I'm pretty locked in on the main and sideboard spell choices. The one thing I'm not quite sure about is the 2 Botanical Sanctum, 1 Stirring Wildwood. I'm not sold on Wildwood, and maybe it should be a Razorverge Thicket. Or maybe one of the Botanical Sanctums should be a Razorverge Thicket or possibly a second Temple Garden.
I'm pretty much dead to dredge, and don't have much game on storm either. You gotta make some concessions when making a SB, and those are mine. Wish me luck!
I think it's important to have at least 2 of some planeswalker in the deck. Not many decks can handle all our creatures, so PWs are back-breaking. Have you considered Bloodbraid Elf if you're going red? You just can't run Spell Quellers (as they'll counter BBE on cascade), but running Blood Moon is good tradeoff. You can run 2-3 Retreats and cascade into them.
I'm personally not a fan of Staticasters. They sometimes can't stop combo fast enough as Devoted Druid can be activated on the stack (right?). When you get Izzets with Elvish Archdruid already out, it doesn't do much. Getting that red mana is sometimes awkward, too. I like Phyrexian Revoker a lot more. Shut down Ezuri and Elves aren't very good anymore. Revokers are really good versus Affinity too.
I like Gideon, too. He is very proactive and aggressive, and sometimes Knightfall doesn't feel aggressive enough. In grindy matchups, his Knight token is serviceable, at least. It's just more of a risk to use him as an attacker cause he can be Pathed.
We managed with zero planeswalkers in our deck before JtMS got unbanned. I think we can still manage :). I think if you want to play BBE and cut Queller, we need to re-tool the deck completely.
While you're right about Staticaster not being able to stop the natural Devoted Druid combo, we have enough disruption postboard with path, Reflector Mage, and Queller to slow them down. And then Staticaster cleans everything up. I've had a lot of success with this strategy when Devoted Druid combo was everywhere on mtgo last year. Getting red mana is sometimes awkward though. Revoker sounds like a decent strategy. He's just a temporary solution though. Affinity can galv blast him, elves can push/decay him, etc. At least staticaster can kill some stuff before he dies
What does everyone think about dropping jace and going back to Bant splash red for kessig and staticaster? Jace has been pretty unimpressive for me, although not terrible. Just not good. I am going to run a league tonight and replace my two maindeck jace with two maindeck retreats again. That makes me want to pick up red again too because I won't need double blue anymore (I would have to drop Clique too).
I've also noticed an influx of green decks on mtgo, specifically Vizier combo decks and green Saheeli combo decks. Izzet staticaster can decimate those matchups (as well as other matchups like elves, affinity, lingering souls, and storm) and I don't like not having staticaster in the board. I think if I'm dropping jace, I'm going back to red.
Gideon, AoZ has been a beast in the board, and I want to have two of him in the 75. Maybe I just replace the 2 maindeck jace with 2 maindeck gideon instead of retreats and see how it goes. I think Gideon is more matchup dependent though.
It's overall fairly solid. I don't mind not playing the combo, though I do miss Kessig sometimes. That card is just so good with KotR.
I think the Field of Ruin is a bit greedy and I think I'm going to just play a second GQ in the board and play either another shock or a second Sanctum in place of Field of Ruin. I also might cut a Clique and replace it with the second Scooze - could be wrong but I keep drawing multiples. Jace has been solidly medium. I definitely need more practice playing with the card.
I'm also really not impressed with Blessed Alliance. I feel like without Courser (maybe I can make room for one) we're super weak to Burn and Alliance just isn't a good card in that MU - two mana gain four is just so weak. It's great against stuff like Boggles and Infect, but against most midrangey decks I never bring in the card because there's really not much to board out and we want CoCo to remain relevant. I feel like it just rots in my sideboard most of the time.
Kessig is the card I miss the most by cutting red too. It makes Knight a bit weaker for sure. Izzet staticaster isn't that great right now so I don't really miss it from the board. Blessed Alliance is pretty average against burn, but it's serviceable. It's like just another negate. Blessed Alliance is pretty solid against affinity though. I generally lose against affinity when they play etched champion, and it's an easy way to kill them since they like to go all-in on etched champions. It's also great against humans, like I said in my previous post. I wouldn't bring them in against midrange matchups though (Except against DS decks).
I've been on this deck for a long time now, but this was the first time playing it with JtMS. Jace was fine in the deck, but not super impressive. Gideon on the the other hand was a beast. More impressive than jace. The whole deck felt really good, although I want to play one more Clique main. Not sure what to cut. Thinking about Courser. I also want to add another Blessed Alliance in the board with all the Bogles decks running around. Blessed Alliance proved to be really good against humans. Their best card against us is Mantis rider, and this can get an exalted Mantis Rider AND/OR kill a phantasmal Image AND/OR gain 4 life. Really flexible.
Tribal Zoo is very legit right now, I was playing it last night on MTGO. There's been some kind of list in almost all of the 5-0 League dumps since BBE was unbanned.
I've recently played this matchup a few times. Normally this is the kind of matchup that jund excels against, but it's actually not great. I think we side out dark confidant in this matchup, because their gameplan is to dome you with Tribal Flames and get hellbent. If you flip any card 3cmc or greater with a dark confidant, you are really just helping them. Scooze really excels in this matchup. Gains you life and gets bigger than their creatures. Once it's a 4/4 or greater, it's really hard for them to remove it. Kitchen Finks from the board is also really good.
In my experience it's been about 50/50. If they draw a bunch of BBEs, it's hard to win.
I think I'm inclined to agree with siding out Bob. The stock lists are playing 14 burn spells, and I had multiple games where I was burning my opponent for 10+ damage. I think Fulminator is probably good against them because the tribal manabase is insanely fragile, with white probably being their most important color in the matchup. I'm not excited about Liliana, the Last Hope because it can't actually kill anything, and most of their creatures having 3+ toughness makes Grim Lavamancer pretty mediocre, as well. I think that our plan is probably to try to outclass their creatures with better ones and disrupt their mana. Decks like this have had me considering fitting a second Fatal Push into the sideboard.
I've cut fatal push completely from the main and side to try and maximize BBE power, but I think it's a mistake. We want to have as many 1-mana removal spells as possible against decks like this and stuff like affinity, infect, zoo, etc. Against those matchups, I felt disadvantaged when I didn't have a bolt in the top 10 cards. So I'm going to move to 1 fatal push main again, and I think 1 more in the board like you said.
Tribal Zoo is very legit right now, I was playing it last night on MTGO. There's been some kind of list in almost all of the 5-0 League dumps since BBE was unbanned.
I've recently played this matchup a few times. Normally this is the kind of matchup that jund excels against, but it's actually not great. I think we side out dark confidant in this matchup, because their gameplan is to dome you with Tribal Flames and get hellbent. If you flip any card 3cmc or greater with a dark confidant, you are really just helping them. Scooze really excels in this matchup. Gains you life and gets bigger than their creatures. Once it's a 4/4 or greater, it's really hard for them to remove it. Kitchen Finks from the board is also really good.
In my experience it's been about 50/50. If they draw a bunch of BBEs, it's hard to win.
Don't forget about Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. He's very similar to Elspeth, but does create a bit more "value" while still pressuring the opponent. Elspeth is probably better with her jump ability in some situations, and Gideon in others.
Before the unbans I played 3 Retreats. It depends on the meta, if there are few interactive decks you should increase the odds of comboing. In the other hand if the matchups are grindy drawing a retreat without a Knight on the board is really painful. Now I`m testing with 2.
I will echo Trasno here and say that the slots are less about "utility creatures" and more about mana curve. 7-8 Dorks. 7-9 2-drops (Scooze, Qasali Pridemage, VoR, Selfless Spirit, occasionally JVP), then 12-14 3-drops. The 'always include' 3-drops being 4 KotR and 4 Queller, and then normally 2 Courser and 2 Tracker, and then some flex spots like eternal witness, Geist of Saint Traft, or Vendilion Clique(looking to make a comeback now). Then you have your 4 CoCo and 4 Path, and usually 0-3 Retreats. I like having 2, but many lists have 1. I have a friend who cut 4th path for a 3rd retreat, and he pushes the combo a lot. He also runs Geist though, so the retreat can come down with a fetchland and tap down a blocker or two.
In general, the land/mana dork split is usually 8 dorks/22 lands or 7 dorks/23 lands. If you're up against a lot of jund and control, I like the 7/23. If you're up against more "ignore what opponent is doing" decks, I like 8/22.
Sigh, then run the mountain, obviously people have different fears.
Seeing one corner case where someone drew four copies of FoR isn't enough for me but everyone has different experiences and theories.
Field of Ruin is seeing far more play than Blood Moon right now across several different kinds of decks. I don't understand the point of running a second forest over the first mountain largely because the only double green spell anyone is playing is Kitchen Finks. So again, why go that route? You really haven't provided much an explanation for why you want the 2nd forest over the first mountain that makes sense even under a Blood Moon that you fear so much.
Running two forests doubles the chance of you drawing one naturally, AND a lot of the blood moon decks also run stone rain and/or molten rain. So if on turn 2 you fetch a forest to play out a goyf and they untap and stone rain your forest, you better hope they don't have a follow up bloodmoon.
Another reason is that green is more important now than it was pre-BBE is because BBE is very good against Blood Moon decks. It's very good against ponza, and very good against blue moon. And skred red decks too.
Unless you're running more discard, specifically Thoughtseize, those decks are going to hurt you regardless of whether you're running one or two forests. Even then, Ponza runs acceleration and Bloodbraid Elf themselves on top of a myriad of spells that hurt us. Blue Moon is likely going to play Spreading Seas or Field of Ruin alongside Blood Moon. They're just bad for our health. I don't see why the second forest matters that much in any of these corner cases. If they pop up, you're likely to lose anyway. I would just like to play magic through Field of Ruins, which is in almost every 2-color deck and even Jeskai and Esper control lists.
In my experience, both ponza and blue moon are good matchups for Jund as long as your opening hand doesn't lose to a blood moon. Especially now with BBE legal.
Sigh, then run the mountain, obviously people have different fears.
Seeing one corner case where someone drew four copies of FoR isn't enough for me but everyone has different experiences and theories.
Field of Ruin is seeing far more play than Blood Moon right now across several different kinds of decks. I don't understand the point of running a second forest over the first mountain largely because the only double green spell anyone is playing is Kitchen Finks. So again, why go that route? You really haven't provided much an explanation for why you want the 2nd forest over the first mountain that makes sense even under a Blood Moon that you fear so much.
Running two forests doubles the chance of you drawing one naturally, AND a lot of the blood moon decks also run stone rain and/or molten rain. So if on turn 2 you fetch a forest to play out a goyf and they untap and stone rain your forest, you better hope they don't have a follow up bloodmoon.
Another reason is that green is more important now than it was pre-BBE is because BBE is very good against Blood Moon decks. It's very good against ponza, and very good against blue moon. And skred red decks too.
That's enough black sources for Lilly on 3, 2 forest 2 swamp to fight Blood Moon, 4 manlands, and still 17 Red sources. I would hardly consider 17 red sources a "splash" at this point, and it would be hard to color screw this configuration off single red.
The only big change I made was cutting a Stomping Ground for a Blood Crypt, and the reason I did that was to fit a single treetop in without screwing up the color balances.
I like the mana distribution, but I'd rather fill my playset of Bloodstained Mire before adding a second Blood Crypt or running the secon Wooded Foothills. That way you have an extra green source by cutting Blood Crypt for Bloodstained as well.
The issue with not adding the second bloodcrypt though is that it leaves us with only 1 fetchable red source (since we cut the stomping ground) which is counterproductive to my goal of becoming immune to FoR. Also, I think filling out the Bloodstained Mires over Wooded Foothills is fine overall, but there's a lot of Ponza and Blood Moons in my meta (and I think the current mtgo meta) so I really want to be able to get that basic forest.
That's enough black sources for Lilly on 3, 2 forest 2 swamp to fight Blood Moon, 4 manlands, and still 17 Red sources. I would hardly consider 17 red sources a "splash" at this point, and it would be hard to color screw this configuration off single red.
The only big change I made was cutting a Stomping Ground for a Blood Crypt, and the reason I did that was to fit a single treetop in without screwing up the color balances.
Probably my favorite thing about this configuration is I've been able to consistently win through the combo by quite a larger margin than with CoCo or Jace being the curve topper. I've probably had more turn three or four wins the last couple days than I've had the previous month--Dork into Knight into BBE cascading into Retreat is very much real. It's faster, more proactive, and more consistent with the combo which I feel is a better place to be in the meta. Knightfall is a deck that likes to fight on the ground and have high-value cards, BBE is imo a better enabler. Also, Lightning Bolt is a good card.
This deck looks really sweet. One thing I might suggest trying is cutting out a lot of the value cards like Courser and Voice, and play more aggro cards like Goyf and maybe Lightning Helix. BBE is much more effective when your deck is pressuring the opponent. I think tireless tracker is still solid as he gets big and lets you grind. And like people suggested, Geist is very good at pressuring as well. And Geist/Retreat has some synergy together too (fetchland taps down 2 blockers). I might try this on mtgo soon.
I beat As Foretold Living End, Goblins, Grixis control w/Jace, and Burn. I did flood a few times, but it was mitigated by manlands, LotV, and Collective Brutality. And I felt much more confident keeping 2-lander hands. One thing you might have noticed is that I cut the Stomping Ground. Mainly to keep the 2 basic forests plus the treetop village, while maintaining the 19 black sources. I think it worked out really well. There's a lot of ponza in my meta, so I really want those 2 basic forests.
The SB was good. Duress was not very impactful, but it is very versatile and comes in against a lot of matchups. I wanted to try a Thundermaw Hellkite since I was on 25 lands and because the card is awesome, but couldn't find one.
Keep in mind that if you are on 25 lands, you can trim lands postboard! If you are siding out LotVs and are on the draw, I would probably side out a land. Also, I think it's acceptable to shave a BBE or two against decks like affinity to get lower to the ground. You don't want multiples clunking up your hand while you're trying to deploy your spells. If you shave BBEs, I might also shave a land. Especially on the draw.
4x Birds of Paradise
2x Qasali Pridemage
2x Scavenging Ooze
3x Voice of Resurgence
4x Knight of the Reliquary
4x Spell Queller
2x Tireless Tracker
2x Vendilion Clique
1x Courser of Kruphix
4x Path to Exile
4x Collected Company
2x Jace. the Mind Scultor
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Flooded Strand
1x Temple Garden
1x Breeding Pool
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Horizon Canopy
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Gavony Township
2x Forest
1x Plains
1x Island
2x Botanical Sanctum
1x Stirring Wildwood
2x Negate
3x Unified Will
3x Reflector Mage
3x Blessed Alliance
2x Kitchen Finks
2x Stony Silence
I'm pretty locked in on the main and sideboard spell choices. The one thing I'm not quite sure about is the 2 Botanical Sanctum, 1 Stirring Wildwood. I'm not sold on Wildwood, and maybe it should be a Razorverge Thicket. Or maybe one of the Botanical Sanctums should be a Razorverge Thicket or possibly a second Temple Garden.
I'm pretty much dead to dredge, and don't have much game on storm either. You gotta make some concessions when making a SB, and those are mine. Wish me luck!
We managed with zero planeswalkers in our deck before JtMS got unbanned. I think we can still manage :). I think if you want to play BBE and cut Queller, we need to re-tool the deck completely.
While you're right about Staticaster not being able to stop the natural Devoted Druid combo, we have enough disruption postboard with path, Reflector Mage, and Queller to slow them down. And then Staticaster cleans everything up. I've had a lot of success with this strategy when Devoted Druid combo was everywhere on mtgo last year. Getting red mana is sometimes awkward though. Revoker sounds like a decent strategy. He's just a temporary solution though. Affinity can galv blast him, elves can push/decay him, etc. At least staticaster can kill some stuff before he dies
I've also noticed an influx of green decks on mtgo, specifically Vizier combo decks and green Saheeli combo decks. Izzet staticaster can decimate those matchups (as well as other matchups like elves, affinity, lingering souls, and storm) and I don't like not having staticaster in the board. I think if I'm dropping jace, I'm going back to red.
Gideon, AoZ has been a beast in the board, and I want to have two of him in the 75. Maybe I just replace the 2 maindeck jace with 2 maindeck gideon instead of retreats and see how it goes. I think Gideon is more matchup dependent though.
Kessig is the card I miss the most by cutting red too. It makes Knight a bit weaker for sure. Izzet staticaster isn't that great right now so I don't really miss it from the board. Blessed Alliance is pretty average against burn, but it's serviceable. It's like just another negate. Blessed Alliance is pretty solid against affinity though. I generally lose against affinity when they play etched champion, and it's an easy way to kill them since they like to go all-in on etched champions. It's also great against humans, like I said in my previous post. I wouldn't bring them in against midrange matchups though (Except against DS decks).
4x Noblie Hierarch
2x Qasali Pridemage
2x Scavenging Ooze
3x Voice of Resurgence
4x Knight of the Reliquary
4x Spell Queller
2x Courser of Kruphix
2x Tireless Tracker
1x Vendilion CLique
4x Path to Exile
4x Collected Company
4x Windswept Heath
4x Misty Rainforest
1x Flooded Strand
1x Temple Garden
1x Breeding Pool
1x Hallowed FOuntain
1x Horizon Canopy
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Gavony Township
2x Forest
1x Plains
1x Island
1x Botanical Sanctum
1x Razorverge Thicket
1x Stirring Wildwood
2x Negate
3x Unified Will
2x Stony Silence
2x Blessed Alliance
3x Reflector mage
2x Kitchen Finks
I've been on this deck for a long time now, but this was the first time playing it with JtMS. Jace was fine in the deck, but not super impressive. Gideon on the the other hand was a beast. More impressive than jace. The whole deck felt really good, although I want to play one more Clique main. Not sure what to cut. Thinking about Courser. I also want to add another Blessed Alliance in the board with all the Bogles decks running around. Blessed Alliance proved to be really good against humans. Their best card against us is Mantis rider, and this can get an exalted Mantis Rider AND/OR kill a phantasmal Image AND/OR gain 4 life. Really flexible.
I've cut fatal push completely from the main and side to try and maximize BBE power, but I think it's a mistake. We want to have as many 1-mana removal spells as possible against decks like this and stuff like affinity, infect, zoo, etc. Against those matchups, I felt disadvantaged when I didn't have a bolt in the top 10 cards. So I'm going to move to 1 fatal push main again, and I think 1 more in the board like you said.
I've recently played this matchup a few times. Normally this is the kind of matchup that jund excels against, but it's actually not great. I think we side out dark confidant in this matchup, because their gameplan is to dome you with Tribal Flames and get hellbent. If you flip any card 3cmc or greater with a dark confidant, you are really just helping them. Scooze really excels in this matchup. Gains you life and gets bigger than their creatures. Once it's a 4/4 or greater, it's really hard for them to remove it. Kitchen Finks from the board is also really good.
In my experience it's been about 50/50. If they draw a bunch of BBEs, it's hard to win.
I will echo Trasno here and say that the slots are less about "utility creatures" and more about mana curve. 7-8 Dorks. 7-9 2-drops (Scooze, Qasali Pridemage, VoR, Selfless Spirit, occasionally JVP), then 12-14 3-drops. The 'always include' 3-drops being 4 KotR and 4 Queller, and then normally 2 Courser and 2 Tracker, and then some flex spots like eternal witness, Geist of Saint Traft, or Vendilion Clique(looking to make a comeback now). Then you have your 4 CoCo and 4 Path, and usually 0-3 Retreats. I like having 2, but many lists have 1. I have a friend who cut 4th path for a 3rd retreat, and he pushes the combo a lot. He also runs Geist though, so the retreat can come down with a fetchland and tap down a blocker or two.
In general, the land/mana dork split is usually 8 dorks/22 lands or 7 dorks/23 lands. If you're up against a lot of jund and control, I like the 7/23. If you're up against more "ignore what opponent is doing" decks, I like 8/22.
In my experience, both ponza and blue moon are good matchups for Jund as long as your opening hand doesn't lose to a blood moon. Especially now with BBE legal.
Running two forests doubles the chance of you drawing one naturally, AND a lot of the blood moon decks also run stone rain and/or molten rain. So if on turn 2 you fetch a forest to play out a goyf and they untap and stone rain your forest, you better hope they don't have a follow up bloodmoon.
Another reason is that green is more important now than it was pre-BBE is because BBE is very good against Blood Moon decks. It's very good against ponza, and very good against blue moon. And skred red decks too.
The issue with not adding the second bloodcrypt though is that it leaves us with only 1 fetchable red source (since we cut the stomping ground) which is counterproductive to my goal of becoming immune to FoR. Also, I think filling out the Bloodstained Mires over Wooded Foothills is fine overall, but there's a lot of Ponza and Blood Moons in my meta (and I think the current mtgo meta) so I really want to be able to get that basic forest.
4x Verdant
2x Wooded
2x Bloodstained
2x overgrown Tomb
2x Blood Crypt
2x Forest
2x Swamp
1x Treeptop
3x Raging Ravine
4x Blackcleave
1x Twilight Mire
You get:
19 Black
17 green
17 Red
That's enough black sources for Lilly on 3, 2 forest 2 swamp to fight Blood Moon, 4 manlands, and still 17 Red sources. I would hardly consider 17 red sources a "splash" at this point, and it would be hard to color screw this configuration off single red.
The only big change I made was cutting a Stomping Ground for a Blood Crypt, and the reason I did that was to fit a single treetop in without screwing up the color balances.
This deck looks really sweet. One thing I might suggest trying is cutting out a lot of the value cards like Courser and Voice, and play more aggro cards like Goyf and maybe Lightning Helix. BBE is much more effective when your deck is pressuring the opponent. I think tireless tracker is still solid as he gets big and lets you grind. And like people suggested, Geist is very good at pressuring as well. And Geist/Retreat has some synergy together too (fetchland taps down 2 blockers). I might try this on mtgo soon.
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Bloodbraid Elf
21 Spells:
4 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
1 Collective Brutality
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Fatal Push
1 Terminate
1 Dreadbore
1 maelstrom Pulse
2 Kolaghan's Command
4 Blackcleave CLiffs
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Overgrown Tomb
2 Blood Crypt
1 Twilight mire
2 Forest
2 Swamp
3 Raging Ravine
1 Treetop Village
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Collective Brutality
2 Kitchen Finks
1 maelstrom Pulse
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Duress
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
3 Fulminator Mage
1 Grim Lavamancer
I beat As Foretold Living End, Goblins, Grixis control w/Jace, and Burn. I did flood a few times, but it was mitigated by manlands, LotV, and Collective Brutality. And I felt much more confident keeping 2-lander hands. One thing you might have noticed is that I cut the Stomping Ground. Mainly to keep the 2 basic forests plus the treetop village, while maintaining the 19 black sources. I think it worked out really well. There's a lot of ponza in my meta, so I really want those 2 basic forests.
The SB was good. Duress was not very impactful, but it is very versatile and comes in against a lot of matchups. I wanted to try a Thundermaw Hellkite since I was on 25 lands and because the card is awesome, but couldn't find one.
Keep in mind that if you are on 25 lands, you can trim lands postboard! If you are siding out LotVs and are on the draw, I would probably side out a land. Also, I think it's acceptable to shave a BBE or two against decks like affinity to get lower to the ground. You don't want multiples clunking up your hand while you're trying to deploy your spells. If you shave BBEs, I might also shave a land. Especially on the draw.