Just saw it and what's even better one beat Scapeshift in the quarterfinals and one beat Mono G Tron which is not something you would normally see. It's nice to see Jund doing good although MKM series have always been pretty BGx infested.
You can even see on their metagame breakdown that BGx was the second most-played archetype with 24 copies. A nice result to be sure though, and a pretty dominant performance from jund in the top 8.
I have a question for you all. Say you were gonna play Reid duke’s most recent list from the modern challenge, but make the following changes:
-1 LotV, +1 thoughtseize
-1 confidant, +1 some disruptive element
My question is, what card would you play as that “disruptive element”? I’ve been rolling with collective brutality, but I feel like I have to board it out an annoying proportion of the time.
I think this would be too much tension on mana. You cant really crack clues, play pkns and sac the thopter tokens at the same time.
You would simply not get full potential out the cards in my mind.
Well, I'm just talking about bombing one's opponents with the clues. Any artifact will do, right?
It’s also worth noting, if you haven’t already, that tireless tracker reads “when you sac a clue, get a counter” regardless of how you sac’d it, meaning that saccing a clue to PnK still grows tracker. I don’t think this interaction is anywhere among the most powerful things jund can be doing, but it’s 100% on my modern bucket list.
I mean theoretically you have a lot to gain from a delirium package to enable traverse, epica. If you'll notice, the *entire* sideboard can be tutored with traverse if delirium is enabled, so you can play these 1-of silver bullets and tutor them up pretty consistently when appropriate. That's not trivial, and it's a big part of the reason why birthing pod was once upon a time one of the top tier decks in the format. I also really like the tech of architects of will being both a 2-type cycler (artifact and creature), and a 4cmc spell that you can't cascade into. If you played bauble instead, you'd almost definitely need to remove the BBEs as cascading into a bauble sounds pretty awful.
Also chaos, I think there's merit to not playing death's shadow. This should theoretically only be a jund deck with a watery grave if you need to cast architects in an emergency. I think the notion thief and maybe also the hostage taker are a bit too cute and should probably be trimmed, at which point you're basically splashing blue for 5-6 cards and 4 of them you never really intend to cast. I think it's reasonable to expect not to take much more damage off your lands per game.
Of course, as with any traverse deck you're probably gonna have a bad time if your opponent casts a rest in peace, starts with leyline of the void, etc. You're not totally dead in the water, but all of your creatures except your 4 drops are gonna be pretty abysmal and you can't even traverse for the cards that don't suck anymore. Not on its own a reason not to play the deck (abzan traverse did just get 2nd at a GP after all), but it's definitely something you have to consider when asking "why play this over standard jund". It looks like a deck that uses the graveyard enough to get moderately hosed by hate, but doesn't abuse the graveyard enough to get free wins if your opponent doesn't draw said hate, and that's kind of the worst spot to be in.
It's a neat idea, has at least gone 5-0 in a modern league, and I think there's enough merit that you should test it out guitar90x. If it turns out to be really good, I'm totally down for playing a deck like that.
Personally epica, I’d do the 7th discard spell. Turn 1 discard is such a powerful opener and playing 7 discard is reasonably free when you have faithless looting, plus it will help cheapen your bedlam revelers where LotV might not. Just from personal experience, 7 discard spells has felt really great if you can mitigate their weakness as a late-game topdeck.
Regarding the “two bobs” question, my philosophy is generally to avoid taking the risk on two bobs if it seems like I’m far enough ahead to the point of being able to win without it. If you’re already a favorite to win it seems kinda silly to press the advantage and open yourself up to losing to bad bob variance. If I’m behind though, or the game is neck and neck and I still have a healthy life total, I’d say take the risk. Sometimes you have to take risks to steal games.
Situations like these are why I advocate for not running bob anymore, or at least only in very small numbers, but I digress.
I don’t think reveler costing 3-4 mana is that big a deal. You’re talking about a 4-for-1 here after all.
I actually bought a speculative playset of Pia and Kiran nalaar, shortly before discovering it was gonna be the rare in an intro deck and would therefore never be worth anything. Rip. But anyways, maybe it’s time to bust them out?
The 80/20 was in reference to the matchup game 1. I think there’s enough good hate post board that tron is close to 50/50 nowadays if you choose to put the cards in the board.
You don't read my posts and don't seem to try to understand what I mean, so okay, lets leave it.
I misread one line man, give me a break. I skimmed your post because it’s a little exhausting having to explain an opinion that is not novel or controversial, namely that a traditional jund deck does not have the cards to beat tron in the maindeck. You are entirely dependent on your opponent to stumble, and the ~20% of the time that happens is the entirety of our 20% win rate game 1, no exceptions. I don’t recall the last time I won a game against tron where they had turn 3 or 4 tron into at least 2 payoffs, which represents the other 80% of the time. Being able to consistently advance your own gameplan would help, yes, but you’re talking about a pretty small subset of the already-small 20% of games that you could possibly win in the first place.
Having reread your post, the answer to your question is absolutely unequivocally yes. Does fulminator alone swing the matchup that much? Maybe not on the draw, but a combination of fulminator and 1-2cmc spells to bust up t3 tron on the draw, absolutely. Without cards to bust up their tron you’re basically just letting Jesus take the wheel.
The 80/20 was in reference to the matchup game 1. I think there’s enough good hate post board that tron is close to 50/50 nowadays if you choose to put the cards in the board.
Also fulminator slowing down tron for a turn =/= having a lightning bolt. Attacking twice with all of your creatures is almost always more damage (sometimes even twice as much damage) than 1 attack plus a bolt.
I get that Delver, but I think it’s a bad example because it doesn’t really show off the strengths of looting. The scenario you’ve described depends on your opponent having a bad tron draw (which is uncommon), you not having goyf already, having a looting in hand, and having that looting find goyf in your top 2 cards. The other cards (bolt, thoughtseize, pulse) are just really not good enough, so I feel like we’re talking about a difference of an 80/20 vs 78/22 matchup game 1.
EDIT: to provide a counterpoint here though Delver, if you’re playing against tron, what exactly are you hoping to find with a faithless looting in game 1? We have 0 maindeck LD. Your chances in game 1 are truly abysmal even with a perfect hand, and in games 2 and 3 the bad cards should be out of your deck.
Just saw this, so: Bolt for extra reach, if you play looting turn 1 then a goyf, pulse to deal with PWs, discard if you have many clunky and not impactful enough cards in hand. I think there are enough cards to find.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you expect any of those cards to help you win game 1 against tron, I think you’re gonna have a bad time. Looting for the turn two goyf is kinda legit, but is contingent on you either knowing what you’re fighting or being on the draw in which case you’re likely already dead. My only point is that the only way to win the tron matchup game 1 is for your opponent to stumble A LOT, so I don’t think it’s a particularly good example.
Well, after all everyone needs to decide for him/herself how important sculping hands is and how big of a downside Looting is compared to the upsides.
Definitely, and it’s not my opinion that looting builds are strictly wrong. I just think people are overselling the usefulness of the card in a deck that’s not really set up to support it. One take away I got from playtesting that jund reveler deck about a month ago is that looting can work with reveler alone, but unsurprisingly you’re missing a big piece of the puzzle playing looting without lingering souls. If you want to keep up with a deck like jeskai with 4 lootings in your deck, you have to start pitching lands to looting because you can’t afford to go down on spells. In the end, you end up super land light and feels really bad still being on 4 lands on turn 10. Because souls is just as useful in the bin, you can afford to keep your lands and continue developing. It’s a subtle, but big difference that I think you’ll feel in the long run.
But regardless, I hope it works out for you. I think there’s merit there, even if I don’t quite agree on everything.
Pretty sure this is where yriel’s objections are, ayiluss. I think he and I see eye to eye in the sense that we don’t think that you have to sculpt the perfect hand every time to win. Not that I have anything against sculpting the perfect hand, but the cost of doing so with a card disadvantage spell like faithless looting is quite real.
In general, I do think classic jund has kinda high variance, but I think a large part of that comes down to BBE and bob. Both cards don’t do much on their own and require the top of your deck to play nice. Sometimes BBE spins the wheel into a blank, and sometimes bob flips 9cmc worth of useless cards and kills you. Both cards are obscenely powerful when they cooperate, but I agree a tad more with the “inconsistency” argument upon reflection. There’s something a tad distasteful about having to check your horoscope and the alignment of the planets to know whether you’re gonna have 0 damage bobs and 3-for-1 BBEs, or whether both cards will lead you to an 0-3 drop. But I generally agree with the philosophy of Reid’s build more than Logan’s “spicy jund”. I think jund’s variance can be reduced drastically to a stomach-able level by just not playing the higher variance cards. Not every victory has to be flawless where you answer everything the turn it’s cast. That’s important to mardu because it has a pretty weak proactive gameplan. Jund has few struggles there; it’s very easy to win games with literally two cards; t1 discard, t2 goyf.
Anyways, I was really hoping Reid would post the video after seeing his result. Even if I think his list is a tad out of date, it’s obviously very powerful when things work and a really fun watch.
EDIT: to provide a counterpoint here though Delver, if you’re playing against tron, what exactly are you hoping to find with a faithless looting in game 1? We have 0 maindeck LD. Your chances in game 1 are truly abysmal even with a perfect hand, and in games 2 and 3 the bad cards should be out of your deck.
I get where you’re going with this argument, but if you have a hand with 7 cards, one of which is dead and the other is a looting, and then you cast looting and pitch the dead card+one other, you’re now on 6 useful or semi-useful cards. How’s that any different than replacing the looting with a spell in the first place, and having 6 useful or semi-useful spells plus a dead fatal push? And against a deck where almost all of our cards are live (like affinity or humans), now every card is live except faithless looting. You’ve basically just introduced a dead card to your deck in this case.
I think 23 lands is more than enough with 4 lootings. Your curve largely stops at 3 which is pretty given with 23 lands alone, and the four lootings should be sufficient to hit land drop 3 close to 100% of games and land 4 in the majority of games. There are always outliers, but I noticed jaberwocki frequently drew too many lands so I think you’re right to cut one.
If it were me, I would cut a ravine though personally. The card disadvantage from looting combined with being incentivized to pitch lands in the mid to late game makes ravine a lot worse imo. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I feel like looting and ravine butt heads a bit too much.
Fair enough LEH, thanks for testing. I personally feel that if your problem with the deck is that it’s “too slow”, then the real answer is not that it’s necessarily the trackers, it’s the cards around it. The effect tracker provides is so powerful that I think it’s worth building around to make it work. The goal of this build is to overload your deck with cheap disruption and let tracker do the heavy lifting in the late game. For instance if you’re on Hoogland’s list I think he’s a bit too topheavy.
@Ayiluss we’ve definitely talked the whole “tracker vs bob against aggro” discussion to death, but my general feeling here is that if tracker is a C or a D against aggro, bob is a pretty fat F. Tracker is slow but locks up the game when you’ve stabilized. Bob can help you stabilize, but he can also provide the reach your opponent needs once you’ve controlled the board, or he can speed up your opponents clock. Beyond those matchups, tracker is way more valuable against midrange, and bob is way more valuable against combo. Personally I value the former matchups more than the latter, as combo is largely irrelevant thanks to humans, and the few combo decks that remain are so resilient to disruption that you likely don’t have many cards that matter in g1 if any. The meta right now is dominated by aggro and control/midrange, and in that meta I’d rather have tracker. I get that some people don’t agree with my philosophy behind jund deckbuilding, but I’m fairly confident in my evaluation of each card on a matchup to matchup basis.
Also as an aside, that list I posted a page or two back with lootings plus reveler and tracker was pretty powerful. I don’t personally enjoy looting in jund (even if it might be more powerful) but that list leveraged it quite well. 24 instants and sorceries felt like enough to cash in reveler for 3-4 mana consistently which is still quite powerful. Reveler is so strong that I think a third is quite reasonable, my only hesitation is the grave hate issue. Personally, I think that maindeck is great, but could maybe get away with one fewer land (it’s iffy), probably wants 4 looting, and might want 3rd reveler maindeck. With 4 lootings and 3 reveler, perhaps 2 trackers is ok since you’ll see them more often.
That synergy hasn’t escaped me epica, and I’m totally interested in doing that at some point in my life lol. Like I was saying, pia and Kiran is undoubtedly strong, and I think I’ll go there if reveler doesn’t work out, but I’m sorta not passionate about expensive spells that don’t afford a degree of inevitability. Perhaps I’m wrong though, it looked quite good in jaberwocki’s league.
You can even see on their metagame breakdown that BGx was the second most-played archetype with 24 copies. A nice result to be sure though, and a pretty dominant performance from jund in the top 8.
-1 LotV, +1 thoughtseize
-1 confidant, +1 some disruptive element
My question is, what card would you play as that “disruptive element”? I’ve been rolling with collective brutality, but I feel like I have to board it out an annoying proportion of the time.
It’s also worth noting, if you haven’t already, that tireless tracker reads “when you sac a clue, get a counter” regardless of how you sac’d it, meaning that saccing a clue to PnK still grows tracker. I don’t think this interaction is anywhere among the most powerful things jund can be doing, but it’s 100% on my modern bucket list.
Also chaos, I think there's merit to not playing death's shadow. This should theoretically only be a jund deck with a watery grave if you need to cast architects in an emergency. I think the notion thief and maybe also the hostage taker are a bit too cute and should probably be trimmed, at which point you're basically splashing blue for 5-6 cards and 4 of them you never really intend to cast. I think it's reasonable to expect not to take much more damage off your lands per game.
Of course, as with any traverse deck you're probably gonna have a bad time if your opponent casts a rest in peace, starts with leyline of the void, etc. You're not totally dead in the water, but all of your creatures except your 4 drops are gonna be pretty abysmal and you can't even traverse for the cards that don't suck anymore. Not on its own a reason not to play the deck (abzan traverse did just get 2nd at a GP after all), but it's definitely something you have to consider when asking "why play this over standard jund". It looks like a deck that uses the graveyard enough to get moderately hosed by hate, but doesn't abuse the graveyard enough to get free wins if your opponent doesn't draw said hate, and that's kind of the worst spot to be in.
It's a neat idea, has at least gone 5-0 in a modern league, and I think there's enough merit that you should test it out guitar90x. If it turns out to be really good, I'm totally down for playing a deck like that.
Regarding the “two bobs” question, my philosophy is generally to avoid taking the risk on two bobs if it seems like I’m far enough ahead to the point of being able to win without it. If you’re already a favorite to win it seems kinda silly to press the advantage and open yourself up to losing to bad bob variance. If I’m behind though, or the game is neck and neck and I still have a healthy life total, I’d say take the risk. Sometimes you have to take risks to steal games.
Situations like these are why I advocate for not running bob anymore, or at least only in very small numbers, but I digress.
I don’t think reveler costing 3-4 mana is that big a deal. You’re talking about a 4-for-1 here after all.
I actually bought a speculative playset of Pia and Kiran nalaar, shortly before discovering it was gonna be the rare in an intro deck and would therefore never be worth anything. Rip. But anyways, maybe it’s time to bust them out?
I misread one line man, give me a break. I skimmed your post because it’s a little exhausting having to explain an opinion that is not novel or controversial, namely that a traditional jund deck does not have the cards to beat tron in the maindeck. You are entirely dependent on your opponent to stumble, and the ~20% of the time that happens is the entirety of our 20% win rate game 1, no exceptions. I don’t recall the last time I won a game against tron where they had turn 3 or 4 tron into at least 2 payoffs, which represents the other 80% of the time. Being able to consistently advance your own gameplan would help, yes, but you’re talking about a pretty small subset of the already-small 20% of games that you could possibly win in the first place.
Having reread your post, the answer to your question is absolutely unequivocally yes. Does fulminator alone swing the matchup that much? Maybe not on the draw, but a combination of fulminator and 1-2cmc spells to bust up t3 tron on the draw, absolutely. Without cards to bust up their tron you’re basically just letting Jesus take the wheel.
Also fulminator slowing down tron for a turn =/= having a lightning bolt. Attacking twice with all of your creatures is almost always more damage (sometimes even twice as much damage) than 1 attack plus a bolt.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you expect any of those cards to help you win game 1 against tron, I think you’re gonna have a bad time. Looting for the turn two goyf is kinda legit, but is contingent on you either knowing what you’re fighting or being on the draw in which case you’re likely already dead. My only point is that the only way to win the tron matchup game 1 is for your opponent to stumble A LOT, so I don’t think it’s a particularly good example.
Definitely, and it’s not my opinion that looting builds are strictly wrong. I just think people are overselling the usefulness of the card in a deck that’s not really set up to support it. One take away I got from playtesting that jund reveler deck about a month ago is that looting can work with reveler alone, but unsurprisingly you’re missing a big piece of the puzzle playing looting without lingering souls. If you want to keep up with a deck like jeskai with 4 lootings in your deck, you have to start pitching lands to looting because you can’t afford to go down on spells. In the end, you end up super land light and feels really bad still being on 4 lands on turn 10. Because souls is just as useful in the bin, you can afford to keep your lands and continue developing. It’s a subtle, but big difference that I think you’ll feel in the long run.
But regardless, I hope it works out for you. I think there’s merit there, even if I don’t quite agree on everything.
Pretty sure this is where yriel’s objections are, ayiluss. I think he and I see eye to eye in the sense that we don’t think that you have to sculpt the perfect hand every time to win. Not that I have anything against sculpting the perfect hand, but the cost of doing so with a card disadvantage spell like faithless looting is quite real.
In general, I do think classic jund has kinda high variance, but I think a large part of that comes down to BBE and bob. Both cards don’t do much on their own and require the top of your deck to play nice. Sometimes BBE spins the wheel into a blank, and sometimes bob flips 9cmc worth of useless cards and kills you. Both cards are obscenely powerful when they cooperate, but I agree a tad more with the “inconsistency” argument upon reflection. There’s something a tad distasteful about having to check your horoscope and the alignment of the planets to know whether you’re gonna have 0 damage bobs and 3-for-1 BBEs, or whether both cards will lead you to an 0-3 drop. But I generally agree with the philosophy of Reid’s build more than Logan’s “spicy jund”. I think jund’s variance can be reduced drastically to a stomach-able level by just not playing the higher variance cards. Not every victory has to be flawless where you answer everything the turn it’s cast. That’s important to mardu because it has a pretty weak proactive gameplan. Jund has few struggles there; it’s very easy to win games with literally two cards; t1 discard, t2 goyf.
Anyways, I was really hoping Reid would post the video after seeing his result. Even if I think his list is a tad out of date, it’s obviously very powerful when things work and a really fun watch.
EDIT: to provide a counterpoint here though Delver, if you’re playing against tron, what exactly are you hoping to find with a faithless looting in game 1? We have 0 maindeck LD. Your chances in game 1 are truly abysmal even with a perfect hand, and in games 2 and 3 the bad cards should be out of your deck.
I get where you’re going with this argument, but if you have a hand with 7 cards, one of which is dead and the other is a looting, and then you cast looting and pitch the dead card+one other, you’re now on 6 useful or semi-useful cards. How’s that any different than replacing the looting with a spell in the first place, and having 6 useful or semi-useful spells plus a dead fatal push? And against a deck where almost all of our cards are live (like affinity or humans), now every card is live except faithless looting. You’ve basically just introduced a dead card to your deck in this case.
If it were me, I would cut a ravine though personally. The card disadvantage from looting combined with being incentivized to pitch lands in the mid to late game makes ravine a lot worse imo. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I feel like looting and ravine butt heads a bit too much.
@Ayiluss we’ve definitely talked the whole “tracker vs bob against aggro” discussion to death, but my general feeling here is that if tracker is a C or a D against aggro, bob is a pretty fat F. Tracker is slow but locks up the game when you’ve stabilized. Bob can help you stabilize, but he can also provide the reach your opponent needs once you’ve controlled the board, or he can speed up your opponents clock. Beyond those matchups, tracker is way more valuable against midrange, and bob is way more valuable against combo. Personally I value the former matchups more than the latter, as combo is largely irrelevant thanks to humans, and the few combo decks that remain are so resilient to disruption that you likely don’t have many cards that matter in g1 if any. The meta right now is dominated by aggro and control/midrange, and in that meta I’d rather have tracker. I get that some people don’t agree with my philosophy behind jund deckbuilding, but I’m fairly confident in my evaluation of each card on a matchup to matchup basis.
Also as an aside, that list I posted a page or two back with lootings plus reveler and tracker was pretty powerful. I don’t personally enjoy looting in jund (even if it might be more powerful) but that list leveraged it quite well. 24 instants and sorceries felt like enough to cash in reveler for 3-4 mana consistently which is still quite powerful. Reveler is so strong that I think a third is quite reasonable, my only hesitation is the grave hate issue. Personally, I think that maindeck is great, but could maybe get away with one fewer land (it’s iffy), probably wants 4 looting, and might want 3rd reveler maindeck. With 4 lootings and 3 reveler, perhaps 2 trackers is ok since you’ll see them more often.