MTG Salvation

Faithless looting is good card filtering in our colors. We just need 1 or 2 ways to mitigate the card disadvantage and turn it into an advantage.
Looting feels like the best filtering we will ever get in our colors.

Quote from Ecko99saxk »

Surely grim flayer is better filtering than looting. It can require some deckbuilding changes such as running mb artifacts like spellbomb to enable delirium, but given the prevalence of graveyard decks in the current meta, this may be worth adding.

For the sheer filtering effect, Looting is miles better. The reason is that Grim Flayer needs to resolve, survive as well as connect to get a filtering effect. This is highly unlikely to happen on a consistant basis. Looting only needs to resolve. However, Lootings front-end is probably too weak which makes it bad. The back-end though is really strong, also in straight up Jund.

Grim Flayer reminds me of Tidehollow Skuller. It often eats a removal. Except when your oponent does not interact, or when you have delerium.

Quote from tjd2191 »

Faithless looting is good card filtering in our colors. We just need 1 or 2 ways to mitigate the card disadvantage and turn it into an advantage.
Looting feels like the best filtering we will ever get in our colors.

I've been thinking more and more about Lootings in Jund and to be honest, much of the time it doesn't even feel like a disadvantage. Yes it's always strictly negative CA, but Jund is prone to drawing the "wrong half" of its deck. It's really a quarter - discard/kill/clock/land. If you draw two of what you need and discard two of what you don't need, well I'm sure we'd all gladly be down a card for that. That actually reminds me a bit of some Legacy decks that don't mind running the negative CA of Force in unfair matchups because it's a safety valve and they have tons of other CA elsewhere to make up for it.

I may try 3x Lootings MD as an auto-side-out in every matchup to see how I like that.

Quote from rcwraspy »

Quote from tjd2191 »

Faithless looting is good card filtering in our colors. We just need 1 or 2 ways to mitigate the card disadvantage and turn it into an advantage.
Looting feels like the best filtering we will ever get in our colors.

I've been thinking more and more about Lootings in Jund and to be honest, much of the time it doesn't even feel like a disadvantage. Yes it's always strictly negative CA, but Jund is prone to drawing the "wrong half" of its deck. It's really a quarter - discard/kill/clock/land. If you draw two of what you need and discard two of what you don't need, well I'm sure we'd all gladly be down a card for that. That actually reminds me a bit of some Legacy decks that don't mind running the negative CA of Force in unfair matchups because it's a safety valve and they have tons of other CA elsewhere to make up for it.

I may try 3x Lootings MD as an auto-side-out in every matchup to see how I like that.

Maybe something like this MD:

Alright, alright. I have this pet card that I really like and would love to find a spot for, whether in a real deck or janky brew, I don’t care. I’m sure there’s no spot for it here (aye, there’s the rub, right? To add something, something else has to go), but while we’re talking about zany new brews and unconventional card selections, I figured I’d throw it out there.

I think a singleton Claim // Fame would be sweet in a Faithless Looting build.

It could potentially provide some card advantage and mana efficiency, as well as pseudo card selection/tutoring of its own later in the game. Plus closing the game out with a surprise hasty 7/6 Goyf sounds cool. It doesn’t fit the traditional Jund model of being a self-sufficient card on its own, but that’s the great thing about Looting. It pretty much makes it a non-issue, at least with this particular card. Still, I imagine I’d be hard-pressed to find 4x empty slots for 3x Looting and 1x C2F.

[speculation]
Considering that how fast, retarted and non-interactive format modern has become during the recent years, with new graveyard haste deck born every other week, would unbanning Deathrite Shaman be even unreasonable thing to happen in not so distant future?
[/speculation]

I keep coming back to Looting builds ever so often when the format demands for it, and when I do, I look at the Spicy Jund from Logan Nettles first. You can find the list in the primer as well.

Personally seen though, while I can see the friustration, there is no need for Looting as of now. I think Jund can be build to work fine for the most part against the non interactive decks.

Regarding Faithless Looting, how come Mardu gets away running only 20 lands with looting, but we are always tinkering with the regular 24 land build, even with Faithless Looting included? I mean, Mardu's curve is not that much cheaper than ours. Of course, playing with looting would mean that we might need to cut BBE to avoid silly cascades..

Quote from meite »

[speculation]
Considering that how fast, retarted and non-interactive format modern has become during the recent years, with new graveyard haste deck born every other week, would unbanning Deathrite Shaman be even unreasonable thing to happen in not so distant future?
[/speculation]

Could you not use retarded to describe something being stupid? It doesn't make you come off very intelligent or mature, it sounds childish.

And no, DRS has no chance in hell. The card was too broken in legacy.

Quote from meite »

Regarding Faithless Looting, how come Mardu gets away running only 20 lands with looting, but we are always tinkering with the regular 24 land build, even with Faithless Looting included? I mean, Mardu's curve is not that much cheaper than ours. Of course, playing with looting would mean that we might need to cut BBE to avoid silly cascades..

They run more 1-drops, only 1x 4-drop, no Manlands that require 5x lands, and oftentimes 4x of their 3-drops become 2-drops, which means oftentimes they essentially run less 3-drops than us as well.

Also, when talking about what cards could be printed to elevate our status back to one of the more competitive decks in the format, we can’t just talk about goodies for BGx. Look what banning Probe did. If the right decks git gud because of some newly printed card, namely our great MU’s and/or the decks that have great MU’s against our terrible MU’s, we could be sitting pretty again. Right now I think we’re alright though. It’s just a deck which rewards tight/flawless play and punishes the s*** out of the loose (and the unlucky) pilot.

That’s why I love it. I’m not a great Magic player but I’m always trying to get better because I’m a competitive person for some reason I’ve chosen as my favorite a deck that’s the equivalent of wearing a hair shirt.

@FlyingDelver, it seems like in the last couple weeks you've shifted from trying "spicy" lists with looting, to low to the ground 24 land lists, to a consistent 25 land list. You seem pretty firm that this is where we need to be right now. Have you been having more success with the 25 land list? Or is this just another idea you're toying with? I personally like the 25 land consistent approach btw.

Edit: For the sake of getting some discussion going, and not double posting, I have been loving two Abrade in my sideboard. I replaced Ancient Grudge for them. It depends on the meta, but it feels like I just have so many removal spells at my disposal for Spirits and Humans, which are all over my local meta. I'd give it a shot.

Quote from ProtossPaul »

@FlyingDelver, it seems like in the last couple weeks you've shifted from trying "spicy" lists with looting, to low to the ground 24 land lists, to a consistent 25 land list. You seem pretty firm that this is where we need to be right now. Have you been having more success with the 25 land list? Or is this just another idea you're toying with? I personally like the 25 land consistent approach btw.

I am always valuing consistancy very high. It is the most important aspect of building any Jund list. The need to play 25 lands is solely based on the manacurve for that aspect. I am running a high amount of four drops (4) and also a reasonable amount of three drops (6-7) for which reason I think having 25 lands really adds that for me wanted consistancy in hitting landdrops. And yes, I have been pretty successful with this list lately, have only dropped one match over the last two LGS tournaments.

I am excited to announce that I was given the opportunity to write as guest author at MTGRock.com going onward! I am deeply humbled by that offer. As my first article I have a reworked and polished version of my article of "how to build consistant manabases for GBx decks" from reddit to share with you guys. I hope it can be of some help for you!

Play Patterns: Building A Consistant Manabase for GBx decks.

Cheers,

FlyingDelver

Curious if you have the statistics to support this (akin to what Frank Karsten has). I played a list last night with 4 BBE and 7 3-drops and found 24 lands was fine. Sure, small sample size, but I've pretty much always played 24 in Jund since BBE got unbanned and not really had any trouble. I'm pretty curious if the math supports it.

Quote from darksteel88 »

Curious if you have the statistics to support this (akin to what Frank Karsten has). I played a list last night with 4 BBE and 7 3-drops and found 24 lands was fine. Sure, small sample size, but I've pretty much always played 24 in Jund since BBE got unbanned and not really had any trouble. I'm pretty curious if the math supports it.

The issue that matters here is the probability to reach landrop 5. Why? Its because with that landcount, you can more realistically play 2 spells a turn, as opposed with a lower mana curve. If you have a lot of one and two drops, you are mostly fien with 3 or 4 lands. If you have a lot of three and four drops, you want land 5 in order to cast 2 spells a turn, which would give you a real advantage and a lower chance of dying with spells in hand or the deck feeling too clunky or you not getting optimum value out of your higher CMC spells.

The probability to hit landdrop 5 with 24 lands is 63.8 %(OTD) and 52.2 % (OTP). However, the probability rises with 25 lands to 68.2 % (OTD) and 56.7 % (OTP), thats a difference of 4.4 - 4.5 %. Of course that may not matter in a limited amount of games, but I personally think the added consistancy is of great value. As it stands this would mean the missing land affects your games on average once per 22 games. If you we play a typical FNM of 4-5 rounds, with at least 2 games each match, thats a minimum of 8-10 matches, with the tendency being higher of course. So this could matter once per FNM pretty likely already. Given the almost coin flip probability of 24 lands when you are on the play, I think this is not worth it. I think we want at least a clear favourable odd for us in that concern.

That being said, I generally think 4 four drops and 6-7 three drops is the maximum you can go with 24 lands. I personally like you cut a 4 drop though and add a one drop, which boosts my ability to cast more spells with only 3-4 lands by a smidge.

Its up to you to decide. But I wanted to raise awareness, that also historically seen, 24 lands have never really been played in such a high mana curve as we see now since the unbanning of BBE. The highest mana curves before that ran 7-8 three drops and only 2 four drops. And if you would have wanted more you also neeed an extra land.

So with the numbers and the historical backup, I personally feel comfartable for 25 land being overall better if you run 4 BBE and 7 three drops.

With the discussion between 24 or 25 lands, one thing I tried for a while was 25 lands in a 61 card deck.

I was playing 8 3 drops, 4 4 drops. And yes, traditional theory says 60 cards leads to greater consistency than greater than 60 cards, but maybe with our curve it's where we are supposed to be. I didn't do the maths, but it always felt pretty good to me

Quote from yriel »

@FlyingDelver : I am sorry if i repeat myself again but can you show me the math you use to choose number of manlands ? I respect your "simplify rule" to choose number of lands and cmc-costs but i have the feeling it's because you want 18 black sources you play only 3 manlands (you can't have 4 manlands and 18 black sources with your rules). So if i play only 3 lilianas MD (a 4th in SB), is it still greedy to run 17 blacksources (include the twilight mire) and 4 manlands ? In my list : 11 1-drops, 6 3-drops and 4 4-drops and the last card will be the 12th 1-drop or the 7th 3-drop.
By the way even if i not agree with you half of time, congrats for article, it's a nice work !

Thank you very much!

Concerning your question, I think there are some aspects about it. First and foremost, yes, if you run a standard manabase and also want 4 creature lands, realistically you can't get to 18 black sources. If you have 17 black sources and a twilight mire alongside it, it would mean you are fine if you are on the draw in any game, as the extra card increases the probability to draw more lands. You could think of that as being an extra cantrip there, which would add somewhere between to 1/4 and 1/2 of a land. Given Twilight Mire also I think you are fine on the draw. However, being on the play does mean you might be missing some probability percentage points. Its up to you to decide that.

The next aspect is the fact that when you have 4 creature lands, as well as Twilight Mire in your deck, you have higher chance of needing to mulligan because of suboptimal lands in your hand. It also increases the chance of drawing or having multiple copies in hand on a given turn. If we simply look at the probability of having multiple creature lands on turn 1 on the play, you are at 6.3 % for four copies run, and only 3.4 % when you run 3 copies only. So this is almost doubled in probability there. So the amount of times that this difference matters is once per 15 games (when you run 4 copies) and once per 30 games (if you run 3 copies). So you can see, having multiples drawn is really more likely with 4 creature lands as opposed to 3 creature lands. But this is of course doesn't have to be a bad thing, which brings me to the next aspect.

How many creature lands are acceptable to run in a 24 landbase also comes down to what meta you are expecting. If the format is rather slow and grindy, I think creature lands don't punish you that severely as opposed to a meta defined by aggro decks and linear combo decks. You might actually want to draw multiples copies. However, since in an open meta you should always expect linear combo and aggro decks being everywhere, it is the main aspect for me of why I think only 3 creature lands is correct. If we remember the rule of how many cards you want to run in a deck (this is another article done by Frank Karsten: Link) Having 4 copies of a card means you are fine to have multiple copies in your opening hand or are at least fine with drawing multiple copies. Therefore I recommend 3 copies only, and the reason is that ideally your manacurve should be lower in a 24 landbuild as It can hinder you in making use of your cheap spells in the early game. In that build you really don't want to draw multiple creature lands. And this is also the reason why 4 creature lands are fine to run in a 25 landbase. Typically the mana curve is a bit higher in that build and it means you can more safely spend a turn where you deploy a creature land on a given turn. So the overall thing to note is that when you want to the manabase plays well together with your spell suite, the lower the curve the less creature lands you want. And since in a 24 landbase the mana curve should be lower (now for reasons of hitting landdrops in time like I explained in my previous post) it makes also sense to run fewer creature lands.

So all these aspects fuse into each other and its hard to determine a clear picture out if it. It often comes down to preference as well. Of course a problem is also when having a higher mana curve, having more creature lands means you are less likely to hit your untapped landdrops on time. Its hard to evaulate. But I think, given the fact that I have my historical backup on creature lands as well (4 creature lands was highly uncommon in a 24 landbase) and I have some really good hints about the math from Frank suggesting a safer approach should be better overall for everyone trying to build the deck as a starting point. After all most pros are also on the safer side of things, which definitely means something.

You can't consider those numbers in isolation though. Sure, there's a 4.5% or so difference in the probability of hitting the 5th land (I'm going to assume you mean 5th land on turn 5), but that doesn't paint the entire picture. You also now have a higher chance of flooding out, the mulligan rate might change, etc. Considering it in isolation sort of suggests that it's extremely important, which I'm not convinced it is.

It's also worth pointing out some people definitely played 24 in Jund lists back when we had BBE and DRS. Yuuya top 8'd PT RTR with 4 4-drops and 7 3-drops playing 24 lands. Ochoa had the same configuration with 24, Willy Edel had 25 but had a slightly higher curve which included a 5th 4-drop in the main. I don't have any stats to properly back it up, I just went to some coverage data where I knew I could find some BBEs in Jund.