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@Seiklos: Really like the list. Feels a lot like Team America just with a smoother manabase. Is there anything you'd want to change based on your experiences? Also I'd be interested in your thoughts on sideboarding. If Jund is such a tough MU would a few more diverts be in order?
Sorry, I didn't get this finished yesterday, had a lot of work to do.
First of all, I just wanted to say that going into this, I didn't expect to do well because I thought Abrupt Decay was going to be just everywhere. I guess other players maybe thought the same thing and combo showed up in force along with a bunch of RUG, so it didn't go as bad as I had feared.
Round 1: Charbelcher
I lose the roll and mull to a pretty bad 5 by objective standards. He Gitaxian Probes me 3 times on his first turn and I just assume I am dead, fortunately that's not the case and he ends by playing two LEDs! I have a stifle in my hand but decide to Inquisition anyways because he has played any other mana sources to get going. I see charbelcher and take pyretic ritual and pass. He cant go off next turn either so I proceed to jsut hold up stifle until I can finally cast Tombstalker and end the game. Game 2 I have to mull to 6 and its another hand with no counterspells! However, it does contain stifle and V clique and game 2 goes kind of like game 1. 2-0
Round 2: Jund
I find out that I got paired down into the draw bracket and that's kind of frustrating, but anyways, he has a hand full of removal but I am able to put up a good fight by drawing a bunch of Wastelands and Disfiguring his DRS to keep him off mana. Eventually, he lands a Bob and then another after killing off my Delver with Punishing Fire, I get buried under CA and the Bobs beat me down. I proceed to board in all the stuff I came with for this matchup: Spellsnares and Misdirections. Game 2 my hand dictates that Tombstalker ought to be my plan and when I cast Inq I see Lighting Bolt, Decay, and Liliana. I take Liliana and eventually cast stalker, but by that time he had drawn another and I didn't have a stifle for her -2. It's a tough matchup for a ton of reasons and I'll explain some of my ideas later. 0-2
Round 3: Show and Tell
Game 1 he doesn't do much early and I resolve a T2 Dreadnought. Then he show and tells and I can't stop it. I put in V Clique in case its Omni but its Emrakul himself and I just assume I'm dead. Fortunately, I have a stifle in my hand and stifle the annihilator trigger when he attacks, I take the 15 and go to 4. I attack him with both the Nought and the Clique and take him to 5. I did so because I have a stalker in hand and want to be able to hit for lethal if he decides to block. I knew I wouldn't get that chance though if I had to sac all my permanents so I brainstorm looking for a stifle, instead I see two Delvers. I have three lands untapped at this point so I cast a delver and cast the stalker, pass. He attacks and I sac all four lands, Clique and Delver and block with stalker, and then attack with dreadnought, my last permanent, for the win. Game 2 he snap keeps a hand but I'm not overly concerned: my hand is Clique, Inq, and tons of countermagic. T1 I Inq and discard show and tell, leaving him with Emrakul, Griselbrand, and lands. Eventually I cast Clique and kill him with it while Dazing the Sneak Attack he ends up drawing. It's always fun to survive two back to back Emrakul attacks :) 2-0
Round 4: Death and Taxes
Game 1 was really back and forth as I disfigure a Mother of Runes and then the Thalia that follows. He obviously doesn't know what I am playing so he casts Revoker and sets it to Liliana and I put on a show writing it down etc. In the end I have a Delver facing down a Serra Avenger and I know he has Batterskull in his hand. Fortunately, I am able to stifle the germ trigger and next turn draw Tombstalker. He is at 2 so I attack with Delver, forcing him to block. He doesn't draw StP and I win at 1 life. He never saw Dreadnought or anything so I keep them in and my opening hand is Nought, Stifle, Force, Brainstorm, and lands. T2 I land the nought and Force his Swords. He doesn't draw another in the next two turns and dies. After the game he lamented not knowing what I was playing because he had sided out Flickerwisp! He was a great opponent and ended up 6-3, his final loss being to Adam Prosak playing for to 16. 2-0
Round 5: RUG
I keep a land light hand full of Disfigures and counterspells. I blast his first delver but am wastelanded in the process. We sit for a while, me drawing no lands and he drawing no threats. Eventually I am able to resolve an Inq and take his Goyf and then am able to Disfigure two more delvers. I finally resolve Tombstalker and that seals the deal. I thought it was a fun game (because I like the grindy ones), but he did not and was convinced a nimble mongoose would have won it for him. Game 2 I, again, don't side out any Noughts because he never saw them. T1 he plays a delver and on my turn I disfigure it hoping to draw out counter magic. T2 I cast ponder or brainstorm or something and find the pieces to assemble Dreadnought. I pass and he plays another delver and a mongoose. T3 I proceed to cast some form of discard, see that the coast is clear, and cast the Nought. I looks despairingly and then proceeds to reveal Force with his delver trigger, I respond by submerging the Delver and he scoops. 2-0
Round 6: RUG
Game 1 I get buried under threats despite disfiguring his first Delver. I debate scooping so as not to reveal Dreadnought but I play it anyways to put him on defense. I have a second one and if I draw stifle it was very reasonable that I could have won with an alpha strike. Unfortunately, he draws like 2 goyfs in a row and I die. Game 2 I play a delver and so does he. On my turn 2 I disfigure it and he Forces the disfig! I take that to mean his hand is threat light and daze the force. I then proceed to Wasteland his Volcanic. He fails to draw another land for a while and when he does its another Volcanic and I daze his bolt. I play a Tombstalker and he scoops. Game 3 plays out surprisingly similar with me destroying his lands after he plays his initial delver. I eventually cast stalker to stem the bleeding and start racing. Eventually I cast Clique which tips the balance and I win. 2-1
Round 7: RUG(again!) against Ben under the camera.
Game 1 is straight forward as I strip his hand and then cast an unanswerable Dreadnought (with Vision Charm!) with FoW backup, and despite Glenn Jones thinking it was a race, not even a resolved Goyf would have saved him. Game 2 was a bit more grindy and there was a mistake or two but I really want to clear up some of the things Mr. Jones thought were errors but were absolutely not. The first is playing Brainstorm into Spell Pierce. Anyone who has played Tombstalker against RUG knows that he is what defines the matchup. He simply must resolve or you die. My entire plan, therefore, was getting all the countermagic out of his hand so as to resolve the stalker. This is also the reason I didn't cast Submerge, I needed it to pitch to FoW. Anyways, Tombstalker resolves and the board stands still. I proceed to keep saying Delvers on my Delver trigger but draw them instead of shuffling because either they end up chumps (like they did) or they flip and I go on offense. At one point I have two in play and crack a fetch in response to the first trigger, I fail to resolve the second trigger due to nerves and being so focused on casting my second stalker. Mr. Jones also criticizes casting Clique on Ben's turn into a possible counterspell or something like that. Again, all I am trying to do is resolve that second stalker, if Clique eats a FoW so be it, if not I either get to cycle the FoW or cycle a threat. In the end I am basically playing around Fire//Ice or Forked Bolt or something like that and wanted to be able to block and eat goyf if I had to, and the outcome would have been the same regardless, either attack with both stalkers the first time and he chumps or do it the second time and he chumps. In any case, he has no Fire//Ice nor Dismember so Tombstalker carries the field! 2-0
Round 8: Evan Wagstaff w/ Maverick
Initially I am paired against the High Tide player who went to the finals, but due to a computer mistake we are re-paired and I end up against Maverick. Its another tough matchup and I lost the roll. I am forced to Disfigure his Mom, but I fail to draw threats or answers at the rate he does. Eventually, I am killed by a Mindcensor with a bunch of exalted triggers. He doesn't see Dreadnought and so I keep them in because I have so far appeared to be a control deck. Later I find out he did indeed board out 1 or 2 pridemages, but unfortunately I never see the Nought. I cast a Delver which gets so close, but eventually a Mindcensor is resolved which stops my attack and a KotR is resolved which destroys my mana. I almost pull it out because of the basics in the deck, but his resolved Mom pushes the 11/11 Knight through for the win. After the match I showed him the Noughts and he was quite surprised and had no idea there was anything like that going on in the background. I knew the matchup was tough and have lost to it before so I wasn't overly disappointed. 0-2
Round 9: High Tide
Not much to say really. Game 1 I killed him with a quick Dreadnought. Game 2 he does a bunch of High Tide stuff and I end up dead. Game 3 we end up going to time, but I have immense pressure with a flipped Delver and a Tombstalker. He tries to go off at some point but fails to draw the cantrips to keep going. 2-1
So there it is, that's how my day went. Going into it I had debated Standstill over Ponder but delver is important and I like to be able to shuffle, even though they didn't flip under the camera (it's a curse). Overall, I think the maindeck is pretty tuned, but the board is a lot harder to figure out. As you can see from the report it cuts right through other blue decks. Generally in one of three ways: tons of disruption for combo type stuff, the ability to grind games out and then land Tombstalker as a massive trump to decks like RUG, and Dreadnought for the occasional free win, but also it gives you a really fast clock against other combo decks.
Side notes: I can't emphasize how awesome disfigure was. On Sunday I killed all of the following: Delvers, Deathrites, Dark Confidant, Mother of Runes, Thalia, Mindcensor, and Scavenging Ooze. Previously, I debated splashing red for Lightning Bolt, but having basics is really sweet and is often times the difference between playing and not playing. Decks like Jund are a problem and I will post my thoughts on it later today, but for now, back to work!
EDIT: fixing typos, I'm sure there are tons
Nice report. Thanks for the writup. Concerning the Jund MU, do you think it could be helped by running Sinkholes? They're the best strategy Team America can muster and together with Stifle might be able to mana hose them.
It's funny you mention that because I did also think of sinkholes and in my one game against Jund I noticed that their manabase was the easiest thing to attack. I never even thought of Divert but its probably just straight up better than misdirection. Misdirection I suppose is more for straight combo decks, but against Jund we don't want to have to pay with two cards too often, I sided out both my Dazes and my FoWs.
One thought I had was bringing in Bitterblossom and taking out Noughts in that matchup. When I first played this deck to a 17th place finish in Indianapolis last summer/fall, it had two maindeck bitterblossoms because miracles were big at the time. Its just a thought but some number in the board could be helpful as Jund's only way of dealing with him is Liliana and Faerie tokens could help fight it. I realize BB dies to decay but we gotta do something. In a similar vein I had also considered Jitte for the board because, but its pretty hard to cast an equip at once, not to mention if your opponent has artifact hate they most likely brought it in if they saw a Nought. Other ways of dealing with creature decks could include stuff like Massacre and Damnation as well.
I recall at one open someone was playing a UB deck that was labelled as stiflenought though it had only one nought in it (ironically so did this deck the first time I played it). I saw he had a Desecration Demon or two in his main or board and I thought that was pretty sweet tech for the decay decks. Idk how much we would want that because we play stalker, which is pretty much just better for us and I don't think he was playing it.
I did once try to splash white for lingering souls and Jitte, but I prefer the two color manabase. Has anyone else experimented with BB or am I crazy?
BB seems alright (havent tested) but it is a tad grindy, and like you said it still dies to Abrupt Decay. I think Divert or something is probably a better answer. Plus your Tombstalkers are already pretty sick vs them.
The black tempo version with Tombstalkers used to be formally known as Dreadstalker back in the day...but yeah it's pretty good. I was working on a UB Tempo variant feat bobs, smothers, and such. It was working really well for me in testing. Since you dont get access to bolts you run disfigure's in the board.
The biggest weakness of Jund appears to be it's manabase, especially if you can consistently remove their deathrites and more so if they run grove of burnwillows. By running basics they mitigate the possibility of tempo loss through Wasteland early in the game but if they have fetched up 2 basics and you sink one and waste/Stifle another land they are often unable to cast a large part of their hand and especially those spells that matter most (Lillian and decay).
A possible SB plan could be +4 Sinkholes +3 Submerge +1 Spell Snare - force and dazes, although I still like daze on the play.
Also I think it's either Divert or Sinkholes, both won't work together too well. Divert is a very high variance card. Some games you leave blue up and they go hymn or thoughtseize which is often GG, othertimes the'll go deathrire into goyf or llilian and you're boned. Sinkholes on the other hand are way better on the play and don't synergize too well with Stifle.
I had been thinking about bitterblossom as well and I really liked the idea. I feel it would work well in a game plan where you are bringing in more removal and counters and set yourself up to be the control deck with Stalker and BB being your trump cards. However consider that this strategy would be soft to the Punishing fire versions of Jund.
@Seiklos
Decklist?
It should be up on SCG in the top 16Quote:
Originally Posted by KidA
I am going to test the sinkhole plan for sure in the coming weeks. There is another Open near here in March so I will be able to test out any changes. Right now I kind of like sinkhole over divert because sinkhole could be brought in for other matches, like Stoneblade. The other thing about divert is that it doesn't always solve the Abrupt Decay problem because there isn't always something else to target.
I do agree that Tombstalker is pretty good against Jund, but only if you have a way of dealing with Liliana. Maybe stifle is enough? Maybe pressuring their manabase while keeping in some number of Dazes in is enough? I would suggest Pithing Needle because it has proven so useful against Stoneblade in the past, like Kira, but it dies to Decay (also like Kira). It was for the decay decks that I made the last minute decision to add Tar Pit to the deck, but that was more for BUG control. Truth be told it's a rough matchup no matter what, I wonder if there is any chance Deathrites of our own in the board could be of any use?
Someone once also suggested to me more Vision Charms in the board, but I don't really like that plan. For one you need extra mana open to hold it up the turn you stifle the nought and for another it doesn't protect other threats. On paper I think sinkhole and discard look the most powerful right now.
EDIT: @Roodmistah did/does it play both Tombstalker and Bob? Idk if I would be comfortable doing that, but it never killed anyone to test.
@Seiklos: I've been testing the Jund MU some and it seems playing first is really big. Otherwise I'd say Jund is slightly favored but just wastelands and stifles can put some games out of they're reach. My list differs from your slightly I run - 2 Cliques -1 Tar Pit +2 Spell Pierce +1 Vision Charm, I just hate the Tar Pit in the deck and don't want to run 3 mana spells in a 18 land deck so I'm keeping it pure tempo. Those spell pierces are pretty good against Jund as they hit Hymns and Lilly's both of which can screw you as well as bolts and seizes.
Playing a pretty standard UR list right now, but I have tuned the SB to my Meta which is full of Tribal (Goblins), D&T, Combo (Tin Fins, belcher) and blue decks along with sprinkled in Chalice decks:
2x Sulfur Elemental
2x Shattering Spree (this one is kinda meh)
3x Rough//Tumble
2x Red Blast
1x Pyroblast
3x Submerge
2x Divert
Any thoughts or suggestions? The Sulfur Elementals are kinda different from what Ive seen, but I kind of took a book out of RUG's book for dealing with Thalia decks. Shattering Sprees are so I can kill the random MUD/Chalice decks I usually face at least once. Submerges seems kind of meh.
Play Mind Harness instead of Submerge. We usually have 12~14 threats, that's really low compared to other decks. Stealing a Tarmogoyf off Mind Harness and keeping it for 2 turns is priceless. You'll force your opponent to trade or you'll stall the board (they won't make profitable attacks). In this deck, it works much better than Submerge.Quote:
Originally Posted by Megadeus
Moreover, Mind Harness can also steal red critters. It can save you some turns by stealing a Goblin Piledriver or Goblin Warchief. These are important creatures that, usually, the owner is not willing to trade for, so they might not attack.
Although I agree Mind Harness seems like it would be better in a meta with lots of goblins, piledriver has pro blue so you can't steal him with it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Vandalize
That's true, my bad. Still, taking one Warchief or Siege-Gang Commander can buy you some time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aetherick
In a similar vein to Mind Harness, Sower of Temptation might be a decent SB card. It's kind of matchup specific for sure, pretty much SnT and BUG tempo, but it can't be decayed! Really don't need the extra hate for Show and Tell and it's kind of sub par in the RUG matchup.
Maybe mind harness is all you need to stall the board those couple of turns. If you bring in mind harness over something like submerge just be sure to keep an eye on the number of instants and sorcs for you delvers otherwise you will be down another threat.
This is probably a super narrow application, but have you ever had a situation where you couldn't pay for Mind Harness's increasing cumulative upkeep, but used an otherwise dead Dreadnougt to sacrifice itself and the stolen creature?
I don't see how getting to 4 lands in BUG tempo is going to be easy....Quote:
Originally Posted by Seiklos
And I certainly wouldn't use Sowers against Jund while Mind Harness is totally possible.
No, I would definitely not use Sowers against Jund (I don't think I mentioned Jund in the above post), but I probably wouldn't use mind harness either because it don't know what problems it solves in that matchup. Getting to 4 mana against BUG tempo isn't too difficult, that matchup, in my experience, just kind of grinds until someone sticks the first tombstalker and if you both get one then you just die to Deathrite. We could be thinking of different builds though. The one I have in mind is the one without stifle and does not maindeck sinkholes, basically BUG Delver is what I am thinking of.
Have you tested mind harness against Jund? How did it test and were you playing UR or UB?
@lordofthepit: I have never done that, but I have cast and sac'd Noughts to grow my yard for Tombstalker.
I think the best is playing a nought vs Bridge from Below...