Hand #1: Against Burn, otp, G2: 1 Swamp, 1 Forest, 1 Blackcleave Cliffs, 1 Goyf, 1 Liliana of the Veil, 1 Abrupt Decay, 1 Terminate.
Results: 87.2 % Keep and 12.8 % would mull. In general, this hand does not contain efficient cards that can give us time like IOK Bolt/Push or any lifegain spell. Tarmogoyf won't likely be huge either with our hand alone. However, I think you still keep that hand. You have a painfree landbase which gets to cast every spell in our deck except for BBE, and Tarmogoyf will likely grow through our opponents GY, so the clock is there. LOTV can then rip the hand of the burn player apart when we dropped our goyf. A creature heavy draw from the opponent is also not a big problem. All in all this should be a clear keep.
Hand #2: Against Unknown, G1, otp: 1 Verdant Catacombs, 1 Bloodstained Mire, 1 Ravine, 1 Blackcleave Cliffs, 3 BBE.
Results: 100 % Mull and 0% keep: This is basically not a hand meant to seriously. It should just show that we should not overestimate BBE going forward. I personally would keep this hand though if I am up against control decks specifically. Against unknown I would mull though.
Results: 89.7 % keep and 10.3 % mull: For this hand, some things make the decision easier whether to mulligan or not. For example if you have 25 lands in your deck. In general, one rule of thumb for Jund is to never keep one landers. In principle that is the safe route to go for. But I wanted to give this example that sometimes we can go a bit of a risky route. Since you are on the draw means you get an extra card to look at as well. And sinc you have 4 pieces of interaction it actually is not that bad if you miss your landdrop one time or maybe even twice. After that it gets tough, but I think the risk can be taken here. On the play I would probably ship this hand.
Hand #4: Against Humans, G2, otd: 1 Bolt, 1 Push, 2 Blackcleave Cliffs, 2 Goyf, 1 Blood Crypt
Result: 66.7 % Keep and 33.3 % would mull. This seemed to be the most undecided hand in the series. In general, if the Blood Crypt would have been any green source, we would snap keep. The problem here is that you might have effectively already mulled to 5 if we never draw a green source in time. If we have 25 lands in our deck, we have 18 green lands left to draw with 53 cards in the deck. We are also on the draw. So basically thats a 34 % percent change to draw it right away and the chance increased to 34.5 % and 35.2 % over the next 2 draws if we miss on the previous draws. We have 2 pieces of interaction that can give us time. Besides the land, we have other decent draws as well at least: 24 cards on average that don't need green to be cast. Only devastating topdecks going forward would be nonland cards that need green mana. So if we combine green sources (18) and nonland nongreen cards (24) together, we have: 79 % chance to at least draw something useful for the development of the game. Considering that, I would keep the hand, even if the goyfs could strand in our hand potentially.
Results: 87.7 % would keep and 12.3 % would mull: The big disadvantage of being on the play gets blown up here because we don't have a turn 1 black source to cast a discard spell. One thing to consider is, that if the opposing player has a Leyline of Sanctity, this doesn't matter anyway. And those starts are the hardest to beat. So more or less, we are on "pseudo-draw" this game then. And I personally think we can easily win a game where we are on the draw and have discard while the opponent doesn't have Leyline. And even if the opponent does have Leyline, we have chances to still do something with our goyf and Decay. All in all I would keep.
GW company: the abzan lists play only One viscara seer Main as Their only black card, and some sideboard cards. this is Why i Think abzan is better against us, as they run better answers against Bob, our best Card.
the matches tend to be grinsfests and the Card i am most afraid of is gideon, Ally of zendikar
Am not quite sure about that, our removal spells are generally quite likely to kill a creature in the Counters Company matchup, wheras GW Company runs Voice and harder to kill threats as well like Knight (which is more or less Bolt proof and semi Push proof)
Abzan and its nature of trying to find their combo makes our discard better against them also I feel. LoTV is a card that can grind them out as well. GW Company basically doesn't care about discard and just keeps jamming hard to remove threats on the BF and can even attack our landbase effectively.
I don't have the impression that Counters has better ways to deal with Bob, as Counters Company often runs Path in the SB and Gw Company in the maindeck.
Counters is able to get us sometimes, and then we just die, but overall, I personally have the impression GW is more or less designed to be good against us, wheras Counters Company is at least 50/50.
GW company: the abzan lists play only One viscara seer Main as Their only black card, and some sideboard cards. this is Why i Think abzan is better against us, as they run better answers against Bob, our best Card.
the matches tend to be grinsfests and the Card i am most afraid of is gideon, Ally of zendikar
Am not quite sure about that, our removal spells are generally quite likely to kill a creature in the Counters Company matchup, wheras GW Company runs Voice and harder to kill threats as well like Knight (which is more or less Bolt proof and semi Push proof)
Abzan and its nature of trying to find their combo makes our discard better against them also I feel. LoTV is a card that can grind them out as well. GW Company basically doesn't care about discard and just keeps jamming hard to remove threats on the BF and can even attack our landbase effectively.
I don't have the impression that Counters has better ways to deal with Bob, as Counters Company often runs Path in the SB and Gw Company in the maindeck.
Counters is able to get us sometimes, and then we just die, but overall, I personally have the impression GW is more or less designed to be good against us, wheras Counters Company is at least 50/50.
ty again flying delver for your tips. i agree on your assessment on GW company. how do we sure up the matchup? and tips on gameplay? from my initial games, trying to avoid to kill voice is a good gameplan. also bolt the bird on early turns but not on late games. anger of the gods is good and damnation. would you play bontu last reckoning on damnation slot so you can cascade to it? should i shave 1 bolt for push/decay.
No I would never consider Bontu's, I don't think tempo matters much here, and I rather have Damnation which comes a turn later than Bontu's. If you cascade into it, you at least pay the same amount of mana as a Damnation on the following turn.
But yeah, sweeper are good, and cards like Kalitas can get out of hand pretty quickly. Ooze is also an allstar.
1. Path is not a Good answer to turn 2 Bob, my Buddies on Counters Company tend to agree here.
2. there are man das if Building GW Company, and i thought if a different Build than you did i Think, there are Zoo lists than compare more to naya Zoo, knightfall or little kid abzan with little to no Combo Pieces, and lists that are very Close to abzan Counters Company. here we have a naming issue, i tend to Read Coco as Counters Company, not as collected Company.
3. depending on the Build of GW kolagahns loses a lot of Value ans lotv gain Value. i think that a Deck without finks and Witness is better to handle.
4. here it is again important to identify what list they are playing with what win conditions, ans how they are going to sideboard. if you Stay a Step ahead the matchup becomes favored for us.
how would u approach this deck? how to sure up the matchup? thoughts on your perfect 60 cards. if you have a different sideboard plan for play/draw that would be helpful too. because on the games i played LotV is good on play but not on the draw.
Went 3-1 at FNM with the same 24 land list that FlyingDelver proposed but no treetop village.
Round 1: Loss (0-2) vs Humans
Game one my opponent is able to curve out pretty well but I'm able to answer the first couple threats and land a bob. He's able to go wide and I'm picking off his creatures one by one and slowly starting to stabilize at 4 until i hit BBE off my bob.
I side in +2 anger, +1 lavamancer, +2 finks and +1 brutality, -2 thoughtseize, -4 IOK
Game two I keep a speculative hand of lavamancer, anger and 5 lands. I drop lavamancer, and he goes noble into freebooter, taking my anger and I dont draw anything relevant and get run over by double thalia's lieutenant.
We play two more sideboarded games and I beat him 2-0, the first game I was able to double bolt and use k-command on vial and make him discard his last card then goyfs went to work. Game two I was able to anger his board and have bob and lili while he was hellbent and he scooped.
Round 2: Win (2-0) vs RUG Midrange
Game one I inquisition and see goyfs, blood moon, electrolyze and some cantrips. I'm have a double bob hand and he doesn't kill my first bob which runs away with the game.
My opponent didnt board against me but I threw in some spellbombs, cage, brutalities, finks, etc.
Game two i see he has two blood moons but my hand has a bunch of fetches so when he lands moon he actually hurts himself more than me. He empties double goyf onto the battlefield with two cards in hand while i have bob out, I cast lili into his four mana expecting him to cryptic, which he does and then i pulse his goyfs and he dies to bob running away with the game.
Round 3: Win (2-0) vs Gifts Storm
My opponent was running a weird version of gifts storm with merchant scroll but i'm able to strip his hand in the early game and bob and goyf make short work of him.
I side in +2 brutality, +2 spellbomb and +1 cage and -2 terminate, -1 decay, -2 push
Game two I land cage and land BBE into spellbomb, and my opponent locks himself out with blood moon for some odd reason and I have swamp to cast my bobs.
Round 4: Win (2-0) vs Gifts Storm
Game one I'm able to answer turn 2 baral and then see a cantrip light hand with electro and remand and a ritual. He plays electro with remand up so i bolt without making my land drop, he remands, then i play mire and crack for crypt and bolt electro again. Goyfs beat him down pretty quickly after.
I side the same as last match
Game two I'm able to answer and early baral and have bob and lili poised to ultimate so my opponent is forced to empty for 4 goblins and go after lili while I have a 4/4 ooze out. I draw spellbomb and he's close to empty handed and ooze goes to work on his life total and he scoops.
Does anyone have any good advice on the humans matchup? Game one he had a pretty fast start and I was almost able to stabilize but he went wide and reflector mage was a little annoying. I noticed anger can be really good sometimes but lieutenant can make their humans outgrow anger as well.
I have a problem. UR Control (with and without Young Pyromancer) is giving me fits. I feel like Liliana of the Veil and discard spells followed up with a Tarmogoyf (or any threat) is supposed to be good enough. That rarely seems to work out. Not to mention, Keranos is a pain after game 1. Is my thinking wrong? Should I just load up on all the threats I can get?
if you do not want to run deglamer in the sb, just accept that you are going to Loose against keranos. normally the only play bin as a One of, so its fine.
I Think that the inclusion of young pyro changes the Match compleptly, i would always Board answers for Their winning condition and all 2 for 1s i have (finks, Tracker, etc.)
So would you keep the discard spells in?
With UR Control you also include Blue Moon variants and/or Breach variants?
In general, I would definitely leave in discard. I would also bring it in actually. Thoughtseize is the best answer we have to Keranos if we expect one. I would cut Push and cut Bolts if they aren't running YP. If they are running YP maybe cutting 1-2 LoTV could be right.
As for the matchup, usually they should not be able to handle a Tarmogoyf which is out of bolt range, which makes me feel the matchup shouldnt be too hard. But it depends on the wincons they have, thats why I asked if its Blue Moon and/or Breach. YP is also a card thats hard to deal with if it sticks.
With UR Control you also include Blue Moon variants and/or Breach variants?
In general, I would definitely leave in discard. I would also bring it in actually. Thoughtseize is the best answer we have to Keranos if we expect one. I would cut Push and cut Bolts if they aren't running YP. If they are running YP maybe cutting 1-2 LoTV could be right.
As for the matchup, usually they should not be able to handle a Tarmogoyf which is out of bolt range, which makes me feel the matchup shouldnt be too hard. But it depends on the wincons they have, thats why I asked if its Blue Moon and/or Breach. YP is also a card thats hard to deal with if it sticks.[/quote]
I have played against two different versions. The one I was more familiar had Young Pyromancer in it and felt a bit more like a UR tempo/midrange deck. It had Blood Moon as well. I just felt like Young Pyromancer was hard to overcome if I couldn't remove it fast enough. Otherwise, I generally didn't have problems with it. The other one I ran into recently is definitely more towards control. He didn't run Young Pyromancer. Instead, he loaded up on permission spells and Blood Moon in the main deck. Then he brought in more threats after sideboard. He also had Blood Moon main deck as well. I just felt like I wanted all the discard spells I could get, but Bloodbraid Elf felt pretty awkward. I mean it usually still generated value via the cascade, but the 2-toughness felt like a liability more often than not. Also, sometimes cascading into a discard spell (with 8 in the deck after sideboard) felt like a whiff. The control version also ran Jace, the Mind Sculptor, which just ended me once he could untap with it in play. I felt like I had to fight on too many fronts (mana denial via Blood Moon, random threats like Keranos and possibly Vedalken Shackles as well as Jace) against it.
1. Path is not a Good answer to turn 2 Bob, my Buddies on Counters Company tend to agree here.
2. there are man das if Building GW Company, and i thought if a different Build than you did i Think, there are Zoo lists than compare more to naya Zoo, knightfall or little kid abzan with little to no Combo Pieces, and lists that are very Close to abzan Counters Company. here we have a naming issue, i tend to Read Coco as Counters Company, not as collected Company.
3. depending on the Build of GW kolagahns loses a lot of Value ans lotv gain Value. i think that a Deck without finks and Witness is better to handle.
4. here it is again important to identify what list they are playing with what win conditions, ans how they are going to sideboard. if you Stay a Step ahead the matchup becomes favored for us.
how would u approach this deck? how to sure up the matchup? thoughts on your perfect 60 cards. if you have a different sideboard plan for play/draw that would be helpful too. because on the games i played LotV is good on play but not on the draw.
my Current lists is a 24 Lands list with 2 scoozes and 3 Bolt/2 push. i have 2 k.command and a ltlh Main.
I would bring in (as a priority list)
1 Lava Man
1 Ltlh
1 Anger
1 Fulminator
1 Tracker
1 Cage
1 CB
all cards after anger are worse than LotV.
I Think the matchup is slightly in our favor if we play right, unless they draw to many Companys or sigarda.
in my opinion that are a Aggro midgrange Deck with a Value Plan b. since the printing of bbe we have better Value and enough removal for the problematic cards.
discard is actually all very good against them, because if we are on the play we want to cast 3 1mana Spells in the first Two turns (Bolt the Bird, ans either Double discard or discard and removal).
love your sideboard. it really fights grindy matchups. no wonder u have good matchup with GW company. we'll see if i can apply the same principle. and ty to Flyingdelver for Kalitas suggestion. it really ahines in this matchup.
I have been lurking this thread for a few years now. I have been trying to play Jund for over a year now. I started playing online everyday about 2 months ago. Since then, I have only won 14 out of 75 matches. I do not know what exactly I am doing wrong. It is very frustrating to lose so much. I have a very similar deck that you all use and I follow the primer religiously. I seem to get close to winning about half of the matches but always lose to straight up nonsense. When I play at locals, I seem to do better, I have never done better than 2-2 but I figure that is because all the guys at my locals are just as bad if not worse than me when it comes to casting a spell.
I have found that 24 lands is bad but good. I flood continuously at 24. I feel that 14 creatures is not enough. I rarely get enough spells or creatures to cast in the entire game. I often find myself just astonished with how bad my luck is when it comes to lands. I either draw none or all. Nothing ever in between.
I am really starting to doubt that this deck is right for me but I fear that if I choose another different deck, that I will suffer the same problems and not win hardly ever. I have thought about going to burn or E Tron. Perhaps the entire MTG thing is not for me. Any generic advise for a super scrub noob? Any help is appreciated. I like the deck, I like the interactions, and like the lack of unfairness the deck has but I cannot handle losing at such a disturbing pace with a supposedly powerful deck.
Just my 2 cents: I played traverse shadow for about a year and tried every single version and never got good results. Then played burn for 6 months, and at the moment I play Jund making a top 3 in about half of my FNM nights. I'm sure those results are not spectacular at all, but have been playing MTG for less than two years.
Sometimes self-confidence is very important, so using a more linear deck like Burn can help a lot (or at least that was my case). In the end I dropped burn as I always loved Jund and sometimes I just felt I won or lose on the topdeck.
As for the land / spell / creature rate, maybe work on your mulligan strategy. I tend to agree that I would love to have a couple Tasigurs or trackers in the mainboard for additional clock, but that is not possible so we must prioritize. I think hellkite12 covered the rest. Good luck!
1. Path is not a Good answer to turn 2 Bob, my Buddies on Counters Company tend to agree here.
2. there are man das if Building GW Company, and i thought if a different Build than you did i Think, there are Zoo lists than compare more to naya Zoo, knightfall or little kid abzan with little to no Combo Pieces, and lists that are very Close to abzan Counters Company. here we have a naming issue, i tend to Read Coco as Counters Company, not as collected Company.
3. depending on the Build of GW kolagahns loses a lot of Value ans lotv gain Value. i think that a Deck without finks and Witness is better to handle.
4. here it is again important to identify what list they are playing with what win conditions, ans how they are going to sideboard. if you Stay a Step ahead the matchup becomes favored for us.
1) Of course Path is not a good answer to bob, but that doesn't change the fact that I don't think Counters Company has better ways to kill bob, like you stated.
2) In my mind when we say GW Company its exactly one version, namely the one Todd Stevens is known for. Knightfall and Abzan Little Kid are simply what we call them: Knightfall and Abzan Little Kid. Other versions are not really the popular ones I think. Especially Zoo type of versions are mostly just Abzan Little Kid and or Knightfall.
3) If you read Todd Stevens article on the ultimate guide to GW Company, you can see in the SB guide for the GBx section that he mentiones the matchup is very favourable. And I have to agree. GW Company is designed to beat us. IMO, when the GW Company is a good pilot, we should be unfavoured.
4) Just like 3). The matchup is unfavourable in my opinion, wheras Counters Company is at least 50/50 or slightly favoured.
Finks and E-Witt are surely tough to beat, but both can be dealt with a singleton Ooze for example. GW Company does also run a number of Finks/E-witt, in addition to Knight of the Reliquary (Almost always Bolt proof and semi Push proof), Voice of Resurgance (almost always trades at least 1-for-2 not in our favour), Courser of Kruphix (Bolt proof and also semi push proof) and Ramunap Excavator, which will literally destroy us if they get to use it a bunch of times in conjunction with Ghost Quarter. Yes all creatures can be Terminated or Decayed, but the need to rely on our hard removal against most creatures when this deck runs close to 30 creatures total, makes the math easy to say their creatures are generally more sticky and harder to deal with than the ones from Counters Company. If we get to deal with the first wave of creatures Counters Company has way more bad topecks than GW Company. They can rip a useless Devoted Druid and or Vizier for example (considering an empty board). Duskwatch recruiter on its own is also not very effective. GW Company can just rip a huge Knight and we die. And this is not a combo. Its a single card. All in all I do feel much better playing against Counters Company than playing against GW Company, and I do also believe discard is better against Counters Company than GW Company.
Does anyone have any good advice on the humans matchup? Game one he had a pretty fast start and I was almost able to stabilize but he went wide and reflector mage was a little annoying. I noticed anger can be really good sometimes but lieutenant can make their humans outgrow anger as well.
Against Humans you have to be very careful about your lifetotals, and knowledge about combat dynamics is very rewarding. Reid Duke showed excellent knowledge of that in his Pro Tour match when he was on Abzan. Its very much worth it to check out for this reason. I highly recommend watching it. Sneak in points of chip dmg when you can, but always be on the defense primarily. Also use your removal at best, like its sometimes better to Push a Hierarch rather than Bolt it since Bolt is better against a potential Mantis Rider of the top for example. After SB have access to basically every card that can kill a creature.
Maindeck stays the same right now, the lower to the ground approach should be good vs both of those decks. Sideboardwise I like impactful Hollow One hate like Cage and Anger. Also trying out a Hazoret as a mirror Bomb, which can still be okay against Tron (as she replaced a Fulminator)
I think Sunday Modern Challanges and MOCS are way bigger indications for the modern metagame than the tuesdays and friday league results now, since those focus on different kind of decks rather than the actual metagame. And this MOCS result was pretty clear: Humans and RB Hollow One needs to be beaten.
My meta is free of hollow one and other graveyard decks. There is an occassional dredge every 3 weeks and some stable storm presence. Would 2 Surgical and a spellbomb be enough for storm while helping me combo them with fulminator vs big mana?
Also damping sphere how many would you test and what would you cut?
As for Storms sake, Surgical is a card that you surely bring in and is on the verge of being "good enough", but its not exciting. How present is Storm compared to Big Mana decks in your meta? How many Oozes do you have in your 75?
I would maybe try a compromise of running 3 Fulminator, 1 Surgical, 1 Spellbomb and 1 Cage for the whole package. That way you have 4 cards against Big Mana, and still good GY hate against Storm. I think if you skimp on good GY hate (Spellbomb is good, but only a singleton in your case) Storm can get pretty dicey sometimes. I personally think the inclusion of Cage over Surgical would firm up your percentage points against Storm which is very valuable and the loss of the second Surgical for Big Mana is no big difference for the matchups win%, as a Fulminator + Surgical combo is unlikely and our best line against Big Mana is still Discard into Goyf into Fulminator.
For that meta there are actually only 7 decks where I would side in Surgical against (2 Tron, 1 Valakut, 2 Storm, 1 Dredge and 1 Living End). And against 4 of those, Surgical is only okay and not great (2 Storm, 1 Dredge and 1 Living End). I would cut them completely and play another Spellbomb and a Cage, which would help better for all matchups except for those 3 Big Mana decks (except Cage against Living End of course, but Cage is also applicable against Elves and good against Counters Company).
As a more general aspect, I would not play both Huntmaster and Hazoret. You have a high amount of aggro decks where those cards arent that good against. I would cut the Hazoret and play a Finks or Liliana, the Last Hope.
Also I would always bring 1 Grudge, which also helps against Tron.
Its job is to stuff Tron and Storm and any other Big Mana deck not running Utopia Sprawl.
I think Tron survives just fine, Storm on the other hand guess they will be packing some Abrade.
But it is impossible to combo through so there is that at least.
FlyingDelver, as I stated before I'm happy to see that we reached about the same maindeck. However I am not confortable with my sideboard just yet, and I'd like the comumunity (and yours, of course) insight on that regard.
Didn't miss the extra discard even facing Grixis control, and while Blood moon is a meta call I felt that those two extra sideboard slots were determinating.
What matchups do you think I would be giving up to by cutting 2 IoK?
@andyburgos If you run the same maindeck like mine, it would mean that you have a mana curve looking like this after the changes you made:
10 One drops
15 Two drops
7 Three drops
4 Four drops
Which equals to a average CMC of: 2.14
Now, with 24 lands and 4 manlands, I don't like playing more 2 drops than needed. I personally want to be able to play CMC 1 spell + CMC 2 spell on turn 3 fairly consistantly. Let alone for this reason I am not a fan of maindecking CB.
What is the reason for you to play CB over IOK in general? I would argue for discard purposes IOK is miles better on average. For lifegain purposes IOK does similar things, since IOK is besides our cheap removal one of the best cards we have against aggro decks. So only the removal mode would be left in my thinking. And regarding that, I personally think I would much rather have a more versatile discard for the overall format than the extra removal. Playing the 24 land approach with more CMC 1 cards already has more removal compared to more popular lists.
I just don't want to have multiple 2 drops in my hand when needing to operate on 3 lands only basically (which you have to accept when you run that 24 land approach).
As for your sideboard, I would cut the Surgicals completely and run 1 Cage. Surgical is a card that always will be in the gauntlet for Jund, but right now its not impactful enough. Then you have an extra slot which you can use to bring back CB to the SB. The second slot is obtained by cutting a Tracker and either keeping the singleton Tracker or replacing it with a more impactful bomb like Huntmaster or Hazoret.
Besides that I don't think Blood Moon is a card that belongs in Jund at all, not now and also not the in the past. There was only a small period of time where BM was acceptable for me, which was during a big popularity of Bant Eldrazi. Maybe in the future, but especially with the printing of Damping Sphere, i do not believe so.
@andyburgos If you run the same maindeck like mine, it would mean that you have a mana curve looking like this after the changes you made:
10 One drops
15 Two drops
7 Three drops
4 Four drops
Which equals to a average CMC of: 2.14
Now, with 24 lands and 4 manlands, I don't like playing more 2 drops than needed. I personally want to be able to play CMC 1 spell + CMC 2 spell on turn 3 fairly consistantly. Let alone for this reason I am not a fan of maindecking CB.
What is the reason for you to play CB over IOK in general? I would argue for discard purposes IOK is miles better on average. For lifegain purposes IOK does similar things, since IOK is besides our cheap removal one of the best cards we have against aggro decks. So only the removal mode would be left in my thinking. And regarding that, I personally think I would much rather have a more versatile discard for the overall format than the extra removal. Playing the 24 land approach with more CMC 1 cards already has more removal compared to more popular lists.
I just don't want to have multiple 2 drops in my hand when needing to operate on 3 lands only basically (which you have to accept when you run that 24 land approach).
As for your sideboard, I would cut the Surgicals completely and run 1 Cage. Surgical is a card that always will be in the gauntlet for Jund, but right now its not impactful enough. Then you have an extra slot which you can use to bring back CB to the SB. The second slot is obtained by cutting a Tracker and either keeping the singleton Tracker or replacing it with a more impactful bomb like Huntmaster or Hazoret.
Besides that I don't think Blood Moon is a card that belongs in Jund at all, not now and also not the in the past. There was only a small period of time where BM was acceptable for me, which was during a big popularity of Bant Eldrazi. Maybe in the future, but especially with the printing of Damping Sphere, i do not believe so.
Very insightful (also thanks to hellkite12]). Maindeck CB was mostly to improve my game against burn, and at that you are right that IoK is not the card to cut.
I'll take out the surgical extractions and keep 2 nihil spellbomb for my next LGS, as that will allow me to restore the proper IoK and relegate CB to the side. Hazoret or Huntmaster are both options to cut the second tracker, as I think they hit similar matches.
As for the single ancient grudge, is it justifiable with 2 maindeck K-Commands and 2 sweepers on the board, or should I respect Lantern and Affinity more? I feel that maybe 1x Engineered explosives replacing a single Anger of the gods should help in the Lantern and Boggles matchups, too.
Thanks again! Much appreciated.
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Hand #1: Against Burn, otp, G2: 1 Swamp, 1 Forest, 1 Blackcleave Cliffs, 1 Goyf, 1 Liliana of the Veil, 1 Abrupt Decay, 1 Terminate.
Results: 87.2 % Keep and 12.8 % would mull. In general, this hand does not contain efficient cards that can give us time like IOK Bolt/Push or any lifegain spell. Tarmogoyf won't likely be huge either with our hand alone. However, I think you still keep that hand. You have a painfree landbase which gets to cast every spell in our deck except for BBE, and Tarmogoyf will likely grow through our opponents GY, so the clock is there. LOTV can then rip the hand of the burn player apart when we dropped our goyf. A creature heavy draw from the opponent is also not a big problem. All in all this should be a clear keep.
Hand #2: Against Unknown, G1, otp: 1 Verdant Catacombs, 1 Bloodstained Mire, 1 Ravine, 1 Blackcleave Cliffs, 3 BBE.
Results: 100 % Mull and 0% keep: This is basically not a hand meant to seriously. It should just show that we should not overestimate BBE going forward. I personally would keep this hand though if I am up against control decks specifically. Against unknown I would mull though.
Hand #3: Against Affinity, G1, otd: 1 Blackcleave Cliffs, 1 IOK, 1 Push, 1 Bolt, 1 KCommand, 1 TS, 1 LoTV.
Results: 89.7 % keep and 10.3 % mull: For this hand, some things make the decision easier whether to mulligan or not. For example if you have 25 lands in your deck. In general, one rule of thumb for Jund is to never keep one landers. In principle that is the safe route to go for. But I wanted to give this example that sometimes we can go a bit of a risky route. Since you are on the draw means you get an extra card to look at as well. And sinc you have 4 pieces of interaction it actually is not that bad if you miss your landdrop one time or maybe even twice. After that it gets tough, but I think the risk can be taken here. On the play I would probably ship this hand.
Hand #4: Against Humans, G2, otd: 1 Bolt, 1 Push, 2 Blackcleave Cliffs, 2 Goyf, 1 Blood Crypt
Result: 66.7 % Keep and 33.3 % would mull. This seemed to be the most undecided hand in the series. In general, if the Blood Crypt would have been any green source, we would snap keep. The problem here is that you might have effectively already mulled to 5 if we never draw a green source in time. If we have 25 lands in our deck, we have 18 green lands left to draw with 53 cards in the deck. We are also on the draw. So basically thats a 34 % percent change to draw it right away and the chance increased to 34.5 % and 35.2 % over the next 2 draws if we miss on the previous draws. We have 2 pieces of interaction that can give us time. Besides the land, we have other decent draws as well at least: 24 cards on average that don't need green to be cast. Only devastating topdecks going forward would be nonland cards that need green mana. So if we combine green sources (18) and nonland nongreen cards (24) together, we have: 79 % chance to at least draw something useful for the development of the game. Considering that, I would keep the hand, even if the goyfs could strand in our hand potentially.
Hand #5: Against Bogles, G1, otp: 1 TS, 1 IOK, 1 Abrupt Decay, 1 Goyf, 1 Ravine, 1 Stomping, 1 Twilight Mire.
Results: 87.7 % would keep and 12.3 % would mull: The big disadvantage of being on the play gets blown up here because we don't have a turn 1 black source to cast a discard spell. One thing to consider is, that if the opposing player has a Leyline of Sanctity, this doesn't matter anyway. And those starts are the hardest to beat. So more or less, we are on "pseudo-draw" this game then. And I personally think we can easily win a game where we are on the draw and have discard while the opponent doesn't have Leyline. And even if the opponent does have Leyline, we have chances to still do something with our goyf and Decay. All in all I would keep.
Am not quite sure about that, our removal spells are generally quite likely to kill a creature in the Counters Company matchup, wheras GW Company runs Voice and harder to kill threats as well like Knight (which is more or less Bolt proof and semi Push proof)
Abzan and its nature of trying to find their combo makes our discard better against them also I feel. LoTV is a card that can grind them out as well. GW Company basically doesn't care about discard and just keeps jamming hard to remove threats on the BF and can even attack our landbase effectively.
I don't have the impression that Counters has better ways to deal with Bob, as Counters Company often runs Path in the SB and Gw Company in the maindeck.
Counters is able to get us sometimes, and then we just die, but overall, I personally have the impression GW is more or less designed to be good against us, wheras Counters Company is at least 50/50.
ty again flying delver for your tips. i agree on your assessment on GW company. how do we sure up the matchup? and tips on gameplay? from my initial games, trying to avoid to kill voice is a good gameplan. also bolt the bird on early turns but not on late games. anger of the gods is good and damnation. would you play bontu last reckoning on damnation slot so you can cascade to it? should i shave 1 bolt for push/decay.
But yeah, sweeper are good, and cards like Kalitas can get out of hand pretty quickly. Ooze is also an allstar.
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/35564_The-Ultimate-Guide-To-GW-Company.html
how would u approach this deck? how to sure up the matchup? thoughts on your perfect 60 cards. if you have a different sideboard plan for play/draw that would be helpful too. because on the games i played LotV is good on play but not on the draw.
Round 1: Loss (0-2) vs Humans
Game one my opponent is able to curve out pretty well but I'm able to answer the first couple threats and land a bob. He's able to go wide and I'm picking off his creatures one by one and slowly starting to stabilize at 4 until i hit BBE off my bob.
I side in +2 anger, +1 lavamancer, +2 finks and +1 brutality, -2 thoughtseize, -4 IOK
Game two I keep a speculative hand of lavamancer, anger and 5 lands. I drop lavamancer, and he goes noble into freebooter, taking my anger and I dont draw anything relevant and get run over by double thalia's lieutenant.
We play two more sideboarded games and I beat him 2-0, the first game I was able to double bolt and use k-command on vial and make him discard his last card then goyfs went to work. Game two I was able to anger his board and have bob and lili while he was hellbent and he scooped.
Round 2: Win (2-0) vs RUG Midrange
Game one I inquisition and see goyfs, blood moon, electrolyze and some cantrips. I'm have a double bob hand and he doesn't kill my first bob which runs away with the game.
My opponent didnt board against me but I threw in some spellbombs, cage, brutalities, finks, etc.
Game two i see he has two blood moons but my hand has a bunch of fetches so when he lands moon he actually hurts himself more than me. He empties double goyf onto the battlefield with two cards in hand while i have bob out, I cast lili into his four mana expecting him to cryptic, which he does and then i pulse his goyfs and he dies to bob running away with the game.
Round 3: Win (2-0) vs Gifts Storm
My opponent was running a weird version of gifts storm with merchant scroll but i'm able to strip his hand in the early game and bob and goyf make short work of him.
I side in +2 brutality, +2 spellbomb and +1 cage and -2 terminate, -1 decay, -2 push
Game two I land cage and land BBE into spellbomb, and my opponent locks himself out with blood moon for some odd reason and I have swamp to cast my bobs.
Round 4: Win (2-0) vs Gifts Storm
Game one I'm able to answer turn 2 baral and then see a cantrip light hand with electro and remand and a ritual. He plays electro with remand up so i bolt without making my land drop, he remands, then i play mire and crack for crypt and bolt electro again. Goyfs beat him down pretty quickly after.
I side the same as last match
Game two I'm able to answer and early baral and have bob and lili poised to ultimate so my opponent is forced to empty for 4 goblins and go after lili while I have a 4/4 ooze out. I draw spellbomb and he's close to empty handed and ooze goes to work on his life total and he scoops.
Does anyone have any good advice on the humans matchup? Game one he had a pretty fast start and I was almost able to stabilize but he went wide and reflector mage was a little annoying. I noticed anger can be really good sometimes but lieutenant can make their humans outgrow anger as well.
With UR Control you also include Blue Moon variants and/or Breach variants?
In general, I would definitely leave in discard. I would also bring it in actually. Thoughtseize is the best answer we have to Keranos if we expect one. I would cut Push and cut Bolts if they aren't running YP. If they are running YP maybe cutting 1-2 LoTV could be right.
As for the matchup, usually they should not be able to handle a Tarmogoyf which is out of bolt range, which makes me feel the matchup shouldnt be too hard. But it depends on the wincons they have, thats why I asked if its Blue Moon and/or Breach. YP is also a card thats hard to deal with if it sticks.[/quote]
I have played against two different versions. The one I was more familiar had Young Pyromancer in it and felt a bit more like a UR tempo/midrange deck. It had Blood Moon as well. I just felt like Young Pyromancer was hard to overcome if I couldn't remove it fast enough. Otherwise, I generally didn't have problems with it. The other one I ran into recently is definitely more towards control. He didn't run Young Pyromancer. Instead, he loaded up on permission spells and Blood Moon in the main deck. Then he brought in more threats after sideboard. He also had Blood Moon main deck as well. I just felt like I wanted all the discard spells I could get, but Bloodbraid Elf felt pretty awkward. I mean it usually still generated value via the cascade, but the 2-toughness felt like a liability more often than not. Also, sometimes cascading into a discard spell (with 8 in the deck after sideboard) felt like a whiff. The control version also ran Jace, the Mind Sculptor, which just ended me once he could untap with it in play. I felt like I had to fight on too many fronts (mana denial via Blood Moon, random threats like Keranos and possibly Vedalken Shackles as well as Jace) against it.
love your sideboard. it really fights grindy matchups. no wonder u have good matchup with GW company. we'll see if i can apply the same principle. and ty to Flyingdelver for Kalitas suggestion. it really ahines in this matchup.
Just my 2 cents: I played traverse shadow for about a year and tried every single version and never got good results. Then played burn for 6 months, and at the moment I play Jund making a top 3 in about half of my FNM nights. I'm sure those results are not spectacular at all, but have been playing MTG for less than two years.
Sometimes self-confidence is very important, so using a more linear deck like Burn can help a lot (or at least that was my case). In the end I dropped burn as I always loved Jund and sometimes I just felt I won or lose on the topdeck.
As for the land / spell / creature rate, maybe work on your mulligan strategy. I tend to agree that I would love to have a couple Tasigurs or trackers in the mainboard for additional clock, but that is not possible so we must prioritize. I think hellkite12 covered the rest. Good luck!
Mardu Pyromancer
Grixis Shadow
Traverse Shadow
Jund
Abzan
The Rock
1) Of course Path is not a good answer to bob, but that doesn't change the fact that I don't think Counters Company has better ways to kill bob, like you stated.
2) In my mind when we say GW Company its exactly one version, namely the one Todd Stevens is known for. Knightfall and Abzan Little Kid are simply what we call them: Knightfall and Abzan Little Kid. Other versions are not really the popular ones I think. Especially Zoo type of versions are mostly just Abzan Little Kid and or Knightfall.
3) If you read Todd Stevens article on the ultimate guide to GW Company, you can see in the SB guide for the GBx section that he mentiones the matchup is very favourable. And I have to agree. GW Company is designed to beat us. IMO, when the GW Company is a good pilot, we should be unfavoured.
4) Just like 3). The matchup is unfavourable in my opinion, wheras Counters Company is at least 50/50 or slightly favoured.
Finks and E-Witt are surely tough to beat, but both can be dealt with a singleton Ooze for example. GW Company does also run a number of Finks/E-witt, in addition to Knight of the Reliquary (Almost always Bolt proof and semi Push proof), Voice of Resurgance (almost always trades at least 1-for-2 not in our favour), Courser of Kruphix (Bolt proof and also semi push proof) and Ramunap Excavator, which will literally destroy us if they get to use it a bunch of times in conjunction with Ghost Quarter. Yes all creatures can be Terminated or Decayed, but the need to rely on our hard removal against most creatures when this deck runs close to 30 creatures total, makes the math easy to say their creatures are generally more sticky and harder to deal with than the ones from Counters Company. If we get to deal with the first wave of creatures Counters Company has way more bad topecks than GW Company. They can rip a useless Devoted Druid and or Vizier for example (considering an empty board). Duskwatch recruiter on its own is also not very effective. GW Company can just rip a huge Knight and we die. And this is not a combo. Its a single card. All in all I do feel much better playing against Counters Company than playing against GW Company, and I do also believe discard is better against Counters Company than GW Company.
Against Humans you have to be very careful about your lifetotals, and knowledge about combat dynamics is very rewarding. Reid Duke showed excellent knowledge of that in his Pro Tour match when he was on Abzan. Its very much worth it to check out for this reason. I highly recommend watching it. Sneak in points of chip dmg when you can, but always be on the defense primarily. Also use your removal at best, like its sometimes better to Push a Hierarch rather than Bolt it since Bolt is better against a potential Mantis Rider of the top for example. After SB have access to basically every card that can kill a creature.
With that I results I will react to it by changing my list to the following one:
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
3 Raging Ravine
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
1 Twilight Mire
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Treetop Village
Creatures [14]
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
3 Lightning Bolt
3 Fatal Push
2 Terminate
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Kolaghan's Command
1 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Liliana of the Veil
2 Fulminator Mage
2 Collective Brutality
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Hazoret the Fervent
Maindeck stays the same right now, the lower to the ground approach should be good vs both of those decks. Sideboardwise I like impactful Hollow One hate like Cage and Anger. Also trying out a Hazoret as a mirror Bomb, which can still be okay against Tron (as she replaced a Fulminator)
I think Sunday Modern Challanges and MOCS are way bigger indications for the modern metagame than the tuesdays and friday league results now, since those focus on different kind of decks rather than the actual metagame. And this MOCS result was pretty clear: Humans and RB Hollow One needs to be beaten.
Treetop is still on the test right now.
As for Storms sake, Surgical is a card that you surely bring in and is on the verge of being "good enough", but its not exciting. How present is Storm compared to Big Mana decks in your meta? How many Oozes do you have in your 75?
I would maybe try a compromise of running 3 Fulminator, 1 Surgical, 1 Spellbomb and 1 Cage for the whole package. That way you have 4 cards against Big Mana, and still good GY hate against Storm. I think if you skimp on good GY hate (Spellbomb is good, but only a singleton in your case) Storm can get pretty dicey sometimes. I personally think the inclusion of Cage over Surgical would firm up your percentage points against Storm which is very valuable and the loss of the second Surgical for Big Mana is no big difference for the matchups win%, as a Fulminator + Surgical combo is unlikely and our best line against Big Mana is still Discard into Goyf into Fulminator.
As a more general aspect, I would not play both Huntmaster and Hazoret. You have a high amount of aggro decks where those cards arent that good against. I would cut the Hazoret and play a Finks or Liliana, the Last Hope.
Also I would always bring 1 Grudge, which also helps against Tron.
As for Damping Sphere, right now I would play 0-1 copies. If Tron gets more popular maybe more.
I think Tron survives just fine, Storm on the other hand guess they will be packing some Abrade.
But it is impossible to combo through so there is that at least.
FlyingDelver, as I stated before I'm happy to see that we reached about the same maindeck. However I am not confortable with my sideboard just yet, and I'd like the comumunity (and yours, of course) insight on that regard.
Yesterday I tried 2 maindeck Collective brutality replacing 2 Inquisition of kozilek and ran this sideboard:
1 Ancient grudge
1 Fulminator Mage
2 Blood moon
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Kitchen finks
2 Anger of the gods
2 Tireless tracker
Didn't miss the extra discard even facing Grixis control, and while Blood moon is a meta call I felt that those two extra sideboard slots were determinating.
What matchups do you think I would be giving up to by cutting 2 IoK?
10 One drops
15 Two drops
7 Three drops
4 Four drops
Which equals to a average CMC of: 2.14
Now, with 24 lands and 4 manlands, I don't like playing more 2 drops than needed. I personally want to be able to play CMC 1 spell + CMC 2 spell on turn 3 fairly consistantly. Let alone for this reason I am not a fan of maindecking CB.
What is the reason for you to play CB over IOK in general? I would argue for discard purposes IOK is miles better on average. For lifegain purposes IOK does similar things, since IOK is besides our cheap removal one of the best cards we have against aggro decks. So only the removal mode would be left in my thinking. And regarding that, I personally think I would much rather have a more versatile discard for the overall format than the extra removal. Playing the 24 land approach with more CMC 1 cards already has more removal compared to more popular lists.
I just don't want to have multiple 2 drops in my hand when needing to operate on 3 lands only basically (which you have to accept when you run that 24 land approach).
As for your sideboard, I would cut the Surgicals completely and run 1 Cage. Surgical is a card that always will be in the gauntlet for Jund, but right now its not impactful enough. Then you have an extra slot which you can use to bring back CB to the SB. The second slot is obtained by cutting a Tracker and either keeping the singleton Tracker or replacing it with a more impactful bomb like Huntmaster or Hazoret.
Besides that I don't think Blood Moon is a card that belongs in Jund at all, not now and also not the in the past. There was only a small period of time where BM was acceptable for me, which was during a big popularity of Bant Eldrazi. Maybe in the future, but especially with the printing of Damping Sphere, i do not believe so.
Very insightful (also thanks to hellkite12]). Maindeck CB was mostly to improve my game against burn, and at that you are right that IoK is not the card to cut.
I'll take out the surgical extractions and keep 2 nihil spellbomb for my next LGS, as that will allow me to restore the proper IoK and relegate CB to the side. Hazoret or Huntmaster are both options to cut the second tracker, as I think they hit similar matches.
As for the single ancient grudge, is it justifiable with 2 maindeck K-Commands and 2 sweepers on the board, or should I respect Lantern and Affinity more? I feel that maybe 1x Engineered explosives replacing a single Anger of the gods should help in the Lantern and Boggles matchups, too.
Thanks again! Much appreciated.