Jund!
Did I scare you yet?
Reading that word is like watching a cockroach skitter across the floor, draping its antennae across muffin crumbs and forgotten macaroni. Some people are just repulsed.
Jund scares the best of people away. They run into the other room, perhaps to grab their mothers or even wives to dump their problem on another pair of eyes. They grab a book and pound away, but what they don’t even realize is how ineffective their primitive tools are. The cockroach has been around. It snickers its little insecty snicker as it smugly beats its sinister wings and knows it can scurry further if that’s the worst you can do. You have a few thousand years? Peh. The cockroach has been perfectly tuned after thousands of iterations over millions of years. It’s seen everything there is to offer, and nothing short of the end of the world is about to stop its reign.
Sure, every human thinks they are at the top of the animal ladder. Humans are supposed to have a favorable cockroach matchup. (After sideboarding.) However, they’re misinformed. Have you ever tried sitting in a room, one on one fighting a cockroach? Trust me, you’re not favored. Sure, sometimes it will be an old cockroach and you can get him, or he makes too many mistakes and they end up fatal. But, if played perfectly, the cockroach can beat you one on one at every turn.
You don’t want to try to beat the cockroach. No. Kafka had the right idea. Be the cockroach.
It’s not as cool or as flashy. You’re not doing extraneous things like having opposable thumbs or increasing in size, but those are subservient to the main goal: victory. They’ll make the cities. You can rule them.
Today’s article isn’t for the light hearted, or those namby-pamby wimps who are grossed out by the thought of being a cockroach. So grow a pair (of feelers) and dip your evolutionary toe into the Red, Green, and Black strands of DNA that make up Jund.
There are some big questions about Jund out there. Where is Jund at now? Is it still good? What’s left to do? What’s the next step?
But before the question, I want you to consider taking a test.
Go ask five Magic players how their deck’s Jund matchup is.
Common responses?
“About 50/50.”
“Bad game 1, but it gets better after sideboarding.”
“I feel like I’m favored, though I’ve definitely lost to it a lot.”
“Depends on their cascades.”
This test was first brought to my attention by Ari Lax at GP: DC when he kept asking people that very question, and would always get those kind of responses. He did so to a point where it became a running joke, but beneath the joke of it was a very good point: no deck could really claim a good matchup against Jund.
That has since changed, and I think there are three decks that can make reasonable claims against Jund, though even then they aren’t ridiculously favored. Still, the point remains that very few players can claim better than an even Jund matchup against average players with stock builds, let alone good players with tweaked builds.
There is also the myth that Jund requires to no skill to play well, and that is entirely false. I actually believe it to be in the top three decks in Standard as far as skill needed to win goes. Yes, a lot of the plays script themselves. However, you have to make decisions ranging from when to play tapped lands, to when to cast your removal spells, to what to attack with and when, to when is it safe to make a dragon with Sarkhan and, arguably most importantly, when to be the beatdown and when to be the control.
No, the deck isn’t skill intensive in the way a Faeries on Faeries mirror match would be, and yes, you can still play the deck at a quarter of the efficiency it needs to win. However, in every match that I have lost in the past two weeks, I have been able to pinpoint a single error I made that cost me the game.
The cards in Standard are so powerful, so direct in their effects, and players understand what is going on so well that even with decks which are traditionally hard to play like U/W Control, a lot of the plays just script themselves. As a result, instead of the skill being spread out over the course of a game like decks of formats past because you get to make a lot of decisions, and as a result you could occasionally get one wrong, instead you get to make one, maybe two decisions that the entire game hinges on. For better or worse, that still means skill is impacting your games in a powerful way — and I think that’s especially evident the more you play with Jund.
Before going further, here’s my list.
Creatures (13)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (27)
Spells (18)
Sideboard
As you can tell, there are a lot of unusual components to this list you might not expect in the wake of Turtenwalk-esque Jund lists. Since DC, few new lists have just not had the leverage needed to supplant builds that look like his. Throw in the Vengevine and non-Vengevine lists, and you have quite a conflict on your hands.
Here’s my take on the Vengevine conflict.
Vengevine is an entirely absurd cockroach card. With that out of the way, the Jund decks that are using Vengevine are fundamentally different decks. Especially if you’re working with the builds that start cutting Putrid Leech and Blightning and start adding Vengevines, you’re on your way toward building something entirely different. I prefer the non Vengevine lists because they support cards like Blightning better, and I feel like you get to retain more flexibility in card choice. This changes after Magic 2011 (more on that later), but for now I think lists like this are where Jund is at.
With that out of the way, let’s look at the manabase.
You have all of your usual suspects that allow you to actually cast your spells and don the skin of creatures when necessary, but what’s interesting to note is the configuration. What might jump out at you are the four Dragonskull Summits and one Lavaclaw Reachers. I had it at 3 and 4, but, as good as manlands are, you often are trying to rip your fifth land for a Bituminous Blast or Sarkhan the Mad and it absolutely must enter the battlefield untapped. Furthermore, Reaches hasn’t been that great of a manland in my experience. A fifth manland is nice, but I haven’t found a significant want for six.
With four Summits, the number of mana symbols you have works out to be about even among colors. You have 16 Black sources, 16 Green sources, and 17 Red sources. The extra Red source is kind of inevitable because of how your M10 duals work out, and you can’t swap a Mountain because you need all of the basic Mountains against Mythic and Next Level Bant so you can sling a turn 1 Bolt at their Hierarch or Birds. Otherwise, your commitments early and late all kind of even out, so, for better or worse, the mana works best in a configuration like this.
Moving toward the spells, you might notice some drastic changes from my previous list if you’ve been paying attention to my Magic Online lists. For example, I made top eight of an online PTQ slinging only two Lightning Bolts, and with two Lotus Cobras and three Seige-Gangs (And that doesn’t even include the completely different sideboard.).
Two major things have happened since then. One is that I’ve come to a better realization of how the mirror works, and I’ve played significantly with Tommy Ashton’s very good build, which this list has pieces of, that won a PTQ a few weeks back. The second is that the metagame has shifted away from the control decks. Instead, there has been an upturn in green and red decks. This makes Lightning Bolt invaluable because it’s crucial in both of those matchups even though it’s often the weakest card in the deck.
With fewer control decks being played, Cobra’s ability to dodge Spreading Seas became less enticing. It still gave you the potential to nut draw them, but that didn’t happen enough to make it worth including over other slots.
As far as Siege-Gang goes, first off, fewer control decks make him worse. But, moreover, I thought he was insane in the Jund Mirror but, much like Master of the Wild Hunt, he’s only good in ideal situations but ultimately poor if they just keep an answer. If you get to untap with him then yes, Siege-Gang is an amazing mirror card, but you can just Bolt or Blast him so often that it ends up being an unfavorable use of five mana compared to something like, say, a Bituminous Blast or Sarkhan the Mad.
So, with that in mind going over the spells the four Bolts should make sense. Obviously Bloodbraid Elf and Sprouting Thrinax are also inclusions. While some of the lists (mostly those sporting Vengevine) have decided to remove Leech, I think doing so is ridiculous as some of your most powerful draws are backed by Leech. Most matchup statements about Jund also include the quantifier “…if they don’t have Leech.” Playing less then four is entirely wrong.
Despite the Vengevines roaming around, I still think Blighting is too good to not play. The deck needs reach a lot of the time, and Blightning does that while also disabling them early on. The trick is, if you aren’t cascading into it, you need to play it carefully. You shouldn’t just jam it out there and let them get a free Vengevine. Instead, you can hold it in your grip and use it to strip the last two cards from their hand. Often they’ll lead on Vengevine and hold back Bloodbraid Elf or something like Ranger of Eos to bring it back, so Blightning takes care of those backup plans. Furthermore, even if they do discard Vengevine, they won’t have any cards in their hand to immediately rebuy the one they discarded. No, it’s not my favorite card against them and you can just cascade into it, be forced to cast it, and randomly lose, but it’s still an absolutely insane card when they aren’t discarding Vengevines.
The two Terminates, four Pulses, and four Bituminous Blasts are very important to have with the upturn of fast green decks. (And the latter is notably powerful in the mirror.) Often when you’re cascading all you want to hit is an answer to their Knight of the Reliquary or something, and Terminate and Pulse do just that. Plus, despite how clunky Pulse can be sometimes, it is one of your most important preboard cards against Turboland. Additionally, against decks like Bant or even UW, it is crucial you deport Elspeth back to the Maelstrom before she starts creating a lot of tokens.
Sarkhan the Mad is very good when he is good, and poor when he is bad. However, he is the most important card in the mirror match. By maindecking two, you give yourself some percentage in the mirror and the ability to just serve with Dragons when necessary. Against some control draws he can be a card advantage machine, but it often doesn’t turn out that way because of their Manlands. Still, a stream of dragons is a solid, powerful threat against creature decks and something that totally breaks the mirror match.
Finally, the singleton Malakir Bloodwitch is important for a lot of reasons. It originally was a Siege-Gang Commander, but that was just incorrect. First of all, you don’t have many cards for control in your sideboard so you need to gain some extra leverage against U/W somewhere, and Bloodwitch is one of your best threats against them — far better that the Commander. It’s also solid in your Mythic matchup. While is it poor is the Jund mirror, you have enough ammo for them that I’m fine making this concession and just discarding it to a Blightning — or occasionally serving with a 4/4 flier.
Moving past the maindeck, the sideboard is where you find a lot of strange choices. Blood Seeker? Overgrown Battlement? What is going on here?
This is how I view Jund’s position right now.
U/W and U/W/r have both had a major downturn. Even though there was tons of U/W hanging around not even a month ago, between the 15 rounds of a 2.5k tournament and a PTQ last week, along with a handful of online 8 man tournaments, I didn’t face U/W or a variant on it once. Turboland and the resurgence of Red has pretty much evaporated the Blue and White control standby out of the format. The decks that worries the Jund, ranked in popularity, as seems to be the case around here online, is Jund at the top, followed by Mythic/Bant, followed by Turboland, followed by Red. You are pretty advantaged against most other decks you play against, even U/W without many sideboard cards for it.
With that in mind, the Jund mirror is important to attack. Mythic, Turboland, and Red, matchups which I would say are slightly unfavorable in the first game, have risen to popularity because of their Jund matchups. My sideboard solves all of these issues.
Let’s first look at the mirror. Traditionally the mirror is defined by Goblin Ruinblaster. You would take out four Pulses, bring in four Ruinblasters, and call it a day. If you get to four and Ruinblaster them on the play, it sets them way behind and is often enough to win the game in a matchup defined by four- and five-drops.
That’s all fine if you win the first game, but it puts you at a significant disadvantage to win the match if you lose the first game. For this reason, Ruinblaster infuriated me. It was getting to the point where I didn’t even want to board it in on the draw because it so often did nothing when I had to use every card possible to not die to their aggressive Ruinblaster-backed draw. Furthermore, it was a card very good at blowouts on turn four and poor if you get into a topdecking war and they don’t have a manland.
I really dislike cards which are insane when everything goes right, but poor when everything goes wrong. It just makes variance come into play even more, which is not something I wanted to add too. I needed a new plan. So, as I often like to do, I looked for ways to attack the matchup from another angle. I wanted to be jumping when they dived for me; juking left when they kept going straight.
Enter Daniel Hanson and his Overgrown Battlements.
While Dan had them partially for some different reasons and partially for some of the same, I saw the card and knew exactly how I wanted to use it. If their plan is to Ruinblaster you, as it almost assuredly is, Battlement not only negates that plan but allows you to Bloodbraid Elf before them and (if they don’t have a Ruinblaster on turn 4) Sarkhan before them… even on the draw! Furthermore, it stymies an aggressive draw by blocking Bloodbraid Elf, Sprouting Thrinax, and Goblin Ruinblaster without dying.
If you want to be even more advantaged in the Jund Mirror, you can board in Battlements and Ruinblasters. I tried that for a little while and it led to some absolutely sick draws while being able to both deal with their plan and deliver Ruinblasters of your own as early as turn three, but it ultimately just stole too many sideboard slots. Still, if you expect to play against Jund half of the tournament, it may be something to consider.
Some of you might be bemoaning the loss of Ruinblaster against control, and I definitely can’t disagree. Losing the blowouts of Ruinblaster against control sucks. However, the other upside of Overgrown Battlement is that it can singlehandedly buy you enough time against Mono Red to win. Right now, I would rather be boarding a card that is great against Red than trying to make the already fine and much less prevalent control matchup better. Between the choice of a card that’s good in the mirror and against Red and a card that’s good in the mirror and against UW, I’d much rather have the former in the current metagame.
Next up: another draft common. Though this one doesn’t even always make the 40 card decks! However, I can assure you, Blood Seeker is absolutely insane. It alone has carried me to tons of tons and match victories. I even won a match the other day when I only cast Blood Seekers as creatures!
What is it for? Well, if it isn’t immediately obvious, it’s for Turboland. They’re off the Eldrazi plan and at most have a single Rampaging Baloths in the maindeck. Instead, they’re all in on Avenger of Zendikar. Its plant creating ability isn’t optional, so, aside from Lotus Cobra powered Avengers, Blood Seeker often represents at least eight damage — and usually more. Plus, it gets around Narcolepsy and nugs them for all of their random plant tokens from Khalni Garden. I have yet to lose a match to Turboland since I added Blood Seeker to my sideboard.
I really wish I could take credit for this one as it feels like just the kind of thing I would do to scour a spoiler and come up with some random unplayed card to beat a matchup. Zaiem Beg beat me too it — but as soon as he told me I began trying it, and what sounded like a cute answer soon became an entire matchup breaker. If you want to beat Turboland — and you should because it’s popular right now — maxing out on Blood Seekers is the way to go.
Now, obviously there are things Turboland can do to interact with your two mana 1/1. They can set up complicated Jace turns where they play Jace, pass, then bounce it on their turn, or, alternatively, Time Warp with Jace. If you have no pressure, they can run Avenger into it and drop to a low life total. Some people might even try and Sphinx of Jwar Isle you. However, if all of those things sound hard to set up, that’s because they are. You have to have some other action, but you don’t even need that much of it. Two Blood Seekers represents a particular rough spot because they can’t use just Jace to get out of it. Some people have been using Thought Hemorrhage, and I think Blood Seeker is just better. It’s easier to cascade into, deals damage on its own, can’t be Negated, and costs less. It’s an excellent addition to the deck.
Next up is Cunning Sparkmage. The Mythic and Bant matchups usually hinge around killing their mana sources, and Cunning Sparkmage does that like none other. It does cost three, so there are games where it is slow out of the gates, but if you have a Lightning Bolt or are on the play it gets the job done like few other cards. Once you can control that angle of the game, you should be well on the way to winning.
I prefer it to cards like Forked Bolt or Pyroclasm because it is repeatable. Mythic has a lot of redundancy, so even if you burn away two birds they can still just drop a Cobra. Sparkmage is better more often and over time, especially when you take ticking down Planeswalkers into consideration. It is also highly relevant that it plus Bituminous Blast adds up to five damage so you can kill Baneslayer and Soverigns of Lost Alara. It was a great Tommy Ashton innovation and I don’t think I would want to go back to battling the Mythic matchup without them.
I wish I could play more Doom Blades, but alas, there is only room for two. The two maindeck terminates kind of help make up for one, though. It’s very good against Red, Mythic, and Bant, where you just want to load up on ways to kill their guys early so you can dominate the game.
Finally, the one Sarkhan is just to have a third in the mirror. With the single Malakir Bloodwitch in your deck you have five cards to take out usually, and Sarkhan is just the best extra card to have in the mirror. I have been Goblin Ruinblastered and out cascaded 4 to 0, and a single Sarkhan has still managed to turn the game around in my favor. It’s also very important to have yours before they have theirs, because just to trade with one they have to spend a turn casting Sarkhan and then they still have a dragon to face down. As a one of the mirror Jund in the sideboard, it’s just the right card.
Though the cards are pretty straightforward to bring in each matchup, sometimes you might not know what to take out or how to play each matchup. Here’s how I typically sideboard, though as always, use your own discretion based on what you think will work and don’t just blindly follow advice. For example, I find myself boarding in Cunning Sparkmage in the most random matchups just because I want a repeatable damage source or have too many dead cards.
Jund
-3 Maelstrom Pulse, -1 Dragonskull Summit, -1 Malakir Bloodwitch
+4 Overgrown Battlement, +1 Sarkhan the Mad
My only advice in game 1 of the Jund mirror is to play good Magic. Don’t blow your removal too early, don’t run into their Lightning Bolts, and know when to be the beatdown and when to be the control deck. If they aren’t Vengevine Jund, then cast your Blightnings early on to strip them of resources since the mirror is mana and spell hungry. Sarkhan the Mad is your best card.
After sideboarding, they are going to want to be the beatdown and make the game about Goblin Ruinblaster. You are usually going to want to be the control deck and counteract their Ruinblasters and aggressive starts with Overgrown Battlement. Keeping your seven card hand is important, but if you’re on the draw and going to be crushed by a Ruinblaster then you may want to ship it back. Also keep yourself aware of openings involving leading only on basic lands for the first three turns. It’s not that hard to do, and entirely stops the Ruinblaster plan.
On the play, it might be okay to take out the last Pulse to put the land back in. However, after playing with 31 mana sources in the mirror after sideboarding, I am confident it is one too many on the draw. On the play, though, you really need to be able to keep your hand so Blightning isn’t a disaster so having all 27 lands is okay. You can also take out the last pulse for a Cunning Sparkmage, which isn’t terrible in the mirror.
Turboland
-4 Sprouting Thrinax, -2 Sarkhan the Mad, -1 Malakir Bloodwitch, -1 Bituminous Blast
+4 Blood Seeker, +2 Doom Blade, +2 Cunning Sparkmage
On the play, you want to sideboard like that. On the draw, cut another blast for the third Sparkmage.
Maelstrom Pulse is your most important card aside from Blood Seeker. Game one, the games you win often involve turn two Putrid Leech, followed by Pulsing all of their tokens away and then dealing with their 5/5 late game. Oracle of Mul Daya is very important to kill, which is why you want Bituminous Blast in the matchup. (Though on the draw it’s a little too slow, so you can cut one.) After sideboarding, while I wouldn’t say you should mulligan aggressively for Blood Seeker, you definitely want it enough that I would keep most hands with at least three lands on the play (maybe two on the draw) and a Seeker.
The games can be grinds sometimes, and you often feel behind, but with Blood Seeker I’m convinced the matchup is very much in your favor. (Until they start evolving to combat your Seekers, that is.)
Mythic
-4 Sprouting Thrinax, -2 Sarkhan the Mad
+4 Cunning Sparkmage, +2 Doom Blade
This matchup is pretty clear cut. Kill what they play and try not to get blown out. While a lot of people cut Leech and/or Blightning against them after sideboarding, I don’t like that at all. Blightning is like two removal spells against them, and when you’ve choked their mana producers you want to strip them of the threats they’re holding before they hit the threshold to actually cast them. Though it’s true that Leech is smaller than most of what they play, in the games where you have turn 2 Leech, turn three Sparkmage Leech is going to deal a lot of damage and put you in a position to take the game.
Next Level Bant
-3 Sprouting Thrinax, -2 Blightning, -1 Sarkhan the Mad
+4 Cunning Sparkmage, +2 Doom Blade
I like leaving in two Blightnings because, despite their Vengevines, they still have a lot of very potent cards you can nail after they cast a Vengevine. If they don’t play one by turn four or five, they probably don’t have one and you are free to Blightning away. I like leaving one Sarkhan in just as a strong card to draw late when they’re trying to get card advantage and gum up the board. Thrinax is alright here, but I would rather have two Blightnings and a single Sarkhan.
Mono Red
-4 Maelstrom Pulse, -2 Sarkhan the Mad
+4 Overgrown Battlement, +2 Doom Blade
You are definitely the control here. Trade straight across whenever you can, try to never pump Putrid Leech, run them out of cards, and then gain advantage going long with Bituminous Blast. I tried bringing in Sparkmage for a while, and while it looks good on paper for dealing with their elementals, it usually just ate a burn spell then gave them a window to Ball Lightning me or something equally horrendous. You could experiment with bringing some in over the Bloodwitch or Leech, but I like both of those for trading with what they play.
U/W
-1 Lightning Bolt, -1 Bituminous Blast
+ 1 Doom Blade, +1 Sarkhan the Mad
You’re a little short on cards to bring in here, but it can be surprisingly hard for them to win if you have a bunch of removal spells for their handful of creatures and just Pulse an Elspeth. I like leaving in 3 Bolts because they’re better to Cascade into on a blank board than a removal spell and they help deal with Elspeth. Although Bituminous Blast is actually pretty good against UW, you don’t want your hand clogged with them which is why I move down to three.
The only other thing to note about this build is if control is much more prevalent than red in your area, I would cut Battlements for Ruinblasters. Still, though, I prefer the Battlement plan in the mirror.
Now, this is what I would do right now for the last few PTQ’s and the online scene. However, once M11 comes out, the deck needs to move in a different direction. I think Mana Leak and Obstinate Baloth might finally push what I think is the best build away from Blightning and onto Vengevine. People are going to be packing Baloths, and, while good, a Loxodon Hierarch is not unbeatable. A free one, however, very well might be. Vengevine is very good against Mana Leak strategies, and, without Blightning in our deck, gets a lot better. I want to reserve most of my comments until the full M11 spoiler is out, but I think that’s the avenue I’m going to try when the format switches as it gets closer to Nationals.
Hopefully this helps you smash everyone in Standard, and allows you to be that Red, Black, and Green cockroach that is going to take down one of the last few PTQs. Let me know if you have any questions in the forums or over e-mail at gavintriesagain at gmail dot com and I’d be more than happy to answer them about the deck. Talk to you soon!
Gavin Verhey
Team Unknown Stars
Rabon on Magic Online, Lesurgo everywhere else