Hi, I'm trying to get some advice on what to learn towards in the current competitive legacy meta. I haven't played competitive legacy for awhile, about 6 months. Prior to that I was piloting mainly Punishing jund, and it is my go to favorite. However it seems to have fallen out of favor recently.
I was also looking at possibly building sneak and show, but again my knowledge of the current competitive meta is a little lacking since I have been out of it for as long as I have. I've noticed burn actually becoming a thing, is this true and how viable is it these days?
So is Punishing jund still a viable choice in the current meta? Or is it too unfavorable at this point in time? Thanks for your input.
I've been out of the game for awhile and looking to return. I've been piloting jund since before it was even punishing jund, and really love the deck. However, I've noticed it's fallen pretty sharply out of favor recently. I was surprised by this when I also saw the majority of the top 8 results being fair decks. So what has been causing the decline in favor for the Punishing Jund? On paper it seems pretty strong still, but I could easily be missing something.
When a completed decklist is required for a tournament, if you have the right list of cards but misscount your deck, does this count as an illegal deck list?
Example: if my deck was 61 islands, and i wrote 61 islands but wrote a deck count of 60, would that be a decklist infraction or does infractions only count toward playing the exact cards listed? Thanks to whoever replies!
No, removing Red from Jund will not be JUND anymore.
The concept of jund is G/B good cards. Red was there because of BBE, and BBE was only there because he casted your G/B good cards for free. The banning of BBE, although frustrating, is probably healthy for the format. He kept other mid range decks from being played, as BBE kept other fair strategies in the format down. Jund will continue to exist. However it will also open up bug and junk. Instead of BBE which is a great catch all, the four drop you play (if you play one still) will be a meta decision. Need to apply pressure? Hellrider. Need value against other midrange? Hotf. If blue starts dominating we have Thrun. There are many options, the real downside to bbe leaving is that it makes jund's infamous 50% meta degrade a little bit.
I plan on trying Hotf and having thruns in the SB for UWR mid range. The best part of BBE for me was it kept the blue MU in my favor, or at least manageable. With that gone I'm even more concerned about the UWR match up. Without the resilience of BBE cards like thrun may be necessary. Being locked out by remand/scm feels bad.
Well the main problem with relying on charm is playing around it. After he saw gw he knew to keep her at four, and it worked. A 4/4 flyer that mind controls is fine and can easily win a game. How about pithing needle? Seems like a wide range use that answers what matters about olivia. A 3/3 beater is pretty manageable.
I was looking to splash a color for naya since I feel I can support it fairly easily, as long as its light and can be fixed by a farseek or two. I feel like I run out of gas fairly easily sometimes and it would be nice to be able to value out my opponent.
Obviously being in 3 color I would be looking to splash black or blue for the fourth. Revelation is pretty attractive, and hard to pass up. Right now I think that would be the easiest thing to splash, and gives access the the strongest cards. Black on the other hand has rakdos's return, which has a similar effect in creating card advantage. This would also give access to olivia, which is a pretty powerful card in the mirror.
The fourth color would also put me less on the aggressive side, but I already play a more ramp style deck, with 3 AoS and 1-2 Armada wurms. With this in mind I would end up most likely dropping the selesnya charm as well as some mid range creatures for the azorious charm/revelations for blue, or dreadbore/rakdos's return for black.
So, if I splashed a fourth color, what color would you recommend and why? Also if you don't recommend splashing any as the mana base would be too tight, please say so as well as any recommendations to help CA in the archetype that you found successful.
The past FNM I ran into a jund list which ended up knocking me out of the top 8, mainly due to Olivia. I'm fairly familiar with jund as its what I started playing at the beginning of RTR standard season but switched to naya as its purely more powerful and has better match ups.
What are other people's plans regarding Jund? I found it not super favored for me when playing jund, but now looking across the table from the other end I feel extremely behind if they drop olivia. I went 1-3 in games against Jund this friday, and if I see it again I feel I need to have answers. Should I just sideboard plummet or is there a better solution?
@Pasab
I agree that Liliana is a very solid card for Jund. Like I said I regretted only running one, I under valued her. But I don't think 4 is necessary, particularly if you are running a decent amount of tops or sylvan libraries. Even with one I saw her at least once in most of my matches. Between Bloodbraid elf, bob, and top/library for a non blue deck we see a very large amount of cards. I think 2-3 is the right number, I'd probably play 2 main 1 in board. As for dealing with tombstalker, I really didn't want to count on liliana to get rid of him. Counting on 3 mana sorcery speed removal that doesn't work if they have a second creature could possibly end poorly. These were judgment calls I made, and in some games they paid off and some they really bit me. I'd probably turn one of the terminates into another Liliana, like I said I really wanted another as I played. However I want at least a single answer in the deck at instant speed for a large creature like stalker, or other larger unexpected creatures. However this is under the mentality of running at least 3 tops as I do, so I'm used to seeing half my deck during a game.
The lists that were in the top 8 were running 4 liliana but only one card for library manipulation. If you run 3-4 tops I'm fairly sure you can get away with 3 Liliana, possibly 2 and have a high probability of seeing a copy.
@affinityformilfs
Treetop is a real nice card to be able to see in matches like UW miracles to finish up a match. It's also pretty good in a format so dominated by abrupt decay. It's nice to have as an optional beater against decks like Team Italia, which that match up often turns into a removal war then both decks in top deck mode. The one of rarely hurt and like I said before with enough library manipulation you can find one ofs like that a lot easier. In the builds that were in the GP without top I wouldn't really recommend it since it's a lot less likely that you'll see it.
As for the tops, no not really. I started off with four tops, and that did get a little awkward. However with three I didn't run into a lot of issues with seeing them in multiples. Being able to stack cascades and bob is really nice and saved me several games. I think it's a nice utility and rewards 1-2 ofs in the main like deed.
Also on your comment of the thoughtseize/iok question although I did reference it in my original post I wanted to clarify a bit. I ran 2/2 because I was worried about burn and UR delver lists combined with the damage off of bob. Not as popular among high end competitors, but I was at an open, not a pro tour. I say unless you have a field that would require otherwise just play thoughtseize. Not being able to Iok Jace is pretty huge. If you're in a meta that you expect a lot of him (like most high competitive metas) then you're better off with just thoughtseize.
I guess you would have end higher on the card by playing 3 Liliana instead of 1 + 2 Terminate...
Not sure what you mean by 'end higher on the card' so I'm sort of making the assumption that your asking why terminates took Liliana's spot. I had two lilianas originally, one in main and one in board. The one in the board got taken out last second. I regret it now, as I wish I played 2. I don't think I would of wanted 3 though.
The terminates were mainly there because of the popularity of tomb stalker that I saw. I didn't really want to have only sorcery speed answers to him, with lily not being a solid answer on her own either.
I ended up taking 31st at Columbus with Jund, after losing round 9 to Kevin Gerhart and dropping from 12th :(. That said I found the deck to be incredibly resilient to most match ups. I found that top is slightly better than sylvan library for the pure sake that I can respond better to bob triggers and I can respond to bloodbraid elf cascade. It's also nice that top protects itself.
I'm glad that this deck is in the established section and has been getting some attention, as it has certainly earned it with the results it has put up in the weekend.
During play in the weekend I found myself really wanting to go turn one shaman, turn two wasteland then bob or hymn. I don't think I lost a game with that set up the the first two turns. Anyway, for anyone that is interested here was the deck list I brought.
I split thoughtseize and iok just because of some concerns against a deck like UR delver or etc with the life loss from bob. I'll probably end up cutting a wasteland and adding an 8th fetch.
Garruk relentless is becoming primal hunters i just havnt gotten to switch it yet. I did love shaman and cos against uw flash. Shaman did well but cos didnt the most work. Out of the two matches i played uw flash i went 4-2 in games, winning both. The 2 cards games i lost was without cos. Making a threat in your hand uncounterable they almost fold, especially if its a value creature like hotf and thragtusk. Ultimate price was also very nice to be able to shoot RAs out of the air when they cast them tapping out.
After a gpt this past Wednesday, i can say for sure that cos is worth it if you expect uw flash or similar decks in the meta. I played two, one in swiss and one in the top 8, and the games i stuck cavern and named a creature type in my hand i just won. Those decks count on being able to counter other threats and trickle damage in, even dropping a vnh off of it i dealt 12 damage with it before he was reasonably answered with a pike. I think two is enough, but 3 is worth it if thats the meta you expect.
Quality info, thanks for the update on the UWR and UW match ups. Bant was the only one of the three I have personal experience with, and I've lost one match to it since RTR standard came. UWR and UW are pretty unfamiliar for me directly so a lot of my data is coming from some online testing and other individuals.
It seems that UW flash is popular right now since the GP that Gerry Thompson T8'd at. It's a deck that I'm surprised did as well as it has, looking at the cards. It seems that it just took advantage of most decks being tap out clunky machines that spit out good cards. I plan on adding 2x CoS to my mana base as well as a few shamans in replacement of 1-2 VNH and pillars. Any other suggestions from people with experience with the match ups?
I was also curious how bad exactly do you think this match up is, I've heard from a lot of people it's a beating but this could be due to poor card choices.
I'm sure a lot of individuals are aware of the shift into blue that a lot of competitive play has been turning to between Bant control, UWR mid range and UW flash. Bant control is fairly manageable especially after sideboard. UWR mid range and UW flash seem to be giving a lot of people more trouble. My meta is really lacking in the mid range strategy, most people are either full blown aggro or a very reserved control/entreat/AoS deck.
For the U tempo deck match up, what do you think about it and what have been your solutions that you found successful if you saw it necessary? The original style of Jund was really to stomp early meta strategies but now the meta has surely shifted from a lot of aggro to a lot of tempo/control.
I was also looking at possibly building sneak and show, but again my knowledge of the current competitive meta is a little lacking since I have been out of it for as long as I have. I've noticed burn actually becoming a thing, is this true and how viable is it these days?
So is Punishing jund still a viable choice in the current meta? Or is it too unfavorable at this point in time? Thanks for your input.
Example: if my deck was 61 islands, and i wrote 61 islands but wrote a deck count of 60, would that be a decklist infraction or does infractions only count toward playing the exact cards listed? Thanks to whoever replies!
The concept of jund is G/B good cards. Red was there because of BBE, and BBE was only there because he casted your G/B good cards for free. The banning of BBE, although frustrating, is probably healthy for the format. He kept other mid range decks from being played, as BBE kept other fair strategies in the format down. Jund will continue to exist. However it will also open up bug and junk. Instead of BBE which is a great catch all, the four drop you play (if you play one still) will be a meta decision. Need to apply pressure? Hellrider. Need value against other midrange? Hotf. If blue starts dominating we have Thrun. There are many options, the real downside to bbe leaving is that it makes jund's infamous 50% meta degrade a little bit.
Obviously being in 3 color I would be looking to splash black or blue for the fourth. Revelation is pretty attractive, and hard to pass up. Right now I think that would be the easiest thing to splash, and gives access the the strongest cards. Black on the other hand has rakdos's return, which has a similar effect in creating card advantage. This would also give access to olivia, which is a pretty powerful card in the mirror.
The fourth color would also put me less on the aggressive side, but I already play a more ramp style deck, with 3 AoS and 1-2 Armada wurms. With this in mind I would end up most likely dropping the selesnya charm as well as some mid range creatures for the azorious charm/revelations for blue, or dreadbore/rakdos's return for black.
So, if I splashed a fourth color, what color would you recommend and why? Also if you don't recommend splashing any as the mana base would be too tight, please say so as well as any recommendations to help CA in the archetype that you found successful.
What are other people's plans regarding Jund? I found it not super favored for me when playing jund, but now looking across the table from the other end I feel extremely behind if they drop olivia. I went 1-3 in games against Jund this friday, and if I see it again I feel I need to have answers. Should I just sideboard plummet or is there a better solution?
I agree that Liliana is a very solid card for Jund. Like I said I regretted only running one, I under valued her. But I don't think 4 is necessary, particularly if you are running a decent amount of tops or sylvan libraries. Even with one I saw her at least once in most of my matches. Between Bloodbraid elf, bob, and top/library for a non blue deck we see a very large amount of cards. I think 2-3 is the right number, I'd probably play 2 main 1 in board. As for dealing with tombstalker, I really didn't want to count on liliana to get rid of him. Counting on 3 mana sorcery speed removal that doesn't work if they have a second creature could possibly end poorly. These were judgment calls I made, and in some games they paid off and some they really bit me. I'd probably turn one of the terminates into another Liliana, like I said I really wanted another as I played. However I want at least a single answer in the deck at instant speed for a large creature like stalker, or other larger unexpected creatures. However this is under the mentality of running at least 3 tops as I do, so I'm used to seeing half my deck during a game.
The lists that were in the top 8 were running 4 liliana but only one card for library manipulation. If you run 3-4 tops I'm fairly sure you can get away with 3 Liliana, possibly 2 and have a high probability of seeing a copy.
@affinityformilfs
Treetop is a real nice card to be able to see in matches like UW miracles to finish up a match. It's also pretty good in a format so dominated by abrupt decay. It's nice to have as an optional beater against decks like Team Italia, which that match up often turns into a removal war then both decks in top deck mode. The one of rarely hurt and like I said before with enough library manipulation you can find one ofs like that a lot easier. In the builds that were in the GP without top I wouldn't really recommend it since it's a lot less likely that you'll see it.
As for the tops, no not really. I started off with four tops, and that did get a little awkward. However with three I didn't run into a lot of issues with seeing them in multiples. Being able to stack cascades and bob is really nice and saved me several games. I think it's a nice utility and rewards 1-2 ofs in the main like deed.
Also on your comment of the thoughtseize/iok question although I did reference it in my original post I wanted to clarify a bit. I ran 2/2 because I was worried about burn and UR delver lists combined with the damage off of bob. Not as popular among high end competitors, but I was at an open, not a pro tour. I say unless you have a field that would require otherwise just play thoughtseize. Not being able to Iok Jace is pretty huge. If you're in a meta that you expect a lot of him (like most high competitive metas) then you're better off with just thoughtseize.
Not sure what you mean by 'end higher on the card' so I'm sort of making the assumption that your asking why terminates took Liliana's spot. I had two lilianas originally, one in main and one in board. The one in the board got taken out last second. I regret it now, as I wish I played 2. I don't think I would of wanted 3 though.
The terminates were mainly there because of the popularity of tomb stalker that I saw. I didn't really want to have only sorcery speed answers to him, with lily not being a solid answer on her own either.
I'm glad that this deck is in the established section and has been getting some attention, as it has certainly earned it with the results it has put up in the weekend.
During play in the weekend I found myself really wanting to go turn one shaman, turn two wasteland then bob or hymn. I don't think I lost a game with that set up the the first two turns. Anyway, for anyone that is interested here was the deck list I brought.
4 Deathrite Shaman
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Bloodbraid Elf
1 Eternal Witness
22 Land
4 Wasteland
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Treetop Village
3 Bayou
2 Badlands
2 Taiga
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Forest
3 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Pernicious Deed
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Terminate
3 Hymn to Tourach
2 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Pithing Needle
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Engineered Plague
2 Pernicious Deed
1 Abrupt Decay
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Duress
1 Hymn to Tourach
1 Maelstrom Pulse
I split thoughtseize and iok just because of some concerns against a deck like UR delver or etc with the life loss from bob. I'll probably end up cutting a wasteland and adding an 8th fetch.
4 blood crypt
3 woodland cemetary
3 dragonskull summit
3 rootbound crag
2 cavern of souls
1 kessig wolf run
2 forest
1 swamp
1 mountain
4 thragtusk
4 huntmaster of the fells
2 olivia voldaren
1 thundermaw hellkite
3 vampire nighthawk
2 deathrite shaman
4 farseek
2 ultimate price
3 dreadbore
2 mizzium mortars
1 bonfire of the damned
1 sever the bloodline
2 underworld connections
2 garruk relentless
1 rakdos's return
2 pillar of flame
2 abrupt decay
3 slaughter games
2 appetite for brains
3 duress
1 bonfire of the damned
1 underworld connections
Garruk relentless is becoming primal hunters i just havnt gotten to switch it yet. I did love shaman and cos against uw flash. Shaman did well but cos didnt the most work. Out of the two matches i played uw flash i went 4-2 in games, winning both. The 2 cards games i lost was without cos. Making a threat in your hand uncounterable they almost fold, especially if its a value creature like hotf and thragtusk. Ultimate price was also very nice to be able to shoot RAs out of the air when they cast them tapping out.
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It seems that UW flash is popular right now since the GP that Gerry Thompson T8'd at. It's a deck that I'm surprised did as well as it has, looking at the cards. It seems that it just took advantage of most decks being tap out clunky machines that spit out good cards. I plan on adding 2x CoS to my mana base as well as a few shamans in replacement of 1-2 VNH and pillars. Any other suggestions from people with experience with the match ups?
I was also curious how bad exactly do you think this match up is, I've heard from a lot of people it's a beating but this could be due to poor card choices.
For the U tempo deck match up, what do you think about it and what have been your solutions that you found successful if you saw it necessary? The original style of Jund was really to stomp early meta strategies but now the meta has surely shifted from a lot of aggro to a lot of tempo/control.