There have been a lot of awesome new decks being debuted recently, what with the first week of PTQs, StarCityGames.com Atlanta Open, the first results from European National Qualifiers, and so on. But, like, let’s be real. Jund has had Standard in a deathgrip for a while. Even if Rise of the Eldrazi will shake up Standard to the point where Jund is dethroned, people are still going to take a while to adapt. You’re going to play against Jund at Regionals on the fifteenth. You’re going to play against it in your next PTQ. You’ll probably play against it in the PTQ after that. You need to have a plan.
I don’t have the answers for beating Jund with every deck in the format, but I’ve been working on various builds of Fireball Blue over the last few weeks, tweaking and tuning to be sure I have an edge against Jund.
The final list I recommend for playing against Jund post-board is at the end of the article. The rest of the article details the evolution of that list from the Magic Online PTQ lists, and explains how numbers were adjusted to deal with the myriad problems Jund presents. Essentially, the final list treats the matchup as a long war of attrition where the Blue-White deck seeks to trade with Jund, perhaps getting an extra card out of Wall of Omens or Day of Judgment, maybe losing one to Blightning or Bloodbraid Elf, and then recouping all of those cards with an X-spell. Mind Spring is the real backbreaker, but Martial Coup is also very strong. Baneslayer Angel remains to close out long games and provide a few free wins when Jund has to burn an early Pulse on Wall or simply doesn’t draw removal.
Putrid Leech is Jund’s best threat against you in the early game; you want to hit that guy with Path to Exile or Celestial Purge as quickly as possible. Wall of Omens can park in front of Bloodbraid Elf or Sprouting Thrinax, and hopefully Elspeth can hang out behind Wall and make even more blockers. Blue-White has such a dominating end game compared to Jund that you just want to grind out the early turns and survive long enough to let your Angels and X-spells take over. Blightning is usually not a big deal unless their draw is exactly Leech, Blightning, Elf flip Blightning, which is admittedly very hard to beat. Try to hold up Flashfreeze for Garruk Wildspeaker; that guy can be pretty frustrating.
As a general rule, I don’t test very many games with maindecks. I play a few in order to get a feel for what is important in the preboard matchup and what cards could conceivably be brought in as trumps, but I try to play as many games as possible after boarding. I try as many strategies as possible, change numbers around, figuring out what the most important interactions and cards are, and so on. I’ve been doing this a lot with Blue-White and Jund specifically, starting with, again, ___SipItHolla’s list from the last Magic Online PTQs:
It didn’t take very long after I started playing maindeck games before I wanted to cut Knight of the White Orchid for Wall of Omens. White Orchid is pretty awesome against Bloodbraid Elf, but having to draw Borderpost or do some weird sequencing to get the extra card out of Knight was a lot of work compared to tapping 1W, drawing a card and blanking Sprouting Thrinax in addition to Bloodbraid Elf. After cutting the Knights, I also cut the Fieldmist Borderposts for Sejiri Refuge; gaining a life is more valuable than the occasional ability to ramp from three to five mana. This change is a little more debatable; accelerating to five mana in your Baneslayer Angel deck obviously has a lot of value. Now, in the Jund matchup specifically, you are going to be way ahead in any game where you have an unanswered Angel regardless of whether or not you are Slaying Banes on turn four or turn five; rarely will you actually need to be ramping towards, say, Martial Coup. (Against mono-red, sure, you want Angel in play as soon as possible, but I am way more concerned with Putrid Leech than I am Goblin Guide, and gaining a life while interacting on turn three also has value.) Gaining an extra one or two life, on the other hand, can have a lot of value in games you are trying to close out before the other guy draws running Bolts or Blightnings.
As I kept playing more games, I kept becoming more and more frustrated with Oblivion Ring. Having a lot of Oblivion Rings gives you a lot of outs to Putrid Leech and Garruk Wildspeaker, and answering Sprouting Thrinax with Ring is certainly much more satisfying than answering it with Day of Judgment. On the other hand, if you Oblivion Ring something and make Maelstrom Pulse live, you’re in bad shape. If they ever get to Pulse two Rings, you are probably just completely kold.
At the same time, all of Jund’s manlands were pretty frustrating. I stabilized in multiple games only to lose to a Ravine that was very very angry with me. Putrid Leech was also proving hard to beat, so I cut two Rings for more copies of Path to Exile. This made me a little softer to Garruk, but Wall of Omens was proving reasonably effective against Garruk; it was surely not good for me when they got a stream of 3/3s, but Wall could hold one in check while I looked for an answer to Garruk. Negate was also doing a lot of work against the Green planeswalker, although I was pretty unhappy with Negate overall.
Day of Judgment fluctuated between “awesome” when I was using it to kill two Putrid Leeches on turn three and “garbage” when I was glaring at Day with two Thrinaxes in play. Between manlands, Bloodbraid Elf, and Sprouting Thrinax, Jund is pretty resilient to mass removal. Still, having Day is important against draws that feature multiple Leeches, and if you can exile Thrinax and force them to commit, say, Leech and Elf, Day will serve you quite well. Martial Coup for five is totally different; the soldiers give you a threat, protect you from manlands, and fight Saprolings. I trumped many Broodmate Dragons by going large with Coup. Do be sure to leave up a white source so that you can Path whatever Soldier they attempt to Maelstrom Pulse.
I also wasn’t super happy with the mana in the list from the PTQ. I wanted access to a Tectonic Edge virtually every game, because I had a lot of sequences where I would play Day of Judgment or two spot removal spells in the midgame and have some mana left over, but would also have a manland to deal with. Even if Jund draws multiple manlands and you only have one Tectonic Edge, you’re still in reasonable shape because of the tempo swing you get whenever you Edge an activated manland. Spreading Seas attacks manlands, sure, but you’re essentially obligated to Spreading Seas their turn one Savage Lands, and holding Seas into the midgame specifically for manlands while you’re being attacked by Elf and Thrinax is painful.
I actually pretty unhappy with Spreading Seas. It was never like I drew Seas and it was just awful, but neither did it contribute to any fundamental gameplan. I could delay their Putrid Leech and Thrinax for a turn, but casting Spreading Seas on the draw when they had Leech in play would usually just lead to Blightning, and they could always cast Bloodbraid Elf on time. Drawing two Seas on the play gave me a few free wins, but those were few and far between. Sure, Seas replaces itself, but when you have twenty-eight or more mana sources in your deck, you need to ensure your spells are powerful enough that you don’t just flood out. The color I had the most success at shutting off was Black, which could free up Baneslayer Angel, but once the other guy knows you have Seas they can hold a Catacombs or a Swamp until they play it and Pulse you in the same turn.
The cards that were performing very well against Jund will come as no great surprise. I won almost all of the games where I untapped with Baneslayer Angel. Jund just had to show a Maelstrom Pulse or be just kold. Wall of Omens was fantastic; it was gaining me four or six or more life every game. Elspeth was excellent; if she could hide behind Wall of Omens, I could amass enough Soldiers to withstand any obscene Bloodbraid turn that didn’t involve Maelstrom Pulse, and she could also send the 1/1s to the skies to take out Garruk. I was also pretty far ahead in any game where I was able to untap after a big Mind Spring; in any attrition war, drawing four or more cards is pretty good, and the Jund matchup certainly qualifies. Using Everflowing Chalice to power up Mind Spring and Martial Coup was also exciting; I wanted more Chalices.
Whenever my opponent cast Blightning, I usually had mixed feelings. On the one hand, playing Blightning instead of a threat was usually pretty good for me, although Jund tends to sequence turn three Blightnings only when their hand also contains Putrid Leech and Bloodbraid Elf, and that draw is hard to beat. Getting Blightninged on turn five or so is also frustrating, though at that point you usually have enough lands that you can afford to discard some unless you are working towards a big x-spell. In general, when you get hit by Blightning, you want to discard in such a way that you are drawing as live as possible, so don’t be afraid to discard lands if you have spells you can cast immediately. Sometimes, of course, you are working towards five mana and Angel and have to choose between the fifth land and a removal spell, and those choices are never easy, but while Blightning was frustrating, I found that I was losing more games to aggressive Leech draws than to multiple Blightning draws.
With all of this in mind, I decided to try the following postboard configuration against Jund:
Creatures (12)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (26)
Spells (18)
The extra Tectonic Edges demanded a higher land count. I had to cut the fourth Chalice out of consideration for a need for colored sources, but Chalice is pretty awesome, and so is drawing multiples. I cut Sphinx of Jwar Isle when I added Gideon Jura in order to keep the curve fairly low, and went up to the maximum number on Paths because it and Oblivion Ring were essentially my only answer to Putrid Leech that didn’t cost a million mana. Flashfreeze comes in as a catch-all that is particularly efficient against Garruk, Blightning, and Broodmate Dragon. Elspeth hit the bench because of all the fours, but I wasn’t too thrilled with that change. I was pretty excited to try Kor Firewalkers, though; it wouldn’t solve my problems with Putrid Leech, but it was pretty sweet against Elf and Thrinax, and would serve to draw removal away from my Angels.
It’s important to recognize the various ways your opponents can construct their deck after sideboarding as well. Because of Wall of Omens, I expect most Jund players to leave their removal in, and possibly even sideboard additional cards like Deathmark as an extra hedge against Baneslayer Angel that they can also use on Wall as needed. Even though I expect removal spells, I leave in all the Angels; you still get free wins when they don’t draw Pulse, and sometimes they have to kill your Walls just to get through. In the early game, you can just discard Angels to Blightning, and as AJ Sacher pointed out, if they Deathmark your turn five Angel, it means they didn’t kill you with a real card on turn 4.
The most common sideboard cards for Jund to bring in against Blue-White are Goblin Ruinblaster, Malakir Bloodwitch, Great Sable Stag, and additional expensive bombs like Broodmate Dragon or Siege-Gang Commander. Stag is no big deal because of Wall of Omens and all of your removal spells, but Ruinblaster can be frustrating and Bloodwitch can cause substantial problems. Bloodwitch essentially blanks your first Angel, and if they have Bloodwitch plus a removal spell or you don’t have an Angel, removing Bloodwitch can be pretty hard.
My results with the above postboard configuration were mixed. Firewalker was totally awesome against Thrinax and Elf, but it’s pretty bad if they have Putrid Leech or Garruk instead. It’s actually pretty frustrating to draw Firewalker in the latter scenarios, because you know that you’ve basically done this to yourself: you boarded in a card, drew it, and it was essentially blank because it was completely the wrong answer to the threat the other guy presented. Also, if you have Firewalker, you have fewer answers to Putrid Leech. This means you want more copies of Day of Judgment or Oblivion Ring. Adding more Rings puts you back into Maelstrom Pulse blowout situations, but adding more Days when you are also trying to block with Firewalkers is pretty awkward, especially when you are blocking, you know, Sprouting Thrinax.
Games with Gideon were sort of weird. What usually happened was that I would play him and kill a guy, and then he would get attacked below two. If they had Garruk I could Abyss it, but if they didn’t it was sort of awkward. He’s awesome in conjunction with other planeswalkers or Wall or like a Path, but I felt like he was kind of extraneous in all of the games where he was totally dominating. It’s sort of weird to be like “yeah, killed two guys, gained six or so life…kinda mediocre” but that’s how I felt. I’d certainly rather have Baneslayer Angel, for example. Flashfreeze was an excellent role-player, though Oblivion Ring kept being awkward against Pulse.
I didn’t particularly miss Spreading Seas; the more games I played the more I just found myself wanting to pick a bunch of fights, make a bunch of one-for-one trades, match their Bloodbraids with Walls, and use Mind Spring to break the symmetry.
Devout Lightcaster made a very brief appearance, but while I found that although Goblin Ruinblaster wasn’t usually a problem unless I had to fight through multiples on the draw without Everflowing Chalice, Ruinblaster was pretty good at shutting off the third source of white, and Lightcaster, while awesome against Leech/Thrinax draws, wasn’t good enough to compensate for all of the times I couldn’t cast him until after I had Baneslayer in play. It also didn’t fight Malakir Bloodwitch very well, which was the card I was having the most trouble beating.
Gideon wasn’t any help against Bloodwitch, either, so I tagged Sphinx of Jwar Isle back in and was very happy with the results; Sphinx is awesome on basically every board, but he is particularly strong against Bloodwitch, and gives you an attacker when the board stalls in a Baneslayer/Bloodwitch standoff. I also added Celestial Purge, which was basically just what the doctor ordered against Putrid Leech; with Path, I had a lot of answers to Leech, which let me get into the midgame at a more comfortable life total. Fewer Leeches to contend with also made Wall of Omens better. Cutting Firewalkers to make room for Purge was a pretty easy fit. Elspeth also came back in to help against Garruk, act as a Wall, and act as a super-Wall with Wall of Omens.
(Mind Control is another alternative to Malakir Bloodwitch, if that’s how you want to roll.)
Lastly, I cut Jace, the Mind Sculptor to make room for the final few cards. Throughout all of my testing, I was consistently unimpressed with Jace. To be sure, in games where I had two spot removal spells in the first three turns and could play him without pressure, he was very good. In those situations, you can Brainstorm and force their next turn to be Blightning or Bloodbraid Elf, or you untap and show them anything, like the deuce of spades anything, and they can’t possibly win. But if you’re behind on the board, Jace is pretty loose. If they just have a single creature when you Jace, you can bounce it and be in okay shape if they don’t Bloodbraid you…but if they only have Thrinax or Leech, probably the best case scenario for you is that they have Blightning. More likely, their hand is all fours, and all of their fours are awesome against you and particularly good against Jace. And if they have two creatures, Jace is four mana, Unsummon, gain three life. If you’re lucky, it kills half of a Broodmate Dragon.
Now consider again the first scenario. You’ve killed their Leech and their Thrinax, and you’re going into the midgame at twenty with four mana untapped. There’s not a lot that you need to be super worried about in this position, and you’ll probably be fine as long as you have almost any spell; Elspeth, Coup, Spring, more removal, anything. You don’t need Jace to win in that situation. And when you’re behind, he’s not that good at bailing you out. I cut him and went up to four Mind Springs to recoup card advantage going long. I just trade, trade, trade into the late game and then reload on Mind Spring or cast Martial Coup and just overwhelm them. The final postboard configuration against Jund:
Creatures (10)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (26)
Spells (22)
The Days act as a catch-all against Garruk and Leech; the Oblivion Ring was cut for Flashfreeze because I was never super excited to cast Oblivion Ring but I was always happy to Flashfreeze a Blightning or a Garruk.
This is a postboard list, obviously. I’ve left it that way because I expect people to generally choose their own adventure when it comes to their maindeck, and presenting a maindeck with a specific sideboard plan won’t be as useful for those people. This list supposes that you brought in three Flashfreeze and three Celestial Purge, and you probably boarded out two to four copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor. The last few slots might be Negates, more Days of Judgment or Oblivion Rings if you want more ammo against the Mythic decks, or perhaps Gideon Jura if you want him maindeck for other matchups. Personally, I have three copies of Jace and some slots that are still in flux between more Negates, more planeswalkers, and more removal spells.
Good luck in Regionals. May you defeat many Savage Lands.
Max McCall
max dot mccall at gmail dot com