I used to board in K-Command all the time, and over time have brought it in less and less. I think that you want 2 cards that can blow up artifacts, and Abrade is better than K-Command for this matchup because it can kill both halves of Thragtusk while also costing 1 less mana. Because you're not really stopping them from assembling Tron, the window of opportunity for cards like Abrade and K-Command is actually pretty narrow, which is why we lean more on countermagic in that matchup. And as a last point, non-creature spells are the easiest thing for us to deal with on the stack, so you just don't really need a ton of artifact destruction.
Bolt is nice as an answer to both Thragtusk and a Karn that's had to minus. Sometimes you also have to Bolt -> Snap -> Bolt to push through damage after they start resolving Wurmcoil Engines. Based on the above sideboard, I would go:
-2 Fatal Push
-2 Dismember
-1 Snapcaster Mage
Mulliganing and deploying a threat is the most important thing in this matchup. I've played a lot of turn 2 Snapcasters just to have some kind of clock going while I dig and sit back on my countermagic.
As a long time B/G/x player that moved to Death's Shadow and is considering just playing Infect, I think that the problems with midrange (and I'm lumping Shadow in because it has the same issues) go well beyond just needing better card selection.
The Creatures
The first issue with midrange in Modern is the threats that it has access to. I think that the clock started ticking on B/G/x when BfZ/Oath of the Gatewatch released. Up until that point, Tarmogoyf had largely been the poster child for "undercosted, efficient threat". The tradeoff to Tarmogoyf's incredible stats for 2 CMC is that it doesn't do anything else. The price you pay for raw power is that he's just a big dumb idiot, but in the days before Fatal Push that tradeoff was very worth it. The only common creatures at that size were Tasigur and Gurmag Angler, but Angler is also a vanilla beater and Tasigur's ability is only relevant in the late-game. The new Eldrazi upended this paradigm, giving us efficiently costed creatures with very powerful ETB abilities. Even after Eye of Ugin was banned, Bant Eldrazi (and later, Eldrazi Tron) continued to be a tier 1 deck for months because it's creatures just pushed the limits of what a midrange threat is capable of. Since then, we've seen a slew of new threats enter the format, with most either providing powerful ETB effects (Spell Queller, Bedlam Reveler, new Ulamog), cheating on mana to an egregious degree (Hollow One, Prized Amalgam, Arclight Phoenix), or threatening to take over the game if left unanswered (Thing in the Ice, Tireless Tracker). The bar for a creature that costs 2 actual mana in Modern is absurdly high at this point, and paying 2 mana for a vanilla creature, even one with super-high stats, is very suspect. When you consider that Goyf really only reaches its full potential in Death's Shadow, a deck like Jund looks like it's just bringing a knife to a tank fight. Jund, specifically, really suffers from the fact that most of it's creatures are small (Confidant, BBE) or take time and investment to build up to a reasonable size (Ooze, Raging Ravine). Tarmogoyf is the best creature in that deck, and it's really far from the best creature in the format right now.
The Answers
I never played with Jund when DRS was legal, but I've been playing the deck since the days of Splinter Twin and 3 maindeck copies of Abrupt Decay. I honestly don't think Jund's answers have ever been better than they are right now, and I even think that the argument of "you can't build a 75 to beat everything" is less true than it's ever been (though still a challenge). The problem is finding those answers when you need them. While the obvious solution is to run more cantrips, you risk running into the Grixis Shadow issue of "too many cantrips that cost actual mana but might not do anything". There's a real tension between running enough cantrips to find your answers, and running enough answers to not spin your wheels pointlessly, and this is exacerbated by the best blue cantrips currently being banned. Ancient Stirrings and Faithless Looting putting cards in your hand right now is a huge part of why they're so powerful. Would Stirrings be even half as good if it put the card on top of your library? I'm of the opinion that a little consistency is a good thing, and I actually like having Stirrings and Looting in the format, but the power level disparity between these two cantrips and the third one on the list is significant. I don't think it's surprising at all that some of the decks that have seen the most success this year are generally running one or the other.
I think that this issue is extremely difficult to answer without changes to the banlist, one way or another. It's hard to imagine Wizards printing new cantrips at the power level they need to be for Modern, and it's even harder to imagine what a cantrip strong enough to slot into B/G/x or Death's Shadow but somehow unappealing to anything unfair would look like. I think that the current trends in Modern are somewhat a result of what happens when fair decks have worse card selection than unfair ones. Why spend 2 cards to dig for an answer when you can spend 1 to find a threat?
The mana curve
When BBE was unbanned, the next several weeks of discussion on the Jund forums were dominated by the question of 24 vs 25 lands. 24 is already an insanely high land count for Modern in a deck already prone to flooding out, so people largely solved the 25th land by adding another creature land. This led to lists running 25 lands, 4-5 of which were manlands that came into play tapped, and the plan was to pay the full amount of mana for all of the 3/4 CMC spells in the deck. At the same time, Humans and Hollow One were running 20ish lands with multiple ways to mitigate flooding and cheat on mana. Jund's shell just looked so antiquated next to what those decks were doing in the average game. In general, we've seen a trend in Modern towards more 20ish land decks with few, if any, creature lands, more ways to find your lands when you need them, and more ways to prevent or mitigate flooding. My personal opinion is that Traverse Shadow is the classic Jund shell updated for the current Modern format, and I'm not sure why anyone would play traditional Jund instead.
An increase in graveyard strategies
Up until this point I've mostly whined about Jund's problems, but this is actually not as big a deal for that deck. While messing with Tarmogoyf is annoying, for the most part Jund is still fairly functional with a Rest in Peace or Relic of Progenitus in play.
However, the increase in graveyard strategies has definitely been felt by both Shadow variants, most notably Grixis. Players originally transitioned from Traverse to Grixis Shadow because of an increased resilience to Fatal Push, alongside 4 copies of Snapcaster Mage, leading to a huge edge in the mirror. Graveyard hate at the time was pretty low, with Dredge having recently eaten a ban and Hollow One not released yet. This meant that you could pretty reliably deploy Tasigur and Gurmag Angler on turns 2/3 without having to warp your deck beyond a playset of Thought Scour. Fast forward to today, and an abundance of degenerate graveyard strategies have required the format to have the highest amounts of graveyard hate since Dredge was dominant enough to require a ban. Grixis Shadow has warped so fully around its delve threats that its now playing multiple copies of Mishra's Bauble, on top of 4 Thought Scour and 0-2 Faithless Looting. Even then, sometimes you have to mulligan your 7 card hand and keep a 6 with an Angler that you cannot cast before turn 4. Relic of Progenitus is a beating out of Tron, KCI, and Scapeshift, where you need to be deploying your threats on turn 2. Relic being a colorless card means that decks running Ancient Stirrings have an excellent chance of finding it, and being forced to take Relic with Thoughtseize over an actual win condition or enabler, purely because you can't deploy a threat otherwise, is a common component in how Grixis Shadow loses those matchups.
I think that each of the B/G/x and Shadow variants have specific issues beyond what I've outlined, but in general I think that they all suffer from the above issues in some way or another. I won't pretend to be the person with the answer, but I've spent a lot of time trying to find a way to make one of the two archetypes really feel like it's on the same power level as the other top tier decks of the format, and these are the problems I've run into with the most consistency.
TLDR:
- You're investing either more mana or setup for your threats than other decks, and those threats can be outclassed
- Generally speaking, it's easier for decks in Modern to find threats than it is to find answers right now
- B/G/x's curve as an archetype is absurdly high compared to the rest of the format
- You're either an underdog to the graveyard strategies (B/G/x) or affected by the splash hate (Shadow)
Yeah, my initial testing of a Jund version of Traverse came because I wanted to spend some time with Tarmogoyf instead of Gurmag Angler. Although, the time for that may have already passed, I've been playing against a lot more decks packing Fatal Push online lately.
I think 7 discard spells (alongside what I assume is 3 Stubs) and 2 Looting is reasonable to try. I think that both Shadow decks can benefit from 1-2 Faithless Looting.
I've been liking Trophy against Spirits post-board. Being able to hit RiP, Worship, or Moorland Haunt with the same card, in addition to their creatures, has been nice.
I’ve actually been playing straight Jund, in an attempt to determine if you really need Stubborn Denial in Traverse. I’m basically playing it as a lower to the ground Jund, which was basically what Traverse was when it first showed up.
The flexibility is great, but Traverse Shadow really thrives in low-resource games, and Trophy nets your opponent resources. I think that makes Trophy a really good sideboard card, because you can have the choice to only bring it in for games where that doesn't matter as much, or the cost is worth it. Trophy is notably worse against creature decks than an actual removal spell, and both Spirits and Hardened Scales use that extra mana very effectively. Additionally, Dismember is considerably easier on a 4-C manabase than Trophy.
Edit- For what it's worth, the Traverse Shadow lists I was testing right after Trophy came out had 3 in the main deck. I've slowly transitioned them to the sideboard, one at a time, since then.
I would cut an Assassin's Trophy. You're already running 7 discard spells and 3 Stubborn Denials, so you're already pretty insulated against things that only Trophy can hit. In that vein, I think you can actually drop the other 2 Trophies for Dismembers.
What does the rest of your main deck look like that those are your only two options? I've generally swapped between 1 Ghor-clan Rampager and 1 Grim Flayer, based on if I want to race harder or have higher threat density.
+1 for banning Twin discussion, it feels like the same 2-3 people just run us around in circles with that topic. It's not even that there's nothing productive to be discussed, it just feels like anytime it comes up any suggestion that Twin shouldn't be unbanned is met with the same people foaming at the mouth about how only they truly understand how Twin would impact Modern and how anyone that doesn't want Twin unbanned, for any reason, is either uninformed, an idiot, or just "wrong".
In your list, specifically, I could see Deprive being an issue because you're heavier on red. In a list with more blue cantrips, though, you're already fetching blue sources pretty actively in the matchups where you'd bring in Deprive. In particular, I'm talking about decks like U/W Control, Tron, KCI, Burn, Titanshift, Amulet Titan, and Storm. Against those decks, you usually want to stick a threat early, then just react to everything your opponent is doing. You're generally using discard spells to sculpt their hand so that it lines up favorably against your available answers, and just trying to stop them from resolving key spells for 3-4 turns. Deprive plays very nicely into that plan, and I have actually found the requirement to bounce a land to have some amount of upside. I played a match against U/W last week where I played a Shadow, which my opponent tried to Cryptic with 1 additional mana up (playing around Stubborn denial). I was able to Deprive the Cryptic, resolved my Shadow, then replayed the land and was able to hold up Stubborn Denial. Your ability to play a longer game against U/W improves drastically when you're not as dependent on turning on Stubborn Denial to prevent them from resolving big spells once they hit 5/6 mana.
I would really recommend to anyone that they try Deprive before writing it off, it's been doing real work for me in the matchups I've brought it in for.
I was the Shadow player, I expected to play against a lot of Dredge and Hollow One and wasn't disappointed. I think that Death's Shadow takes great advantage of Surgical, and that the current MTGO metagame is actually a boon for Shadow because it makes running the Surgicals main a good thing. Death's Shadow lines up really well against the current version of Dredge, I'm on something like a 6 match win streak against it online.
I found shadow decks frustrating to play when it had such a massive target on its head. But, now that its just a good deck and an established archetype in modern it seems like a good place to go with where the meta is heading.
This is incredibly true, and up until people were running a ton of graveyard hate because of Dredge I've actually had a really good time with the deck for the entire year. It feels like playing Jund did in 2015, where you could answer a lot of what people were doing and your creatures were generally better than everyone else's. It's too easy to hate the deck out for it to always be the deck to beat, but since the initial popularity died down a lot less people are playing the deck, so it's been able to skate under the radar pretty nicely.
I'm a long time gbx player but modern has gotten to the point where it feels like everything easily slips underneath midrange and a lot can go overhead. Drawing multiple lands feels like a death sentence in this format, too, which happens to jund too much, manlands or not.
This has been the dealbreaker for me with B/G/x. You can't win top-deck wars with 24 lands and no filtering when every other deck is running ~20, and a bunch of those are playing cards like Faithless Looting and Horizon Canopy to further mitigate flooding. The 17 land shadow builds almost never flood, although hitting your third land can sometimes be an issue.
Is there a true reason to just go jund? Why go grixis right now? I know grixis grinds better against fair matchups, what is jund and 4c better with? Is 4c the best deck for spell based combo and aggro? Is grixis meant more for spell based combo and midrange?
I've played every Shadow variant over the last year, and did a bunch of testing with Traverse when Trophy came out. Ultimately, I think that Grixis is better because it can support Stubborn Denial and Temur Battle Rage in a 3 color manabase, and I think that any argument between the decks is secondary to that.
Traverse Shadow can get into some real problems if you're drawing your basics and shocklands instead of fetches, and ultimately I don't think Tarmogoyf is enough to warrant the green splash. The 17 land Grixis lists running Baubles are better at finding their threats than the older 18 land lists, and sometimes you have to mulligan "lands and spells" hands to try to find one with a threat, but I haven't found this to be a significant issue. I also think people in general are too stingy with their Snapcasters when they're not drawing Shadow/Angler and just need to start attacking.
Has ben friedmans bauble and loot significantly changed a lot?
So...is more than 2 loot just too much for the shadow decks? Ignoring our specific personal meta, what should the sideboards be utilizing?
I did a lot of testing with Looting and also didn't like it in the long run. The 17 land lists tend not to flood and your post-board configurations are already so tight that you really don't want to discard anything. I've really come around to Serum Visions in this deck over Opt because of how it can interact with Street Wraith to dig deeper.
I don't know if I'd play this list in paper, but I just got 2nd place in the MTGO Modern Challenge with this:
I was expecting a ton of Dredge and Hollow One, and I played against a ton of Dredge and Hollow One. The Surgicals in the main were super sweet, and easy to board out when I didn't want them. Also, I think Deprive is strictly better than Disdainful Stroke because of how the games play out where you're boarding it in.
Edit- I'll also echo what Hype_rion said about being able to play an unfair game and this feeling like an evolution of the B/G/x archetype. While Jund has that weird "everything goes over or under me without much issue" problem, Shadow knows exactly where it sits on the totem pole.
People keep talking about Faithless Looting, but I actually think Bloodghast is the biggest problem out of the recursive graveyard decks. It cheats on mana to a huge degree, and only gets better as the game goes on and you chip away at your opponent. I think that banning it would kill multiple graveyard decks, though, which is probably a little excessive.
I'm slightly frustrated with Jund because it very much feels like these aggro decks can easily go under us and we easily can have this other decks go way over us.
This was the overall conclusion that I came to after testing various B/G/x decks after Assassin's Trophy came out. It just feels like everything is a bad matchup now, even the creature-based matchups that were traditionally favorable for us. I ended up moving to Traverse Shadow and then back to Grixis Shadow, which is what I've been playing this year up until the Trophy printing. I would actually play either Shadow deck over one of the other B/G/x decks right now, because they operate similarly but have much higher card efficiency, which lets them keep pace with the faster decks of the format. Grixis, specifically, also has an absurd amount of flexibility in how you build/sideboard/execute it.
It's hard to even say what it is that Jund actually needs at this point. Trophy did so much for the deck's bad matchups and freeing up it's sideboard, but the clunky set of removal it replaced was the most glaring issue in the deck's shell. I really liked Jadine's recent list and how it lowered the overall curve of the deck, but even then it's still a 24 land deck that can't filter its draws. I think that the high land count and inability to really mitigate flooding are what's made grinding with Jund so much harder lately.
-2 Fatal Push
-2 Dismember
-1 Snapcaster Mage
+2 Abrade
+2 Disdainful Stroke (coughDeprivecough)
+1 Stubborn Denial
Mulliganing and deploying a threat is the most important thing in this matchup. I've played a lot of turn 2 Snapcasters just to have some kind of clock going while I dig and sit back on my countermagic.
The Creatures
The first issue with midrange in Modern is the threats that it has access to. I think that the clock started ticking on B/G/x when BfZ/Oath of the Gatewatch released. Up until that point, Tarmogoyf had largely been the poster child for "undercosted, efficient threat". The tradeoff to Tarmogoyf's incredible stats for 2 CMC is that it doesn't do anything else. The price you pay for raw power is that he's just a big dumb idiot, but in the days before Fatal Push that tradeoff was very worth it. The only common creatures at that size were Tasigur and Gurmag Angler, but Angler is also a vanilla beater and Tasigur's ability is only relevant in the late-game. The new Eldrazi upended this paradigm, giving us efficiently costed creatures with very powerful ETB abilities. Even after Eye of Ugin was banned, Bant Eldrazi (and later, Eldrazi Tron) continued to be a tier 1 deck for months because it's creatures just pushed the limits of what a midrange threat is capable of. Since then, we've seen a slew of new threats enter the format, with most either providing powerful ETB effects (Spell Queller, Bedlam Reveler, new Ulamog), cheating on mana to an egregious degree (Hollow One, Prized Amalgam, Arclight Phoenix), or threatening to take over the game if left unanswered (Thing in the Ice, Tireless Tracker). The bar for a creature that costs 2 actual mana in Modern is absurdly high at this point, and paying 2 mana for a vanilla creature, even one with super-high stats, is very suspect. When you consider that Goyf really only reaches its full potential in Death's Shadow, a deck like Jund looks like it's just bringing a knife to a tank fight. Jund, specifically, really suffers from the fact that most of it's creatures are small (Confidant, BBE) or take time and investment to build up to a reasonable size (Ooze, Raging Ravine). Tarmogoyf is the best creature in that deck, and it's really far from the best creature in the format right now.
The Answers
I never played with Jund when DRS was legal, but I've been playing the deck since the days of Splinter Twin and 3 maindeck copies of Abrupt Decay. I honestly don't think Jund's answers have ever been better than they are right now, and I even think that the argument of "you can't build a 75 to beat everything" is less true than it's ever been (though still a challenge). The problem is finding those answers when you need them. While the obvious solution is to run more cantrips, you risk running into the Grixis Shadow issue of "too many cantrips that cost actual mana but might not do anything". There's a real tension between running enough cantrips to find your answers, and running enough answers to not spin your wheels pointlessly, and this is exacerbated by the best blue cantrips currently being banned. Ancient Stirrings and Faithless Looting putting cards in your hand right now is a huge part of why they're so powerful. Would Stirrings be even half as good if it put the card on top of your library? I'm of the opinion that a little consistency is a good thing, and I actually like having Stirrings and Looting in the format, but the power level disparity between these two cantrips and the third one on the list is significant. I don't think it's surprising at all that some of the decks that have seen the most success this year are generally running one or the other.
I think that this issue is extremely difficult to answer without changes to the banlist, one way or another. It's hard to imagine Wizards printing new cantrips at the power level they need to be for Modern, and it's even harder to imagine what a cantrip strong enough to slot into B/G/x or Death's Shadow but somehow unappealing to anything unfair would look like. I think that the current trends in Modern are somewhat a result of what happens when fair decks have worse card selection than unfair ones. Why spend 2 cards to dig for an answer when you can spend 1 to find a threat?
The mana curve
When BBE was unbanned, the next several weeks of discussion on the Jund forums were dominated by the question of 24 vs 25 lands. 24 is already an insanely high land count for Modern in a deck already prone to flooding out, so people largely solved the 25th land by adding another creature land. This led to lists running 25 lands, 4-5 of which were manlands that came into play tapped, and the plan was to pay the full amount of mana for all of the 3/4 CMC spells in the deck. At the same time, Humans and Hollow One were running 20ish lands with multiple ways to mitigate flooding and cheat on mana. Jund's shell just looked so antiquated next to what those decks were doing in the average game. In general, we've seen a trend in Modern towards more 20ish land decks with few, if any, creature lands, more ways to find your lands when you need them, and more ways to prevent or mitigate flooding. My personal opinion is that Traverse Shadow is the classic Jund shell updated for the current Modern format, and I'm not sure why anyone would play traditional Jund instead.
An increase in graveyard strategies
Up until this point I've mostly whined about Jund's problems, but this is actually not as big a deal for that deck. While messing with Tarmogoyf is annoying, for the most part Jund is still fairly functional with a Rest in Peace or Relic of Progenitus in play.
However, the increase in graveyard strategies has definitely been felt by both Shadow variants, most notably Grixis. Players originally transitioned from Traverse to Grixis Shadow because of an increased resilience to Fatal Push, alongside 4 copies of Snapcaster Mage, leading to a huge edge in the mirror. Graveyard hate at the time was pretty low, with Dredge having recently eaten a ban and Hollow One not released yet. This meant that you could pretty reliably deploy Tasigur and Gurmag Angler on turns 2/3 without having to warp your deck beyond a playset of Thought Scour. Fast forward to today, and an abundance of degenerate graveyard strategies have required the format to have the highest amounts of graveyard hate since Dredge was dominant enough to require a ban. Grixis Shadow has warped so fully around its delve threats that its now playing multiple copies of Mishra's Bauble, on top of 4 Thought Scour and 0-2 Faithless Looting. Even then, sometimes you have to mulligan your 7 card hand and keep a 6 with an Angler that you cannot cast before turn 4. Relic of Progenitus is a beating out of Tron, KCI, and Scapeshift, where you need to be deploying your threats on turn 2. Relic being a colorless card means that decks running Ancient Stirrings have an excellent chance of finding it, and being forced to take Relic with Thoughtseize over an actual win condition or enabler, purely because you can't deploy a threat otherwise, is a common component in how Grixis Shadow loses those matchups.
I think that each of the B/G/x and Shadow variants have specific issues beyond what I've outlined, but in general I think that they all suffer from the above issues in some way or another. I won't pretend to be the person with the answer, but I've spent a lot of time trying to find a way to make one of the two archetypes really feel like it's on the same power level as the other top tier decks of the format, and these are the problems I've run into with the most consistency.
TLDR:
- You're investing either more mana or setup for your threats than other decks, and those threats can be outclassed
- Generally speaking, it's easier for decks in Modern to find threats than it is to find answers right now
- B/G/x's curve as an archetype is absurdly high compared to the rest of the format
- You're either an underdog to the graveyard strategies (B/G/x) or affected by the splash hate (Shadow)
I think 7 discard spells (alongside what I assume is 3 Stubs) and 2 Looting is reasonable to try. I think that both Shadow decks can benefit from 1-2 Faithless Looting.
I've been liking Trophy against Spirits post-board. Being able to hit RiP, Worship, or Moorland Haunt with the same card, in addition to their creatures, has been nice.
Edit- For what it's worth, the Traverse Shadow lists I was testing right after Trophy came out had 3 in the main deck. I've slowly transitioned them to the sideboard, one at a time, since then.
I would really recommend to anyone that they try Deprive before writing it off, it's been doing real work for me in the matchups I've brought it in for.
This is incredibly true, and up until people were running a ton of graveyard hate because of Dredge I've actually had a really good time with the deck for the entire year. It feels like playing Jund did in 2015, where you could answer a lot of what people were doing and your creatures were generally better than everyone else's. It's too easy to hate the deck out for it to always be the deck to beat, but since the initial popularity died down a lot less people are playing the deck, so it's been able to skate under the radar pretty nicely.
This has been the dealbreaker for me with B/G/x. You can't win top-deck wars with 24 lands and no filtering when every other deck is running ~20, and a bunch of those are playing cards like Faithless Looting and Horizon Canopy to further mitigate flooding. The 17 land shadow builds almost never flood, although hitting your third land can sometimes be an issue.
I've played every Shadow variant over the last year, and did a bunch of testing with Traverse when Trophy came out. Ultimately, I think that Grixis is better because it can support Stubborn Denial and Temur Battle Rage in a 3 color manabase, and I think that any argument between the decks is secondary to that.
Traverse Shadow can get into some real problems if you're drawing your basics and shocklands instead of fetches, and ultimately I don't think Tarmogoyf is enough to warrant the green splash. The 17 land Grixis lists running Baubles are better at finding their threats than the older 18 land lists, and sometimes you have to mulligan "lands and spells" hands to try to find one with a threat, but I haven't found this to be a significant issue. I also think people in general are too stingy with their Snapcasters when they're not drawing Shadow/Angler and just need to start attacking.
I did a lot of testing with Looting and also didn't like it in the long run. The 17 land lists tend not to flood and your post-board configurations are already so tight that you really don't want to discard anything. I've really come around to Serum Visions in this deck over Opt because of how it can interact with Street Wraith to dig deeper.
I don't know if I'd play this list in paper, but I just got 2nd place in the MTGO Modern Challenge with this:
2x Blood Crypt
4x Bloodstained Mire
1x Island
4x Polluted Delta
2x Scalding Tarn
1x Steam Vents
1x Swamp
2x Watery Grave
Sorcery (9)
2x Inquisition of Kozilek
3x Serum Visions
4x Thoughtseize
2x Dismember
2x Fatal Push
2x Lightning Bolt
3x Stubborn Denial
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Temur Battle Rage
4x Thought Scour
Creature (15)
4x Death's Shadow
4x Gurmag Angler
3x Snapcaster Mage
4x Street Wraith
2x Mishra's Bauble
2x Anger of the Gods
2x Deprive
1x Fatal Push
2x Grim Lavamancer
2x Kolaghan's Command
2x Nihil Spellbomb
1x Snapcaster Mage
1x Stubborn Denial
2x Young Pyromancer
I was expecting a ton of Dredge and Hollow One, and I played against a ton of Dredge and Hollow One. The Surgicals in the main were super sweet, and easy to board out when I didn't want them. Also, I think Deprive is strictly better than Disdainful Stroke because of how the games play out where you're boarding it in.
Edit- I'll also echo what Hype_rion said about being able to play an unfair game and this feeling like an evolution of the B/G/x archetype. While Jund has that weird "everything goes over or under me without much issue" problem, Shadow knows exactly where it sits on the totem pole.
This was the overall conclusion that I came to after testing various B/G/x decks after Assassin's Trophy came out. It just feels like everything is a bad matchup now, even the creature-based matchups that were traditionally favorable for us. I ended up moving to Traverse Shadow and then back to Grixis Shadow, which is what I've been playing this year up until the Trophy printing. I would actually play either Shadow deck over one of the other B/G/x decks right now, because they operate similarly but have much higher card efficiency, which lets them keep pace with the faster decks of the format. Grixis, specifically, also has an absurd amount of flexibility in how you build/sideboard/execute it.
It's hard to even say what it is that Jund actually needs at this point. Trophy did so much for the deck's bad matchups and freeing up it's sideboard, but the clunky set of removal it replaced was the most glaring issue in the deck's shell. I really liked Jadine's recent list and how it lowered the overall curve of the deck, but even then it's still a 24 land deck that can't filter its draws. I think that the high land count and inability to really mitigate flooding are what's made grinding with Jund so much harder lately.