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Video Daily Digest: Vraska Jund

Jund isn’t just for Modern! Ross Merriam highlights a successful Standard list featuring Vraska, Relic Seeker that might provide a change of pace at the SCG Cincinnati Standard Classic!

For today’s Daily Digest, I’ve enlisted the help of a friend and expert in the field of all things Jund. When it comes to the black, red, and green, no one is more knowledgeable than Jund Guy, so here are his thoughts on today’s deck:

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Why is everyone playing all this Temur nonsense? Temur doesn’t even have black! And they just reprinted Duress! Who needs Negate when you have the cheaper, better version?

Black also gives you access to the best removal. Fatal Push is obviously great and Vraska’s Contempt gives you a great answer to The Scarab God (which is the only card Jundy enough to make me want to play Islands in my deck) and Hazoret the Fervent. You can’t Jund if you don’t have answers to everything and they don’t let us play with Thoughtseize in Standard anymore (the jerks).

You can round out the removal suite with Abrade to answer pesky artifacts without resorting to narrow Naturalize effects and Doomfall, which is great because it’s a removal spell that isn’t dead Game 1 against control. I always lose to those stupid control decks Game 1 because I draw too much removal, but how do ya like me now, huh? I thought so.

And look at the threats you have in Jund! Three good planeswalkers! Three! They do all the things planeswalkers should do: kill things and draw cards. That’s all I want to do. That’s all anyone wants to do. I should probably count Vance’s Blasting Cannons as a fourth planeswalker here, since it draws cards and kills things, so four!

In Jund, even the threats kill things. Glorybringer and Noxious Gearhulk are perfect Jund cards. Kill your thing, make a thing. Two for one. Game. Jund great.

The coup de grace is Carnage Tyrant. When you’re done killing their stuff and drawing cards and you’re getting a little hungry so you want to end the game, rawr! Nuff said.

Why doesn’t everyone play Jund? Jund!

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Thanks for your insights, Jund Guy! The one thing I’d add is that Channeler Initiate plays an important role here as an early mana creature for a deck with a fairly high curve that turns into a sizable body later on so you don’t flood. Attrition decks have to be hyper-wary of flooding, even with card advantage, and having an accelerant that stays relevant definitely helps there.

It’s hard to go wrong with a pile of powerful removal, threats, and card advantage, which is probably why Jund Guy likes Jund so much, but if you’re bored with the top tier of Standard decks right now, this is a great place to turn for a change of pace.