Your first instinct that I was going to include some Eminem-inspired “Mom’s Spaghetti” meme was, in fact, wrong.
But for those of you that showed up strictly for that…here. Click the link. The rest of us are going to talk about Standard while you revel in your garbage postings.
A few weeks ago I talked about how emerge was going to quickly become the “busted” mechanic of Standard going forward. This was met with resistance and a lot of people pointing out that I was almost certainly overreacting and generally being a great big bearded baby.
Welp.
The Pro Tour and Grand Prix out in Portland would like to have a word with you.
Creatures (16)
- 3 Pilgrim's Eye
- 3 Emrakul, the Promised End
- 1 Wretched Gryff
- 4 Gnarlwood Dryad
- 3 Elder Deep-Fiend
- 2 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
Planeswalkers (1)
Lands (21)
Spells (22)
Creatures (22)
- 3 Pilgrim's Eye
- 3 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
- 2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
- 1 Emrakul, the Promised End
- 2 Wretched Gryff
- 4 Elder Deep-Fiend
- 3 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
- 4 Primal Druid
Lands (24)
Spells (14)
Yes, the old favorites are still performing quite respectably. Bant Company is one of the best decks in the format and is now becoming the finesse choice of many top players due to the high skill curve it allows. R/W Humans has sloped off in popularity, and the newly minted “aggro deck,” U/R Thermo-Alchemist, is putting up extremely impressive results. B/W Control and B/W Angels give a strong midrange deck option for those who love grindy plays.
But of course there are very few decks that can stand up to the raw power of Emrakul, the Promised End and the horrors that it surrounds herself with.
B/G Delirium, R/G Ramp Delirium, and Temur Emerge have taken their places as Tier 1 deck choices in Standard. They are powerful, versatile, and capable of soaking up assaults from aggressive, midrange, or control decks. They can go long or turbo out Eldrazi monstrosities to overwhelm an opponent. In short, they are the axis that the metagame rests on nowadays.
But as good as those three decks are…there is a better one.
With the StarCityGames.com Invitational on the horizon, there is only one deck I have been testing and that have been touting to my teammates. Unfortunately, Robert Santana decided to slaughter the entire field in Portland with what I believe is the best deck in Standard with the most tools to be successful. Even SCG standout Jeff Hoogland seemed to agree with me.
At this point we’re fighting spaghetti monsters with spaghetti monsters.
Creatures (12)
- 3 Pilgrim's Eye
- 2 Nissa, Vastwood Seer
- 1 Mindwrack Demon
- 1 Emrakul, the Promised End
- 2 Distended Mindbender
- 3 Ishkanah, Grafwidow
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (24)
Spells (21)
Now I know what you’re going to say: “Mark, this deck just won a Grand Prix! Of course you’re going to say it is good!” Reader, this article was partially written several days before the GP occurred. It’s not so much as a phenomenon as it is that Jund Delirium is the deck that you should either be preparing to play or prepare to play against.
The Moving Parts
Jund Delirium takes the best pieces of G/R Delirium and G/B Delirium and put them together in a far more effective shell with the added bonus of the most powerful emerge creature in this current metagame.
One of the most crucial elements to what sets Jund apart from other Delirium iterations is that Distended Mindbender is present. Of course Elder Deep-Fiend is a ridiculously good Magic card, but Mindbender can cripple an opponent at multiple stages of the game. If cast on turn 4, it completely stunts them, or if you play it a few turns later, it may strip a crucial big spell when they are tapped out.
Two of the best removal spells in Standard work in tandem to hold down aggressive creature starts. Fiery Impulse and Kozilek’s Return were crucial to G/R Delirium’s success at Pro Tour Eldritch Moon. Bant Company is a deck that wants to take the fight to you with creatures that create a snowball effect of card advantage. Holding them down with a well-timed Kozilek’s Return or a Fiery Impulse with spell mastery on a Spell Queller is the difference between winning and losing. Flashing back Return off a Mindbender or Emrakul, the Promised End only adds to the level of control this deck has over opponents’ battlefields.
It also takes Languish and To the Slaughter from G/B and bolsters its ability to withstand early assaults. Having access to multiple potentially game-breaking sweepers is key.
To the Slaughter is a card that I’ve been waiting for to have its day in the sun, and it looks like that moment is upon us. With the upswing in B/W and Abzan planeswalker strategies, this versatile spell gives additional removal that can be used on a situational basis to answer potentially difficult threats like Gideon, Ally of Zendikar or Liliana, the Last Hope.
Speak of the devil and she shall appear…
One of the glaring weaknesses that G/R Delirium has is the inability to exercise recursion, which is a trait the G/B counterpart has. Liliana, the Last Hope is one of the best planeswalkers we have ever seen or will ever see. My rampant use of hyperbole may blunt this statement, but she actually is. Liliana protects herself and makes combat a nightmare for opponents by shrinking their best attacker and blocker. Her ability to curve up from powerful two-drops like Sylvan Advocate or ahead of Languish creates dire situations that players haven’t quite figured out how to play around.
That’s what makes Liliana, the Last Hope so incredible right now. Do you even think $45 is her ceiling?
In this deck Liliana provides every level of power you could want from a planeswalker. She pads your life total by shrinking creatures and her +1 works together very well with Languish to finish off five-toughness monsters. She excels at turning on delirium with her -2 ability and can buy back Ishkanah, Grafwidow; Emrakul, the Promised End; or Distended Mindbender. Her ultimate is something a lot of decks can’t hope to beat, so they will struggle to contain it while overextending often into your mass removal spells.
Last, but of course worth mentioning, are the enablers.
If you’re going to do it…do it with Flare. [Wooooo!—Ed.]
One of my favorite decks of all time was Esper Solar Flare from a few years ago. Cards like Forbidden Alchemy and Unburial Rites did a ton of work for me, and by far it was my most beloved deck to play.
Grapple and Vessel remind me quite a bit of Forbidden Alchemy in that they let you decide on whatever card best suits the situation. Sure, they don’t come with Flashback, but they allow you to choose the best way to approach the game and sculpt your hand with the best and most potent spells. In a deck this synergistic, providing ample fuel for delirium and Emrakul’s cost reduction are the most important avenues to victory, and these both let you dig deeper and deeper into your deck to find answers.
These cards do me proud.
The Invitational and You
This weekend, Jeff Hoogland went strong at the Classic at #SCGNY while Robert Santana walked…yes, walked…into the winner’s circle. These are two different players with two entirely different philosophies regarding deckbuilding that came to the same conclusion: this deck is busted. It appears Jeff played Joel Larsson’s exact 75, while Robert cut the two Nahiri’s Wrath and replaced them with Pulse of Murasa.
In an interview prior to the finals, Robert reasoned that the deck’s real weakness was MTGO darling U/R Thermo-Alchemist, due to the clock they put you on. Pulse of Murasa is able to negate a couple of their burn spells, and that can be the difference maker when it comes to having enough time to start implementing your gameplan.
U/R Thermo-Alchemist wasn’t able to crack the GP Portland Top 8, but in the hands of Todd Anderson it was able to win the Classic. This bodes well for Jund Delirium in that a Grand Prix meta was able to not succumb to this new attempt at a burn deck, but Todd is an extremely well-known Magician who will almost certainly write an article touting the inherent power of the U/R deck. This will influence many people when they decide to sleeve something up for the #SCGINVI.
Recognizing that this is one of the bad matchups for the deck is going to be very important this week. Is that a reason to play Jund? Of course!
Many of the best players in the world battled the Pro Tour and latest Grand Prix with G/B Delirium, and that is a bread-and-butter matchup for Jund. Commenters during Portland also commented that B/W seemed to be, at least on paper, a difficult matchup for Jund. Travis Woo was swept in the finals, succumbing to Distended Mindbender in Game 1 and eventually suffocated by a superior draw in game two. In the end, Jund out-muscled B/W in extremely convincing fashion.
Moving into this weekend, I think there are a few things this deck could do in order to bolster its matchups and improve the sideboard.
I like cards like Tireless Tracker and Infinite Obliteration over things like Dragonmaster Outcast or the fourth Fiery Impulse. After sideboarding in other Emrakul-based matchups, it becomes more about attrition and picking apart the resources of your opponent. G/B decks have cards like Grim Flayer, but your copies of Languish and Kozilek’s Return lose a lot of potency aside from that and get sideboarded out for the most part. Tireless Tracker may provide additional card draw and a simultaneous win condition if unchecked. Den Protector gives you a way to buy back important spells and creatures, but I also would want something to give me extra trumps in emerge and delirium matchups.
Infinite Obliteration is a card I played several copies of in my StarCityGames.com Regionals decklist from two weeks ago that let me defeat multiple emerge opponents by taking Emrakuls or Elder Deep-Fiends. It’s possible that Obliteration can give that additional push needed to combat the expected decks this weekend.
Another strong possibility is the return of Duress as a way to tame the U/R Thermo-Alchemist deck. Several friends have told me the same thing: “I’m having trouble against U/R, but it’s probably not a deck.”
Well…turns out that it’s very real.
Duress is capable of taking away Collective Defiance or even their marquee card, Fevered Visions. This can hamper the U/R deck’s ability to gain traction, and in doing so you are able to get to work with Mindbenders and Emrakul. Transgress the Mind can also do good work, but I think I’d want as much disruption against them as I could muster.
The interesting thing about this weekend will certainly be what innovations come forth from the established decks. With the Pro Tour under our belts, the next stop for Standard’s biggest stage is the #SCGINVI, and I’ll be watching every minute of it.
If you’ll be there, be sure to be smart. Play Jund.
When you don’t know what to do…always play Jund. Just Jund.
There is no Dana. Only Jund.