Idk, I think this problem of “non-redundant removal” is being way overstated. I think if jund pilots just trim on their creature count (so as to have more removal/discard overall) you can handle just about anything with proper planning. This problem does unfortunately exist against hollow one and other decks where the opponents creatures dodge 1/2 or more of our removal, but we’re hardly alone there. Mardu and jeskai don’t fare that much better against hollow one than we do.
But against humans? I find the problem isn’t that I have the *wrong* removal, it’s that I don’t have enough removal. How many spells are really conditional here? Mantis rider is the only meaningful spell that can’t be fatal pushed without revolt, and otherwise the only way to get got is to let the opponent grow a creature to 4 toughness such that it ducks bolt. It’s quite easy to stick an early goyf or scooze and just race while you kill-spell all of their powerful creatures. Your opponent can’t really race a scavenging ooze when their largest creature is a 2/3.
Maybe I’m lucky, but I haven’t had many problems with creature-based strategies other than hollow one.
Delver and I had a rather protracted and occasionally contentious discussion about the tracker build; if you want to read more thoughts on the subject you might wanna check out my comment history, or go back 10 pages or so. Not sure we reached any meaningful agreements though.
Anyways I’ve also been very impressed with the tracker build. I think it has better game against midrange and aggro decks than more bob-centric builds do, and right now winning those matchups are really the key to success. I think the tracker build struggles a lot more comparatively in a metagame with lots of combo and decks that don’t threaten your life total. Tracker can dig faster, but he can’t start digging until turn 4 and in a turn 4 format, that’s quite meaningful.
Still, while aggro and midrange continue to define modern I think I’m going to be emphasizing tracker and I’ll be running as few bobs as my curve will allow.
So you’ve been impressed with brutality in the maindeck? I like brutality, but I feel like I often whiff on the ‘duress’ mode against a random opponent, and the other two modes semi-often don’t have text. Like against, say, ironworks or hollow one or tron. I feel like I have to sideboard it out an unsavory % of the time.
I’d be inclined to agree, however I do think that push serves a vital role as lightning bolt 5-6. It’s annoyingly conditional and not the best removal a lot of the time, but it keeps you from getting curve’d out by aggro. I think it’s a necessary evil, where decay feels a lot more disposable.
You’re right though, it should not be the go to removal if you can play bolt.
To echo ayiluss’ comments I’m not particularly enamored with decay right now. Consider how many high-cmc creatures there are in the format right now: hollow one is packed full of them, death’s shadow plays anglers and tasigur, bedlam reveler out of mardu, primeval titan, vengevine, etc. I wouldn’t leave home without a terminate, and I even play a dreadbore to supplement with the same effect. If anything I think decay is the card most frequently on the chopping block for me.
Yeah, I keep getting drawn back to 25 land builds as well.
Is 5 manlands for sure the way to go though? I feel like the first manland is great for dodging flood, but manlands 2-3 lose their utility since you can usually only animate one, which is, in part, why I chose to run field of ruin. Does anyone have an opinion on hissing quagmire? It’s not a good attacker, but it’s a much better blocker than raging ravine in a pinch (if, say, you’re getting beat to death by an angler). It would certainly provide different utility which is kinda what I’m going for, I just don’t know if it’s good enough.
I employed the ghost quarter strategy years ago when I played Abzan, and it felt like if you had to GQ your opponent turn 2 on the draw you were set so far behind that it didn’t make a difference in the end. Consequently I went with field of ruin since it’s the more powerful card in more scenarios, but I could reevaluate.
I haven’t been impressed with finks lately in modern. It feels like the 3/2 and 2/1 bodies aren’t that relevant anymore in modern unless they come stapled to extra cards, like bob or BBE.
The baloths are a hold over from when I was playing the 4-of tracker build and had a hard time winning the mirror. In general I’ve really enjoyed baloth against lightning bolt decks, especially mardu and jund since the card is obviously great against kcommand and LotV. It’s also pretty good against control I’ve found since they help put pressure on your opponent to have path. It’s pretty good against hollow one I think, I haven’t seen many people board out burning inquiry, though I confess that I don’t get to play this matchup as often as I’d like.
I’m not married to them, but I’ve boarded them in quite frequently and they’ve really overperformed. Did you have something else in mind Delver?
It's been pretty sweet. It's not such a far departure from the usual jund list, but the biggest tech is splitting the difference between tracker and BBE, the reasoning being that BBE can't cascade into other BBEs whereas it can cascade into tireless trackers. It helps maximize your cascades, and it marginally lowers the probability of hitting the crappy cascades since you effectively have more cascade targets in the deck. Plus, there are some matchups where the tempo of BBE is more valuable and other matchups where the grindy-ness of tracker really shines so it's nice to have both MD.
I know I've railed on confidant, but unfortunately I just couldn't really see a way around playing confidant anymore. After playtesting a bunch, lavamancer and brutality are a bit too hyper-specific for maindeck inclusions in the end. They're not disastrous, but also not great half the time. Collective brutality for instance I have to move to the board in like 75% of matchups and it ended up feeling so narrow that I just cut it in general. It's really only there anymore to beat burn, which just isn't very relevant in modern anymore. Since I have to put some additional low-end spells in the deck to round out the curve, dark confidant is really the most sensible option; grim flayer just doesn't really do it for me.
2 confidants is I think the maximum I'd ever play though as I stand by the opinion that it's a horrible card in multiples and a big weak link for the BG archetype in general.
Field of ruin is a pretty sweet 1-of for a 25 land build. It really adds a unique element to the deck since our maindeck isn't usually capable of destroying a problematic land. With that field of ruin, it might be correct to fit a basic mountain in there somewhere.
Lastly, haven't really had a chance to play against too much big mana and not sure about the '2 moon, 1 mage, 1 sphere' split. I know I want 4 spots for the big mana decks, and I know I want at least 1 damping sphere and 1 fulminator mage, but that's all I know.
One should not overlook the obvious, Grim Lavamancer can do repeated damage to the dome. there are match-ups where this ability is highly desirable.
Yeah, that was my thinking. Unfortunately though based on testing, the 5th spot removal spell probably needs to take precedence over lavamancer in the maindeck. In hindsight I think even though lavamancer only costs 1 mana, he’s actually more of a mid game spell rather than early game. He can be cast on turn 1, but he’s hard to enable early and less mana efficient than something like push.
Regarding your thought Delver, I used to run jund a couple of months ago with no lavamancer and like 3 sweepers. Part of the problem is that humans, a matchup where that should be good, ended up feeling kind of medium. The combination of Thalias, meddling mages, and freebooters makes resolving a sweeper challenging whereas they don’t play nearly as many ways to interact with lavamancer. I haven’t tried a second EE though, mostly due to the insane price tag on that card. That could work out though where a second anger might not. Probably not good to lean on EE too much in a deck with BBE, but in a build with no BBEs that might be more powerful.
Just curious, do you guys see fatal push as being 100% necessary in the maindeck against the field? Like I'm curious what your thoughts are about the following 1cmc "removal" suites:
The pros of having the lavamancer maindeck as opposed to fatal push is it's comparatively much more useful against non-creature decks since fatal push obviously can't be pointed at the face. It's also repeatable removal vs 1 time use, and it's an infinitely better cascade off of BBE on an empty board.
The cons obviously is that you have 1 fewer maindeck answer to cards like tarmogoyf and death's shadow. Lavaman can team up with a bolt to kill some of those creatures, but push is a much cleaner answer without a doubt. Lavaman is also not an immediate effect like push is, meaning that if you can't afford to let your opponent untap with a creature, push is much more useful.
What do you think? I know prevailing logic is to play a maindeck push before lavamancer, but worth exploring the alternative.
I’ll go even a bit further and just say that Olivia has been largely eclipsed by Liliana the last hope. She’s not a strict 100% upgrade, but she provides a similar ability as Olivia while being far less mana intensive and generally more flexible. Ltlh is a decent board card against control and against tron when paired with fulminator mages, whereas Olivia is pretty lackluster in both matchups.
Olivia can shine in the right set of circumstances, but I don’t think there are enough decks jam-packed with x/1s and x/2s for her to prey on at this point, and even if there were, LtLH has a strong case for just being the better card.
Yeah that's kinda what I'm thinking epica. 12-13 3drops is maybe a bit much lol, but like 10 3cmc spells and 2 BBEs is actually a less painful curve as far as bob's concerned (compared to your average list with 8 3cmc and 4 BBEs) and two trackers + two BBEs should give you approximately the same staying power. Been trying the following top end setup:
and the BBEs have felt way more valuable on average. Could just be running a bit hot, which is why I'm gonna go a little deeper and try +1 Tracker, -1 BBE which I'm expecting to be quite nice. I'm playing 2 bobs for my curve's sake and because it's always nice to reevaluate cards you've previously written off, but after adding that second tracker it's a bit tempting to keep the 3rd BBE over the second bob. We shall see.
I’ll go on record as saying that playing a bunch of maindeck trackers goes a long way towards smashing the crap out of value town I’m like 3 or 4-0 against value town with the tracker build. I have to imagine that otherwise you’ll have a hard time though.
I’ve had an overwhelmingly positive impression of damping sphere. I’ve had no luck vs tron before sphere came along. The ability to take tron offline on turn 2 means you aren’t just cold to turn 3 tron on the draw, which means your game 3 win rate goes up considerably. And where fulminator is good against the fair matchups in modern, sphere is good against a bunch of the combo matchups, including KCI which can be otherwise quite challenging without access to stony silence. Some other decks that can have a rough time comboing through a sphere include obviously storm, grishoalbrand, Cheerios, and ad nauseum to a degree. Obviously those aren’t a top priority as far as board space is concerned, but it’s better not to sleep on them anyways if you can afford 1 card or so.
From testing I’ve found that 4 sideboard cards is kind of the sweet spot needed to beat tron with some consistency. Running fewer than that means you’re unlikely to draw your hate on time vs tron. Notably, Reid duke has been registering 3 fulminator 1 sphere in his last couple modern videos too. You can certainly go with 5 hate cards if you hate tron that much lol though I’d be concerned about your other matchups too.
EDIT: also, as I’ve been thinking about it this past week, what if part of the reason that people have been disappointed with BBE since its unban is that people are jamming 4-of BBE in a deck with only 8ish 3cmc hits? If you really think about it, that means you’re playing 12 top end cards, but only 8 of them can be cascaded into, so you’ll pass over 1-2 BBEs mid-cascade and end up on a brick some % of the time (and I don’t know about you guys, but that % has not felt negligible). What if the way to make BBE better is to replace copies 4 and maybe even 3 with more 3 drops like tracker, kcommand, etc. so that you’re running fewer BBEs, but each one is more valuable? Food for thought I guess, maybe I’m being naive in assuming this hasn’t already been realized.
But against humans? I find the problem isn’t that I have the *wrong* removal, it’s that I don’t have enough removal. How many spells are really conditional here? Mantis rider is the only meaningful spell that can’t be fatal pushed without revolt, and otherwise the only way to get got is to let the opponent grow a creature to 4 toughness such that it ducks bolt. It’s quite easy to stick an early goyf or scooze and just race while you kill-spell all of their powerful creatures. Your opponent can’t really race a scavenging ooze when their largest creature is a 2/3.
Maybe I’m lucky, but I haven’t had many problems with creature-based strategies other than hollow one.
Delver and I had a rather protracted and occasionally contentious discussion about the tracker build; if you want to read more thoughts on the subject you might wanna check out my comment history, or go back 10 pages or so. Not sure we reached any meaningful agreements though.
Anyways I’ve also been very impressed with the tracker build. I think it has better game against midrange and aggro decks than more bob-centric builds do, and right now winning those matchups are really the key to success. I think the tracker build struggles a lot more comparatively in a metagame with lots of combo and decks that don’t threaten your life total. Tracker can dig faster, but he can’t start digging until turn 4 and in a turn 4 format, that’s quite meaningful.
Still, while aggro and midrange continue to define modern I think I’m going to be emphasizing tracker and I’ll be running as few bobs as my curve will allow.
So you’ve been impressed with brutality in the maindeck? I like brutality, but I feel like I often whiff on the ‘duress’ mode against a random opponent, and the other two modes semi-often don’t have text. Like against, say, ironworks or hollow one or tron. I feel like I have to sideboard it out an unsavory % of the time.
I’d be inclined to agree, however I do think that push serves a vital role as lightning bolt 5-6. It’s annoyingly conditional and not the best removal a lot of the time, but it keeps you from getting curve’d out by aggro. I think it’s a necessary evil, where decay feels a lot more disposable.
You’re right though, it should not be the go to removal if you can play bolt.
Is 5 manlands for sure the way to go though? I feel like the first manland is great for dodging flood, but manlands 2-3 lose their utility since you can usually only animate one, which is, in part, why I chose to run field of ruin. Does anyone have an opinion on hissing quagmire? It’s not a good attacker, but it’s a much better blocker than raging ravine in a pinch (if, say, you’re getting beat to death by an angler). It would certainly provide different utility which is kinda what I’m going for, I just don’t know if it’s good enough.
http://www.starcitygames.com/decks/StarCityGamescom_Modern_Open/2018-07-28_modern_Indianapolis_IN_US/1/
EDIT: Ayyyyyyy, Jund on top baybeeeee.
I haven’t been impressed with finks lately in modern. It feels like the 3/2 and 2/1 bodies aren’t that relevant anymore in modern unless they come stapled to extra cards, like bob or BBE.
I’m not married to them, but I’ve boarded them in quite frequently and they’ve really overperformed. Did you have something else in mind Delver?
I've been personally testing with this list for the past couple weeks:
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
2 Forest
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
3 Raging Ravine
1 Treetop Village
1 Field of Ruin
CREATURES
2 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Scavenging Ooze
2 Tireless Tracker
2 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Fatal Push
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
1 Terminate
1 Dreadbore
1 Abrupt Decay
3 Kolaghan's Command
3 Liliana of the Veil
2 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Duress
1 Fatal Push
1 Grim Lavamancer
1 Golgari Charm
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Anger of the Gods
2 Obstinate Baloth
1 Fulminator Mage
1 Damping Sphere
2 Alpine Moon
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Nihil Spellbomb
It's been pretty sweet. It's not such a far departure from the usual jund list, but the biggest tech is splitting the difference between tracker and BBE, the reasoning being that BBE can't cascade into other BBEs whereas it can cascade into tireless trackers. It helps maximize your cascades, and it marginally lowers the probability of hitting the crappy cascades since you effectively have more cascade targets in the deck. Plus, there are some matchups where the tempo of BBE is more valuable and other matchups where the grindy-ness of tracker really shines so it's nice to have both MD.
I know I've railed on confidant, but unfortunately I just couldn't really see a way around playing confidant anymore. After playtesting a bunch, lavamancer and brutality are a bit too hyper-specific for maindeck inclusions in the end. They're not disastrous, but also not great half the time. Collective brutality for instance I have to move to the board in like 75% of matchups and it ended up feeling so narrow that I just cut it in general. It's really only there anymore to beat burn, which just isn't very relevant in modern anymore. Since I have to put some additional low-end spells in the deck to round out the curve, dark confidant is really the most sensible option; grim flayer just doesn't really do it for me.
2 confidants is I think the maximum I'd ever play though as I stand by the opinion that it's a horrible card in multiples and a big weak link for the BG archetype in general.
Field of ruin is a pretty sweet 1-of for a 25 land build. It really adds a unique element to the deck since our maindeck isn't usually capable of destroying a problematic land. With that field of ruin, it might be correct to fit a basic mountain in there somewhere.
Lastly, haven't really had a chance to play against too much big mana and not sure about the '2 moon, 1 mage, 1 sphere' split. I know I want 4 spots for the big mana decks, and I know I want at least 1 damping sphere and 1 fulminator mage, but that's all I know.
Yeah, that was my thinking. Unfortunately though based on testing, the 5th spot removal spell probably needs to take precedence over lavamancer in the maindeck. In hindsight I think even though lavamancer only costs 1 mana, he’s actually more of a mid game spell rather than early game. He can be cast on turn 1, but he’s hard to enable early and less mana efficient than something like push.
Regarding your thought Delver, I used to run jund a couple of months ago with no lavamancer and like 3 sweepers. Part of the problem is that humans, a matchup where that should be good, ended up feeling kind of medium. The combination of Thalias, meddling mages, and freebooters makes resolving a sweeper challenging whereas they don’t play nearly as many ways to interact with lavamancer. I haven’t tried a second EE though, mostly due to the insane price tag on that card. That could work out though where a second anger might not. Probably not good to lean on EE too much in a deck with BBE, but in a build with no BBEs that might be more powerful.
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Fatal Push
1 Fatal Push
1 Grim Lavamancer
vs
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Grim Lavamancer
2 Fatal Push
The pros of having the lavamancer maindeck as opposed to fatal push is it's comparatively much more useful against non-creature decks since fatal push obviously can't be pointed at the face. It's also repeatable removal vs 1 time use, and it's an infinitely better cascade off of BBE on an empty board.
The cons obviously is that you have 1 fewer maindeck answer to cards like tarmogoyf and death's shadow. Lavaman can team up with a bolt to kill some of those creatures, but push is a much cleaner answer without a doubt. Lavaman is also not an immediate effect like push is, meaning that if you can't afford to let your opponent untap with a creature, push is much more useful.
What do you think? I know prevailing logic is to play a maindeck push before lavamancer, but worth exploring the alternative.
Olivia can shine in the right set of circumstances, but I don’t think there are enough decks jam-packed with x/1s and x/2s for her to prey on at this point, and even if there were, LtLH has a strong case for just being the better card.
and the BBEs have felt way more valuable on average. Could just be running a bit hot, which is why I'm gonna go a little deeper and try +1 Tracker, -1 BBE which I'm expecting to be quite nice. I'm playing 2 bobs for my curve's sake and because it's always nice to reevaluate cards you've previously written off, but after adding that second tracker it's a bit tempting to keep the 3rd BBE over the second bob. We shall see.
From testing I’ve found that 4 sideboard cards is kind of the sweet spot needed to beat tron with some consistency. Running fewer than that means you’re unlikely to draw your hate on time vs tron. Notably, Reid duke has been registering 3 fulminator 1 sphere in his last couple modern videos too. You can certainly go with 5 hate cards if you hate tron that much lol though I’d be concerned about your other matchups too.
EDIT: also, as I’ve been thinking about it this past week, what if part of the reason that people have been disappointed with BBE since its unban is that people are jamming 4-of BBE in a deck with only 8ish 3cmc hits? If you really think about it, that means you’re playing 12 top end cards, but only 8 of them can be cascaded into, so you’ll pass over 1-2 BBEs mid-cascade and end up on a brick some % of the time (and I don’t know about you guys, but that % has not felt negligible). What if the way to make BBE better is to replace copies 4 and maybe even 3 with more 3 drops like tracker, kcommand, etc. so that you’re running fewer BBEs, but each one is more valuable? Food for thought I guess, maybe I’m being naive in assuming this hasn’t already been realized.