Billings MT 8012014 Burning Jund Aggro Deck Tech and Saturday Mini-Con MTG Events

Those who regard the Gruul as savage simpletons underestimate the subtle power of their shamans.

Prior to the rotation of innitrad block I built a deck I dubbed jundigo. The idea was pretty self explainatory. Kill your opponent on turn 4 or force them to do something drastic to wipe the board and then every card you draw after that is going to finish the game because everything has undying, haste, trample, evasion or some other devastating mechanic. Here's a link to a run down one of the last incarnations of the deck.


After rotation the loss of buddy lands just made playing jund aggro or a 3 color deck at all impossible. I was forced to go to mono-red to continue playing competitively. With the printing of M15 and painlands not only was I able to put the band back together but the mana would be more consistent than after with 0 chance of any land coming in to play tapped. The catch is nearly every single land in the deck deals me damage when I play it. 12 shocklands 6 painlands. We'll lets rip the bandaid off and look at the deck.

Version 1.1 7302014 4-1

I was not really sure what my removal package should be but I knew my main fear was courser of kruphix. A wall that kills almost everything in my deck, can easily be played turn two and gains life very turn. My golgari charms are a great answer to this but I didn't feel like that was enough so I brought in 4 abrupt decay
which also hits banishing light, chained to the rocks, detention sphere and aggro or hexproof enchants like unflinching courage.

I ended up 4-1. I've made a bit of a foobar again and forgot the start taking notes on my matches. I got busy and by the time I had a chance to start writing this my matches are all foggy :(. Won't happen again I swear!

Last night was quiet due to Modern season we only had a few standard players and I went 3-0. Rather than spend time detailing the match ups I think it would be better to go over how the deck works since I don't ever really do that. Here's the latest version.




Version 1.2 8012014 3-0

I think the mistake a lot of people make is finding a cool combo and trying to haphazardly build around that. This forces you to hope to draw to it. As I mentioned in the previous post this is fine in legacy with the bizillion dig effects it has. Standard is so random it's almost a game of poker. That's I lean in the direction of having 3 and 4 combos and win cons. Sure I wanna draw a full house but I also want to still be able to win with a pair of 2's Ace high.

Turn 1 I always want an  Experiment One or Rakdos cackler. This is very important. Almost mulligan worthy if I don't see one of these. It's worth mentioning if you want to see a particular card turn 1 play 8 of it, maybe even 9. Same goes for turn 2.

Turn 2 I have 3 options some number of burning-tree emissary, madcap skills, and or spiked jester. some way to evolve experiment one, spiked jester for pressure, madcap skills to be an ahole, though a burning-tree emissary and a rakdos cackler on turn 2 is not the worst. whatever happens you wanna deal 5 damage on turn 2.

Turn 3, If you were able to create any of those potential board states the world is kind of your oyster. Preferably they did so minor board building not realizing how much gas you could potentially have left in your hand. Last night I had at one point a board of experiment one, burning-tree, burning-tree, madcap skills on the experiment one and turn 3 I played a 3/3 dreg mangler with haste which evolved my experiment one into a 6/3 that can only be blocked by 2 or more creatures and has regenerate. Polukranos who? So at this point I don't care what they have on the board I'm swinging for 13 damage on turn 3.  block whatever you want go bananas. I usually have a gore-clan rampager still in my hand this game is over.

Turn 4 is where the mogis maruader and spike jester tend to come into play as a combo. Think of the Mogis maruader as a replacement for hellrider or Falkenrath Aristocrat. What's cute is the mogis marauders text reads as follows.

When Mogis's Marauder enters the battlefield, up to X target creatures each gain intimidate and haste until end of turn, where X is your devotion to black.(Each  in the mana costs of permanents you control counts toward your devotion to black.)

This means if you have the devotion via cards like spiked jester or dreg mangler on the table you can give anything you play haste and intimidate. So lets say you have an experiment one, burning-tree, and marauder on turn 4 in hand, spiked jester and dreg mangler on board. you can play experiment one, burning-tree, marauder giving them all haste and intimidate...

The gore-clan rampager is surprisingly the most unnecessary maindeck card. It's mostly just there for teh trample effect. It doesn't have haste. It doesn't combo with anything. It just kind of pushes that last bit of damage through when someone has managed to stabilize after turn 4. I rarely if ever play it as a creature. It's just gonna die honestly. 

Seismic Stomp was a last minute move to the mainboard to provide some late game evasion and synergy with burning-tree shaman. I don't see it staying I was just filling a curve spot. 

Sideboard

When sideboarding the first thing I do is take out all the gore-clan rampagers. They don't combo with anything and removing them doesn't hurt my combos or curve. I might take out the abrupt decays if they are a dead card.

1x Dark Betrayal

2x Destructive Revelry

2x Ultimate Price

1x Doom Blade

4x Thoughtseize

2x Domri Rade

3x Mutavault

Dark betrayal is a cheap early effect against mono-black throwing a wall or threat at me like lifebane zombie or nightveil specter on turn 3 to slow me down.

Destructive Revelry - comes in against anything heavy on enchantments and synergizes with burning-tree

Ultimate price and doomblade are very situational. Honestly I haven't been able to justify bringing them in yet, they may come out of the deck in the future.

Thoughtseize all four of these come in against anything I don't have a strict answer to because they're cheap and don't hurt my curve.

Domri rade and mutavault come in against control. This is a new strat I'm trying against control. I had a crushing loss against mathew last week playing Naya control. He ran 4 anger of the gods mainboard. I wracked my brain trying to figure out a way to deal with that. I got him down to under 5 life both games but he beat me solid 2-0 angering 3 times of over the course of the two games and stabilizing both times near death. I don't see a defensive measure I can take that doesn't break up my combos so I think the best thing to do is bring in mutavault which dodges anger of the gods and Domri rade to keep my card advantage going. Naya control doesn't play a lot of 3 and under drops and even less after sideboard so in a change of pace I'd pull out the abrupt decays and one gore-clan rampager....

MINI-CON

There's a scifi/fantasy convention going on down at North Park today you can find more details here

Kab Sports cards is going to be running Draft and Modern Tournaments today with a box of M15 as the first prize in Modern. As soon as I finish with this I'm gonna head down and help run the booth with Kris. You should come by and...do whatever it is you do at these things I've never been to one. I don't even have my chun-li costume ready :(

Modern is at noon the entry is $10.

M15 Draft at 2:30pm Entry is $15