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Last Sunday, I watched my friend Andrew Lipkin play in an MTGO PTQ with Jund. After working on various decks, we decided that Jund was probably the deck he should play.

We wanted to beat RDW, Mythic, and Jund. Everything else seemed like a minor part of the metagame. Naya is a slight favorite to Mythic and Jund, but it’s a known quantity, so players probably know how to play against it. The RDW matchup can be pretty bad, depending on the skill of the RDW player.

Mythic wasn’t really an option. Jamming the all creature deck is about drawing your opening hand and hoping that it either kills them or you draw enough gas after they kill all of your guys. At no point do you really get any chance to outplay your opponent, or even give them rope to hang themselves by making poor choices.

NLB or the NLB/Sovereigns hybrids are kind of in the same boat, although you have a little more control over the games.

RDW is another option, but again, it has a small amount of interaction. While the deck is definitely well positioned right now, that just isn’t enough for me, as I believe that I can find a deck that is similarly positioned.

Take, for example, Control Jund. Mythic and RDW are decent matchups when you can kill everything they play. You can play certain cards to increase your win percentage in the mirror. Sarkhan the Mad, Goblin Ruinblaster, and even things like Abyssal Persecutor or Overgrown Battlement can help.

So which of those did Andrew play?

All of them!

Wait, what about UW Control? If you checked out my forums from last week, you’d see that plenty of people seem to think that UW is nearly unbeatable in this metagame. Neither of us thought that we would get paired against UW often, so we skimped on hate for that matchup.

Here is what Andrew registered:

Jund Featured by Andrew Lipkin on 2010-07-18 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/19708_One_Step_Ahead_Perfect_Jund_and_Legacy_Brews.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Creatures 2 Abyssal Persecutor 4 Bloodbraid Elf 4 Putrid Leech 4 Sprouting Thrinax Instants 3 Bituminous Blast 4 Lightning Bolt 3 Terminate	Planeswalkers 2 Sarkhan the Mad Sorceries 4 Blightning 3 Maelstrom Pulse Basic Lands 3 Forest 3 Mountain 3 Swamp Lands 4 Dragonskull Summit 1 Evolving Wilds 4 Raging Ravine 1 Rootbound Crag 4 Savage Lands 4 Verdant Catacombs	Sideboard: 4 Goblin Ruinblaster 4 Overgrown Battlement 3 Doom Blade 1 Sarkhan the Mad 1 Maelstrom Pulse 2 Slave of Bolas
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We wanted to crush this mirror, which this list more or less does. You have fliers in the form of Persecutor and Sarkhan tokens, you have lots of lands plus Battlement in the board to fight Ruinblaster and mana screw, you have acceleration to blow them out with quick Ruinblasters of your own, and you even have Slave of Bolas to beat their best cards in Sprouting Thrinax and Sarkhan the Mad.

Mythic is solid with all the removal. The plan there is to side out Thrinax and either Sarkhan and Persecutor for removal and Ruinblasters. The odd man out is a Blightning or two. Most players don’t like Blightning in this matchup, but I’m fine with drawing one per game.

Ruinblaster further constricts their mana after you kill their mana guys, hopefully giving you time to beat down with Leeches before they can play their five- and six-drops. If nothing else, it should do a lot to make your Blightnings live.

A lot of players insist on either playing Dragon’s Claw or ignoring the RDW matchup, but it seems easy to me. As long as you mulligan appropriately, which means keeping hands with early plays, and ones that aren’t completely kold to Goblin Guide, Jund is actually favored. Things like Quenchable Fire or Earthquake can be bad times, but you can whether through those. Blightning is awesome against that plan.

Dragon’s Claw isn’t good enough, nor does it solve the big problems. Killing their constant damage sources is what is going to win you the game, not tapping out on turn 2 only to get attacked for five or more damage. But hey, you gained a life!

The PTQ went well enough. Andrew defeated UW with maindeck Kor Firewalkers, Turboland, Mythic, and three Jund mirrors before falling to the fourth mirror. In the last round, he beat Guillaume Wafo-Tapa playing UW Control, which was also his matchup in Top 8.

We both felt like we had a better idea on what GWT was packing, so we were no longer bringing in the Doom Blades (which I’m sure made Guillame incredibly happy when Andrew cascaded into it during game 2 in the swiss). With his Flashfreezes, Purges, and Negates, we were pretty sure he didn’t have Baneslayer Angel or Kor Firewalker.

Andrew maxed out on burn spells and threats and was able to remove most of his removal, except for the necessary Pulses. Abyssal Persecutor is a decent threat, one that forces a Day of Judgment all by itself. It’s still vulnerable to a lot of their removal, but at least it dodges Flashfreeze and can face off against Jwar Isle. While you don’t have a lot of ways to remove it yourself, it’s very difficult for them to win without killing it for you.

So there he was in Top 8, playing against a deck that he had already defeated twice in the swiss. Naturally, Andrew picked about the worst time to lose. He would have faced Turboland in the semis, the eventual winner, Brandon Scheel. Scheel didn’t have much of a sideboard because of his overcompensation for RDW, but he won the tournament anyway. If he made it past Scheel, another UW deck was waiting for him.

Overall, there were close matchups all around. Perhaps there should be some added hate for the Blue decks…

Owen Turtenwald refers to his list as “Perfect Jund,” and I couldn’t really agree more. This is the perfect deck to play right now. Most people are sick of Jund so there are fewer mirrors. While I don’t mind that, there are plenty of people out there who shy away from “painful” mirror matches.

Whatever your reason to play Jund, you have to know that it has all the tools to succeed right now.

This is what we came up with for the new list:

Perfect Jund Featured by Gerry Thompson on 2010-07-18 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/19708_One_Step_Ahead_Perfect_Jund_and_Legacy_Brews.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Creatures 4 Bloodbraid Elf 2 Goblin Ruinblaster 1 Malakir Bloodwitch 4 Putrid Leech 4 Sprouting Thrinax Instants 2 Bituminous Blast 4 Lightning Bolt 2 Terminate Planeswalkers 2 Sarkhan the Mad	Sorceries 4 Blightning 4 Maelstrom Pulse Basic Lands 3 Forest 3 Mountain 4 Swamp Lands 4 Dragonskull Summit 4 Raging Ravine 1 Rootbound Crag 4 Savage Lands 4 Verdant Catacombs	Sideboard: 2 Prophetic Prism 2 Goblin Ruinblaster 2 Malakir Bloodwitch 4 Overgrown Battlement 3 Doom Blade 2 Slave of Bolas
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

I wanted All is Dust in the sideboard instead of Prophetic Prism, but Andrew wanted the more consistent option. AID gives you a way to get out of those “can’t possibly win” scenarios, whereas Prism is a value card. While AID is higher variance, it means you’re probably always drawing live. The games will usually go late, and you will usually get to seven mana, so I think it’s the better choice.

There are always some open slots in Jund, and right now I like the Ruinblasters and Malakir Bloodwitch. Most people just have a lot of removal in those slots instead, but I think they give you a lot of added value in game 1 where you otherwise wouldn’t have them.

I wanted to try a manabase with fewer Savage Lands and more Terramorphic Expanses and Evolving Wilds to dodge Spreading Seas, and to some extent Goblin Ruinblaster. Both of those cards are highly annoying, and despite playing 27 lands, a single disruption spell can cause a major hiccup in your curve. The Expanses would also assist the M10 lands in being a bit more stable. Playing Savage Lands followed by Raging Ravine and Dragonskull Summit is tilt inducing.

I miss the Persecutors, especially in the mirror, but there just wasn’t any room. I have cards to fight Mythic, RDW, UW, and the mirror, but it’s hard to fight all those with just 75 cards. Something had to give, so I decided to cut the demons.

I’m still interested in Monument Jund, although I think you have to mostly sacrifice things like the Mythic matchup. Lotus Cobra blanks Spreading Seas, Eldrazi Monument is great against Day of Judgment and the Jund mirrors. You have to play a lot less removal, so again, the Mythic matchup is probably terrible. Mythic and RDW devolve into races instead of the classic control versus aggro battle.

A couple of interesting decks I’ve seen while perusing the MTGO Daily Event decklists:

Ziggurat Aggro Featured by Willy Edel on 2010-07-18 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/19708_One_Step_Ahead_Perfect_Jund_and_Legacy_Brews.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Creatures 4 Bloodbraid Elf 2 Bloodghast 4 Goblin Ruinblaster 3 Hell's Thunder 4 Hellspark Elemental 4 Noble Hierarch 4 Putrid Leech 4 Sedraxis Specter 2 Siege-Gang Commander 4 Vengevine Basic Lands 3 Forest 3 Mountain 3 Swamp	Lands 4 Ancient Ziggurat 2 Crumbling Necropolis 4 Savage Lands 2 Terramorphic Expanse 4 Verdant Catacombs	Sideboard: 4 Dragon's Claw 4 Sprouting Thrinax 3 Doom Blade 4 Blightning
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I messed around with some Ancient Ziggurat decks a while back, but I never played the unearth guys. They’re really sick against Jund, but Hell’s Thunder doesn’t play well with Ziggurat, which is presumably why there’s only three.

With Sprouting Thrinax in their place, and Siege-Gang Commanders, the deck produced plenty of tokens, so I also had a Ranger of Eos for Bushwhacker package in there as a finisher as well.

This is kind of like the Jund Monument decks without Monument though, which seems sub-par. Monument is one of the best cards out there right now, and if not for Ziggurat, would be a perfect fit in a deck like this.

The second cool list:

Red/Green Monument Featured by Gerry Thompson on 2010-07-18 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/19708_One_Step_Ahead_Perfect_Jund_and_Legacy_Brews.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 4 Eldrazi Monument Creatures 4 Acidic Slime 4 Birds of Paradise 4 Bloodbraid Elf 4 Goblin Ruinblaster 4 Lotus Cobra 4 Nest Invader 4 Vengevine	Sorceries 4 Roiling Terrain Basic Lands 4 Forest 4 Mountain Lands 2 Khalni Garden 4 Raging Ravine 4 Rootbound Crag 2 Scalding Tarn 4 Verdant Catacombs	Sideboard: 3 Dragon's Claw 4 Cunning Sparkmage 3 Jaddi Lifestrider 2 Kozilek's Predator 3 Lightning Bolt
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I like the look of it, but I can’t help but feel that Cunning Sparkmage would assist in the land destruction plan against Mythic. Being able to maindeck that would probably help a lot.

The sideboard seems sketchy. Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple things that might be good. Master of the Wild Hunt and Sparkmage would be nice to have to replace the land destruction against creature decks. Gigantiform might be a solid threat against Jund or other decks where the board will most likely stall out.

Standard isn’t all I’ve been thinking about, although I definitely am excited for the upcoming tournaments with M11. Legacy has been occupying most of my time. I started playing my local Thursday Legacy events at the Monster Den in Minneapolis. The tournaments draw roughly 25 people each day, almost all of which are regulars with vast collections.

Cedric Phillips sent me a message a few months ago, saying that he broke it for Grand Prix: Columbus, but I had to keep it quiet and tell no one. He also told me that Steven Birklid had played the deck and could vouch for its awesomeness.

That deck was a raw Hypergenesis list loosely based off Richard Feldman’s article on this very site.

I signed up with more or less this list:

Hypergenesis Featured by Gerry Thompson on 2010-07-18 (Legacy) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/19708_One_Step_Ahead_Perfect_Jund_and_Legacy_Brews.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifact Creatures 1 Inkwell Leviathan 1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind Creatures 4 Elvish Spirit Guide 4 Simian Spirit Guide Enchantments 4 Ardent Plea	Instants 4 Force of Will 2 Misdirection 4 Violent Outburst Legendary Creatures 4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria 4 Progenitus 1 Sakashima the Impostor Sorceries 2 Hypergenesis 4 Show and Tell Lands 4 City of Brass 4 Flooded Strand 4 Forbidden Orchard 1 Plateau 1 Savannah 4 Tinder Farm 1 Tropical Island 1 Volcanic Island	Sideboard: 3 Form of the Dragon 3 Krosan Grip 2 Misdirection 3 Pyrokinesis 2 Ricochet Trap 2 Wipe Away
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I like the maindeck, although it could use another Misdirection or two. The one-ofs were simply things that I wanted to try. Sakashima kind of sucked, and was basically win-more. Inkwell was good against Blue decks (duh) and there could be some more in the sideboard against decks with Karakas. Sphinx is alright against Zoo, but pretty miserable everywhere else. Even Zoo could simply Path it if you don’t have a counterspell handy. Iona wasn’t fast enough and didn’t lock out most opponents completely. Maybe Form of the Dragon is just a better tertiary win condition.

Zoo is a bye. Merfolk is actually okay if they don’t have Stifle. Even then, you have Force of Will, Traps, and Misdirections to fight through their minimal hate. Form of the Dragon post board should leave them drawing pretty slim. Don’t forget that you can Misdirection Stifle onto your own City of Brass or Forbidden Orchard triggers. You can even do it to your own fetch land if you have a spare one available.

Combo should offer little resistance since all of your combo pieces are redundant and you should be, on average, a turn faster than most combo decks.

The deck is inconsistent, though. There are plenty of redundant pieces but no glue to hold the deck together. Sometimes you draw all mana, all threats, or all Show and Tells, and that just isn’t good.

Cedric and I moved onto other things, although we are both convinced that Hypergenesis could be a player in Legacy. It’s very similar to the Goblin Charbelcher decks, except that it’s much more stable, and has access to an excellent sideboard.

On the bright side, one archetype was successfully crossed off my list. The week after I played an update to AJ Sacher/Josh Guibault’s Counterbalance/Thopter deck. My list was weak, and I lost in Top 8 to Merfolk.

Here is what I would have played if I could do it over again:

Counterbalance Thopter Featured by Gerry Thompson on 2010-07-18 (Legacy) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/19708_One_Step_Ahead_Perfect_Jund_and_Legacy_Brews.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 1 Crucible Of Worlds 1 Engineered Explosives 4 Sensei's Divining Top 1 Sword of the Meek 2 Thopter Foundry Creatures 4 Dark Confidant Enchantments 4 Counterbalance 1 Moat Instants 4 Brainstorm 3 Enlightened Tutor 4 Force of Will 4 Swords to Plowshares Planeswalkers 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor	Sorceries 2 Vindicate Artifact Lands 1 Seat of the Synod Basic Lands 4 Island 2 Plains 1 Swamp Lands 4 Flooded Strand 1 Marsh Flats 1 Mishra's Factory 4 Polluted Delta 1 Scrubland 1 Tundra 1 Underground Sea 1 Wasteland Legendary Lands 1 Academy Ruins	Sideboard: 1 Pithing Needle 1 Ethersworn Canonist 2 Meddling Mage 1 Back to Basics 4 Engineered Plague 1 Humility 1 Planar Void 2 Hydroblast 2 Path to Exile
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The ability to assemble multiple Plagues makes this list better against tribal strategies. Confidants give you an edge in the mirror, and I definitely like them a lot against Merfolk. You want to make your land drops and have enough threats to fight through their limited counter magic.

I would like to add another Vindicate and another Mishra’s Factory, but also some more Blue cards for Force of Will. Predict was solid, and Spell Snare is a consideration.

This Thursday: Ringing some Bells.

GerryT