Regionals is over, and now the push is toward Grand Prix: DC. A week ago, I would have told you to choose either Jund or UW and just smash. Now, though? Now we have a bit more to work with, as Regionals is a fairly large event that is spread out across many groups of players in drastically different metagames, and so it is becoming more and more clear as days go on what the “best” decks are and which ones just aren’t cutting it.
The night before Regionals I still had no idea which deck to play. I had both Jund and UW sleeved up, but in the end my decision was far simpler than I was making it: I should play Jund. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from my writing, it’s that I need to start taking my own advice. Vengevine is a revolution in the Jund deck, and I personally don’t think I’d ever go back to Garruks or what have you. Vengevine is the next level, and I decided to put my money where my mouth was and battle with four of them.
Here is the list I registered:
Creatures (22)
- 2 Siege-Gang Commander
- 2 Sprouting Thrinax
- 4 Putrid Leech
- 4 Bloodbraid Elf
- 2 Borderland Ranger
- 4 Plated Geopede
- 4 Vengevine
Planeswalkers (1)
Lands (26)
Spells (11)
Upon registering my list, I felt really good about it. I audibled to including Geopede despite how bad it seemed on the surface, but sometimes you just have to trust your people, you know? Well, I did, and I would definitely play Geopede again. It is not that Nest Invader is bad, but rather that I think maybe a faster clock (as well as a new way to beat Wall of Omens) is better than the having a better Mono-Red match-up. Granted, a Bloodbraid Elf or a Vengevine a turn earlier is stellar, but having another set of “Putrid Leeches” is probably just a bit superior. When I cascaded into them it was less than exciting, but whenever you land one of turn 2 with a fetch or two in hand he’s just superb.
I cut down to just a pair of Thrinaxes, more or less because there are better cards to be playing right now in Jund, and Thrinax is only good in the mirror. Josh Silvestri recommended cutting it altogether, but I wasn’t about to put myself that far back in the mirror. I felt that with two in my deck that it would be relevant enough to make a difference if I saw it in the mirror, and maybe not be such a horrible cascade as often in the other match-ups. Borderland Rangers took the place of the remaining two Thrinax slots, and that card performed as well as ever, though maybe a bit better now that it also allows me to pump my Geopedes with some level of consistency.
Sarkhan the Mad is awesome, by the way. I was contemplating if risking the potential game loss was worth it to register him as Sarkhan the Rad, but I decided against it. I only had one, yeah, but he can be a very powerful tool. He’s actually really good against control decks as well as mirrors and other creature decks, not to mention that he fills a similar role as Blast without being a dud in certain match-ups. I probably should have played two Sarkhans in the maindeck and instead sideboarded Bituminous Blast altogether, but at the time I only really had access to one Sarkhan. Oh well.
In the sideboard, probably only Hell’s Thunder sticks out. Bloodwitch is back in favor because UW doesn’t have a solid plan against it (they sometimes board out some of their sweepers and rely on the Wall of Denial plan, but this is build-dependant), and the other cards speak pretty much for themselves (an important note: you must be playing Thought Hemorrhage at this stage in the game — it’s simply way too good against the combo decks). Hell’s Thunder, though, is fairly unprecedented in Jund, but it was the right call. The idea is that by playing it you’re making nearly all of your post-board cascades into either threats that can kill Wall of Omens (Geopedes and Leeches) or ways to destroy planeswalkers (Hell’s Thunder, Maelstrom Pulse, Blightning). This gives you a much better out to planeswalkers in general as well as yet another set of haste creatures. I believe I’ve already said my fair share on the importance of haste creatures in Jund, so I’ll just leave it at that. Hell’s Thunder lets you ride the burnout plan pretty closely post-board, and the unearth on Hell’s Thunder can let you get around UW’s counterspells if the game goes long. I was overly tired at the event (I got very little sleep — which, of course, was very stupid of me), and in my third round I was trying to force a Blightning through to beat my control opponent when I could have just unearthed my Thunder and killed him a turn earlier (I won regardless, but a mistake is a mistake). These kinds of situations are where Thunder really shines, and I’d certainly play it again.
I only played until the fourth round, where I received my second loss. Both my losses were to the mirror, and both were very reasonable defeats (and unfortunately both were friends of mine). In the first round I lost one of my games to a Master of the Wild Hunt that I could not find an answer for, and in the last game we had a stalled board where a Blightning from either player would have been the end of it, and he drew his first. That’s the mirror, and I was fine with that. The round four Jund deck that beat me wasn’t close — I mulled to five in the first game (again, which is how it goes sometimes), and then he quickly dispatched me in game 2. I didn’t draw a Vengevine until that round, though, which was pretty awkward since in every situation where I had been losing that day a Vengevine would’ve been amazing. In the second game of round four, though, I cast one on turn four, passed, and watched him get Bolted. I cast a Bloodbraid the next turn, and cascaded into Blightning. I’ll go on record saying that cascading into Blightning there just wasn’t that good, as any creature could have actually turned the entire game around. But I “whiffed,” and my opponent took a well-deserved game.
The bottom line? Vengevine is still the card to be playing right now, and I think Geopede lived up to his expectations. I’m finding some solace about how my day went by taking a look at the bigger picture about my deck: yeah, I didn’t do very well, but my deck was built in a way that I could easily have pulled out of the holes I was being placed in. I even almost won a game against the control player in round three who had a Spreading Seas on all my lands I had in play at the time, which was a first for me. Bloodbraid Elf into Maelstrom Pulse is pretty good, right?
Based upon the decks I was seeing at the top tables and the raw power of my deck, I’m not so sure that Jund just isn’t the best deck for DC. On the other hand, Mythic was very plentiful at the Michigan Regionals, and I’ve never felt like Mythic was an awesome deck to be sitting across from with Putrid Leeches and Blightnings. Gerry T’s Naya deck, also, has emerged from the weekend — and that deck, I fear, might complicate things a bit.
The list, for those who didn’t see it yet (this is the list Gavin used to qualify for Nationals):
Creatures (32)
- 3 Ranger of Eos
- 3 Wild Nacatl
- 4 Noble Hierarch
- 4 Knight of the Reliquary
- 4 Bloodbraid Elf
- 3 Lotus Cobra
- 1 Scute Mob
- 4 Cunning Sparkmage
- 2 Stoneforge Mystic
- 4 Vengevine
Lands (26)
Spells (2)
Sideboard
Look at that, two noncreature spells! Now that’s a Vengevine deck!
I still don’t know how good Naya as a deck really is, but no one can argue with the results this list put up last weekend. The deck abuses Vengevine the best, has endless card advantage, and still manages to make Cunning Sparkmage insane. The mana is better than ever, and all the big players are here as always. The Manabarbs in the sideboard is one of my favorite parts about the deck, mostly because this list can get around the self-inflicting damage by using Hierarchs and Lotus Cobra to generate painless mana while UW digs for that Oblivion Ring.
This deck doesn’t care about Wall of Omens, and seems like it has the best tools in the format to take on Jund. It seems very weak to Mythic if you don’t just rawdog the Collar to go along with Cunning Sparkmage, but after sideboarding things start to look up. I still don’t feel like you’re any better off that Jund is against that deck, but maybe I’m wrong? I haven’t ran Naya against Mythic since Conscription was added, but even back then it wasn’t terribly thrilling to have Wild Nacatls compared to their Rhox War Monks.
So is this the deck to play this weekend? Well, it has strong match-ups across the board, but in reality it’s just one of those decks that is “pretty good against everything.” I’d say that the combo decks are probably something you’d like to avoid, but overall you can reasonably win every match you sit down to play if you’re focused and play well. That’s certainly good enough to make Day 2 with in DC, but you might need something more than that to advance beyond that point.
Unfortunately, not many decks can fill that role. UW is probably the closest thing to a “truly consistent deck,” but my money might actually be on Mythic. Mythic does so many things right in this metagame that I myself am finding it hard to avoid playing the deck. You have a good Jund match-up, a decent draw can plow UW, and you’re probably also favored against the “hot” new deck, GerryT Naya. Mythic suffers from the same fate as Naya does when it comes to the combo decks, as neither one can interact with them in any meaningful way, but how many Polymorph players will be in DC? More or less than the number of UW and Jund/Naya players? I’d wager it will be a lot less, especially if the Polymorph (and Open the Vaults, in this case) players acknowledge that those decks would be very hard to win a Grand Prix with given how often you can lose games because you draw poorly. The trick to performing well at a Grand Prix is taking a deck that has very solid match-ups against the general field, not the kind that has auto-wins and the occasional punted match-up. Mythic may not give you tons of room to outplay your opponents like UW does, but it is a respectable aggressive deck that has a “nut draw” that can easily dispatch the unaware. I still feel that Jund can fulfill this role, so really any of the three “creatures decks” (Jund, Naya, Mythic) are good choices to have a shot at Top 16. Mythic just seems to have an edge in my opinion, given that it can beat the other two critter decks with far more ease than they can beat each other.
My stance on UW is like this: I don’t like it. This is probably the first time in a long time where I am against playing the Blue deck, but at this stage Vengevine is just better than what they’re doing. Heck, Sovereigns of Lost Alara might be a stronger play in Standard than a lot of the spells that UW mages are slinging, and it’s time that more people take heed of this. Whether you choose to battle with Vengevines and Bloodbraid Elves or Knight of the Reliquary and Baneslayer Angel, I think creatures are the way to go for this Grand Prix.
Oh, yeah, and I’m actually going to this one. See you all in DC!
Until next time…
Chris Jobin
Team RIW
Shinjutsei on MTGO