If you have pyro tokens or souls tokens dying when Leyline is on the BF, it will still remove Bridge from Below in the opponents GY, since Leyline does not exile tokens, it only exiles cards (which tokens aren't). Also be aware that Bridge checks upon resolution, which means you can prevent a 2/2 zombie hitting the BF by a Surgical.
- Take the card you can't deal with
- Take the card that's next on the opponents manacurve
- Take removal that kills Young Pyromancer
Now this order might me interchanged, for example if Young Pyromancer is key in a given matchup, its almost always correct to just take the removal right away to deploy YP. There is actually a great article of Reid Duke on SCG talking about Thoughtseizing the opponent, so its very much worth it to check it out: Thoughtseize YouThe link to the old Mardu Primer can be found here: Zomfshark's Mardu Primer