Jundplayable?

(I wrote this back in May but never got around to posting it. I have an updated decklist that I’ll post later on but I figure I’ll share this because someone may find it interesting. )

 

 

For years Jund was the default Midrange deck of Modern. As the best Tarmogoyf decks it had all of the tools it needed to combat the format.  There were other Midrange shells floating around such as Four Color Gifts and Pre Siege Rhino Abzan.With the release of Return to Ravnica, Jund was given access to the now banned Deathrite Shaman(DRS)  and the soon to be multi format staple Abrupt Decay. At this point, Jund exploded within the format. Pro Tour Return to Ravnica has been jokingly called “Pro Tour Jund” due to it taking up a large percentage of the metagame and putting three copies in the top 8.

 

For the next year or so Jund dominated the format and WOTC responded by banning Bloodbraid Elf (BBE). This didn’t really do much to impede the decks dominance. The next step in evolution was a 4 color monstrosity that played Ajani and Lingering Souls at it’s top end  that was notably piloted by Jacob Wilson to win Grand Prix Chicago in 2012. It would take yet another year of Jund slapping everyone around for WOTC to ban Deathrite Shaman and bring the deck  level with the rest of the format.

 

Initially people thought Jund wouldn’t be able to function without powerful haymakers such as DRS or BBE but that was proven false. Over the years, Jund would rise and fall in format standing whenever there were huge shifts in the metagame, namely the printing and subsequent bannings of Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time. But what about now? Bloodbraid Elf has now been unbanned and quite frankly has seemingly done nothing of real consequence.

 

While Jund itself has not increased in power relative to the format,the unbannings of BBE (and Jace) had a major effect effect. Initially, players jammed decks with four copies of BBE and/or Jace which lead to the online metagame devolving into a midrange soup. Cut alas, at  SCG Dallas    the tourney directly after the unaban was saturated by players attempting to invalidate Jace and BBE in one of three macro ways:

1) Going over the top of them -Ponza, tron, eldrazi decks etc
2) Trying to “out fair” them- 4 color Pyromancer. Jund , Various control decks, Company Shells etc
3) Killing them before 4 mana spells  are relevant/ invalidating the cheap interaction out of the opponent -Boggles, Infect, Hollow One, Humans etc

 

From this event forward, the game plan of invalidating the opponent’s deck by killing them before the turn they’d make a critical proved to be fruitful. So, where does Jund sit in all of this? Uh, apparently nowhere. We’ve seen that the deck has not really been doing that great, so much so that many players have gone on to state that the deck isn’t really that playable. But, I’m bored and having played the deck for years before the unban I occasionally get the itch to tune or at the very least theorycraft a list.  Let’s see what we can do to analyze and possibly revize the status quo of Jund deck building.

 

I think the best starting point would be looking  at the best performing deck that could be considered cousins  of Jund, Mardu Pyromancer and BR Hollow one. Both decks take one half of the Jund gameplan and push it to an extreme of sorts.
Mardu operates with a low threat count but maximizes its ability to play relevant interaction before turn 3. Young Pyromancer and Lingering Souls while they can technically kill the opponent function more within the capacity of gumming up the board so you don’t die to midgame pressure until you eventually turn the corner and kill the opponent in some arbitrary way. BR Hollow One by comparison minimizes the disruptive elements of Jund in order to maximize its ability to nut draw its opponent.  Comparing Hollow One to Jund on a similar axis is definitely somewhat of a mental leap at face value but I think the decks operate on similar axis enough to learn from. Hollow one utilizes negative tempo and card disadvantageous spells to accelerate their creatures out for less than their printed casting costs. The decks disruption comes from Lightning Bolt pushing through attackers, Burning Inquiry forcing the opponent to ‘mulligan’ and by cornering it’s opponents such that they have to utilize awkward play patterns in order to mitigate the recursive threats of the deck.

So, how can we utilize either or both of these aspects within our deckbuilding process?

 

From the  Mardu school of thought we can focus in on maximizing our ability to disrupt the opponent on turn one as often as possible. Within this logic, cards such as Lightning Bolt, Fatal Push, and even dismember seem much more appealing that larger clunkier spells such as Kolaghan’s Command, either three mana Liliana, or Maelstrom Pulse.  Employing this logic we can take the  approach of lowering our top end bomb count and instead rely on our disruption crippling the opponent while our more mana efficient threats kill them. From this point we need to analyze our sources of card advantage. Mardu utilizes Faithless Looting as a way to change the quality of it’s hand.  While looting is card disadvantage it allows for Bedlam Reveler to be played for two to three mana on turns four or five. Being able to empty ones hand and gas back up at a low enough cost that you can still cast an interactive spell. Junds play patterns aren’t able to easily emulate mardu’s. The latter tends to play like a blue deck in that it disrupts first then gasses back up. Jund often wants to get its card advantage engines in play earlier and gain incremental advantage. However, what we can do is customize our removal suite such that we can better take on a ‘control’ role in the fair mathups.

 

In regards to Hollow one we want to maximize our ability to clock the opponent with large threats as fast as possible. A secondary aspect of Hollow Ones game plan is to have pseudo free recursive threats that can whittle away at the opponent’s life total. Unfortunately, Jund doesn’t really have access to good recursive threats. In theory we could play Bloodghast but unlike other strategies we can’t really abuse the card. However, we can utilize large creatures to pressure opposing life totals. As such, I think we should maximize the decks ability to present fast and aggressive threats.

 

Historically, Dark Confidant has been a lynchpin of Jund because it facilitates the decks fundamental gameplans that operate in conjunction to beat the opponent. The first is that the deck is incredibly potent as long as its casting two spells in one turn. It almost doesn’t matter what configuration of spells the deck is utilizing as long as they interact with the opponents boardstate or hand  in some regard. Secondly, Jund wants to create a gamestate where both players are topdecking. In some ways the latter strategy is similar to that of Legacy Rug Delver where instead of necessarily trying to answer all of the opponents threats you simply get ahead on board and create a gamestate where it doesn’t matter what the opponent plays because you’re so far ahead. I think that both of these gameplans are still viable for Jund to utilize but I think we have to break the status quo to some degree in order to do this.  Jund’s threat suite needs revisions; leaning heavily on small bodied creatures with conditional effects no longer seems like a good standard to follow. The format seems to be in a place that heavily rewards us for having large beating sticks.

 

Post unbanning we’ve seen a lot of decklists that are heavily focused on maximizing Bloodbraid Elf cascades. The intrinsic issue with this plan is that it dictates a gluttony of three mana spells so that you can get seven manas worth of spells for a four mana investment as often as possible . This logic would be perfectly fine if Modern was a format of midrange battles, but that’s just not the state of the things. Modern has slowly been progressing towards decks goldfishing turn 3.5 kills. As such we need to compensate within our own deckbuilding to either match this trend or do what we can to create a roadblock to allow us to stabilize with our own threats. Cheap disruption should be placed at a premium and I think the best way to make everything fit is to shave the fourth copy of Bloodbraid Elf. While the card is powerful, it leads to clunky deckbuilding and draws.

 

 Taking into account these lines of logic I’ve come to the following decklist as a starting point for future revision:

Creatures: 14
3 Dark Confidant

2 Grim Flayer
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Bloodbraid Elf

 

Instants: 9

2 Fatal Push

3 Lightning Bolt

1 Abrupt Decay

2 Terminate

1 Kolaghan’s Command

 

Artifacts: 1

1 Nihil Spellbomb
Sorceries:8

4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
1 Maelstrom Pulse

Planeswalkers: 4
4 Liliana of the Veil



Lands:24
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
2 Overgrown Tomb
3 Raging Ravine
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
1 Treetop Village
1 Twilight Mire
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard:
3 Fulminator Mage
2 Kitchen Finks
1 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Collective Brutality
1 Damping Sphere
2 Anger of the Gods
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Maelstrom Pulse/1 Tormods Crypt/ 1 Grafdiggers Cage/ 1 Dismember/1 Collective Brutality/Damping Sphere

 

 

 

 

So a few notable choices in regards to this deck:

 

3 Bob and 2 Flayer?
The 3/2 Split of Bob and Flayer is a concession to the format. Bob gives the deck the ability to accrue card advantage in order to pull and stay and stay ahead of the opponent. But given the aggressive state of Modern, I think that using your life total so liberally is a dubious proposition. Additionally, the 2/1 body attached to a non recursive threat isn’t really that impressive in the format at the moment. It’s not uncommon that Bob doesn’t get to attack and you have to wait until he flips a larger threat to start being able to pressure the opponent.  

 

Grim Flayer hedges against the major issues I have with Bob. It acts  pseudo Tarmogoyf that allows us to beat the opponent to death quickly but it also provides crucial card filtering. Classically, one of Junds biggest issues is that its a 50/50 deck. Half of your cards are good against fair decks while the other half is good against unfair decks. A turn two flayer allows us to mitigate this issue. It’s very common for players to take into account the value of indiscriminately  drawing more cards than their opponent, however its commonly overlooked how important it is to not draw cards that are dead in a particular matchup. I could see going up to a 3/3 split to be more threat dense. If you choose to go this route then cut the fourth copy of Inquisition.

 

Spellbomb /Scooze split
The next choice that may strike you as odd is the 2/1 split of Scavenging Ooze and Nihil Spellbomb.  Scooze offers a desirable effect, but the card is slow and mana intensive. Against the decks where your opponent’s graveyard matters you’re lead to an awkward point where you have to choose between progressing your board, and leaving up mana for Scooze activations. Spellbomb helps alleviate this issue by being free to activate. Being able to deploy bomb in the early game and then use your remaining mana to progress your boardstate or cast whatever discard or removal spell is relevant. At it’s worse, Spellbomb cycles for two mana or can be discarded to Liliana in order to pump Goyf and Flayer. Having the random artifact in the maindeck supports the addition of Flayer and allows Goyf to brick wall Gurmag Angler.

 

Also, I can’t stress this enough; When playing spellbomb, do not prioritize leaving up the mana to draw a card from Spellbomb.  It’s much more important to get ahead on board and play as many disruptive elements as possible. Giving your opponent a free Rishidan Port affect only does yourself a disservice. Do not allow yourself to fall further behind in tempo in order to cycle, the value really isn’t worth it.

 

Five one mana removal spells
I’m not quite sure if this decision is correct. I would not be surprised if having six removal spells that can be cast on turn one. Whether the 6th removal spell should be an additional Lightning Bolt or Fatal Push should be dictated by the format, but I think I’d start with a third Fatal Push. Being able to answer random Eldrazi, creatures from humans that have been pumped by Thalias Lieutenant and various manlands seems fairly important to me. By utilizing Flayer and building the deck to make swole Goyfs I think that  we’ll be able to mitigate the need for the reach that Bolt provides. With that said, a 6th removal spells should be tailored to whatever you expect to see metagame wise.

 

Math wise, with five removal spells you have a 52.2% chance to see a one mana removal spell within your top 7 cards. Adding the sixth removal spell bumps your odds up to 59.2%. However, we have eight removal spells between our one and two mana spells which means we have a 70.5% chance to see one of those removal spells in our top 7 cards. These odds are reasonable, if we choose to swap Spellbomb with something like a Dismember then we go up to a 75% chance of having a removal spell that we can cast on turn one or two.  I think that staying at five one mana removal spells is fine for the time being but with testing I could see having six being worth it.

 

1-2 Kommand/ Lili last hope split
I opted to play a singular copy of Kommand in the main because the flexibility and recursion effect is quite powerful. However the spell is quite clunky and I think that playing too many of this effect would cause more problems than solve them. With that said, I think having access to a recursion effect is important so I’ve opted to play two copies of Liliana the Last Hope in the sideboard. Lili fills a few holes that this list would have issues with. The first is Lingering Souls and other token producers. Historically, Jund has had issue with go wide strategies that are able to invalidate it’s threats by blocking with inconsequential bodies that it can simply replace at a later point in the game. Lili as an on board ‘machine gun’ in a nice, clean, and mana efficient way to mitigate these issues.  When battling midrange and control decks, Lili is great due to not only her recursion effect, but also by her nature of being a hard to deal with permanent type that can pressure the opponent on a secondary axis forcing the opponent to need multiple narrow effects.

Spellbomb/Tormods crypt split.

The next oddity in the list is the split of Tormod’s Crypt and Nihil Spellbomb. I’ve had multiple discussions with players who firmly believed that Spellbomb was “strictly better”. However, I think that this logic is incredibly narrow minded. I do believe that Spellbomb is at times conditionally better than Crypt but upon deeper analysis I think that Crypt is much more important in most matches where the opponent graveyard is of importance. As I see it, against decks such as Dredge, Storm, KCI, Living End, Grishoalbrand and to a degree Hollow One, the ability to present relevant graveyard disruption on turn 1 as well as cast a discard or removal spell can be backbreaking.  A prime example is Reid Dukes PT Rivals T8 match. As we can see, on turn 1 Reid is forced to to choose between deploying Grafdiggers Cage or Nihil Spellbomb when each option has its own merits. Playing Cage cuts off the opponent’s ability to play a Faithless Looting discarding some number of Bloodghast followed up by a fetchland which would allow him to get the creatures in play around a spellbomb effect. Playing Spellbomb specifically cuts off the line of fetchland into Gurmag Angler. Now say hypothetically the Spellbomb in Reids hand was a Crypt. He would have been able to play both disruptive elements on turn one and shut off both lines which would have significantly slowed his opponent down long enough for Reid to be able to utilize his mana in in the subsequent turns to full effect. Ultimately, the decision comes down to how much you value Spellbomb cycling. If you’re expecting more Dredge then play Crypt. If you expect Mardu, then play Spellbomb.

 

Only one Collective Brutality

I think Collective Brutality is quite medium within the format at the moment. At two mana none of it’s effects are efficient enough for me to want to rely on it. Most of the combo decks punish you for spending two mana on a duress effect and storm in particular tends to cut copies of Goblin Electromancer so the disfigure mode is frequently dead. The only issue I see with playing a single Brutality is that your Burn matchup suffers a bit, however a caveat to that is that this list functionally has six Goyf effects which are by far your best cards in the matchup.

 

1 Maelstrom Pulse/1 Tormods Crypt/ 1 Grafdiggers Cage/ 1 Dismemeber/1 Collective Brutality/Damping Sphere/Tasigur/Grim Flayer

 

I’m having some trouble deciding what the 15th sideboard card should be. Its all relative to what you want to hedge for. Maelstrom Pulse if you expect prison decks, Boggles, Midrange, and various creature based strategies as a way to answer various random problem permanents.

 

The second Crypt would be a hedge towards the various graveyard strategies. However, I think I third copy of the exile a singular yard effect may be a bit too much at the current moment. As such, I find myself leaning towards playing the singleton cage over the second crypt. Cage still functions as cheap gravehate, however its a bit more flexible in the fact that you can utilize it against the Collected Company strategies of the format.

 

A second copy of Damping Sphere would be useful against Storm, KCI and Tron but I’m not sure it’s an effect that we truly need.

 

A second Brutality would solely be played as a hedge for the Burn matchup if you expect the field to be saturated with that deck.

 

Tasigur and Grim Flayer are just extra ‘Goyfs’. A sb Tasigur would make the deck a bit weaker to to Rest in Peace which is somewhat of an issue bit the card isn’t really commonly played so we can possibly ignore that angle. .Additionally, the card dodges Fatal Push, Decay, Bolt etc which makes it harder to answer in midrange mirrors. Costing ‘1’ mana could prove to be beneficial. Also, if it comes down to it Tasigur can ‘draw’ you additional cards which would be quite useful as a way  to make up for the lack of the 4th bob and bbe. Flayer would possibly be better considering that you can deploy the card on turn two against combo decks. If you go the route of boarding an additional threat play Flayer if you want to hedge for unfair decks but play Tasigur if you want to hedge for the fair mirrors. Also, it may seem odd to have Dismember and various creatures in the sideboard but Jon Alexander wrote a great article about deckbuilding where he covers the concept that theres no such thing as mainboard and sideboard cards. Ultimately, swap this spot around as you see fit given your expected metagame.

 

In Regards to the Mana
The decks Manabase is fairly stock. I think 4 Manlands are fine to have, but if you’re worried about Bloodmoon strategies, or are worried about playing spells on curve then cutting the Treetop Villiage for a second Forest is perfectly reasonable. Mountain is terrible most of the time. I’d only consider it if Ghost Quarter and Field of Ruins are going to be prevalent in the expected metagame. Even then, I’d play it in the sideboard if anything. Additionally, in aggro matchups such as Burn, Humans,Hollow One  and Affinity, cutting Treetop for a sideboard basic or Ghost Quarter solely because they’re untapped mana source that will let you cast your spells on curve which I think is more important than a 3/3 body.

 

 Ghost Quarter is fine to play in the sideboard as a tool for attrition based matchups and Tron.  In the former it not only alleviates the issue of hitting land drops on time but it favorably interacts with Search for Azcanta and manlands.  I also like the card because in corner cases it functions as a way to bust up Tron on t2 when you’re on the draw. It won’t hard carry you in those situations but it can slow them down long enough for you to win the game.

 

Faithless Looting?

Another card I considered adding to this list was a copy or who of Faithless Looting. Ben Freidman wrote and article comparing Faithless Looting to brainstorm. The idea of having an effect to loot away dead discard spells and the like seemed fairly useful. The major issue I saw is that this forced you to lean very heavily on Dark Confidant or something like Read the Bones to offset the card disadvantage. Looting being  inherent card disadvantage combined with Liliana of the Veils effect also would probably make the card somewhat unplayable. Ultimately,I think Grim Flayer is a better filter effect to lean on.

Traverse the Ulvenwald

The card could be good as a 1-2 of but I’m not sure it’s really needed. It also once again exacerbates the decks weakness to Rest in Peace and Relic of Progenitus. I do however think that it’s an avenue worth exploring at some point in time but not necessarily at the moment.  I also don’t really think we have access to the most impactful toolbox threats in the format and would be a much less powerful Traverse shell than Abzan or a Death’s Shadow deck.

 

Anyway, I think that’s enough for now. I find it interesting how oddly ridged the *core* of Jund seems. That could be the case, or that could just be my personal biases in regards to approaching the deck. The suggested list doesn’t stray that far from the norm. I mostly just made a few tweaks that I think fill holes that the status quo leaves wide open.  I think the next time I write about Jund I’ll cover a much more radical approach to the decks construction.

 

 

As I mentioned before, this article is a bit dated. If I was to start testing Jund again I think I would gravitate towards a list closer to this one.

 

Creatures:15
3 Dark Confidant
3 Grim Flayer
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Bloodbraid Elf

Spells:21
1 Fatal Push
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Thoughtseize
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Terminate
1 Kolaghan’s Command
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Maelstrom Pulse

Lands:24
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Forest
2 Overgrown Tomb
3 Raging Ravine
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
1 Treetop Village
1 Twilight Mire
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard:15
3 Fulminator Mage
2 Kitchen Finks
1 Grafdigger’s Cage
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Anger of the Gods
2 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Chandra, Pyromaster