Silvestri Says – Worlds Breakdown
Posted by Josh Silvestri
November 23, 2009 | 
48 comments
This week's article will be a little shorter than my usual fare, but I'll make up for that by including many pretty pie charts for you to look at.
Top Decks of Standard: 42 lists total
Jund: 21
Boros: 6
Junk: 2
Mono-Red: 2
Bant: 2
GW / Naya: 2
4cc Control: 2
Vampires: 1
Turbofog: 1
Magical Christmas Land: 1
Eldrazi Green: 1
WW: 1
To put these numbers in perspective, Affinity consisted of 31% (32% if counting Mantle Affinity) of the field at Worlds 2004 where Affinity was the most played deck. Meanwhile Faeries was 27% of Pro Tour: Hollywood, another format about which people complained for months about having a dominant deck. Jund beat both of these famous examples and had half the slots of the decks that went 5-1 or 6-0. Jund posted better percentages than Affinity did and I'd have to believe it likely that if we got the average points of Jund players, it would trump Affinity's 8.72 avg. It certainly trumps Affinity's 20.6% of the top decks with a lofty 50% from Jund.
Ridiculous.
So where does this leave you as a player? Well despite certain arguments to the contrary, yes you should give up on your deck right now if you can't beat Jund. Losing to a deck that not only consists of Affinity-esque percentages of the field, but has the high placing finishes to back up its numbers (and in fact it's being under-played considering these), means even if you successfully deck Jund through the swiss you'll inevitably lose to it in the Top Eight.
Not everything is doom and gloom though; there are a couple of decks that have the right stuff to take out Jund. Joel Calafell's Fog deck turns the Jund match into a practical bye, unless they god-draw you out of the game and you can still win against those types of hands if you hit UUWW by turn five. [card acidic slime]Magical[/card] [card mold shambler]Christmas[/card] [card violent ultimatum]Land[/card] has enough land destruction to really hit Jund where it hurts and powering out large threats can sometimes just overwhelm the Maelstrom Pulse brigade.
Talking about these two decks neatly segue ways into my next point. The decks that succeeded and weren't Jund were very refined decks with a clear set of goals and plans. It isn't like Magical Christmas Land never existed before, it was a running joke made at pretty much every Lotus Cobra deck built and was even the main reference in The Magic Show. So what allowed Conley to succeed where other decks failed despite having similar plans? Focus and the complete knowledge of what he needed his deck to do.
His deck was going to be the equivalent of Jund Mana Ramp, except he knew that just casting big dumb animals was not a winning plan against Jund. Instead a plan that will beat Jund gets grafted onto the deck and suddenly we have the first focused land destruction deck that played real land destruction and not just silly Spreading Seas silliness. Christmas Land only has six big guys while a huge number of Lotus Cobra-based ramp decks had ten to twelve, despite being incredibly difficult to cast if Cobra died or the deck stopped at five mana. Note that Conley didn't overlook his main plan either, he still ran Harrow and Khalani Heart Expedition in his deck, as he described in his deck tech; this deck goes full bore at the mana acceleration game.
Joel Calafell's deck knows exactly what it wants to be: a deck that essentially negates the opponent for the entirety of the game starting on turn four or so. It reminds me a lot of Trix in every match that doesn't involve Boros. All the deck is built to do is draw cards, defend itself, draw more cards, negate everything the opponent does to win and then wipe them out in a single turn. I compare it more to a combo deck than a control deck, because to me the deck draws too many cards and runs too many cheap cards that negate entire plans from opposing decks to remind me of any control from the past half a decade. Maybe if we go back to olden-time Extended blue decks, the decks become more similar"¦
Point is though; this wasn't some new concept either. All Calafell and his partners did was take an existing strategy and tune it to its inevitable conclusion. He runs far fewer Fog effects than many people played, as well as cutting almost all the worthless mill cards people paraded around online forums as a legitimate plan B. Everything in Calafell's deck can fall under three classifications with the exception of the two Archive Trap: [card day of judgment]defense[/card], [card howling mine]card drawing[/card] and mana. He made his deck exceptionally well at achieving his goal of drawing three or more cards a turn while being able to defend his life total safely without investing all his mana or relying entirely on Time Warp.
At this point you're probably wondering why have Calafell's deck in this section of the article. After all, Conley's deck clearly had a plan B in mind when it was created. See, that's the sweet thing, Joel went a step further and moved his entire plan B to the sideboard where it can come in for maximum effect in just about any match he wants. Not only does the sideboard strategy Jacerator uses just seem ridiculously strong, but it can go a step further with Tezzeret the Seeker. With the Planeswalker added in as well, suddenly it has ways to fetch out sideboard singletons and two-of cards while providing another way to win if the opponent isn't prepared to kill him off. By just playing out your normal strategy, Tez can threaten a win thanks to your draw engines being artifacts.
On that note, Andre Coimbra's Naya Lightsaber deck is another good example of having a plan B waiting in the wings. He can drastically change his deck and board in up to thirteen cards in the Jund match, all of which are live bullets over cards that might not pull their weight in the match. Normally this wouldn't be too deserving of mention, but dedicating that much of your board to a deck swap and using cards that aren't all hate or reactive answers is to be commended. That said, I hope people realize that Naya isn't the breaker to the metagame. Coimbra only went 4-2 in the Standard portion of Worlds and the advantage it supposedly holds in the Jund match has been grossly exaggerated by a few people. Don't get me wrong, Naya Lightsaber is a fine deck, but don't be fooled into thinking it somehow is the answer to the current metagame.
Moving on from why decks succeeded, let's take a quick look at decks that failed miserably before we close this piece. By far the worst performing deck in the Standard section of Worlds was Eldrazi Green. I guess without the surprise factor the deck had going for it, Eldrazi Green simply couldn't stand up to what the competition brought to the table. Vampires were another big loser as almost no-one showed up with it to represent in the first place. To my knowledge, Vamps simply can't stand up to Jund decks in a fair fight and is impotent against a number of other midrange decks in the field. It feels strange to think that Vampires limited success at the beginning of this format was due to people not having yet adjusted, meanwhile this same criticism was leveled at Jund and yet the results are night and day.
The much vaunted Junk decks were also big wastes of time as Junk only had two copies finish with a 5-1 record or better. Considering this deck was the third most played in the field, I'd call that a rather spectacular failure. Not as much as Eldrazi Green, but it was another deck that failed to live up to the lofty expectations of being the next best midrange build. Sadly Junk lacks the broken Cascade mechanic, making it difficult to justify over Jund, even if the individual card power level is higher. Past that, the biggest issue I had with the deck was lack of a true game-changer. Baneslayer Angel is nice, but dies too often to count on consistently and you really want some sort of a powerful spell that just doesn't exist. Let's hold out hope for Worldwake.
As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Jund is still king of the hill and at its results are at a disturbingly high level; more than I'd assumed. There is some hope from the Worlds results though and hopefully Bant, Naya, Jacerator or any of the other half-dozen somewhat successful decks from Worlds can make an impact on the metagame.
Josh Silvestri
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Jim Varney says: November 23, 2009 @ 9:55 pm
I think Conley’s deck is still subject to alot of the criticisms of all the other cobra decks. If you don’t have cobra on the draw you’re pretty much dead, as your best case scenario is a turn 4 Ruinblaster or Acidic Slime, both of which are going to be too slow on the draw against Jund. Also, with taht many mana sources, like any other ramp deck, you get draws where you ramp into a threat and they kill it, and you spend the rest of the game drawing cobras, harrows, and khalni heart expeditions. Also, Conleys deck is pretty miserable against Boros, since your land destruction spells are pretty irrelevent, and they’re almost guaranteed to be able to kill Cobra.
Daniel says: November 23, 2009 @ 9:59 pm
I was really expecting most pros to bring something to beat Jund, rather than just play it. guess it really is just that good.
NL says: November 23, 2009 @ 10:19 pm
the lightsaber deck is good but still can lose to dumb jund draws.
in my testing, the callafel deck did terribly vs the jund decks, but maybe my oponent kept cascading into blightnings, i dont know. seemed like they always had a pulse for my card drawers and i was left top decking while they cascaded into good times. then i’d get thought hemmoraged for a good number of my threats etc.
conley’s deck seems like it has potential, but your mana is bad much like jund and without a cobra that sticks, it seems iffy. when i was playing it, 23 land seemed too few. i’m probably playing the deck wrong or something. i had more success trying to set up a big land fall turn rather then just accellerating when possible.
Chris Young says: November 23, 2009 @ 10:40 pm
What I find remarkable about the Jund list that LSV took to worlds is that he dropped Putrid Leech from the list after the much vaulted debate that went on this site about the board options and actually looking at all the cards.
I dont know if the results bear out that Leech is essential or not but something that struck me about the decks that acutally beat jund tended to focus on 2 things Junds fragile manabase and creating dead cards. (such as black removal)
I think the more successfull of the plans was to attack its fragile mana. Ruin Blaster has the potential to simply wreck the deck as was seen in the final.
In that same debate over the value of Putrid leech I had mentioned that by adding white to the manabase and focusing on the use of Fetch lands over Shard lands a Jundish deck could actually have a more stable mana base and even be faster. I had posted a Jund/Naya Hybrid that I had some success against other Jund with.
What I think this Worlds pointed out was the right way to attack Jund and that while its a very strong deck it does have some definite weaknesses.
I think we are going to see a metagame shift now towards decks that may run Jundish cards but do so on more stable mana and have a little more vareity in side board plans as there isnt simply 1 comon method for those decks that beat jund.
The Jund cards are still really good but Worlds showed us ways to beat Jund.But in doing so used methods that were basicly Jund independant and were able to survive the rest of the field as well.
I think we learned a lot about not only Jund but the fact that you can beat it without sacrificing the ability to beat other decks as well. I think its numbers will fade a bit from here out but never completely because the cards it runs will find their way into various other hybridizations on its themes.
You will also see decks than simply attack aspects of the cards that Jund runs without specifically targeting Jund. Pro Black for instance nukes Malestrom Pulse, Terminate and B-Blast which has the added bonus of shutting off a large chunk of Junds cascade.
Look for Jund to morph somewhat in response to this to try and minimize the blamks that get created by such simple means.
Obama says: November 23, 2009 @ 10:49 pm
“Joel Calafell's Fog deck turns the Jund match into a practical bye, unless they god-draw you out of the game and you can still win against those types of hands if you hit UUWW by turn five.”
Well after writing a rather long explanation to explain why this isn’t quite the case, I’ll save you some reading: replace “god” with “good” and your statement is correct. Jund builds without leech will need better than “good” hands, but they often make up for it with Duress and Thought Hemo out of the side (which improves their post-board odds a lot).
HowMasterful says: November 23, 2009 @ 11:06 pm
I dunno if you know this but in order to report something masterfully you have to actually BE a master (see tournament reports by Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa).
Josh S. says: November 24, 2009 @ 12:22 am
“What I think this Worlds pointed out was the right way to attack Jund and that while its a very strong deck it does have some definite weaknesses.”
What part of, ‘put up better numbers than Fae or Affinity’ throws people off? Seriously, this is an awful attitude to have for a competitive player. The ‘right way’ to attack Jund is playing Jund.
... says: November 24, 2009 @ 1:17 am
So what about Mono Red? That deck certainly has a way to attack one of Jund’s core weaknesses, which is that for the first two or three turns, the deck does nothing. Mono Red, especially when on the play, can reduce Jund’s life total to single digits within that time frame with relative ease.
Trackback MTGBattlefield says: November 24, 2009 @ 1:27 am
Silvestri Says – Worlds Breakdown…
Your story has been summoned to the battlefield – Trackback from MTGBattlefield…
MorphlingV2 says: November 24, 2009 @ 3:10 am
I think the problem is not so much in creating a deck that beats Jund, but in creating a deck that still remains viable against the rest of the field at the same time. In my run at Worlds I faced Jund only once so playing a deck that beat Jund, but was not so good against other decks would be an even bigger disaster than my result already was.
Josh S. says: November 24, 2009 @ 3:27 am
yawn. I’ll just point to Fog doing well in the dailies and 8-mans on MODO (including for me) and that online is literally 50% jund. believe whatever you want though, it just allows me to rack up free tix until people start putting in real hate for the deck.
Rick says: November 24, 2009 @ 5:58 am
While I got a good laugh out of Conley’s deck (and kudos to him for doing well with it), the deck I thought was impressive was Rob Dougherty’s White Weenie deck. Sure, it’s an all Plan A deck, but it does that plan really really well. I don’t know if I’d ever play it, as 16 land is a little worrisome to me, but it looks like a blast, and it looks like it should have at least decent game against Jund. It’s fast, it has outs to Jund in the main and the board both, and it’s relatively flexible for only having one gameplan.
I was a little surprised by the rise in Unearth/Dredge players. I didn’t realize the pros actually took it seriously. It seems like one of those “interesting” decks more than a “good” deck.
Markwerf says: November 24, 2009 @ 6:38 am
fog is good because it does really well against the other 50% of the field but depending on the version of jund it ranges from good to somewhat unfavorable, the leech version for example is favored against fog if the pilot knows what he’s doing. I agree though that unless people start playing some more hate for it, its really good. Virtually any deck can hate it though by bringing in some artifact kill as just hitting fonts or mines really hurts the deck. Unfortunately the same mines and fonts make it more likely that artifact hate is drawn…
Amarsir says: November 24, 2009 @ 7:21 am
Now I feel dumb for doing this analysis myself the other day. Nicely done.
As I’d said in reply to lsv’s article, if you (or some other writer) have some way of analyzing one Jund build vs another, I’d appreciate seeing that. Many did well with Leeches, so are they still right?
Amarsir says: November 24, 2009 @ 7:27 am
@Rick, Dougherty only went 3-3 though IIRC. I’d look more toward Cavaglieri’s white deck.
LP says: November 24, 2009 @ 7:44 am
“yawn. I'll just point to Fog doing well in the dailies and 8-mans on MODO (including for me) and that online is literally 50% jund. believe whatever you want though, it just allows me to rack up free tix until people start putting in real hate for the deck.”
The people at my store love fog decks. There are 0 jund decks at my FNM and half the people play turbofog. What “hate” exists for it?
Rick says: November 24, 2009 @ 7:44 am
@Amarsir – Cavaglieri’s deck does different things, though. The popular white decks tend to be more midrange than pure aggro. They’re different decks with different plans. And of course, there’s the whole “one player playing one deck at one tournament” sample size for Dougherty.
Were I to take one to a tourney, though, I’d probably take Tokens. But the straight WW deck seems like it would have potential, and I’d certainly test it, if not actually choose to play it.
Anyway, my point is that it’s a neat (relatively) original decklist in a morass of established netdecks. Not that netdecking is bad, but if we’re looking for fresh meat from Worlds, Dougherty’s is a deck I’d mention. So I did.
Chris Young says: November 24, 2009 @ 7:45 am
I wasnt saying that you shouldnt play Jund just know that where Jund may be vulnerable some decks exposed this and those same decks managed to pass a variety of opponents not just Jund.
Id be interested to know how the CF writers that played Jund faired and what they faced and did they all use LSV’s list.
Zadok001 says: November 24, 2009 @ 8:56 am
“…I'll make up for that by including many pretty pie charts…”
For “many”, read “two”.
Not that I’m complaining, nice article. Jund is one of the worst “enemy” decks we’ve seen in years, and looks set to remain on top of the heap for the foreseeable future. It’s difficult to imagine a set of hoser cards actually being printed that affect Jund’s overall performance, given that the hate we have now is *very* strong, and clearly Not Good Enough. So, either another deck eventually develops that can be as degenerate as Jund, or Jund stays the Best Deck until it rotates. Ugly.
. says: November 24, 2009 @ 8:59 am
Wizards should have put Plow Under in M10, that would be the best possible card to keep Jund in check.
Jeremy Fuentes says: November 24, 2009 @ 9:19 am
woulda been nicer with some decklists for reference….. =\
The_Engineer says: November 24, 2009 @ 9:39 am
Jund needs to have a minimum of putrid leech into maelstrom pulse for the matchup to be winnable. Fog decks only lose when you can keep them off howling mine and jace in the early game. Anybody who says otherwise is a victim of wishful thinking.
On a side note, I suspect Jund decks will soon start devoting two copies of unstable footing to their sideboards (this was not a jund deck that was boarding them- Jund would bring in duress, too, obviously), as that card can be quite good against Fog. This was actually the result of brainstorming about what to do if somebody played turbofog at a tournament a couple weeks before worlds, and there’s really not a lot of good options. Duress helps, a 4th pulse helps, but beyond that, you need to outdraw them.
svjchtr says: November 24, 2009 @ 11:08 am
They should reprint all the cards for Ravager Affinity in Worldwake so that we can finally beat Jund.
Robin says: November 24, 2009 @ 1:03 pm
“The people at my store love fog decks. There are 0 jund decks at my FNM and half the people play turbofog. What "hate" exists for it?”
Unstable footing, for one. The nice thing is that two sideboard slots is more than enough, since you can basically mull to it, and these mine decks are set up to draw you into your answers anyway. It is pretty easy to set up an attack phase that is lethal if their fog fails.
Josh S. says: November 24, 2009 @ 1:05 pm
Be less lazy Fuentes, isn’t your article this week going to be talking about what to buy from Worlds?
Unstable Footing, Runeflare Trap and Vithian Renegades all fall under obnoxious to blowout hate-wise.
diego says: November 24, 2009 @ 1:14 pm
OK, so for the record.
4 played vampires and 1 6-0′d.
Seems pretty good
Joe says: November 24, 2009 @ 2:20 pm
What were the decklists for the 4cc decks?
anon says: November 24, 2009 @ 2:30 pm
it’s terrible actually, but hey continue liking your god-awful decks. Obviously that small sample size is working for you, since everyone realized the deck was trash, but one guy got lucky with it. grats.
Vesuvan says: November 24, 2009 @ 3:33 pm
Erm… where are all these Jund decks with Duress and Thought Hemorrhage in the sideboard? If they existed then yes they would have a much better chance against the Calafell deck, but the most I’ve run into online is 3 copies between these two cards and usually the only cards the Calafell deck has to worry about are 3-4 copies of Maelstrom Pulse, and they have Flashfreeze and Negate.
solebush1 says: November 24, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
can i ask how you are pointing to 8-mans and daily’s?
As far as I know there is no way of seeing what lists are winning 8-man’s, and while we can see the 4-0 and 3-1 decks for daily’s, there’s no way I know of to see how many of each deck are entering the tournament to begin with. While you do see the occasional turbo fog deck at at 3-1, it’s not like they’re all over the place and its not like we know that other players aren’t consistently scrubbing out with it.
I can believe that turbo fog has a favorable matchup against jund, but a virtual bye? I doubt it. And to say i’m missing out on free tickets isn’t going to do much to convince me otherwise.
Josh S. says: November 24, 2009 @ 5:34 pm
Multiple Fog decks 4-0′d dailies the last few days and other’s went 3-1. And while you can’t see all 8-man results, I can go by what I see when I play in them (and the replays) and what my friend’s see when they play in them.
It’s very simple really, Blightning doesn’t single-handedly beat a deck that has a dozen cheap ways to draw cards. Maelstrom Pulse doesn’t do it either just because it can kill a few of those. Flashfreeze and Negate are also cheaper than any relevant threats Jund has against you. Ruinblaster doesn’t do anything and Duress is still just a 1-for-1 trade. Jund’s fastest clock against Fog involves a turn five kill and Fog not drawing a multitude of cards to stop it. Otherwise the clock Jund puts down is practically irrelevant since it won’t be seriously threatening the Fog player until he gets down to 4 life or less.
Honestly, I don’t care if I convince anyone. Like I said, it’s better for me if people don’t respect the Fog deck. I’m not going to go out of my way to point out why the deck is good if people are going to say it loses to Jund after only seeing the list 4 days ago.
solebush1 says: November 24, 2009 @ 7:15 pm
I still can’t find the 4-0s. I’m pretty sure I checked them all. I guess its not that important really.
Again, I’m not going to argue whether or not it has a good matchup. I can accept that the matchup is favorable for turbo fog. But in the article you speak as if Jund may as well concede. You cannot talk about a matchup vs. Jund on a card-for-card basis, to do so is to ignore why Jund does so well. Sure, blightnings and pulses may not win by themselves. But what happens when the elf starts cascading into them? The counterspells may be cheaper, but as you say for duress, it’s just a 1-for-1. And I would say, in general, 1-for-1 trades favor a jund deck. It seems to me if a howling mine doesn’t stick early, the fog deck can get outclassed quickly.
Just to reiterate, I’m not trying to say Jund is favored, just that the matchup is probably a lot closer than you’re making it out to be.
javert says: November 24, 2009 @ 8:06 pm
I’m biased towards red – green and despite not wanting to believe Jund is an unfair deck, it’s worthless to argue against that numbers. Which card would be the most likely to be hit by the banhammer? Bloodbraid Elf is the cascade card but Blightning, Thrinax, Pulse and Leech are the goodstuff cards. Right now, Leech and Elf are the most likely ones that involve the broken draws. Bituminous blast can be built around, but it’s the other cascade card. Opinions?
Josh says: November 24, 2009 @ 8:33 pm
if something would get banned bloodbraid is miles ahead of everything else
Josh S. says: November 24, 2009 @ 9:04 pm
I agree with the Josh that doesn’t have an initial. Bloodbraid would definitely be miles ahead of everything else.
And yet it still does so much less than Bitterblossom. It’d definitely be the weakest banning in history.
Matthew says: November 24, 2009 @ 9:16 pm
What’s amazing is how everyone’s complaining about Jund’s 35%.
Zoo pulled out 29% in extended by the way. So its considered virtually just as powerful an option.
In my honest opinion, considering Jund though. Its the same thing year in and year out now since Affinity happened. Yes, its all Affinity’s fault, Affinity broke the game.
Before Affinity, no matter how strong a deck was, people always found answers, they’d search and test new ideas until the deck was beaten. You had vast populous doing this, but after Affinity, the world’s moral crumbled somehow, and people just started caving, with people just choosing to play the apparent ‘best’ deck without ever trully trying to beat.
This has now been a consistant problem. Regardless of how powerful the ‘best’ deck really is. Kamigawa, most were stuck on Gifts, Ravnica seems like could’ve been an exception, Timespiral, everyone was stuck on Teachings. Lorwyn, everyone was stuck on Faeries. Now, with Alara its Jund. Jund was just as powerful during Faerie menace times. Nothing much changed. Why the deck ‘suddenly’ so strong?
In my opinion… its very simple. The vast numbers who played Fae just cause it was the ‘best’ now play Jund cause its the ‘best’.
People have to realise. Once a deck starts reaching %’s of 25% and more in an event, statistics start going mad and start getting majorly in favour of any deck hogging the 5-1 and 6-0 slots. Having a field of 35% does make having 35% of the top 64 fair, as the way pairings go, you could well have the deck comfortably taking 50% of the slots. Its about odds.
A person has 50/50 chance against Jund, for arguements sake. You play against 3 Jund decks over 6 rounds? You could well end up 1-2 or 2-1. The more you play, the worse your chances and the better the general chance of Jund. Remember, as much as we try deny it, this game still has an element of luck, and needs a high level of co-operation amoung groups of players to tune decks to the best out of them. If everyone just keeps playing Jund, its gonna be number 1, regardless of whether it deserves it or not as it just has the superior engineering team.
Worlds proved Jund is not the be all and end of all of the type 2. But are people paying attention? Doesn’t look like it, they just continuing in their zombie ways, the ‘best’ deck is the ‘best’ deck and must play the ‘best’ deck, regardless if it actually won the event or not.
Let’s also consider how many of the 400+ who arrived would’ve actually spent time on type 2 rather than drafts and extended as their tools to make top 8? This has been a regular occurance lately. You frequently have people who 4-2′d or 3-3′d day one making top 8 and even winning worlds. Alot of pro’s find it too easy to ignore the format and still perform at worlds, which I think didn’t help the cause at all when it came to seeing new tech.
I played Jund heavily during Lorwyn, deck no stronger than it use to be, and yes, I actually beat Fae regularly, did anyone take the deck seriously? No. Why? Cause Faeries were the best deck that needed to be ‘hated’ out the format.
I’m now packing something else. And beating Jund regularly, like alot of other people. But will others take note? Not a chance. Why? Cause Jund is the ‘best’ deck.
Affinity broke the game, created a zombie nation of gamers:P
comatose says: November 24, 2009 @ 9:50 pm
I think most people are too quick, and with reason since Faeries just left the environment not too long ago, “chicken little” the current standard. I think the real litmus test is how much of a “set gap” we have between Alara block and Zen block. Cascade is the problem that Zen technically doesn’t know exists.
To put it in another way, the soup we call standard right now has a profound Cascade taste. Until the next expansion it is my fear it will be the most pungent of flavors assaulting our senses. So I suppose….more soup please, sir…
Chris Young says: November 24, 2009 @ 10:35 pm
@ Matthew people need to read and reread this one line from your comment
“Worlds proved Jund is not the be all and end of all of the type 2. But are people paying attention?”
The 35% of the field is important only in that you dont have a prayer if you cant beat Jund. The flip side of this is if you can beat Jund and nothing else you are even more screwed.
What the decks that beat Jund proved was that its plan of attack was not neccissarily Jund specific but aimed at beating the most prevelant cards in the format.
Attacking any decks manabase is usually a good idea and Junds is especially susceptable.
Creating dead cards is a valid plan against most decks as well.
All of the successfull Jund beaters used one or both of these avenues of attack Some were more successfull because they get better against Jund specifically. and fed off more Jund matchups than decks that could have beaten Jund but were paired against less Jund.
There is some merit to the charge that the multi format torurney that is Worlds does allow for a Jund hater to do only mediocre in standard when not playing Jund and pass into the finals on the strength of other formats while the dominant deck makes it primarily on its strength.
lsv says: November 25, 2009 @ 12:04 am
As for Jund without Leeches:
David Ochoa 5-1
Andrew Plinston 5-1
Ben Stark 4-2
Zach Efland 4-2
Charles Gindy 3-3
LSV 2-4
Reasonable stats, and without me dragging down the average, even better =). I think we would have been pretty happy with these sort of numbers going in, esp considering how random the Jund mirror can be.
One of the awesome things about having no Leeches is being able to cut Thrinaxes against decks that bring in 3-4 Celestial Purge (most decks) and relying on Stags, Masters, Bloodbraids, and possibly Ruinblasters, depending on the opposing deck. Purge isnt completely dead, but it gets way worse, which is pretty good.
JonathanW says: November 25, 2009 @ 4:16 am
I think it’s a little unfair to compare Jund to Faeries just yet. For one thing, UB Faeries were at or near the top for more than a year and a half. Cascade Jund hasn’t even hit six months at the top yet. For another, Faeries was more controlling than Jund; getting your spells countered by the same deck over and over is (mildly) more annoying than getting your creatures blown up by the same deck over and over.
Amarsir says: November 25, 2009 @ 3:40 pm
@Rick, that makes sense. I didn’t want the deck to be over-emphasized simply due to a deck tech. But working from it because it’s different has validity.
@lsv, thanks for the summary. With the Japanese players taking out leeches too, that’s some good company on the decision. And Purge also helps justify Master of the Hunt over Siege-Gang, though perhaps to a lesser extent.
Numdiar says: November 25, 2009 @ 7:52 pm
Just to comment on something said above, I think if wizards wanted to ban something from jund it would need to be sprouting thrinax or blightning. Bloodbraid elf is only insane because it cascades into these cards, and they are the ones that are hardest to deal with. Sprouting thrinax basically invalidates vampires and blightning wrecks any deck using planeswalkers. I don’t think jund could function very well without blightning/thrinax to cascade into.
Matthew says: November 25, 2009 @ 9:12 pm
People seem to miss what actually makes Jund so strong.
Its not the ‘card advantage’ but more the size of your spells vs their mana cost thanks to the cascade.
Think about it. The control player and guys like WW are all paying retail value for their ultimatums and Conquerer’s Pledge’s etc.
Jund’s getting anything up to and over 50% discount, almost effectively stealing whole turns with how far ahead into the game a cascade can jump them.
Nothing in Jund is that powerful that needs to be banned. No card has a ridiculous powerlevel that other decks don’t have equal or more powerful cards. The issue comes with how cascade takes multiple cards to create ‘single’ cards that are more powerful than the combined elements.
Examples:
Bloodbraid into Blightning:
Total cost by design: 4GRB.
Total cost by cascade: 2RB
That about a 40% saving and skips Jund ahead something like 3 turns.
Bituminous Blast into Garruk
Total cost by design: 5GGRB
Total cost by cascade: 3BR and its at instant speed
That about a 40% saving too and skips Jund ahead 4 turns.
That’s the real problem. Trying to keep up with Jund’s card advantage is only half the problem, if not less. Its the size of the spells and effects the Jund deck is generating and at the ridiculously cheap effective mana costs that hurting alot of the decks. On top of that, this mammoth spells and effects that are so cheap are also very counter resistant, taking anything from 2 to 3 counters to resolve as although they play out like 1 big spell, they are still made up of small pieces which each need to be dealt with individually, and that’s where the implied card advantage hits, but first and foremost, its the size of the spells and their impact vs total cost that’s the problem. Its also why alot of Jund players are almost ‘lazy’ on their manabases as the deck is often able to cheat past clunky mana thanks to the cascade.
Ban Bloodbraid and you break the back of the deck for this very reason as waiting for turn 5 will be too much. I for one, don’t feel a banning is necessary though. People just need to wake up and take note of how people beat Jund at worlds and realise the errors they are regularly making when designing decks to beat Jund. It was exactly the same with Faeries. Alot of people played Faeries, including me, not because of the ‘raw unstoppable’ power of the fae, but rather because very few people had any clue on how to beat it, even though you saw plenty of pro’s doing it week in and week out, people still couldn’t figure it out for some reason.
Numdiar says: November 25, 2009 @ 11:12 pm
@Matthew
There is no good way to beat jund. People act like there’s this obvious way to do it that no one has figured out. I mean what exactly is good vs jund that people aren’t doing now? There might be a strategy that does okay vs jund but it’s still worse than just playing jund itself.
Matthew says: November 26, 2009 @ 8:58 am
That’s why countless people did it at worlds. There’s no easy way to beat it… It wouldn’t be a good deck if there was, but that doesn’t make it unbeatable, its still very beatable as worlds clearly proved. People just like ignoring the obvious and rather cry about a deck being to powerful instead of doing the work themselves. Just like Faeries. That deck was much easier to beat than people were ever willing to admit, just like Jund. I built a deck for a friend at our regionals, and he went undefeated, steamrolling Faeries and this was with timespiral legal, fae at its strongest.
Matthew says: November 26, 2009 @ 9:00 am
Heck, even been beating Jund with a SolarFlare remake of mine. Who knows maybe the deck will catch on like my Demigod Medred design did last year.
dan says: January 24, 2010 @ 2:11 am
The only reason turbofog worked was because it had the element of surprise. It had the advantage in game 1s for that very reason (and noone ran maindeck hate since control is dead), and then in game 2, opponents saw 50-100% of his deck in game 1 and noticed he ran 0 creatures, so they’d sideboard out most/all creature removal. Then he’d surprise them again with 4 baneslayers and protect them from any remaining hate there was left with countermagic and use the whole deck differently. It also targetted the metagame perfectly with maindeck flashfreeze for Jund and Anti-Jund. It won’t do crap in the next tourney, even with the new Jace. A lot of players could hugely benefit from the way he worked the metagame though, and if they follow the “spirit” of the deck’s creation, they could do very well.
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