I see a lot of The Rock / Junk listes playing 1 or 2 slots of the human shaman and she makes great CA.
I understand that her CCM3 might be dangerous with Dark Confidant regarding or other slots (LotV, Maelstrom Pulse and K. command), but bring back a discard card against combo, a creature against Midrange / control, a removal against creatures deck, etc. seems attractive.
What are your thoughts about it ?
Gus
I don't think she's straight gas enough for this shell, personally. at 3 CMC we could be playing Tracker for a much higher ceiling - significantly better threat, a lot more potential CA. Ewit allows us to select what we get back, of course, but the card we want has to already be in the GY - it doesn't help us dig for answers. I think her biggest appeal is Lili recursion, but again, when evaluating each individual card along the curve I don't see her being more valuable than other options at 3. The 2nd Kcomm is about the only card I'd consider cutting for her, but it seems more flexible in most situations.
I suppose she's better in certain postboard matches where a single piece of hate really hoses opp's strategy (i.e. grafdigger's vs. dredge/shoal), but my knee-jerk armchair appraisal of the card leaves me feeling like she's too narrow in application vs. our other 3-drops. She's also a very overcosted threat vs. RiP effects, which are common tech against us.
All that being said, I HAVEN'T tried her in Jund so maybe someone with actual experience can speak.
What is Olivia Voldaren for? Is she more a way to deal with tokens or a way to go over the top of the eldrazi deck and steal their stuff?
Yes...?
Olivia dominates creature matchups of any flavor. She's good at pinging x/1's and she can get bigger than the other guy's dudes and/or threaten to steal if the game is grinding on. The steal is so mana-intensive that I've rarely ever used it in Modern, but it isn't irrelevant. It's much more common to just grow her to 6/6+ and wall Smashers or anglers. With her evasion she also closes quickly when you're ready to turn the corner.
I run her out of board and I'll bring her in for Abzan decks or E-tron, primarily.
What's our best sideboard cards against GDS? I keep losing this matchup. I feel like Nihil is useful but doesn't clench the matchup, and I already have Damnation, Last Hope and a 2nd Maelstrom Pulse in my board.
Just to second the guys who already replied: I open-handed a Leyline against GDS this week and it made the game extremely one-sided. Afterward he showed me a stranded Gurmangler and Tasigur. They operate on such a low land count that you basically shut off their delve threats, which are the things I'm primarly worried about anyway. That, and the value grind via Snap.
Nihils have to be timed pretty perfectly and that's difficult to do since it really needs to happen fast to take them off delve. They can also refill the yard via thoughtscour et al. pretty quickly afterward.
In spite of this I've swapped the Leylines in the board for spellbombs because they're soooo much better topdeck and still do their job against dredge etc. Leyline really needs to be in your opening hand to do its job.
I usually side out my Lili's since blindly +ing is asking for free smiters
They don't run Smiters, but yeah, Lili can go.
See, that's what I thought, too. I hadn't looked into the deck in quite a while, but sure enough G2 I thoughtseize this guy and he's got a Smiter in hand. I'd already sided out the Lili's anyway but I figured maybe they had updated the list. It's possible he ran them out of board, too; didn't ask. The guy's decklist seemed pretty personalized, as such things go. Glad I'm not crazy.
How is everyone doing against Abzan Coco these days?
It should be a decent matchup for us but between the full set of Finks, CoCo, Gavony Township, the combo, and the sheer amount of creatures they can ***** out in general it's surprisingly tough to keep up with them once they get going.
Last night I lost an absolutely brutal G1 against it wherein I didn't see a single Scooze and he cast the SAME Coco 5 times (he ran 4 Ewits). G2 open-hand Grafdigger's and G3 drew it on T3 = those were easy games. He ended up with 2 Cocos that did nothing in his hand G2.
G3 he boarded in RiP against me... I was ok with that. Huntmaster and Ravine won both games.
One thing I've noticed is some tricky choices with discard depending on their hands. Lots of redundancy, and it's tempting to take a Finks just to not have to deal with it twice. My angle is stripping their CA cards (Coco, Ewit), save removal for combo pieces. I usually side out my Lili's since blindly +ing is asking for free smiters, and edicting will hit a dork as often as hitting something you actually care about.
All in all I agree - the matchup feels favorable in a vacuum, but it gets VERY hard if they're able to cast multiple coco.
I took FlyingDelver's advice and upped my Scooze count to 3, from 2. I've only had one local to hit since I made the change, but I agree with all of the above sentiments. The upside to running Scooze is too good to cut him completely. I've been itching to try Flayer so I may drop back to 2, but lifegain is a real thing in this deck.
I feel like Flayer is in competition with the Bob slot more than anything, but that's tricky because as you said, he synergizes really well there.
Kalitas is a bit too slow in a lot of matchups for what you want from Scooze. He's also harder to hit consistently since you're very unlikely to run more than 1-2 copies of him.
I'm to worried that I'd end up playing blood moon and it not doing enough. I always think back to Todd stevens saying he's never lost a game that blood moon resolved, granted he's a damn good player but still I think it would do more harm then good. I'm currently thinking of playing 4x thought seize in the main deck a 4/2 split between inquisition.
I feel like Thoughtseize's value has gone up in a meta full of delve creatures and eldrazi, for sure, and it lets us grab Real Bad Things from other decks that IoK misses, to boot (Company, Cryptic, Elspeth, etc). I'm just not sure that going the full 4 is where I'd be, given how painful the deck already is. I tend to side them out vs. burn, for instance, and only have 2 IoK in that matchup feels pretty bad on paper, as it's typically been VERY strong there. I'm on a 3/3 split right now myself.
That being said, if your local meta doesn't punish greedy manabases and Bob triggers, TS is simply more versatile.
As for blood moon, I'm all for someone wanting to run the card out of board, but I still think that it's pretty bad for our deck as-is, so you'd really have to change up a lot to make it work. Hell, a lot of people play it against me, even; we require a lot of color fixing and BM can really throw this off; I don't think it's a very good idea to play a card that hates on our own deck no matter how good it is vs. certain matchups.
It's usually strong vs. the field, though, that much is certain, and especially so vs. our bad matchups. Speaking plainly - if you really wanna run it, you gotta change the deck around quite a bit, but I think there is some deckbuilding space for innovation here.
Hello everyone, with eldrazi tron becoming popular whats the general opinion of blood moon in jund decks?
There are lists that try to run it, sure, but all it really does is slow them down, not lock them out. It also does the same to you, though, so without significant deckbuilding constraints to mitigate this i personally wouldnt recommend.
Went 3-0 (smaller tourney) with the changes discussed above. Shed a basic forest for the 6th fastland, added the 3rd scooze, moving CB to the board and dropping ancient grudge altogether (!!) due to lack of affinity in my locals. This is NOT a permanent change, just meta-dependent.
- 6 fastlands felt fine. Don't know what else to say here.
- 3 scooze was neither under- or over-whelming. It was simply whelming. Felt about the same, really, but the extra creature MB was nice since I did run into a control matchup again.
Drew 2 lili's all night, and one of them was IoK'd. Not super great.
I know a lot of people have been talking about Claim to Fame, and while I'm not really sold on it myself, I *am* wondering, lately, what we can do to increase our clock somewhat vs. more controlly matchups. Windmill-slamming a goyf on T2 after T1 discard is fine, and all, but I'm having difficulty being aggressive with the deck without the right draw. Any pointers for this? Specifically vs. blue-based control matchups, but anything that helps vs. say Tron or Ad Naus could apply, too.
Thanks, I mainly wanted to see how you handled you 4+ drops because I've been having a small crisis with them myself. I currently just 1 of of Huntmaster, Olivia and T-Maw in the main with Thrun in the side. I've been testing T-Maw main and so far I love it, having such a vicious top end feels amazing a lot of the time, and with a good number of Souls decks running around he sometimes gets added utility. There's also generally low amounts of flying creatures around, so sometimes he wins the game on his own
I think that split is probably fine; it could also be very meta-dependent, but since it sounds like you see Abzan a lot I think Olivia is very maindeckable. Super high five on the Thundermaw tech, though; I've been a big fan since I first tried it. Really cool to see someone else going for it and loving it
Nope, sure didn't. Interestingly, my fish opponent Round 1 did.
Surgical on Valakut is ofc the best you can do, usually this needs a Fulminator though. Blood Moon is also decent against them. They need green to cast their spells and especially double green can get them if you resolve an early BM. But BM in Jund is very shacky and I think its not worth it.
Having tried BM in Jund before, I'm inclined to agree. I guess Fulminator into Surgical will have to do for now.
I really advice going for 3 Oozes. MB GY hate is quite useful against go wide strategies (CoCo decks) as well as Grixis DS and Living End and Dredge and Storm to a certain extent. This is basically the top decks right now.
Yeah, I think I'll go back to 3 for a while; the meta has shifted a ton since I quit and came back so it's a different world out there, for one.
I think a mountain is too painful to have. I tried playing it but it didn't perform well for me. Right now I have 2 Swamp and 1 Forest and even that Forest is sometimes such a bad land. It is really only needed to lower fetching dmg and have outs for BM. With Mountain only one of that things apply. And I think this is not worth it at all.
No idea why you would run a singleton Mountain, I can just imagine how awkward an opening hand with one of those must be.
Hey, man, I just said I had ideas; I never said I had good ones ;p
Honestly, though, just having the option off a path to grab red for fixing. I think it's probably a warping effect due to how often my UW control-playing buddy wants me to test vs. him, so I'm used to being both color screwed by Seas and path'd out of basics, which isn't a common occurrence against ANY other deck. I'm gonna try an extra fastland in place of Forest #2 for now, so back to 3 basics. I've been lucky dodging the awkward openers, but I agree costs do not compare favorably with benefits in this case.
For me it's always been a personal preference to play 1 more Terminate over the 4th LotV.
Tbh Terminate is so good in my meta that I play a 61 card deck just to be able to fit 4x lillys and 4x terminates. I've never had any issues with that and the deck runs smoothly.
I went to 61 cards post-board against... UW I think? Worked out fine. Don't think I have the stones to try it very often, but it's good to hear that you're pulling it off consistently.
Sure, though I obsessively change my list slightly just about every time I play. I'll try to recreate last night's as best I can. I'll add notes below.
3 Bobs because right now that's all I have. I'll be changing that pretty quickly; I'm just lazy, 3 has worked, and I don't have a lot of time or money to put toward MTG right now (and I'm really bad at hoarding cards instead of trading for stuff). I've also thought about trying out a Grim Flayer in that slot because I find the card interesting and haven't done any testing with him.
I'll probably switch the push/bolt spread. I have an unreasonable attachment to lightning bolt and don't like the amount of things Push doesn't kill when bolt could at least force a trade or dome someone. I might go up to 9 fetches if I do. My locals have an inordinately high number of target-lite control lists, too.
3/3 discard split because IoK misses enough things I care about nowadays that I prefer the extra security in being able to nab the problem cards vs. the life.
3 LotV because I never picked up the 4th back when I was building the deck for some reason, and LtLH is waaaay cheaper and very interesting. I've yet to really do anything cool with her, though, as she's a pretty recent acquisition. I thought about Chandra, Torch of Defiance but I'm already running a fairly high curve for Jund and the reviews I've seen here and other places have been fairly underwhelming. I may decide to go full 4 LotV at some point, though.
Brutality switches from main to side but lately I've been draining myself so much between mana fixing, bob, and thoughtseize that I felt like squeezing a bit more MB lifegain.
2 Scoozes instead of 3 because... I don't know. I'm never super jazzed with Scooze, honestly. I have like a million of them though so maybe I'll jam another in there. Seems like it'd help alleviate my threat issues and painful mana some.
The sideboard is in constant flux. I've tried Crumble to Dust, Blood Moon because I love that card, Shatterstorm, another huntmaster, Duress... I mean, the list goes on. I've even jammed a Stormbreath Dragon in there because yay dragons and FU path to exile. I've run a Languish here before and that felt REALLY good when I kept a goyf or dragon, but I'm scared enough by what it doesn't kill that I don't think I'd take it over an actual wrath effect. Still, beats weird indestructible tech I guess?
The thundermaw is a pet card, but even in non-Souls matchups it pulls its weight. I doubt I'll cut him anytime soon.
Edit: I tried a single Mountain in place of the 2nd Forest, and to be honest, I actually really liked it. I might switch back; didn't run into Blood Moon this week (but LAST WEEK omg everywhere), and being able to tutor my 2nd red off a path or shockless fetch for a hellkite felt pretty good. Spreading Seas is very common at my LGS, too.
Hopefully last edit: I've been kinda toying with a mana sink card like Rakdos's Return or something just to break up the awful draw-go topdeck wars I get into with all the local control players. Anyone tried something dumb like this?
Just kidding, more edits: The Pulse of Murasa in the sideboard is a new(ish) idea I wanted to try anticipating Burn, which I didn't pair up against. I didn't draw it all night but it still seems to have fringe applications against other stuff where recursion, life, or even mana fixing matters. Speaking of pulses, I'm probably gonna add another Maelstrom Pulse because I've been seeing a lot of problematic 'walkers around my shops lately. Anyone played with multiples regularly?
Some things I'm interested in trying:
Kalitas. Never tested him. Lifelink is dope tho.
Rhonas. I tried a wolf-run once but let's just say colored mana is pretty important to the deck...
Tireless Tracker.
Painful Truths.
Hell, maybe a Thragtusk in the board.
I mean the best and worst thing about Jund is how flexible it can be. It's great to try things and tune to a meta, it's awful having a brewer's mentality and always wanting to try new things, never being satisfied with your list. I just love the deck too much to stop, I guess.
Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Happy to discuss!
While I usually prefer dragons and ninjas or the odd angel, my current favorite card has to be Huntmaster of the Fells. SOOO much flavor, cool ability, crazy value, takes over games on his own, I mean I could go on but you all remember. I only wish he was more relevant in Modern since I have a foil sitting around in a binder right now =|
I don't think she's straight gas enough for this shell, personally. at 3 CMC we could be playing Tracker for a much higher ceiling - significantly better threat, a lot more potential CA. Ewit allows us to select what we get back, of course, but the card we want has to already be in the GY - it doesn't help us dig for answers. I think her biggest appeal is Lili recursion, but again, when evaluating each individual card along the curve I don't see her being more valuable than other options at 3. The 2nd Kcomm is about the only card I'd consider cutting for her, but it seems more flexible in most situations.
I suppose she's better in certain postboard matches where a single piece of hate really hoses opp's strategy (i.e. grafdigger's vs. dredge/shoal), but my knee-jerk armchair appraisal of the card leaves me feeling like she's too narrow in application vs. our other 3-drops. She's also a very overcosted threat vs. RiP effects, which are common tech against us.
All that being said, I HAVEN'T tried her in Jund so maybe someone with actual experience can speak.
Yes...?
Olivia dominates creature matchups of any flavor. She's good at pinging x/1's and she can get bigger than the other guy's dudes and/or threaten to steal if the game is grinding on. The steal is so mana-intensive that I've rarely ever used it in Modern, but it isn't irrelevant. It's much more common to just grow her to 6/6+ and wall Smashers or anglers. With her evasion she also closes quickly when you're ready to turn the corner.
I run her out of board and I'll bring her in for Abzan decks or E-tron, primarily.
Just to second the guys who already replied: I open-handed a Leyline against GDS this week and it made the game extremely one-sided. Afterward he showed me a stranded Gurmangler and Tasigur. They operate on such a low land count that you basically shut off their delve threats, which are the things I'm primarly worried about anyway. That, and the value grind via Snap.
Nihils have to be timed pretty perfectly and that's difficult to do since it really needs to happen fast to take them off delve. They can also refill the yard via thoughtscour et al. pretty quickly afterward.
In spite of this I've swapped the Leylines in the board for spellbombs because they're soooo much better topdeck and still do their job against dredge etc. Leyline really needs to be in your opening hand to do its job.
See, that's what I thought, too. I hadn't looked into the deck in quite a while, but sure enough G2 I thoughtseize this guy and he's got a Smiter in hand. I'd already sided out the Lili's anyway but I figured maybe they had updated the list. It's possible he ran them out of board, too; didn't ask. The guy's decklist seemed pretty personalized, as such things go. Glad I'm not crazy.
Last night I lost an absolutely brutal G1 against it wherein I didn't see a single Scooze and he cast the SAME Coco 5 times (he ran 4 Ewits). G2 open-hand Grafdigger's and G3 drew it on T3 = those were easy games. He ended up with 2 Cocos that did nothing in his hand G2.
G3 he boarded in RiP against me... I was ok with that. Huntmaster and Ravine won both games.
One thing I've noticed is some tricky choices with discard depending on their hands. Lots of redundancy, and it's tempting to take a Finks just to not have to deal with it twice. My angle is stripping their CA cards (Coco, Ewit), save removal for combo pieces. I usually side out my Lili's since blindly +ing is asking for free smiters, and edicting will hit a dork as often as hitting something you actually care about.
All in all I agree - the matchup feels favorable in a vacuum, but it gets VERY hard if they're able to cast multiple coco.
I feel like Flayer is in competition with the Bob slot more than anything, but that's tricky because as you said, he synergizes really well there.
Kalitas is a bit too slow in a lot of matchups for what you want from Scooze. He's also harder to hit consistently since you're very unlikely to run more than 1-2 copies of him.
I feel like Thoughtseize's value has gone up in a meta full of delve creatures and eldrazi, for sure, and it lets us grab Real Bad Things from other decks that IoK misses, to boot (Company, Cryptic, Elspeth, etc). I'm just not sure that going the full 4 is where I'd be, given how painful the deck already is. I tend to side them out vs. burn, for instance, and only have 2 IoK in that matchup feels pretty bad on paper, as it's typically been VERY strong there. I'm on a 3/3 split right now myself.
That being said, if your local meta doesn't punish greedy manabases and Bob triggers, TS is simply more versatile.
As for blood moon, I'm all for someone wanting to run the card out of board, but I still think that it's pretty bad for our deck as-is, so you'd really have to change up a lot to make it work. Hell, a lot of people play it against me, even; we require a lot of color fixing and BM can really throw this off; I don't think it's a very good idea to play a card that hates on our own deck no matter how good it is vs. certain matchups.
It's usually strong vs. the field, though, that much is certain, and especially so vs. our bad matchups. Speaking plainly - if you really wanna run it, you gotta change the deck around quite a bit, but I think there is some deckbuilding space for innovation here.
There are lists that try to run it, sure, but all it really does is slow them down, not lock them out. It also does the same to you, though, so without significant deckbuilding constraints to mitigate this i personally wouldnt recommend.
Heh, i once had sword in my sb too. I might try to find room again after seeing this.
Why dreadbore and not just another pulse, i wonder?
- 6 fastlands felt fine. Don't know what else to say here.
- 3 scooze was neither under- or over-whelming. It was simply whelming. Felt about the same, really, but the extra creature MB was nice since I did run into a control matchup again.
Drew 2 lili's all night, and one of them was IoK'd. Not super great.
I know a lot of people have been talking about Claim to Fame, and while I'm not really sold on it myself, I *am* wondering, lately, what we can do to increase our clock somewhat vs. more controlly matchups. Windmill-slamming a goyf on T2 after T1 discard is fine, and all, but I'm having difficulty being aggressive with the deck without the right draw. Any pointers for this? Specifically vs. blue-based control matchups, but anything that helps vs. say Tron or Ad Naus could apply, too.
Thanks!
I think that split is probably fine; it could also be very meta-dependent, but since it sounds like you see Abzan a lot I think Olivia is very maindeckable. Super high five on the Thundermaw tech, though; I've been a big fan since I first tried it. Really cool to see someone else going for it and loving it
Hey, man, I just said I had ideas; I never said I had good ones ;p
Honestly, though, just having the option off a path to grab red for fixing. I think it's probably a warping effect due to how often my UW control-playing buddy wants me to test vs. him, so I'm used to being both color screwed by Seas and path'd out of basics, which isn't a common occurrence against ANY other deck. I'm gonna try an extra fastland in place of Forest #2 for now, so back to 3 basics. I've been lucky dodging the awkward openers, but I agree costs do not compare favorably with benefits in this case.
I went to 61 cards post-board against... UW I think? Worked out fine. Don't think I have the stones to try it very often, but it's good to hear that you're pulling it off consistently.
Sure, though I obsessively change my list slightly just about every time I play. I'll try to recreate last night's as best I can. I'll add notes below.
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blooming Marsh
2 Swamp
2 Forest
3 Raging Ravine
Stuff
3 Dark Confidant
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
2 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Thundermaw Hellkite
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
3 Terminate
2 Fatal Push
3 Lightning Bolt
2 Abrupt Decay
1 Collective Brutality
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Kolaghan's Command
Other Stuff
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Things
2 Leyline of the Void
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Damnation
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Kitchen Finks
1 Pulse of Murasa
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Olivia Voldaren
2 Fulminator Mage
3 Bobs because right now that's all I have. I'll be changing that pretty quickly; I'm just lazy, 3 has worked, and I don't have a lot of time or money to put toward MTG right now (and I'm really bad at hoarding cards instead of trading for stuff). I've also thought about trying out a Grim Flayer in that slot because I find the card interesting and haven't done any testing with him.
I'll probably switch the push/bolt spread. I have an unreasonable attachment to lightning bolt and don't like the amount of things Push doesn't kill when bolt could at least force a trade or dome someone. I might go up to 9 fetches if I do. My locals have an inordinately high number of target-lite control lists, too.
3/3 discard split because IoK misses enough things I care about nowadays that I prefer the extra security in being able to nab the problem cards vs. the life.
3 LotV because I never picked up the 4th back when I was building the deck for some reason, and LtLH is waaaay cheaper and very interesting. I've yet to really do anything cool with her, though, as she's a pretty recent acquisition. I thought about Chandra, Torch of Defiance but I'm already running a fairly high curve for Jund and the reviews I've seen here and other places have been fairly underwhelming. I may decide to go full 4 LotV at some point, though.
Brutality switches from main to side but lately I've been draining myself so much between mana fixing, bob, and thoughtseize that I felt like squeezing a bit more MB lifegain.
2 Scoozes instead of 3 because... I don't know. I'm never super jazzed with Scooze, honestly. I have like a million of them though so maybe I'll jam another in there. Seems like it'd help alleviate my threat issues and painful mana some.
The sideboard is in constant flux. I've tried Crumble to Dust, Blood Moon because I love that card, Shatterstorm, another huntmaster, Duress... I mean, the list goes on. I've even jammed a Stormbreath Dragon in there because yay dragons and FU path to exile. I've run a Languish here before and that felt REALLY good when I kept a goyf or dragon, but I'm scared enough by what it doesn't kill that I don't think I'd take it over an actual wrath effect. Still, beats weird indestructible tech I guess?
The thundermaw is a pet card, but even in non-Souls matchups it pulls its weight. I doubt I'll cut him anytime soon.
Edit: I tried a single Mountain in place of the 2nd Forest, and to be honest, I actually really liked it. I might switch back; didn't run into Blood Moon this week (but LAST WEEK omg everywhere), and being able to tutor my 2nd red off a path or shockless fetch for a hellkite felt pretty good. Spreading Seas is very common at my LGS, too.
Hopefully last edit: I've been kinda toying with a mana sink card like Rakdos's Return or something just to break up the awful draw-go topdeck wars I get into with all the local control players. Anyone tried something dumb like this?
Just kidding, more edits: The Pulse of Murasa in the sideboard is a new(ish) idea I wanted to try anticipating Burn, which I didn't pair up against. I didn't draw it all night but it still seems to have fringe applications against other stuff where recursion, life, or even mana fixing matters. Speaking of pulses, I'm probably gonna add another Maelstrom Pulse because I've been seeing a lot of problematic 'walkers around my shops lately. Anyone played with multiples regularly?
Some things I'm interested in trying:
Kalitas. Never tested him. Lifelink is dope tho.
Rhonas. I tried a wolf-run once but let's just say colored mana is pretty important to the deck...
Tireless Tracker.
Painful Truths.
Hell, maybe a Thragtusk in the board.
I mean the best and worst thing about Jund is how flexible it can be. It's great to try things and tune to a meta, it's awful having a brewer's mentality and always wanting to try new things, never being satisfied with your list. I just love the deck too much to stop, I guess.
Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Happy to discuss!