Hey all, just getting back into the game over the past few months after being gone from right before return to return to ravnica electric boogaloo. Mostly been on other decks for a minute but I miss elves a lot. I know nurturing peatland is great. After that, I left while people still seemed undecided (or at least I wasn’t paying enough attention) on Clancaller. And I see some people run that new beast that draws cards. Can anyone give me a rundown on those two? I won’t be playing the deck in my local meta for a bit anyway because everyone is on W6 plague engineer decks but I want it at least built again.
I’m not a big fan of the madcap emperion thing. But if you think itll work for you in your meta give it a shot and report back. I'd love to hear your results.
As for the basic swamp, if you are playing 0 red cards maindeck like me it’s pretty great. The cards I hate most in my deck, honestly, are the basic mountains. An opening hand with a swamp is usually fine as long as I have one green source. But a hand with basic mountains is almost like a hand with wastes. They only cast stuff from the board, so other than setting up for valakut they are awful. And with 6 maindeck black cards, being able to get swamp from SFT or Steve is important.
That all being said, the mana in the deck feels great. And with no reason to search mountains I never find myself running out of them with 13 when RG really wants 14
Here is the list I keep saying I will post. It is outdated, but it got me to a few 3-1's in locals against some decent players. I beat Jund at least once an event, and also played Whirza at each event only dropping a couple of games but no matches.
After the first two weeks, the Omens became Mwonvuli Acid-Moss. After the bannings and unbannings, one relic became a Field of the Dead with the mana base changed accordingly replacing one cinder glade with a Sheltered Thicket and adding snow basics, and the other relic became an Hour of Promise which I have previously played to great effect in grindier metas. The sideboard also changed. I replaced Courser with Weather the Storm, one anger became another sphere, another anger became a Sweltering Suns, the thrun became a relic because I realized he was never coming in anymore and I do like relic still as a fifteenth sideboard card while I am trying to make decisions. It never hurts to have some grave hate and at worst it can be a redraw. For this weekend, I am changing one natures claim to a Reclamation Sage and may in the future change the other to a Collector Ouphe but I am waiting on those to come in the mail. I am also strongly considering cutting a baloth and the inferno titan for Veil of Summer which is also coming in the mail. I will be doing a lot of testing against storm soon and want to see how it and damping sphere affect the matchup.
The main strengths of this list for me have really been the unconditional removal. Instead of racing Whirza and praying they can't stop me or gain enough life to live long enough to combo me, I am able to take the control position and often hold up hard removal for one or more pieces of their combo in response to the last piece being cast. This has meant I have won every match I have played against them (4) and only dropped, iirc, 2 games. Additionally, it has made Jund's only hope of beating us (T1 Discard, T2 goyf, T3 Lili) not much of a plan when I can always kill their goyf with any removal spell (when bolt almost never will) and can sometimes deal with their planeswalkers that are out of bolt range with abrupt decay. As for other matchups, my only complaint is that sometimes you do want a maindeck sweeper against some aggro decks, but often going hard into the ramp plan and taking out a few key creatures with push and decay deal with it anyway. As it is, go wide creature decks aren't as common in the store where I am playing now. Lots of midrange, combo, and control.
Edit: I have made some more updates to the primer, adding new cards to the flex slot choices such as HoP, and cleaning up the suggested manabase section. Please give it a look and let me know if you have recommendations.
I think the idea has some merit. I’ve been theory crafting a JUNDtitanshift list rather than a jundTITANSHIFT list. So take out a lot of the ramp except for STE and search for tomorrow and then max out on discard. If I were you and wanted to play a similar list, I would cut the tutor and Obs and that type stuff, max out the discard spells, and use the Jund manabase I’ve been using that is basically the list from the black splash portion of the primer. That is where I would start, but if you’re set on running closer to the list you suggested, definitely go for and let me know how it goes.
Another idea I had at one point was to take the RUGshift list that has no titans and replace it straight into Jund colors. So, all the same green and red spells (except maybe push instead of or in addition to bolts), but replace all the blue spells with black spells. The big thing stopping me was Lilliana being a bad card for us. But Wrenn and Six would be amazing in that shell. Creature removal or getting the opponent to 18 with the second ability, recycle fetchlands or draw lands with the first one, and if the game goes too long, the ultimate let’s you do anything you want basically.
Great to see some activity in this primer. I have hopped into the archetype quite recently and posted my first attempt a few posts above. The B splash was initially only for the sideboard (Slaughter Games, that is) but I can see replacing the sweepers and/or Bolts in the main with harder removal in Decay/Trophy and maybe even Fatal Push, although triggering it might be not as reliable as one would like to with only 6 fetchlands. I currently only have a single Blood Crypt as B source, would you advise towards running a basic swamp or an Overgrown Tomb as well? The current list has 14 mountains.
The sideboard is kind of all over the place, not sure if Abrade shouldn't be something like Destructive Revelry for example. Criticism and suggestions of any kind are welcome.
I’ll post my list soon. I am running a pretty standard list with 4 farseeks rather than any explores, 4 push, and 2 decay in the main. I run 2 forests, a swamp, and an overgrown tomb for my black and green non-mountain lands. I also put a blood crypt in for those times you need to Push something while also getting a mountain.
Just splashing for some sideboard cards is definitely a valid start and just having one blood crypt over a basic mountain is totally fine. But if you want to run more than one or two sideboard cards that you just want to cast one of and win like Slaughter Games against Ad Naus, having an extra source is important. My specific setup is so that I can cast any card in my list through a blood moon, hence the basic swamp. I also found that with four push and 2 decay, to keep on pace casting all the spells you need, you often really need the overgrown tomb. Try stuff out and see how it feels. Also feel free to ask more questions. I am going to try to really flesh out the black splash section now that I’m back in the swing of things and have been playing way more again.
As for suggestions on your list, just cut madcap emperion. It’s not great. Replace it with some Mwonvuli Acid Moss, Khalni Heart Expeditions, or Prismatic omens. Ramping more is better than madcap emperion. Also, if you can, green fetches are better than red since we have way more green spells to cast and will often need to crack for a basic forest either in response to a blood moon or in aggressive matchups. 4 foothills and 3 green fetches is optimal. If you have or can get another one, 4 valakut is almost mandatory. I have won so many Grindy matches only because of a 4th valakut after 2-3 others are a ghost quarter.
Is Red even necessary for the deck ?
Black just seems like a better splash color and with Prismatic Omen you don't even need real mountains.
I’m not sure entirely what you mean. If you mean not running mountains and just using Omen to scapeshift for the win, that will not work consistently. You can’t just hope to draw a copy of a single card in a non-blue deck and not have it removed in response to scapeshift which is why we run so much redundancy in our win conditions in four scapeshift, four Titan, and at least two summoners pact. And we still lose some games to not drawing one of them on time.
So, long story short, yes you need red in so far as you need mountains. You do not need to necessarily use that red mana, I only have 3 red cards in my whole 75, but you need the mountains for valakut no matter what unless you run a completely different deck and plan than us.
On the topic of Field of the Dead, I jammed a ton of games with a buddy testing it out and it felt great. So I took it to sunday modern this week and went 3-0-1 with it doing what I expected. Which is to say, not much of anything most games because I didn’t need it, but winning me games I did need it. Specifically against UW control. Which is a winning matchup anyway, but getting it and a valakut with the first Titan trigger in case of removal let me represent a bolt and a zombie with every land which became relevant.
Hey everyone, after a long time gone, I am finally back to the game and hoping to do some work to the primer like including new cards that are being played, new tech choices of old cards, and just general updates. I could really use some help with it as I just started a new job and do not have as much time as I used to to pour through tournament records and the such. If anyone at all is interested you are more than welcome to send me a private message or just reply to this comment with anything you think should be added and I will take a look. Some really useful things would be links to tournament reports or articles from notable players, some notable placings in big events, personal views on what the new hotness is for the deck, opinions on what to put in the matchups section of the primer, anything about splash colors (I'm still splashing black and loving it even more than I used to and with the recent banning of hogaak and looting it feels even better), anything about that landbase I am seeing occasionally running that new standard land and some snow-covered lands and stuff, or anything else you think is relevant.
On a different note, what do y'all think of the newly revealed Beanstalk Giant. It seems like the adventure just costs 1 too much. Otherwise I might consider trying a couple over something like one farseek and one of the flex ramp slots.
Later tonight I will post the list I have been running lately to a run of 3-1 local events with 20-30 players each. It is a pretty standard JundShift list from around hour of devastation just swapping 2 Hour of Promise for 2 Relic of Progenitus because of a change in stores and metas. I used to play in a control heavy meta that benefited heavily from hour. But the store I am playing in now is so Jund and graveyard heavy that the relics have won me multiple game 1's and only been boarded out a few times. With the banning of Faithless Looting and Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis relics are a bit less necessary, but I will keep them in for a bit longer as I see how my store shakes out. I have not learned anything too new from the past month or so of jamming games. Jund is still a favorable matchup even after they got way stronger with BBE and Wrenn and Six. Various combo decks are varying levels of even races. But that is where Jund shines. Straight R/G can't deal with Urza, Lord High Artificer or otherwise interact with Whirza game one. Jund on the other hand can Fatal Push Urza or Abrupt Decay / Assassin's Trophy the other combo pieces as well as bring in more removal post-board. I did get completely wrecked by that Finale of Devastation combo deck on turn 3 both games once though...
Edit: I have just added a couple of things. I added the website posted a few pages back to the resource section and added a little information to the black splash section. My two biggest priorities right now are fixing the core card choice/flex slots sections to be less out of date and figuring out what to write and where to put it about the Field of the Dead manabase which seems really good and non-intrusive to just throw in. After that, I want to update decklists that are featured and get some information about the splashes put in.
Hey everybody, sorry I kind of abandoned the primer for a while after wanting to do so much updating and only really doing some grammatical fixing here and there.
I just kinda stopped playing magic for a bit because school and life have been in the way. So, to the person asking if the primer is out of date, yes and no. The sideboard matchup sections are still mostly relevant to the decks they talk about. The big thing to remember is that to keep up to date it is most important to be thinking about what matchups you expect. Affinity never changes, so if you expect affinity, it is the same matchup it's always been.
And in regards to that picture earlier on the page, that is owned by the person who created it and sells it on T-Shirts. I could not put it in the primer without permission. However, I encourage you all to check out their work as it's pretty cool.
I'm not going to make any promises about updating the primer any time soon as I will continue to be busy for the foreseeable future and can't say for sure if I will actually regain a stronger interest in competitive magic again soon. with that being said, if anyone here has been playing the deck for a long time and has been posting not just on this website, but on this decks various threads for a while and would like to take over the primer, PM me and we can talk. I would like this primer to thrive but I'm not going to hand it off to some random user who hasn't been involved in the community for long and/or has barely posted much at all.
Thank you for your very aggressive post. I don't have more results because I don't use MTGO and am too poor and busy with school to go to large events. I can only justify going to events that I am judging and thus getting paid to do.
I just find it funny that you called out on people not knowing the deck to justify their decision to play 4 stomping grounds while you don't play the deck on competitively .
First of all Id say most lists play 2 forests. And you cant go valakut into glade ramp, which is way worse than the 2 points your taking.
You often dont want to get basic forests also, and you cant wait to have glade come into play untapped.
Also, what do you think are your worst matchups that you cant afford to pay for stomping ground ? Burn and affinity ? If those are the unfavorable and youre winning against the rest please send me your decklist I will for sure play it on some events.
Just because I haven't made it out to large events does not mean I don't play the deck competitively and well. Also, I have long argued that 2 forests is too few. And the percentages on getting a seven card hand that can't cast a ramp spell on turn 2 with the manabase I use are so minuscule as to be laughable. And if you do get that hand, just mulligan it. 4 stomping grounds are unnecessary. Even if you don't think the extra life points are relevant, the percentages of going from 2-4 just aren't that big of a difference. And the likelihood that you have to have the 3rd one on turn 3 to cast something is also laughable. Additionally, with the manabase I use, I find Burn and affinity to be totally winnable matchups. My biggest issue lately has been storm.
Thank you for your very aggressive post. I don't have more results because I don't use MTGO and am too poor and busy with school to go to large events. I can only justify going to events that I am judging and thus getting paid to do.
I'm not sure I understand exactly what you are asking. If the question is 'Why is it worth it to run removal?', then my answer is that the full combo race does not always favor us as we can never win before turn four and aren't hugely favored to have a turn 4 win anyway. So, to play to our inevitability of winning on turn 5 or later, we often run removal to slow down decks looking to consistently kill on 4 or even sometimes 3. This is mostly aggro matchups like burn and faster combos like storm. In both of these matchups, removing key creatures is very important.
Assuming 7 fetchlands and 3 basic forest as your only other turn one untapped green sources, 2 stomping grounds gives you an 80 percent chance to have turn 1 green source untapped and 85 percent on turn two. Going up to four gives you 86 and 89 respectively. (All of these numbers are determined through hypergeometric calculations). That's not a huge percentage change for the better when you at also hurting your worst matchups.
2 copies are a necessity. Past that, if you think you need them to feel comfortable, go ahead, but you don't need them.
At the cost of making our worst matchups even worse. It is super important to have 2 so that you can get them when you need to with fetches, but there is no reason to max out on them or really even have 3.
As for the basic swamp, if you are playing 0 red cards maindeck like me it’s pretty great. The cards I hate most in my deck, honestly, are the basic mountains. An opening hand with a swamp is usually fine as long as I have one green source. But a hand with basic mountains is almost like a hand with wastes. They only cast stuff from the board, so other than setting up for valakut they are awful. And with 6 maindeck black cards, being able to get swamp from SFT or Steve is important.
That all being said, the mana in the deck feels great. And with no reason to search mountains I never find myself running out of them with 13 when RG really wants 14
4 Scapeshift
4 Primeval Titans
2 Summoner's Pact
Ramp [12]
4 Search for Tomorrow
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Farseek
Removal [6]
4 Fatal Push
2 Abrupt Decay
Flex Slots [5]
3 Prismatic Omen
2 Relic of Progenitus
4 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Stomping Ground
4 Cinder Glade
5 Mountain
1 Blood Crypt
2 Forest
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Swamp
2 Nature's Claim
1 Damping Sphere
2 Terminate
2 Courser of Kruphix
3 Anger of the Gods
3 Obstinate Baloth
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Inferno Titan
After the first two weeks, the Omens became Mwonvuli Acid-Moss. After the bannings and unbannings, one relic became a Field of the Dead with the mana base changed accordingly replacing one cinder glade with a Sheltered Thicket and adding snow basics, and the other relic became an Hour of Promise which I have previously played to great effect in grindier metas. The sideboard also changed. I replaced Courser with Weather the Storm, one anger became another sphere, another anger became a Sweltering Suns, the thrun became a relic because I realized he was never coming in anymore and I do like relic still as a fifteenth sideboard card while I am trying to make decisions. It never hurts to have some grave hate and at worst it can be a redraw. For this weekend, I am changing one natures claim to a Reclamation Sage and may in the future change the other to a Collector Ouphe but I am waiting on those to come in the mail. I am also strongly considering cutting a baloth and the inferno titan for Veil of Summer which is also coming in the mail. I will be doing a lot of testing against storm soon and want to see how it and damping sphere affect the matchup.
The main strengths of this list for me have really been the unconditional removal. Instead of racing Whirza and praying they can't stop me or gain enough life to live long enough to combo me, I am able to take the control position and often hold up hard removal for one or more pieces of their combo in response to the last piece being cast. This has meant I have won every match I have played against them (4) and only dropped, iirc, 2 games. Additionally, it has made Jund's only hope of beating us (T1 Discard, T2 goyf, T3 Lili) not much of a plan when I can always kill their goyf with any removal spell (when bolt almost never will) and can sometimes deal with their planeswalkers that are out of bolt range with abrupt decay. As for other matchups, my only complaint is that sometimes you do want a maindeck sweeper against some aggro decks, but often going hard into the ramp plan and taking out a few key creatures with push and decay deal with it anyway. As it is, go wide creature decks aren't as common in the store where I am playing now. Lots of midrange, combo, and control.
Edit: I have made some more updates to the primer, adding new cards to the flex slot choices such as HoP, and cleaning up the suggested manabase section. Please give it a look and let me know if you have recommendations.
Another idea I had at one point was to take the RUGshift list that has no titans and replace it straight into Jund colors. So, all the same green and red spells (except maybe push instead of or in addition to bolts), but replace all the blue spells with black spells. The big thing stopping me was Lilliana being a bad card for us. But Wrenn and Six would be amazing in that shell. Creature removal or getting the opponent to 18 with the second ability, recycle fetchlands or draw lands with the first one, and if the game goes too long, the ultimate let’s you do anything you want basically.
I’ll post my list soon. I am running a pretty standard list with 4 farseeks rather than any explores, 4 push, and 2 decay in the main. I run 2 forests, a swamp, and an overgrown tomb for my black and green non-mountain lands. I also put a blood crypt in for those times you need to Push something while also getting a mountain.
Just splashing for some sideboard cards is definitely a valid start and just having one blood crypt over a basic mountain is totally fine. But if you want to run more than one or two sideboard cards that you just want to cast one of and win like Slaughter Games against Ad Naus, having an extra source is important. My specific setup is so that I can cast any card in my list through a blood moon, hence the basic swamp. I also found that with four push and 2 decay, to keep on pace casting all the spells you need, you often really need the overgrown tomb. Try stuff out and see how it feels. Also feel free to ask more questions. I am going to try to really flesh out the black splash section now that I’m back in the swing of things and have been playing way more again.
As for suggestions on your list, just cut madcap emperion. It’s not great. Replace it with some Mwonvuli Acid Moss, Khalni Heart Expeditions, or Prismatic omens. Ramping more is better than madcap emperion. Also, if you can, green fetches are better than red since we have way more green spells to cast and will often need to crack for a basic forest either in response to a blood moon or in aggressive matchups. 4 foothills and 3 green fetches is optimal. If you have or can get another one, 4 valakut is almost mandatory. I have won so many Grindy matches only because of a 4th valakut after 2-3 others are a ghost quarter.
I’m not sure entirely what you mean. If you mean not running mountains and just using Omen to scapeshift for the win, that will not work consistently. You can’t just hope to draw a copy of a single card in a non-blue deck and not have it removed in response to scapeshift which is why we run so much redundancy in our win conditions in four scapeshift, four Titan, and at least two summoners pact. And we still lose some games to not drawing one of them on time.
So, long story short, yes you need red in so far as you need mountains. You do not need to necessarily use that red mana, I only have 3 red cards in my whole 75, but you need the mountains for valakut no matter what unless you run a completely different deck and plan than us.
On the topic of Field of the Dead, I jammed a ton of games with a buddy testing it out and it felt great. So I took it to sunday modern this week and went 3-0-1 with it doing what I expected. Which is to say, not much of anything most games because I didn’t need it, but winning me games I did need it. Specifically against UW control. Which is a winning matchup anyway, but getting it and a valakut with the first Titan trigger in case of removal let me represent a bolt and a zombie with every land which became relevant.
On a different note, what do y'all think of the newly revealed Beanstalk Giant. It seems like the adventure just costs 1 too much. Otherwise I might consider trying a couple over something like one farseek and one of the flex ramp slots.
Later tonight I will post the list I have been running lately to a run of 3-1 local events with 20-30 players each. It is a pretty standard JundShift list from around hour of devastation just swapping 2 Hour of Promise for 2 Relic of Progenitus because of a change in stores and metas. I used to play in a control heavy meta that benefited heavily from hour. But the store I am playing in now is so Jund and graveyard heavy that the relics have won me multiple game 1's and only been boarded out a few times. With the banning of Faithless Looting and Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis relics are a bit less necessary, but I will keep them in for a bit longer as I see how my store shakes out. I have not learned anything too new from the past month or so of jamming games. Jund is still a favorable matchup even after they got way stronger with BBE and Wrenn and Six. Various combo decks are varying levels of even races. But that is where Jund shines. Straight R/G can't deal with Urza, Lord High Artificer or otherwise interact with Whirza game one. Jund on the other hand can Fatal Push Urza or Abrupt Decay / Assassin's Trophy the other combo pieces as well as bring in more removal post-board. I did get completely wrecked by that Finale of Devastation combo deck on turn 3 both games once though...
Edit: I have just added a couple of things. I added the website posted a few pages back to the resource section and added a little information to the black splash section. My two biggest priorities right now are fixing the core card choice/flex slots sections to be less out of date and figuring out what to write and where to put it about the Field of the Dead manabase which seems really good and non-intrusive to just throw in. After that, I want to update decklists that are featured and get some information about the splashes put in.
I just kinda stopped playing magic for a bit because school and life have been in the way. So, to the person asking if the primer is out of date, yes and no. The sideboard matchup sections are still mostly relevant to the decks they talk about. The big thing to remember is that to keep up to date it is most important to be thinking about what matchups you expect. Affinity never changes, so if you expect affinity, it is the same matchup it's always been.
And in regards to that picture earlier on the page, that is owned by the person who created it and sells it on T-Shirts. I could not put it in the primer without permission. However, I encourage you all to check out their work as it's pretty cool.
I'm not going to make any promises about updating the primer any time soon as I will continue to be busy for the foreseeable future and can't say for sure if I will actually regain a stronger interest in competitive magic again soon. with that being said, if anyone here has been playing the deck for a long time and has been posting not just on this website, but on this decks various threads for a while and would like to take over the primer, PM me and we can talk. I would like this primer to thrive but I'm not going to hand it off to some random user who hasn't been involved in the community for long and/or has barely posted much at all.
Just because I haven't made it out to large events does not mean I don't play the deck competitively and well. Also, I have long argued that 2 forests is too few. And the percentages on getting a seven card hand that can't cast a ramp spell on turn 2 with the manabase I use are so minuscule as to be laughable. And if you do get that hand, just mulligan it. 4 stomping grounds are unnecessary. Even if you don't think the extra life points are relevant, the percentages of going from 2-4 just aren't that big of a difference. And the likelihood that you have to have the 3rd one on turn 3 to cast something is also laughable. Additionally, with the manabase I use, I find Burn and affinity to be totally winnable matchups. My biggest issue lately has been storm.
2 copies are a necessity. Past that, if you think you need them to feel comfortable, go ahead, but you don't need them.