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Author’s note: I’ve had a bad couple of weeks. You’ve been warned.
As an information whore, I make sure to look at all the recent decklists from various events, rather it’s from Deckcheck, the MTGO DEs, or random National Qualifier tournaments. I’ve spoken before of the swift decline in Constructed Magic the last few years, and I meant it. These tournaments have shown me that my words were true.
No one knows how to build decks.
There are a million articles out there every week telling you how to build your Jund deck this way or that way, and granted, some of those people are worth listening to and some aren’t. Even still, that should be easily decipherable, and you should be able to tell what information out there is good and what isn’t.
Instead, we end up with decklists that have Broodmate Dragon, Grim Discovery, and Duress. What year is it? Why is Broodmate Dragon still in your deck? What matchup could you possibly want to draw that in? Before you say the mirror, let me remind you that there has been a new set or two released since Shards of Alara. There are better, faster options available.
Grim Discovery? Again, what year is it? You want to gain an edge in the Jund matchup, why don’t you try Vengevine or Sarkhan the Mad? You know, those powerful cards that end games really quickly, as opposed to the underpowered, tempo negative, irrelevant two-for-ones. Hell, you could even play Gavin Verhey’s Overgrown Battlements and I’d be fine with it.
Much like Broodmate, what matchup could you possibly want Duress for? Polymorph? UW Control? Turboland?
The first two basically don’t exist anymore, and Duress isn’t even good against Turboland (or UW, for that matter). What are you trying to Duress? The Time Warps or Jaces that they probably side out against you? Those cards suck against you anyway, Jund player! If you had been paying attention at all lately, you’d realize that Turboland is going to beat you by siding in Pelakka Wurm and Sphinx of Jwar Isle. Why would you possibly side Duress in against a deck with those cards?
Spreading Seas really sucks right now, since there isn’t much Old School Jund, and those that do exist probably have Prophetic Prism in their sideboard. Then again, UW sucks and shouldn’t really be played right now either, and if people were going to play UW, they shouldn’t play Spreading Seas. Therefore, why bother even playing Prophetic Prism anymore? Yeah, it was cute for about a week. Get over it.
Another thing that really bothers me is the way RDW is perceived in current Standard. Is it good? Is it terrible? Who knows? Every once in a while, it wins a tournament and then someone claims that it has great matchups across the board. RDW is our new savior!
First of all, you’re placing too much emphasis on the results of a single tournament. Still, who cares? Lots of decks right now say their matchups are “I beat everything except RDW.” Surely that makes RDW a great choice, right?
You do realize that a lot of decks say “I beat everything except Jund” or “I beat everything except Mythic” too, right? The only difference is, if people want to beat RDW, they most certainly can.
Jund is the most notorious offender of this. They THINK they are sideboarding cards for Red, but they are actually siding blanks, while wasting sideboard slots that could be used to better multiple matchups.
Take this sideboard, for example, taken directly from Deckcheck, from a player who placed 4th in a PTQ.
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
3 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Deathmark
1 Thought Hemorrhage
3 Dragon's Claw
Ruinblaster? Sure. Miser’s Thought Hemorrhage? Well, drawing one is usually solid versus certain decks, but more than that is pretty bad, so I could get behind one copy.
Now, the Dragon’s Claws and Nighthawks are very obviously put in there to fight Red, while at the same time playing Deathmark instead of Doom Blade? HUH?
First of all, Vampire Nighthawk sucks. Maybe if it cost two and gave you something else to do on turn 2, then it might be worth it, but no. It dies to everything, the life gain is marginal at best, and it’s hard to cast. I would definitely rather max on Claws before even touching a Nighthawk.
Deathmark and Doom Blade are very similar. You don’t usually need to Deathmark on turn 1 anyway, so why not just play the Blade and have something that is good versus decks that aren’t just Green and White?
I literally have no idea what this person’s thought process was when building his sideboard.
All hatred aside, I honestly think that Jund is THE best deck right now. It’s good against RDW and Mythic if you build it correctly, and those are supposed to be your “bad” matchups. UW was close but typically in Jund’s favor if they knew how to mulligan and cast their spells in the right order, but that’s gone too.
What’s left? Turboland, which can’t beat a lowly Blood Seeker? There are some Monument decks that are kind of scary, but again, with proper removal and some stuff like Sparkmages, you should be able to keep their guys in check.
All of that is assuming you run the correct (at the moment at least) build of Jund, which follows in the footsteps of Owen Turtenwald and, more recently, Tommy Ashton. The format is becoming so aggressive that one of the best strategies is to just kill all of their guys. The other option would be to find some aggro mirror format breaker, but almost everyone has Monuments or Sovereigns of Lost Alara, so good luck finding something that trumps those.
Broodmate Dragon sucks because the format is too fast, and it’s not even good in any particular matchup. Plus, there are better options available. I think that time has come for Siege-Gang Commanders as well. Casting Siege-Gang isn’t something that you want to be doing anymore. As if it needed to be said, Putrid Leech belongs in Jund. Still, there are some wacky individuals out there that insist on going against common knowledge if for no other reason than to be different (hi, James Beltz!).
Trust me, you will win a lot more matches by lowering your mana curve, playing cheap removal that is good against a wide variety of decks, and Cunning Sparkmages so that you don’t have to Bolt every single Noble Hierarch you see, but also so that your Bituminous Blasts can kill Sovereigns of Lost Alara and Baneslayer Angel.
Ruinblaster is another card with some controversy around it. I’ve heard that it’s only good in the Jund mirror on the play, and while that’s kind of true, having some sort of blowout card for the mirror is reasonable. Otherwise, the games turn into these weird attrition battles until someone draws a Sarkhan the Mad. Ruinblaster is also somewhat vital to your Mythic sideboard plan, which should be to constrict their mana.
Manuel Bucher mentioned that Slave of Bolas is really good in the Jund mirror right now, and I couldn’t agree more. Either you kill their Thrinax and get their tokens, or you take their Dragon and kill their Sarkhan. What more could you want?
So, the format is very aggressive, which makes Jund good. What else changes? Well, for starters, grind-em-out decks like NLB probably aren’t viable anymore, without a few changes. Most players simply abandon a deck because they can’t win with it instead of trying to improve it, and that annoys me to no end.
Take a look at Naoki Shimizu’s deck from Japanese Nationals:
| Mythic Conscription A Standard deck, by Naoki Shimizu 7th place at a Nationals tournament in Japan on 2010-07-04 | ||
Creatures 2 Birds of Paradise 4 Noble Hierarch 2 Ranger of Eos 1 Scute Mob 4 Sea Gate Oracle 3 Sovereigns of Lost Alara 4 Vengevine 4 Wall of Omens Enchantments 2 Oblivion Ring Instants 1 Bant Charm 2 Path to Exile Planeswalkers 2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor |
Tribal Enchantments 2 Eldrazi Conscription Basic Lands 5 Forest 2 Island 2 Plains Lands 4 Celestial Colonnade 4 Misty Rainforest 4 Seaside Citadel 1 Stirring Wildwood 2 Sunpetal Grove | 1 Mold Shambler 1 Ranger of Eos 1 Sphinx of Jwar Isle 2 Journey to Nowhere 2 Celestial Purge 2 Deprive 2 Negate 2 Linvala, Keeper of Silence 1 Gideon Jura 1 Martial Coup |
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| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
Pretty standard, but with the Sovereigns package which serves as another threat in an otherwise threat light deck, and to break stalls.
Now take a look at John Penick’s list from the SCG Open in St. Louis:
| Mythic Conscription A Standard deck, by John Penick 7th place at a StarCityGames.com Standard Open tournament in St. Louis, Missouri, United States on 2010-06-27 | ||
Creatures 3 Baneslayer Angel 3 Birds of Paradise 4 Knight of the Reliquary 4 Lotus Cobra 4 Noble Hierarch 4 Sovereigns of Lost Alara 4 Wall of Omens Planeswalkers 3 Elspeth, Knight-Errant 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor Tribal Enchantments 2 Eldrazi Conscription |
Basic Lands 5 Forest 2 Island 2 Plains Lands 1 Arid Mesa 4 Celestial Colonnade 4 Misty Rainforest 2 Sejiri Steppe 1 Stirring Wildwood 2 Sunpetal Grove 3 Verdant Catacombs | 2 Sphinx of Jwar Isle 1 Sphinx of Lost Truths 4 Vengevine 2 Wall of Denial 3 Oblivion Ring 2 Deprive 1 Negate |
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| Download this deck in Apprentice format! |
Download this deck in Magic Online Text format! | |
Both of these lists are hybrids between NLB and Mythic, and that kind of innovation is what it takes to survive in this format.
Regardless, Mythic and NLB have nearly dropped off the face of Magic Online. There are so many Cunning Sparkmages and Forked Bolts running around that I can certainly understand why people would get fed up with their Noble Hierarch dying every game.
Still, isn’t there a way you can sideboard against those cards? Post M11, siding in Cultivate and Sphinx of Jwar Isle is almost a surefire way to victory against Jund. Turn 5 Sphinx is game against a lot of decks attempting to beat you with Sparkmages and Forked Bolts, like RG (U) Monument, Naya, and Mythic splashing Red.
You could also splash for Sparkmage yourself, or play more narrow answers like Pithing Needle, Celestial Purge, or Linvala, Keeper of Silence. I very rarely see those cards, but seeing Mythic getting rolled by Cunning Sparkmage is a common sight.
Naya’s numbers have dropped significantly, but that doesn’t surprise me. The staying power just wasn’t there. It was a metagame deck in a metagame two metagames ago. Aggro decks these days need Monument or Sovereigns, and Naya played neither, and players were too lazy to add either (except, I guess, Todd Anderson, but he did it in reverse).
UW Control had one of the sickest surges in popularity I’ve seen in quite some time, but that deck couldn’t really be any worse right now. Mythic, Turboland, and NLB are all terrible matchups. Most of the time, UW operates as a strictly worse NLB deck anyway, except in that you can actually beat RDW with UW, but not with NLB.
Playing lands, drawing cards, and ignoring my opponent are some of my favorite things to do, so naturally I love Turboland. Still, having to battle RDW, RG Monument, or Mythic every round is a bit too much. Without all the UW and NLB decks, Turboland is rapidly fading out of existence.
To all you Polymorph or Brilliant Ultimatum players out there, take notice. Turboland is a lot better than your decks, and it sucks right now.
Grixis players, what are you doing? Your game plan is the exact same as Jund’s, but you run far worse cards. What’s the deal with that? I understand wanting to branch out and play something new, but come on. At the very least, don’t try to convince me that your deck is good.
Why do I see people playing Beastmaster Ascension in their Monument decks? This isn’t Block Constructed, guys. Overrun is a legal Magic card.
You know what’s weird? When people cut the garbage Devastating Summons from their Red decks and suddenly the deck starts winning again.
Phew. I think that’s about it for my rant. You might be wondering how all of this changes with M11, and while I haven’t read any articles on M11, I can only assume that most of it stays the same. Even with Turboland as bad as it is right now, I am still looking forward to Obstinate Baloth and Cultivate, and attempting to Make Fetch Happen.
As a final note, I’d like to tell you all that, just like last PTQ season, people are getting sick of it. The prices of all the cards are dropping, so now is a good time to sell AND buy. It seems like towards the end, people just start losing interest, which is kind of weird. If I weren’t qualified, I would probably just be hitting the PTQ scene even harder than before.
I guess that’s just me.
GerryT
