Charlie Rinehart was able to stymie SCG circuit superstar Chris VanMeter on his mission to shave off his beard, which he has sworn to wear until he is victorious in a major tournament. This came down to a battle of the Midrange decks after both successfully dispatched Esper Control decks in their semifinal matches. While CVM chose to attack the format with an ever popular style with Jund, Charlie took a different route and combined the strengths of Black and White known as Orzhov midrange, which has been a powerful choice of late.
The deck follows some similar lines that this formats bogeyman Mono-Black Devotion has in using a trio of creatures that form the foundation of the Black deck. We see the pest know as Pack Rat as the two drop of choice in the deck, quick to grow into a swarm of vermin if unchecked and synergistic with the manland Mutavault to big fast and effective beats to the enemy. There is also Lifebane Zombie which against the Green based monster decks is truly effective but also is able to sneak past most defenders to either chip away at life totals or finish off annoying planeswalkers. Then continuing up the curve we the other borrowed creature with Flying powerhouse Desecration Demon which is a bargin at four converted cost and will most often force your opponent to sacrifice his worst creature in an effort to stave off the onslaught for another turn, but eventually he will be out of fodder and you’ll have a gigantic flying demon. Then we get to the creatures which helped to inspire the dabble into white. There are two five drops which both help the deck to recover lost life points first with a singleton of the legendary Obzedat, Ghost Council which also has a great synergy with another singleton Whip of Erebos that allows it to be returned from the grave and then use its own trigger to stick around for more turns after. The other five drop is the powerful and elusive Blood Baron of Vizkopa with not only Lifelink to assure that you remain alive against aggressive strategies but also protection against both White and Black which ensures it dodges a lot of the formats removal to ensure it keeps you alive and kicking. The last creature is a one of Sin Collector which work with the other key disruption in your deck Thoughtseize to provide important information about the opponents plans and strip away a valuable card. For planeswalker power we find Theros Block superstar Elspeth, Sun’s Champion which this deck is often able to drop down behind some protection then use it to ramp up the board state into a one sided slaughterhouse on your road to victory, and is also a very key as additional removal to rid the board of huge monsters that have accumulated on the other side of the table. As far as removal is concerned this deck is rife with a plethora of choices starting with a full set of the creature and planeswalker killer Hero’s Downfall, then also adding pairs of Ultimate Price to rid the board of any of the many mono-colored creatures in the format, Bile Blight that functions as the decks sweeper although it is limited to shrinking all copies of one particular card, and as a catchall answer Banishing Light which is able to remove a good variety of threats. The final card is the decks only real source of card advantage, although the scrylands do help filter bad draws, with another choice borrowed from Mono-Black with Underworld Connections that is so key for this deck to grind out small bits of advantage to try and pull ahead to seal the deal.
I had an interesting discussion with someone over the weekend about a previous article I wrote. I have long maintained that getting into Modern doesn’t have to be overly expensive, as I have explained in a previous article right here on Three Kings Loot. However, people still don’t seem to believe me. So, I set myself a little challenge to show another, different way to get into playing Modern.
The Duel Decks, for those that aren’t familiar, are a pair of themed decks sold together with the intent of being played against each other. This is for those players who are somewhat familiar with the game play of Magic, but aren’t really comfortable building their own decks yet. The nice part about the Duel decks, particularly those built around Planeswalkers, is that there is a surprising amount of value and very playable cards contained within each. You can’t argue when decks contain foiled Planeswalkers, solid cards like Underworld Connections, premium creatures like Hellrider and Reaper of the Wilds, and splashy counter magic like Remand. So, I periodically pick up these Duel decks, sometimes because of the sweet alternate art on the cards, or because I’m actually pretty jazzed about the cards that they contain. The only issue with the Duel decks is that, because they are pre-constructed, they contain a large number of single cards as opposed to the more powerful 3 or 4 of certain cards that get used in other constructed decks made by players. This means that your deck has a high degree of variance each time you draw. This is fun if the other deck has an equal amount of variance, but if the deck is more concentrated and loaded with high powered spells then the reality is that you are likely to get blown out. What can you do about this?
My solution has been to take two of the Duel Decks and to mash them together to see what I can brew up as the best deck. My starting point was to take the Tibalt deck from Sorin vs Tibalt and then to take the deck made for Vraska out of Jace vs Vraska. This means that you get R/B/G deck in terms of colours, which is normally referred to as Jund. Now, my limitations were that I could only use the cards contained in the decks. You’ll see I violated this a little bit, but that I’ll explain what I did and I don’t really think that I violated the spirit of the deck. I will also go through some of the options you could make in order to spice up this new deck that I have affectionately taken to calling Jund Mash-up.
First off, let’s review the deck list for each of the decks I’m using for the Mash-up.
Here is Tibalt-
Now, for Vraska.
These two decks give us quite a number of options to take any Mash-up in, but there are some very obvious cards that are too good to pass up. First off, Tibalt and Vraska need to make the cut because they both offer us some very powerful abilities. Both of these Planeswalkers get a bit of a bad rap, but only because there are others out there that are far more powerful. That doesn’t mean that these two can’t be solid additions to a deck such as this. Next, Underworld Connections is too good a card to leave out simply because of the card draw ability. Reaper of the Wilds and Hellrider are extremely powerful 4 drops that can’t be ignored. Terminate is an extremely efficient removal spell and Browbeat allows you to do two things you want: either draw cards, or make your opponent take damage. So let’s take a look at what I slotted in here to make up the 60 cards in the Mash-up deck.
Jund Mash-Up deck
So, there is the 60 card list. You’ll notice that the only additions I made were to add an extra Reaper of the Wild, because I had an extra, an extra Treasured Find (for exactly the same reason). I substituted Night’s Whisper and replaced it with the improved Read the Bones. Finally, Last Kiss was replaced with the virtually identical Pharika’s Cure. For the Read the Bones I was prepared to pay the extra colorless mana to Scry 2 and then draw 2 meaning my card selection was vastly improved. For Pharika’s Cure I decided that the double black in the casting cost was preferable to paying three mana (2 colourless and a black) because I could have access to it earlier.
So, with only minor substitutions I have created a Jund Mash-Up deck that can do a little bit of everything. The heavy creature removal package pretty much assures everything dies to my spells. The Underworld Connection and Browbeat and Read the Bones allow for additional card draw to keep up the pressure. Blightning is the only real source of hand disruption, but with the ability of Treasured Find I could replay this card and make use of the ability again…and I could go and craft a sideboard out of the remaining cards that will assuredly pack some pretty good discard options. Lastly, the curve of creatures is pretty reasonable. Jund decks have the ability to get out early and this deck is no different. With a number of 2 drops early pressure is almost a guarantee and by 4 mana the real heavy hitters are hitting the battlefield allowing you to really take charge. All in all, the build “feels” pretty decent, if still a little high on the variance order due to all the single cards in the deck.
The easiest way to spice this deck up would be to tinker with your land base. Now, I’m not going to go for pricey lands because you may not have the high price lands like Shocklands from Return to Ravnica. However, there are still a number of options available to you still in the form of Guildgates, namely Rakdos, Golgari and Gruul. The issue becomes if you add in these 12 Guildgates a lot of your land comes into play tapped…which is a perfectly valid observation…but with a tri-colour deck such as this you may put more of a premium on the lands that produce 2 colours instead of just playing basic lands. It also means Tainted Wood may not be a strong choice because you may not control a swamp to allow it to produce green and black mana. Other options are more of the Zendikar life-gain lands like Kazandu Refuge or Akoum Refuge. These inexpensive lands still give you access to both colours of mana, but at least you get a life when it enters the battlefield. Of course, you can keep going on down the line and find plenty of expensive lands if you want, but if the goal is to try and keep your deck cost down and at a reasonable level these choices are perfectly acceptable.
For those interested, the Duel Decks themselves run about $25 for either the Sorin vs Tibalt or the Jace vs Vraska decks at your local game shop, so you would need to shell out about $50 in order to put this together. All in all, that’s pretty decent value and gives you a starting point from which to begin to build your Jund deck to make it more competitive. This shell will give you enough of the key ingredients that you can play and not look out of place, but as discussed, you will miss out on the consistency due to the much higher degree of variance in the cards in your deck. Still, it is a beginning and a fun stepping stone to get you into Modern and ready to play…and gives these Duel decks a new lease on life outside of just being decks primed to face off against each other.
So, before you turn your nose up the next Duel Deck you see, take a second and give it a deeper look. Is there something more you could be doing with this collection of cards? What pieces could you put together in order to maximize what you get out of these deck lists? The possibilities are just about endless even with such a limited card pool and it won’t break the bank…and has plenty of fun available when you play.
Thanks very much and if you guys have any feedback or suggestions on things you would like to see me explore, I’m all ears and would love to hear what you guys want to see me dig up and bang on next.
So, until next time, Keep it fun, keep it safe…Keep it Casual.
Bruce Gray
Nothing has really changed in the creature department with the requisite Pack Rat followed by Lifebane Zombie, Desecration Demon and Gray Merchant of Asphodel. The manabase also allows for the full set of Mutavault which have the added benefit of being rats as well to pump up the pack. This new version runs a one of planeswalker that hasn’t been seen for a while, Vraska the Unseen as a part of the dabble into Green. She is super versatile as she is able to remove almost any non-land permanent, and will often take down creatures trying to destroy her. Vraska compliments an already very strong removal package, which is extremely common for this style of deck. We start with Hero’s Downfall to rid the board of both creature and planeswalker threats, a trio of Devour Flesh which can skirt protection or hexproof, and with the foray into Green we find the other card added to the list Abrupt Decay which is just a good all around answer to a plethora of problem permanents. In order for the deck to keep ahead we have Underworld Connections for draw which also doubles as additional devotion count when you are draining with a Gray Merchant. The final piece of the puzzle comes with the discard powerhouse Thoughtseize that will not only strip your opponent of the most relevant card but also provide you invaluable information about his game plan.
The most apparent difference in this list from those past is the exclusion of Nightveil Specter for a very different evil in Lifebane Zombie. It looks like taking the extra precautions to hedge against Green Monsters and White Weenies paid off. His removal package, which is usually constructed for what you’re idea of the meta calls for, consisted of a full four Hero’s Downfall, a trio of Devour Flesh and two copies each of both Ultimate Price and Bile Blight. The other interesting point of note is that he went for two sets of Temples for the Scry power, which is very handy in conjunction with Underworld Connections when you’re low on life but absolutely need to find something specific.
The opening that this deck wants to see everytime it starts a new game is turn one Thoughtseize into turn two Pack Rat. So often this will rob the opponent of a key defensive piece which will allow the Pack Rat to get to work multiplying itself until it has gotten out of control, which tends to happen very quickly. The synergy with Mutavault which also happens to be a rat is another factor in boosting the lowly rats to monumental proportions. The secondary line of attack comes with a curve of threats starting at the three drop with Nightveil Specter a formidable Flying attacker which has the added value of not only stealing life from your opponent but also can steal cards from the top of their deck, which can even be played as long as the specter remains in play. Then at the four drop we have Desecration Demon which is quite simply a beat stick which you’ll use to grind the opponent to dust. Finally we get to Gray Merchant of Asphodel which has a very useful Devotion ability that will drain the life from your opponent and add that amount which is based on your total Devotion to Black mana. To help boost your Devotion count the deck also has Underworld Connections which provides a steady stream of cards at the price of some life and also a misers copy of Whip of Erebos that helps regain lost life point with Lifelink and will raise your dead creatures from the grave for a turn to fight for you again. As is typical with a Black deck removal is a key element and this deck is no different. There is a varied spread of spells but the key one is Hero’s Downfall which can deal with problem creatures and planeswalkers alike. This is complimented by Devour Flesh and Doom Blade to vanquish other creature problems. Then we round out the package with pseudo-sweeper Bile Blight which is capable of removing some very significant threads but you must be mindful of its use in the mirror. As mentioned before there is also Thoughtseize which not only takes care of any otherwise hard to handle problem but also provides very valuable information about the opponents plans.
Jace Deck
|
Lands (24)
Creatures (22)
|
Other Spells (15)
|
Planeswalker (1)
|
Vraska Deck
|
Lands (24)
Creatures (24)
|
Other Spells (11)
Planeswalker (1)
|
