MTG Salvation

Hi everyone,

I was the player that got dismantled on camera by Owen Turtenwald in round 4. I made many misplays on both a strategic and tactical level, especially in game 3, where I tried to make a cool but incorrect play and ended up on the wrong side of a 3-for-2 as a result. I went 5-3 in day 1, missing day 2. I lost to Owen on Hollow One, Tron, and Mardu Pyromancer. I had one bye and beat Hollow One, Storm, Burn, and Sun and Moon. I was not at the top of my game, and I think with tighter play, I could have turned two of my three losses around (not the Tron loss, just got blasted).

I played only 2 BBE and cut all 3 Fulminators for 3 Leyline of the Void, thinking that I cannot beat both Tron and Hollow One with Jund, and so I should pick which one I actually want to beat. This ended up mostly working out, as I only lost to one big mana deck (Tron) on Day 1. Leyline was nice. I know I lost two games to Hollow One on camera with it, but overall it felt like a strong and useful sideboard card. I also played 2 Cage and 1 Anger as GY hate, and in the future, I think those Cages should be Nihil Spellbombs to make topdeck Leylines less bad. I don't think this is too much graveyard hate. Hollow One is a really hard matchup that requires serious concessions to turn around. With the sideboard configured as such, I think it's 50/50 or maybe slightly better.

Overall, I do not think Jund is well-positioned at the moment. I have never felt my sideboard stretched so thin in all my years of playing this deck. Bloodbraid Elf does not solve any of our current metagame problems whatsoever. Right now it is just a fun card to play, nothing more. I personally find it enjoyable to try to interact no matter how futile it seems, but make no mistake: this is not a tier 1 deck right now.

EDIT: for reference, the decklist I played in the GP:


I think the maindeck is great, sideboard going forward should be -1 Duress, -2 Cage, +2 Nihil Spellbomb, +1 Grim Lavamancer

Quote from chaos021 »

Personally, it's because I don't want and am not comfortable with "variance" from the "best" card in my deck.

Variance is irrelevant if the average outcome is sufficiently good. If Bloodbraid Elf said "Roll a six-sided die. If you roll a 1 or a 2, you lose the game. Otherwise, you win the game.", it would be a no-brainer 4-of even though it's not far from literally the highest variance card that can theoretically exist (actual coin flip for the game win). Obviously it's not that good but I think it's clearly good enough that it's still a no-brainer 4-of.

Quote from Perplex11 »

Does anyone have jadines or connets list?

Jadine's list: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=119403

A few too many concessions to Bogles in my opinion, but she is a master!

Hollow One is a really awful matchup in my experience. Along those lines, I've noticed that the graveyard decks that are resilient to one-shot hate (Hollow One, Living End, and Dredge) seem to be getting more popular on MTGO. It might be time to start playing Leyline of the Void. It's an extreme solution, but it's been done before.

This is such a silly argument; the question was answered for us long ago. There was actually a time BBE Jund existed before the printing of Deathrite Shaman but after the banning of Punishing Fire. Back then people were running anywhere from ~8-10 three-drops in addition to 4 BBE, not very far away from what is being run today, and you cannot find lists that run less than 25 land. Here are just a few top finishes when I searched only for decklists at Premier events, you can look for less competitive tournaments if you wish:

http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=2817&d=218178&f=MO
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=2804&d=218107&f=MO
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=2776&d=217954&f=MO
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=2641&d=217158&f=MO

Unless you're going to argue to me that the entire professional community in 2012 was collectively having a stroke, this is a settled question. Obviously you can always cheat on land and hope to get lucky. After all it's just one card. But don't kid yourself.

Just ended up 9th place out of 133 people in the Saturday Modern Challenge on MTGO today. 6-2 overall. Threw away at least one game on a pretty loose mulligan decision, so falling just a bit short is kind of sad, but it is what it is.

My wins were against a guy who got disconnected and timed out, an As Foretold/Taking Turns deck that made top 8, some kind of 5c Saheeli/Felidar/value cards deck (playing Jace and BBE!), Bogles, Jund mirror, Burn

My losses were against Grixis Shadow and 5c Humans. Both of those are good matchups but it happens. The Humans loss in particular stings because that loss was clearly my fault, made some punts.

My list was reasonably stock:

I think Fatal Push is too efficient against the aggressive decks to cut, but otherwise I want my removal to be pretty universal. I have no idea about Terminate over other options, but I wanted another instant speed card against big creatures. The one Terminate is definitely the worst card.

Grim Lavamancer and Treetop Village are awesome. IoK is amazing against nearly every deck and playing less than 4 is crazy. Raging Ravine is not nearly as good as it used to be. Jace is not very good against this deck, we have so many ways to pressure it. I'm pretty sure Dreadbore is wrong.

25 land was good, don't really want to cut one. There's no other 60th card I want badly in the maindeck.

Quote from Perplex11 »

Quote from iostream »

I think Reid's choices actually make a lot of sense. The logic is just that Jund with BBE is inherently good against Jace. Obviously, BBE and Bolt are effective against Jace, but more to the point, we are relatively threat-dense, so we can naturally pressure planeswalkers well. We don't have to play weird answers like Dreadbore. So what are we supposed to be afraid of? Answer: decks that are trying to go under 4-drops. That means Burn, traditional Zoo, and other true aggro decks that hit hard and fast. Therefore, 4 IOK, 0 Thoughtseize.

I actually think Reid's list is a little conservative! With BBE, I want my cascades to be really great. The Abrupt Decay in his maindeck feels like it should just be a second Maelstrom Pulse, and I'd cut the Fatal Push and maybe even the third Ooze for 2 Collective Brutality. With 25 land, you can make moves like this.

Speaking of land counts, I do not know why so many people here want to cut land. With 4 BBE and 0 DRS, 25 seems like the bare minimum and I'm tempted to run 26.

And without Thoughtseize how do you plan to fight the Eldrazi Tron/Tron decks? I played against Eldrazi Tron earlier and just got destroyed. I know it's a bad matchup, but cutting one of our good cards like Thoughtseize just seems wrong. Reid is obviously a master Midrange player, so I don't doubt his ideas - but I'd rather wait to see what happens in a month than drop something that has been a staple of the deck for ages.

I also think 24 lands has been good to me, and 25 may even be the right choice. 26 seems like way to many for me though. Our curve isn't that high, and I'm personally only running 3 Bloodbraid Elf at the moment.

My plan against Tron decks is to scoop game 1. For one, I don't think Thoughtseize over IoK is anywhere close to enough to turn the game 1 matchup around, but more importantly, Tron is not well positioned when the format is trying to speed up. They might crush us and they might even do well against the Jace decks, but the rest of the field will be dominated by fast aggro and fast combo trying to get under BBE and Jace, and these are Tron's absolute worst matchups. My hope is that Tron pilots just get discouraged and play something else. I should note here that this is also LSV's opinion, see this video: https://youtu.be/So5bsQS83H0?t=49s

To be clear: I think we should still try to have some sort of postboard plan versus Tron, Sideboard Thoughtseizes or Duresses actually seem great right now. All I'm saying is that tuning the maindeck for it is feels very wrong to me.

On the other side of the coin, playing IoK over Thoughtseize actually makes a tremendous difference in the aggro matchups. As I said, the format is speeding up, so I think this is where we should try to find edges. This is another argument in favor of my suggestion of maindeck Brutality, by the way.

I think Reid's choices actually make a lot of sense. The logic is just that Jund with BBE is inherently good against Jace. Obviously, BBE and Bolt are effective against Jace, but more to the point, we are relatively threat-dense, so we can naturally pressure planeswalkers well. We don't have to play weird answers like Dreadbore. So what are we supposed to be afraid of? Answer: decks that are trying to go under 4-drops. That means Burn, traditional Zoo, and other true aggro decks that hit hard and fast. Therefore, 4 IOK, 0 Thoughtseize.

I actually think Reid's list is a little conservative! With BBE, I want my cascades to be really great. The Abrupt Decay in his maindeck feels like it should just be a second Maelstrom Pulse, and I'd cut the Fatal Push and maybe even the third Ooze for 2 Collective Brutality. With 25 land, you can make moves like this.

Speaking of land counts, I do not know why so many people here want to cut land. With 4 BBE and 0 DRS, 25 seems like the bare minimum and I'm tempted to run 26.

I am wondering if those of you who want to play fewer than 4 Bloodbraid Elf were playing Jund back in 2012, when it was without question one of the top two or three decks in Modern. If you didn't, please give the old 4 BBE, 4 Bolt, 4 Bob, 4 Liliana of the Veil core package a shot. This is really a no-brainer.

Quote from thnkr »

@averethel and @Al_Z_Heimer, I don't really buy much into that. I've talked with him before about data gathering and whatnot, and I found that he doesn't actually track individual card performance, only the data available from the MTGO Replay Tool. Thus, lines like...

This is also the reason why Collective Brutality, while good on paper, tends to underperform.

...are based on anecdotal evidence, conjecture, and memory. Nothing actually tracked. To be fair, though, I'm also a bit dismissive because of how dismissive he was of my own work, because of the assumption that too much of my data comes from Cockatrice games, and the claim that Cockatrice isn't as reliable for good data as MTGO. You can see a comparison of win percentages comparing the two here (for matches) and here (for games). So, while I could at least respect the opinion if it were backed up by more than conjecture, I find this one to be unnecessarily dismissive, and even slightly insulting, considering the work I feel I've put in and the lack of work he presented to justify dismissing my work.

I feel like this needs to be said, and I'm not sure how to make it not sound dismissive, but this is just true: the fact that you worked hard doesn't mean that your results are correct, and the fact that the pro community doesn't have readily-presentable data to back up their conclusions doesn't mean that they are wrong. I am not trying to shut you down, but I think that it's wrong that you use links to your data as a cudgel to dismiss other people's opinions.

The fact that any of your data comes from Cockatrice is a red flag; it's pretty well known that the player quality on free platforms is a total joke compared to MTGO. Garbage in, garbage out. Another huge concern is that the entire professional community disagrees with you. When Sam Black, BBD, Justin Cohen, and the most recent Pro Tour champion all disagree with your conclusions, you can be pretty certain that you are incorrect. To wit: the entire debate surrounding Lantern at the moment is whether or not Mox Opal is too good to be legal in Modern, and the fact that you're trying to argue that it's actually bad should make you wonder whether or not you've made a serious methodological mistake.

Hi Lantern people! I've started to pick up this deck, and I am confused about River of Tears. Why is it good to play a River of Tears over the 4th Darkslick Shores? The PT winning list does this, and I'm finding it hard to understand under what circumstances the River is ever better than the straight up dual.

1) I don't know why you have to cut a Pulse for Path. There's no reason why you can't run 2 Pulse and 2 Paths. I actually 5-0'd a league recently with such a list. It also had a Celestial Purge in the sideboard to have more answers to creatures that get past Fatal Push / Decay. Especially if Bedlam Reveler becomes more popular, I think this will be good:



2) I agree that 4 Souls is probably good right now. I have to imagine the thinking behind cutting to 3 is that it is really bad against Tron and combo, but those decks didn't do very well at the PT. The format seems very fair right now.

Many interesting choices in Reid's list.

- 0 Surgical Extraction is a bit of a head scratcher. It seems like one of BGx's highest-impact sideboard cards.
- Only 3 Lingering Souls! This is the reason to play white at all. Why?
- Does Grim Flayer really need the Nihil Spellbomb help? It seems like such a terrible maindeck card against the field.

Grinded through ~10 leagues over the last few days refining the idea of Abzan + Field of Ruin. Lost some games to my own manabase, lost some games due to having the wrong threat suite/answer suite. Tried a number of adjustments, and I think the following list plays well enough that I would encourage you all to try it. Two 4-1's so far with this 75:



The 2 Field of Ruin finds a ton of utility in a variety of matchups, and it really makes a noticeable impact in matches like Affinity where manlands / specific utility lands play an important role.

Be careful about fetching and sequencing your lands, especially taking into account what your next draw could be! This is harder than in standard Abzan. I'm happy to discuss the mana base and the choices therein if anyone is interested. It was an interesting and intricate puzzle to work out; being mana screwed in a variety of ways really teaches you which lands are essential and which lands are not, and this learning process led to some unexpected conclusions (e.g. 0 Blooming Marsh, Hissing Quagmire over Stirring Wildwood, singleton Twilight Mire).

I know the knee jerk reaction to this list is going to be to cut the singleton Path, but believe me, you need it.

I am actually kind of medium on Tracker. It is an "effective four-drop", so you get into situations occasionally where you feel that you can't cast it if you don't have the fourth land. When it gets removed immediately, it is very tempo negative even though you're technically up a card. 3 mana + 2 mana is a lot.

The obvious substitution is Grim Flayer, but in my testing it's been just okay.