Round 4. 0-2 infect
My luck came to a halt as I feel we are slightly favored here. Game 1 I needed to faithless into a bolt to win and whiffed Frown game 2 my hand did nothing and stalled on land drops. How do you guys feel about the infect matchup it is becoming more popular.
It happens. I defnetly feel like we're favored vs. infect.
In my list I run 4 bolts, 2 pushes, vs. Infect I'd probably mull most hands that dont have any sort of interaction of the sorts.
You dont need much stuff vs. Infect other than some guaranteed removal to cut them off, its more important to kill their stuff than to make them spend the pumps.
I feel like we're very favored because not only our deck runs A LOT of removal/discard but also we have tons of chumpblockers, some that fly included.
Yeah, Hazoret really shines against most decks atm. You have Tron, KCI and the mirror a lot, where you either need a fast clock or a really good threat. She basically always wins me the game when I see her, I think there is no reason to not play her main atm.
I'm on the Hazoret mainboard train myself.
I really like her.
How we're feeling about Leyline of the Void in the sidebaord ?
I've come to realise that my local meta has been shifting HEAVILLY towards graveyard decks. out of the (on average) 16-ish players we have every week, I've conclude that there consistently are about:
Which is easilly half of more of the entire meta. Which has lead me to believe that I defnetly need a more powerful grave-hating strategy coming from my sideboard other than just a spellbomb or two + a Rakdos charm. Leyline of the Void is used in quite an ammount of the lists I've seen, so I am wondering about trying it out.
So I wanted to ask, how we're feeling about it here ? Thinking about the card, I've come up with many good reasons to play it and reasons not to play it in the Mardu shell:
Seems good cause:
-> It is great because we're a Faithless Looting deck, so after getting the "opening hand" leyline we can quite sometimes turn the downside of the Leylines of "bad top-decks" into better ones with our cycling. Making the strategy hurt us less than it would to other decks.
-> Leyline is an enchantment, and the more of them we put on play, the more of the "anti-enchantment" side-board of our opponent will be used to take it out, which might increase the chance of our Blood Moons to sit. (In matches where we keep those.)
-> The likeability is 57% to get it in our opening hand. And a 40+% after we mull. So in theory, its fairly consistent at working.
Seems bad cause:
-> Bad top-deck mid-late game most of the time.
-> Its not a sorcery/instant. I'm afraid that adding 4x Enchancments into the deck could make it clunk up a bit in regards of the Revelers, unless I'd be trimming BloodMoons for it... Has anyone tested it out to see if the deck still functions decently well ?
Some extra questions:
In case I decide to run the Leylines on my SB ... Do you think it is a good card against Jeskai/UW strategies !? It shuts down their Azcanta and Snapcaster Mage. Those are only 2 cards, but almost always are the 2 cards we lose to (From my experience we usually either lose to Azcanta out-grinding us, or Snapcaster making ridiculous Command/Wipe plays). I'm a bit unsure if it is worth it or not. On a good side, vs, Jeskai they're most likelly bringing some hate for our BloodMoons, and if they have to destroy both our Leylines and Bloodmooons of enchancements, its likelly they wont have an answer for them all. Not to mention that I feel like the "bad top deck" downside is less impactful in a grindy matchup as we're surelly gonna get to 4-lands eventually there and there is plenty of time to unclunk.
__________________________________
Another thing I've been considering about my sideboard:
Do I really want 2x Wear/Tears ?
I've been finding little use for those, as they arent that exciting vs. KCI, Not that powerful vs. Tron, and I have honestly not been seeing any Affinity latelly. Also, vs. Hollow one bringing strict artifact hate has been a bit hit-or-miss since they may or may not kill us with a Hollow one.
Most of the time I've been using my Wear/Tears as a preventive sideboarding when I expect a "Rest in Peace" but I've also not been seeing many of those decks, as the only white decks I see consistently also use graveyard and they'd be shutting down their 2 best cards in the MU.
I've been flirting with switching them for Anguished Unmaking, at least one of. It can fill the same role in a way, but its way more broad, and it deals with planeswalkers which can be very important vs UWx decks, Tron, and the likes.
What you guys think ?
Are people still running 2x wear/tears ? Been happy about it ?
Of course!!! Sadly, I'm a bit of a noob at these forums, I dont know for sure how to make a decklist. On a reply.
I'll write it down, hope it doesnt look too awful:
Creatures: (9)
4x Young Pyromancer
4x Bedlam Reveler
1x Hazoret, the fervent
Regular landbase, with 1x Sacred foundry +1 plains as white sources, and 7 fetch lands (4x bloodstained + 3x marsh flats.)
Sideboard:
2x Molten Rain
2x Stony Silence
2x Kambal
2x Goblin Rabblemaster
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Engineered explosve
1x Anger of the gods
1x Wear/Tear
1x Nihill Spellbomb
1x Rakdos Charm
1x Liliana, the last Hope.
The decklist is pretty standard, the only weird thing I added was the mainboard Hazoret. My reasoning behind it was that I didnt have any LotV's to play, and I felt like I could go well with 29 spells instead of 30, having Hazoret as either a better clock vs. Tron/Combo decks (which I expected to run into) aswell as a bomb in grindy matchups (I also knew there was a ton of DeahShadows, Junds, and Jeskais there.) felt like a good idea, so I went for it.
It did pay off, by the way. It absolutelly crushed the first game I had in my match vs. Death Shadow, and it was a powerful card to find everytime I found her. The only time she showed up too early I managed to turn her into a more useful card thanks to our lord and master Faithless Looting.
The cards in the deck that I felt less excited about than I was expecting was BloodMoon and Colective Brutality. I didnt really find much use for my brutality modes in most of my matchups, and none of my wins were thanks to Blood Moon. But I understand that all of this might have been bad coincidence.
The cards that were just as good as I thought they'd be were Lingering Souls (Wrecked every fair match. Made me last ages vs. Humans/Hollow one until I had answers and card advantage. And was absolutelly broken vs. D&T, Death Shadow and specially Jeskai.
Bedlam Reveler was brutal, and the deck's ability to turn bad draws into good ones with looting just made me feel great. Seeing 3 cards each turn and picking one of them in a grindy matchup is too powerful.
Something that I was warned about and worked beautifully was the 2x Rabblemasters + Hazoret in matches 2 and 3 vs. Certain decks. I saw at least 2 RIP's and other kinds of gravehate against me, and making my deck less reliant on the grave post-sideboard was defnetly important for me to win.
I am not sure if Molten Rain is all that powerful against control. It can be a dead card at the wrong time. But I am not sure, I can see it being good as well.
I feel like it is, at least, decent and worth it. I had 2x of them in the invitationals I went 7-1 at and they felt good enough against Jeskai control (where I boarded them in.) Azcanta is their most important card in our matchup as its the thing that allows them to keep up and maybe surpass us in card advantage/selection. To top it off, it goes extremly well alongside bloodmoon and might get rid of Colonnades.
If we draw it at the wrong time, in a match up as lasting and grindy as that, its very likelly that we'll also have the chance to dump it to the graveyard with Revelers, Brutalities or Faithless Lootings, so I think we can allow ourselves to play a card that may not always be great, but might be. It defnetly felt more worth it than a Bolt or Fatal push.
Of course, we can make a very strong case for Fulminator Mages instead, since, like we do it in Jund, they double off as a threat when they're not needed and are a guaranteed 2 for 1 most of the time, making them so much better than Molten Rain if not for the fact they dont favor Revelers and young Pyros for not being a sorcery.. nonetheless, we're a deck that often runs 3x Kolaghan's Command, and recurring a Fulminator mage can be devastating, and we can discard it to the graveyard with looting and get it back with Ko-Command when Azcanta becomes an issue. I'm still unsure between it or molten rain tbh.
The deck is incredibly consistant, its really strong atm.
What was your SB plan against KCI? I think the matchup should not be that difficult actually, between discard, removal, GY hate and Kambal the matchup feels okay to me.
That was a lot of sideboard, but the matchup felt difficult nonetheless.
I was playing the best player by far we have at the shop, and he has been getting 5-0's with KCI almost every week for the past couple of months, he knows every little bit and corner of the deck.
To top it off, his entire sideboard was pretty much built to counter Kambals and Stony silences, every single time I dropped either of those he either had a bolt or a nature's claim to counter it, if not Engineered explosives ready.
One of the matches I won was thanks to Rabblemaster giving my deck a proper clock.
I did feel like the match was unfavored, and he told me that he was 5-0 in that matchup (he ended up 6-1 after yesterday, since he beat me once and then lost to me in the finals.)
My issues in the match were:
-> For each sideboard silverbullet I put in, he put a counter to it, and his deck draws more or even cards as ours... Meaning that the likeablity for him to always have an answer to my silverbullets was strong. If you look at more recent KCI sideboards, they've been bringing 3 or 4x bolts on the sideboard. That + Engineered explosives makes Cambal a lot weaker.
-> Discard while good, would only buy me time in a deck that the clock is very slow pre-sideboard (And can continue to be even post-board sometimes.)
I think it might have been easier if I'd find a Nihill spellbomb or Rakdos charm, as I feel like GY hate is maybe the best way to beat KCI. But, for my lack of luck, I didnt see neither in any of the matches we had. Happilly, I still beat it in the finals, but I didnt feel favored at all. Match 1 was hopeless for me, Match 2 I got lucky and had a rabblemaster + bolts early. Match 3 I found A LOT of my sideboard cards, which forced him to kill them off instead of combo, buying me enough time to kill him with tokens and eventually a reveler.
Just got home from the Last Chance invitational I mentioned, and I'm very happy to say that I won it even if running this deck for the first time!
It was a 14 players tournament, meaning there were 4 matches, plus a top 8 elimination.
My matches were as follow:
1- Vs. Death and Taxes (2-0)
2- Vs. Humans (2-0)
3- Vs. KCI (0-2)
4- Vs. Traverse Shadow (2-0)
Top 8: Vs. Hollow One (2-1)
Top 4: Vs. Jeskai Control (2-0)
Finals: KCI (2-1)
I absolutelly loved the deck. Being a Jund player originally, the deck felt delightfully consistent and powerful. The only matchup where I felt the odds were heavilly against me were vs. KCI because of the slow clock of the deck, but even then I managed to grind out the victory at the finals making it a 7-1 run!
If people wish, I can give a more proper review of each match, what I boarded in/out and how it played out/felt like.
This deck felt particullarly unstoppable when facing Traverse and Jeskai, as exepected, Lingering souls is a beast and "RR Draw 3 cards, 3/4" is as broken as it sounds. Felt weak against KCI and I lost game 1 without a chance, it was side-deck with a bit of luck that got me out of there. And it felt favorable vs. Humans and Hollow One even if not that easy. Just the ability of the deck to dig deep for silver bullets/more interaction while generating mass chump blblockers made me feel very safe all the time.
Hi guys! I'm running this deck for the first time in a Qualifiers's tournament this weekend, I should be playing a fairly standard build.
Some of the decks that I'm expecting to run into a lot are:
Humans
Jeskai Control
Lots of Hollow Ones.
Some combos / Tron.
Any tips regarding side-deck with this decks ?
And general strats.
I feel like if we cant play 4-colors reliably, the only way this idea would work consistently would be if we had more ways to take advantage of our graveyard/cards we're dumping there within our 3 colors. We need a spell that fills the LIngering Souls role but in Jund colors for this to be worthwhile.
I'm not 100% sold on playing Faithless looting w/o Lingering Souls or some other card that has graveyard vallue to back it up.
I feel like while the card selection is great, we'd be relying too much on Revelers to make up for the card disadvantage that Looting represents.
ALso might consider Collective Brutalities main deck to dump out excess revelers, one of the recurrent gimmicks on Mardu Pyro is that they never want Bedlams on their hand too early or in mutiple copies, so they dish them out tto the graveyard and draw them back with Kcommand when the time is right.
I personally am also not too sold in Traverse either, seems like yet another card that may go wrong if we dont have Looting to back it up. We cant forget that even when running 4x Lootings that isnt a guarantee we will always have access to it early.
I think that for the deck to really be worthwhile over Mardu it needs to either have Lingering Souls or have access to some other card that makes faithless Looting worthwhile other than just revelers.
I've played a 4-Color list that was pretty much the suggested mix-breed between Mardu and Jund, but running Lingering Souls at my shop last night and went 4-1, it felt extremly powerful but I might add that I was playing in a known meta where I knew I'd not be facing many bloodmoons.
Lingering Souls is just too great. It wrecks control / midrange decks, affinity and its defnetly not a dead card vs. Aggro. And with faithless looting, it pretty much makes your Looting a cantrip that draws you actual stuff.
I know you directed your message towards FlyingDelver, but I'd like to give my 2 cents about some of the things you commented on:
In regards of Maelstrom Pulse, I'd personally not consider moving it to the sideboard. You state that if it is there to kill big creatures, you'd rather terminate. And if it is there to deal with leyline, you'd rather other cards too. But the thing is, its there to kill both things, and artifacts, and planeswalkers altogether in just one card. That's versatility, and that's very important. It may not be the best card at doing any specific job, but its a card that "does it all", which is very good and necessary.
Also, I think we tend to forget how valluable Maelstrom Pulse's gimmick of killing "any cards of the same name" is. Mardu Pyromancer will surelly make a mass of Lingering Souls eventually, and the only card in our deck that deals well with that pre-sideboard is Pulse. Jeskai Control is likelly to eventually pull off a "Secure the Wastes". Humans run phantom images, so they often have "same-name" creatures on the field and, in the end of the day, pretty much every deck runs full playsets of their creatures so its not that rare to find yourself in situations where the Pulse is a 2 for 1.
Its "range" is far more broad than we usually give credit. I like the card in my mainboard and its nowhere near the list of cards I'd consider cutting.
I personally like Liliana the Last hope. I somewhat agree with what you said as in she isnt always THAT impactful, but even vs. Control decks where they dont have creatures on the field for her +1 to work, I've found her fetching me back a creature from my graveyard while still threatening to do that again in 2 turns, forcing my opponent to bolt her still. So, essentially, a 2 for 1 potentially. I'd keep it around, personally.
Now, a card that has disappointing me from time to time is Fatal Push. As amazing as it is of a card, I've been seeing way too many Hollow Ones, Eldrazis and other decks that might play a high-cmc creatures. I feel like Fatal Push felt better when Death Shadow was a huge deal, but latelly I've been inclined to trimming it down to a 1-of and brining 2x Terminates instead. I dont think Jund, with its lack of card selection (And sometimes lack of card draw) can afford playing too many cards that are too specific.
4x Bolts still feel right for me though. Its versatile. Can help me close up games, kills lots of stuff, kills planeswalkers, and if I'm facing a card with 4+ health I can usually just use the bolt teamed up with a Ko-Command, LoTH+1, some creature's blocking or even a Huntmaster's flip or whatever. There are ways of turning a bolt into a heavy removal. Latelly, the only moments I really feel like Fatal Push did something other cards wouldnt nowadays is vs. Collonades, but vs. Control decks we can bring as many terminates as we'd want, since pace usually isnt a problem in those matches.
My list looks exactly the same as Delver's right now, except that instead of running 2 Trackers MB I'm running 1 tracker + 1 Huntmaster.
Also instead of 3 IOK + 3Thoughtseize I'm running 3 IOK + 2 Thoughtseize and 4 bolts + 2 pushes.
I only gave this list one run so far, but was a 4-1 at the local Modern night last wednesday. Only loss was to Jeskai control 2-1, but it was a darn close game all along. Wins were over Hollow One, RG Eldrazi, Grixis Control and Burn. The rest was all 2-0 wins. Felt very good.
Right, I can see 24 lands being fine.
Like I said, with Faithless looting, drawing too many lands/too few become a lot less of a issue as you can just kick them out to the graveyward when they're too many, or dig for more when they're too few.
2x BBE's seems fine in a Faithless Looting. I'm sure we'd still find them quite consistently at the right time and we can always have a 3rd or 4th in the sidebaord for the right matchups.
How do you feel about HUntmaster of the Fells though ?
I think he is often worse than BBE, but he's defnetly A LOT more reliable when it comes to getting vallue out of him. I've been running 1x main deck (I run 3x BBE + 1 of him) and I still love him.
I know I've been insisting on this, but I'm still very un-pleased with the randomness of BBE, at least when we are having to try versions of this deck that arent built around her which lowers the likeability of good hits. Huntmaster is always the first card that comes to my mind when I try to think of a 4cmc card that always have at least paid its bill.
I dont see how this is about "Being obsessed with Faithless Looting right now."
We're a Red, Green and Black deck.
So far, the Diagnosis of us, Jund players, have been that the deck needs better filtering and card selection so that we dont Flood/Clunk as much aswell as to avoid relying so much on just top-decking our way out of situations.
The usual consensus is that decks with good Filtering/Cycling/Cantrips are the way to fix that issue.
Faithless Looting is just the natural first card to come to mind.
I'd have to make some experiments to come up with something solid.
But I'd probably start off cutting a couple BBE's. I feel like they get objectivelly worse in a Faithless Looting deck (Since that's a very poor cascade hit.) I can see some BBE's going to the sideboard instead of mainboard so that we have them vs. Blue decks where, IMO, they really shine.
I also dont think its insane running 23/24 lands instead of 24/25 if we're running Faithless Lootings. The card lets you dig for 2 extra cards, which should fix a lot of land issues very often... If we look into Jeskai Control, for instance, they run about the same ammount of lands as us (24/25) and have a MUCH heavier curve (4x Snaps = 3cmc+ cards, 4x Commands = 4cmc each, and 2 Teferis = 5cmc cards. Not to mention 2x verdicts.) and it works out. IMO the reason that works for them is because they have such an easy time selecting their draws with Cantrips so that they can avoid flooding too much while also avoid missing land drops as often as we may do.
cantrips and filtering "unclunk" awkward manabases.
Another card that I could see being a 3x of is LOTV in a Looting deck, idk.
The cool thing about running Faithless Looting IMO is that you can kind-of cut cards and that doesnt mean they wont show up, as often, as you cycle through your deck so much more that its easier to dig copies of the cards you want. I hasnt run the math, but maybe a deck with, say, 3+2 1cmc removals can find them just about as often as a deck with 4+2 but no Looting.
I sometimes play Hollow One (I know, I'm an infidel) and if there is something that the deck has REALLY impressed me with is how you can sideboard just 1 or 2 silver bullets and you'll still very consistently find them just out of how much cycling the deck goes through, that is really awesome when it comes to sidebaording aswell as consistency for a deck.
Have anyone tried running a list with Faithless Looting yet ? While trimming down 1 or 2 BBE's + 1 or 2 lands for them ?
Seems like we do need something to make us more consistent on what we find and when.
Ever since BBE got unbanned, as powerful of a card as it is, Ive been very unimpressed.
When I make more threat-heavy, fast Jund versions I feel like my BBE's fail me a lot.
When I make 25 lands with lots of powerful BBE findings I feel like my deck gets clunky.
Sometimes I really just miss running a Jund with no 4 drops or with just a huntmaster or two and thats it.
Okay, so, I'm going today at the local modern with a list running 2x Flayers, 3x Confidants... 3x BBE's + 1 Huntmaster... 3x LOTV's + 1 LTHP.
Also, instead of running that Nihill Spellbomb maindeck I'll be running a single Tarfire (Without taking away the 4x Bolts + 2x Pushes package.)
My reasoning:
1x Tarfire instead of 1x Spellbomb: There are not many Hollow Ones, if any, at my local meta. There are, however, A LOT of humans and burn. Tarfire seems superior to a Spellbomb against both.
3x BBE + 1x Huntmaster: Since my local meta has a lot of Human and Burn, I like the idea of making room for a Huntmaster. I chose him instead of Kalitas because we dont have Hollow Ones around, and because I feel like he's overall more versatile. Kalitas can be a bit bad against certain MU's. And while Huntmaster may not always be AMAZING (He sometimes is), its defnetly always at least worth its cost, reason why I like him as a MB more, and rather Kalitas at SB.
3x LOTV + 1 LTHP: I'm down with trimming Liliana of the veil from 4x. to 3x. Since I'm expecting to run into lots of Burns and Humans, I feel like she's not that great there.
3x Confidant + 2x Grim Flayer: Gonna try this for the first time today, but i Like the idea in general. Bob gets boarded out against burn and that's what I'm expecting to see a lot of, and as it stands, card quality is being more precious than card advantage nowadays, I cant remember how many times I lost to a Human while having a stacked hand just cause I couldnt keep up.
_______
Note: I'm also running 4x INquisition + 2x Thoughtseize. Considering that I'm bringing 7x 1cmc removals (4x bolts, 2x pushes, 1x tarfire) is this overkill ? I'm worrying about maybe seeing too many 1cmc cards in my hands and no threats, which is leading me to contemplate having 1x Lavamancer instead of that Tarfire. I just worry Lavamancer could get on the way of my Grim Flayers's Delirium.
It happens. I defnetly feel like we're favored vs. infect.
In my list I run 4 bolts, 2 pushes, vs. Infect I'd probably mull most hands that dont have any sort of interaction of the sorts.
You dont need much stuff vs. Infect other than some guaranteed removal to cut them off, its more important to kill their stuff than to make them spend the pumps.
I feel like we're very favored because not only our deck runs A LOT of removal/discard but also we have tons of chumpblockers, some that fly included.
I'm on the Hazoret mainboard train myself.
I really like her.
I have a question:
How we're feeling about Leyline of the Void in the sidebaord ?
I've come to realise that my local meta has been shifting HEAVILLY towards graveyard decks. out of the (on average) 16-ish players we have every week, I've conclude that there consistently are about:
2-3x Hollow ones.
1x KCI
0-1x Storm
1-2x Grixis Shadow
0-1x Traverse Shadow
1-3x Mardu Pyromancers.
1-2x Jeksai Control
1x Dredge.
Which is easilly half of more of the entire meta. Which has lead me to believe that I defnetly need a more powerful grave-hating strategy coming from my sideboard other than just a spellbomb or two + a Rakdos charm. Leyline of the Void is used in quite an ammount of the lists I've seen, so I am wondering about trying it out.
So I wanted to ask, how we're feeling about it here ? Thinking about the card, I've come up with many good reasons to play it and reasons not to play it in the Mardu shell:
Seems good cause:
-> It is great because we're a Faithless Looting deck, so after getting the "opening hand" leyline we can quite sometimes turn the downside of the Leylines of "bad top-decks" into better ones with our cycling. Making the strategy hurt us less than it would to other decks.
-> Leyline is an enchantment, and the more of them we put on play, the more of the "anti-enchantment" side-board of our opponent will be used to take it out, which might increase the chance of our Blood Moons to sit. (In matches where we keep those.)
-> The likeability is 57% to get it in our opening hand. And a 40+% after we mull. So in theory, its fairly consistent at working.
Seems bad cause:
-> Bad top-deck mid-late game most of the time.
-> Its not a sorcery/instant. I'm afraid that adding 4x Enchancments into the deck could make it clunk up a bit in regards of the Revelers, unless I'd be trimming BloodMoons for it... Has anyone tested it out to see if the deck still functions decently well ?
Some extra questions:
In case I decide to run the Leylines on my SB ... Do you think it is a good card against Jeskai/UW strategies !? It shuts down their Azcanta and Snapcaster Mage. Those are only 2 cards, but almost always are the 2 cards we lose to (From my experience we usually either lose to Azcanta out-grinding us, or Snapcaster making ridiculous Command/Wipe plays). I'm a bit unsure if it is worth it or not. On a good side, vs, Jeskai they're most likelly bringing some hate for our BloodMoons, and if they have to destroy both our Leylines and Bloodmooons of enchancements, its likelly they wont have an answer for them all. Not to mention that I feel like the "bad top deck" downside is less impactful in a grindy matchup as we're surelly gonna get to 4-lands eventually there and there is plenty of time to unclunk.
__________________________________
Another thing I've been considering about my sideboard:
Do I really want 2x Wear/Tears ?
I've been finding little use for those, as they arent that exciting vs. KCI, Not that powerful vs. Tron, and I have honestly not been seeing any Affinity latelly. Also, vs. Hollow one bringing strict artifact hate has been a bit hit-or-miss since they may or may not kill us with a Hollow one.
Most of the time I've been using my Wear/Tears as a preventive sideboarding when I expect a "Rest in Peace" but I've also not been seeing many of those decks, as the only white decks I see consistently also use graveyard and they'd be shutting down their 2 best cards in the MU.
I've been flirting with switching them for Anguished Unmaking, at least one of. It can fill the same role in a way, but its way more broad, and it deals with planeswalkers which can be very important vs UWx decks, Tron, and the likes.
What you guys think ?
Are people still running 2x wear/tears ? Been happy about it ?
Of course!!! Sadly, I'm a bit of a noob at these forums, I dont know for sure how to make a decklist. On a reply.
I'll write it down, hope it doesnt look too awful:
Creatures: (9)
4x Young Pyromancer
4x Bedlam Reveler
1x Hazoret, the fervent
Spells: (29)
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Faithless Looting
4x Lingering Souls
4x INquisition of Kozilek
3x Kolaghan's Command
3x Thoughtseize
2x Colective Brutality
2x Fatal Push
1x Terminate
1x Dreadbore
1x Manamorphose
Enchantments:
2x Blood moon
Regular landbase, with 1x Sacred foundry +1 plains as white sources, and 7 fetch lands (4x bloodstained + 3x marsh flats.)
Sideboard:
2x Molten Rain
2x Stony Silence
2x Kambal
2x Goblin Rabblemaster
1x Ensnaring Bridge
1x Engineered explosve
1x Anger of the gods
1x Wear/Tear
1x Nihill Spellbomb
1x Rakdos Charm
1x Liliana, the last Hope.
The decklist is pretty standard, the only weird thing I added was the mainboard Hazoret. My reasoning behind it was that I didnt have any LotV's to play, and I felt like I could go well with 29 spells instead of 30, having Hazoret as either a better clock vs. Tron/Combo decks (which I expected to run into) aswell as a bomb in grindy matchups (I also knew there was a ton of DeahShadows, Junds, and Jeskais there.) felt like a good idea, so I went for it.
It did pay off, by the way. It absolutelly crushed the first game I had in my match vs. Death Shadow, and it was a powerful card to find everytime I found her. The only time she showed up too early I managed to turn her into a more useful card thanks to our lord and master Faithless Looting.
The cards in the deck that I felt less excited about than I was expecting was BloodMoon and Colective Brutality. I didnt really find much use for my brutality modes in most of my matchups, and none of my wins were thanks to Blood Moon. But I understand that all of this might have been bad coincidence.
The cards that were just as good as I thought they'd be were Lingering Souls (Wrecked every fair match. Made me last ages vs. Humans/Hollow one until I had answers and card advantage. And was absolutelly broken vs. D&T, Death Shadow and specially Jeskai.
Bedlam Reveler was brutal, and the deck's ability to turn bad draws into good ones with looting just made me feel great. Seeing 3 cards each turn and picking one of them in a grindy matchup is too powerful.
Something that I was warned about and worked beautifully was the 2x Rabblemasters + Hazoret in matches 2 and 3 vs. Certain decks. I saw at least 2 RIP's and other kinds of gravehate against me, and making my deck less reliant on the grave post-sideboard was defnetly important for me to win.
I feel like it is, at least, decent and worth it. I had 2x of them in the invitationals I went 7-1 at and they felt good enough against Jeskai control (where I boarded them in.) Azcanta is their most important card in our matchup as its the thing that allows them to keep up and maybe surpass us in card advantage/selection. To top it off, it goes extremly well alongside bloodmoon and might get rid of Colonnades.
If we draw it at the wrong time, in a match up as lasting and grindy as that, its very likelly that we'll also have the chance to dump it to the graveyard with Revelers, Brutalities or Faithless Lootings, so I think we can allow ourselves to play a card that may not always be great, but might be. It defnetly felt more worth it than a Bolt or Fatal push.
Of course, we can make a very strong case for Fulminator Mages instead, since, like we do it in Jund, they double off as a threat when they're not needed and are a guaranteed 2 for 1 most of the time, making them so much better than Molten Rain if not for the fact they dont favor Revelers and young Pyros for not being a sorcery.. nonetheless, we're a deck that often runs 3x Kolaghan's Command, and recurring a Fulminator mage can be devastating, and we can discard it to the graveyard with looting and get it back with Ko-Command when Azcanta becomes an issue. I'm still unsure between it or molten rain tbh.
I boarded in:
2x Stony Silence
2x Kambals
1x Wear/Tear
2x Goblin Rabblemaster
1x Nihill Spellbomb
1x Rakdos charm
That was a lot of sideboard, but the matchup felt difficult nonetheless.
I was playing the best player by far we have at the shop, and he has been getting 5-0's with KCI almost every week for the past couple of months, he knows every little bit and corner of the deck.
To top it off, his entire sideboard was pretty much built to counter Kambals and Stony silences, every single time I dropped either of those he either had a bolt or a nature's claim to counter it, if not Engineered explosives ready.
One of the matches I won was thanks to Rabblemaster giving my deck a proper clock.
I did feel like the match was unfavored, and he told me that he was 5-0 in that matchup (he ended up 6-1 after yesterday, since he beat me once and then lost to me in the finals.)
My issues in the match were:
-> For each sideboard silverbullet I put in, he put a counter to it, and his deck draws more or even cards as ours... Meaning that the likeablity for him to always have an answer to my silverbullets was strong. If you look at more recent KCI sideboards, they've been bringing 3 or 4x bolts on the sideboard. That + Engineered explosives makes Cambal a lot weaker.
-> Discard while good, would only buy me time in a deck that the clock is very slow pre-sideboard (And can continue to be even post-board sometimes.)
I think it might have been easier if I'd find a Nihill spellbomb or Rakdos charm, as I feel like GY hate is maybe the best way to beat KCI. But, for my lack of luck, I didnt see neither in any of the matches we had. Happilly, I still beat it in the finals, but I didnt feel favored at all. Match 1 was hopeless for me, Match 2 I got lucky and had a rabblemaster + bolts early. Match 3 I found A LOT of my sideboard cards, which forced him to kill them off instead of combo, buying me enough time to kill him with tokens and eventually a reveler.
Oh. And Ghirapur completelly wrecked my tokens.
It was a 14 players tournament, meaning there were 4 matches, plus a top 8 elimination.
My matches were as follow:
1- Vs. Death and Taxes (2-0)
2- Vs. Humans (2-0)
3- Vs. KCI (0-2)
4- Vs. Traverse Shadow (2-0)
Top 8: Vs. Hollow One (2-1)
Top 4: Vs. Jeskai Control (2-0)
Finals: KCI (2-1)
I absolutelly loved the deck. Being a Jund player originally, the deck felt delightfully consistent and powerful. The only matchup where I felt the odds were heavilly against me were vs. KCI because of the slow clock of the deck, but even then I managed to grind out the victory at the finals making it a 7-1 run!
If people wish, I can give a more proper review of each match, what I boarded in/out and how it played out/felt like.
This deck felt particullarly unstoppable when facing Traverse and Jeskai, as exepected, Lingering souls is a beast and "RR Draw 3 cards, 3/4" is as broken as it sounds. Felt weak against KCI and I lost game 1 without a chance, it was side-deck with a bit of luck that got me out of there. And it felt favorable vs. Humans and Hollow One even if not that easy. Just the ability of the deck to dig deep for silver bullets/more interaction while generating mass chump blblockers made me feel very safe all the time.
Some of the decks that I'm expecting to run into a lot are:
Humans
Jeskai Control
Lots of Hollow Ones.
Some combos / Tron.
Any tips regarding side-deck with this decks ?
And general strats.
I feel like while the card selection is great, we'd be relying too much on Revelers to make up for the card disadvantage that Looting represents.
ALso might consider Collective Brutalities main deck to dump out excess revelers, one of the recurrent gimmicks on Mardu Pyro is that they never want Bedlams on their hand too early or in mutiple copies, so they dish them out tto the graveyard and draw them back with Kcommand when the time is right.
I personally am also not too sold in Traverse either, seems like yet another card that may go wrong if we dont have Looting to back it up. We cant forget that even when running 4x Lootings that isnt a guarantee we will always have access to it early.
I think that for the deck to really be worthwhile over Mardu it needs to either have Lingering Souls or have access to some other card that makes faithless Looting worthwhile other than just revelers.
I've played a 4-Color list that was pretty much the suggested mix-breed between Mardu and Jund, but running Lingering Souls at my shop last night and went 4-1, it felt extremly powerful but I might add that I was playing in a known meta where I knew I'd not be facing many bloodmoons.
Lingering Souls is just too great. It wrecks control / midrange decks, affinity and its defnetly not a dead card vs. Aggro. And with faithless looting, it pretty much makes your Looting a cantrip that draws you actual stuff.
I know you directed your message towards FlyingDelver, but I'd like to give my 2 cents about some of the things you commented on:
In regards of Maelstrom Pulse, I'd personally not consider moving it to the sideboard. You state that if it is there to kill big creatures, you'd rather terminate. And if it is there to deal with leyline, you'd rather other cards too. But the thing is, its there to kill both things, and artifacts, and planeswalkers altogether in just one card. That's versatility, and that's very important. It may not be the best card at doing any specific job, but its a card that "does it all", which is very good and necessary.
Also, I think we tend to forget how valluable Maelstrom Pulse's gimmick of killing "any cards of the same name" is. Mardu Pyromancer will surelly make a mass of Lingering Souls eventually, and the only card in our deck that deals well with that pre-sideboard is Pulse. Jeskai Control is likelly to eventually pull off a "Secure the Wastes". Humans run phantom images, so they often have "same-name" creatures on the field and, in the end of the day, pretty much every deck runs full playsets of their creatures so its not that rare to find yourself in situations where the Pulse is a 2 for 1.
Its "range" is far more broad than we usually give credit. I like the card in my mainboard and its nowhere near the list of cards I'd consider cutting.
I personally like Liliana the Last hope. I somewhat agree with what you said as in she isnt always THAT impactful, but even vs. Control decks where they dont have creatures on the field for her +1 to work, I've found her fetching me back a creature from my graveyard while still threatening to do that again in 2 turns, forcing my opponent to bolt her still. So, essentially, a 2 for 1 potentially. I'd keep it around, personally.
Now, a card that has disappointing me from time to time is Fatal Push. As amazing as it is of a card, I've been seeing way too many Hollow Ones, Eldrazis and other decks that might play a high-cmc creatures. I feel like Fatal Push felt better when Death Shadow was a huge deal, but latelly I've been inclined to trimming it down to a 1-of and brining 2x Terminates instead. I dont think Jund, with its lack of card selection (And sometimes lack of card draw) can afford playing too many cards that are too specific.
4x Bolts still feel right for me though. Its versatile. Can help me close up games, kills lots of stuff, kills planeswalkers, and if I'm facing a card with 4+ health I can usually just use the bolt teamed up with a Ko-Command, LoTH+1, some creature's blocking or even a Huntmaster's flip or whatever. There are ways of turning a bolt into a heavy removal. Latelly, the only moments I really feel like Fatal Push did something other cards wouldnt nowadays is vs. Collonades, but vs. Control decks we can bring as many terminates as we'd want, since pace usually isnt a problem in those matches.
Also instead of 3 IOK + 3Thoughtseize I'm running 3 IOK + 2 Thoughtseize and 4 bolts + 2 pushes.
I only gave this list one run so far, but was a 4-1 at the local Modern night last wednesday. Only loss was to Jeskai control 2-1, but it was a darn close game all along. Wins were over Hollow One, RG Eldrazi, Grixis Control and Burn. The rest was all 2-0 wins. Felt very good.
Like I said, with Faithless looting, drawing too many lands/too few become a lot less of a issue as you can just kick them out to the graveyward when they're too many, or dig for more when they're too few.
2x BBE's seems fine in a Faithless Looting. I'm sure we'd still find them quite consistently at the right time and we can always have a 3rd or 4th in the sidebaord for the right matchups.
How do you feel about HUntmaster of the Fells though ?
I think he is often worse than BBE, but he's defnetly A LOT more reliable when it comes to getting vallue out of him. I've been running 1x main deck (I run 3x BBE + 1 of him) and I still love him.
I know I've been insisting on this, but I'm still very un-pleased with the randomness of BBE, at least when we are having to try versions of this deck that arent built around her which lowers the likeability of good hits. Huntmaster is always the first card that comes to my mind when I try to think of a 4cmc card that always have at least paid its bill.
We're a Red, Green and Black deck.
So far, the Diagnosis of us, Jund players, have been that the deck needs better filtering and card selection so that we dont Flood/Clunk as much aswell as to avoid relying so much on just top-decking our way out of situations.
The usual consensus is that decks with good Filtering/Cycling/Cantrips are the way to fix that issue.
Faithless Looting is just the natural first card to come to mind.
But I'd probably start off cutting a couple BBE's. I feel like they get objectivelly worse in a Faithless Looting deck (Since that's a very poor cascade hit.) I can see some BBE's going to the sideboard instead of mainboard so that we have them vs. Blue decks where, IMO, they really shine.
I also dont think its insane running 23/24 lands instead of 24/25 if we're running Faithless Lootings. The card lets you dig for 2 extra cards, which should fix a lot of land issues very often... If we look into Jeskai Control, for instance, they run about the same ammount of lands as us (24/25) and have a MUCH heavier curve (4x Snaps = 3cmc+ cards, 4x Commands = 4cmc each, and 2 Teferis = 5cmc cards. Not to mention 2x verdicts.) and it works out. IMO the reason that works for them is because they have such an easy time selecting their draws with Cantrips so that they can avoid flooding too much while also avoid missing land drops as often as we may do.
cantrips and filtering "unclunk" awkward manabases.
Another card that I could see being a 3x of is LOTV in a Looting deck, idk.
The cool thing about running Faithless Looting IMO is that you can kind-of cut cards and that doesnt mean they wont show up, as often, as you cycle through your deck so much more that its easier to dig copies of the cards you want. I hasnt run the math, but maybe a deck with, say, 3+2 1cmc removals can find them just about as often as a deck with 4+2 but no Looting.
I sometimes play Hollow One (I know, I'm an infidel) and if there is something that the deck has REALLY impressed me with is how you can sideboard just 1 or 2 silver bullets and you'll still very consistently find them just out of how much cycling the deck goes through, that is really awesome when it comes to sidebaording aswell as consistency for a deck.
Seems like we do need something to make us more consistent on what we find and when.
Ever since BBE got unbanned, as powerful of a card as it is, Ive been very unimpressed.
When I make more threat-heavy, fast Jund versions I feel like my BBE's fail me a lot.
When I make 25 lands with lots of powerful BBE findings I feel like my deck gets clunky.
Sometimes I really just miss running a Jund with no 4 drops or with just a huntmaster or two and thats it.
Also, instead of running that Nihill Spellbomb maindeck I'll be running a single Tarfire (Without taking away the 4x Bolts + 2x Pushes package.)
My reasoning:
1x Tarfire instead of 1x Spellbomb: There are not many Hollow Ones, if any, at my local meta. There are, however, A LOT of humans and burn. Tarfire seems superior to a Spellbomb against both.
3x BBE + 1x Huntmaster: Since my local meta has a lot of Human and Burn, I like the idea of making room for a Huntmaster. I chose him instead of Kalitas because we dont have Hollow Ones around, and because I feel like he's overall more versatile. Kalitas can be a bit bad against certain MU's. And while Huntmaster may not always be AMAZING (He sometimes is), its defnetly always at least worth its cost, reason why I like him as a MB more, and rather Kalitas at SB.
3x LOTV + 1 LTHP: I'm down with trimming Liliana of the veil from 4x. to 3x. Since I'm expecting to run into lots of Burns and Humans, I feel like she's not that great there.
3x Confidant + 2x Grim Flayer: Gonna try this for the first time today, but i Like the idea in general. Bob gets boarded out against burn and that's what I'm expecting to see a lot of, and as it stands, card quality is being more precious than card advantage nowadays, I cant remember how many times I lost to a Human while having a stacked hand just cause I couldnt keep up.
_______
Note: I'm also running 4x INquisition + 2x Thoughtseize. Considering that I'm bringing 7x 1cmc removals (4x bolts, 2x pushes, 1x tarfire) is this overkill ? I'm worrying about maybe seeing too many 1cmc cards in my hands and no threats, which is leading me to contemplate having 1x Lavamancer instead of that Tarfire. I just worry Lavamancer could get on the way of my Grim Flayers's Delirium.