Jund is back with a vengeance!
As I ‘ve been doing for the past few months, I’ll build a deck and play it for 2x weeks at 2x stores and see how it fares. I wasn’t able to win BOTH of the tournaments these past two weeks (Darn it! My 3 win in a row streak is broken!), but I won the LA Mood battle 10-1 (5-0) and only went 6-4 (2-2) at Imperial. I had to face BOTH of my playtest partners at Imperial, and lost to Eric playing WW Humans and Dobbs playing Bant Pod.
Congrats to Dobbs BTW! He not only won the tournament ON HIS BIRTHDAY but we went to the casino after and each won $17! WE’RE RICH, BITCHES!! Hahaha. HBD again Mr.D! :)
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Here is the deck list!
Creatures
4x Birds of Paradise
4x Skinshifter
4x Daybreak Ranger
3x Bloodline Keeper
2x Oliva Voldaren
2x Wurmcoil Engine
2x Inferno Titan
21
Spells
3x Arc Trail
4x Rampant Growth
3x Garruk Relentless
1x Batterskull
11
Lands
2x Kessig Wolf Run
23x Other Lands that make colors!
25
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Every single card aside from Rampant Growth is Card Advantage and has the potential to run a 2-for-1 on your opponent OR even more!
Daybreak Ranger is insane if he resolves on Turn 2. Versus control he’s a healthy 4/4 for 3 and against aggro he’s an unstoppable machine gun. I played 1x of him against a tempered steel opponent and that’s all I had to do to win! He stayed active and picked off a guy every turn… even through a resolved tempered steel!
BoP and Rampant Growth are there to set up a T3 4 drop… of which I found there to be waaayyyy too many! Sometimes you’d get stuck if you didn’t draw that 4th land, which was what happened to me when I lost VS. both Dobbs AND Eric. Even w / 25 lands and 8 accelerators you still run that risk, but I feel that the land base and accelerator choices are correct for the time being.
Olivia / Bloodline Keeper were impressive to say the least! If I was untapping w / Olivia, I was going to win. At one point I had 2x Active Bloodline Keepers with 4 other Vampires on the board… one of which was Olivia! I still lost that game to a pro-almost-my-entire-deck Mirran Crusader that I couldn’t block, but if I’d had one more turn…
I was originally trying a mix of different finishers in the 6 drop spot, but found that Inferno Titan and Wurmcoil tended to work out the best. Both are great vs. Control, but they are superior vs. Aggro. Either of them could have blocked that pesky Crusader had they been in hand! I was demating the merits of Grave Titan, but then if he gets DoJ’d, you don’t get anything out of him. With I-Titan and Wurm, at least you’ve either dealt 3 damage, or you end up w / 2x 3/3 wurms. STRONG.
I think the cards that were missing from the deck were 2-3x swords. Skinshifter + Sword = GG, and I never got to do it since I had none main. Batterskull never lets me down, and I actually had 2x kills w / Batterskull equipped birds! For as long as it’s in standard, I’m pretty sure BSkull will be run in all my midrange decks. Lol.
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I hope you enjoyed this most recent Deck Tech article!
Have a safe and happy Christmas season (or holiday season, whichever you prefer)! Best wishes to all of you and your families!
Cheers,
Carl Szalich