Fair enough LEH, thanks for testing. I personally feel that if your problem with the deck is that it’s “too slow”, then the real answer is not that it’s necessarily the trackers, it’s the cards around it. The effect tracker provides is so powerful that I think it’s worth building around to make it work. The goal of this build is to overload your deck with cheap disruption and let tracker do the heavy lifting in the late game. For instance if you’re on Hoogland’s list I think he’s a bit too topheavy.
@Ayiluss we’ve definitely talked the whole “tracker vs bob against aggro” discussion to death, but my general feeling here is that if tracker is a C or a D against aggro, bob is a pretty fat F. Tracker is slow but locks up the game when you’ve stabilized. Bob can help you stabilize, but he can also provide the reach your opponent needs once you’ve controlled the board, or he can speed up your opponents clock. Beyond those matchups, tracker is way more valuable against midrange, and bob is way more valuable against combo. Personally I value the former matchups more than the latter, as combo is largely irrelevant thanks to humans, and the few combo decks that remain are so resilient to disruption that you likely don’t have many cards that matter in g1 if any. The meta right now is dominated by aggro and control/midrange, and in that meta I’d rather have tracker. I get that some people don’t agree with my philosophy behind jund deckbuilding, but I’m fairly confident in my evaluation of each card on a matchup to matchup basis.
Also as an aside, that list I posted a page or two back with lootings plus reveler and tracker was pretty powerful. I don’t personally enjoy looting in jund (even if it might be more powerful) but that list leveraged it quite well. 24 instants and sorceries felt like enough to cash in reveler for 3-4 mana consistently which is still quite powerful. Reveler is so strong that I think a third is quite reasonable, my only hesitation is the grave hate issue. Personally, I think that maindeck is great, but could maybe get away with one fewer land (it’s iffy), probably wants 4 looting, and might want 3rd reveler maindeck. With 4 lootings and 3 reveler, perhaps 2 trackers is ok since you’ll see them more often.
I'm also really looking forward to try this build FlyingDelver. Just got to borrow a few cards from some friends before I can make it happen. But the build certainly looks interesting.
Are you still just running jaberwocki's list with -1 Blooming Marsh, +1 Terminate? I can't quite figure out if the sideboard looks the way it does due to still being a work in progress, or if it is really the way to go (so many playsets, also 3 grudges with 3 k commands main seem like a lot to me).
I'm really hooked on the idea of playing 4x leyline of the void in the sideboard though - which seem like a very strong card atm (vs. hollow one, mardu and kci) - but just not doable in regular Jund IMO - looting should help quite a lot here.
I'm also really looking forward to try this build FlyingDelver. Just got to borrow a few cards from some friends before I can make it happen. But the build certainly looks interesting.
Are you still just running jaberwocki's list with -1 Blooming Marsh, +1 Terminate? I can't quite figure out if the sideboard looks the way it does due to still being a work in progress, or if it is really the way to go (so many playsets, also 3 grudges with 3 k commands main seem like a lot to me).
I'm really hooked on the idea of playing 4x leyline of the void in the sideboard though - which seem like a very strong card atm (vs. hollow one, mardu and kci) - but just not doable in regular Jund IMO - looting should help quite a lot here.
Yes, the same list.
The SB is just very streamlined and focused. You got many decks which suffer from good GY hate and therefore Hollow One, KCI, Mardu and any other GY based decks can be beaten with Leylines.
Fulminator is just great vs Big Mana and really helps against Control. Running Looting means you have some negative CA to cope with and Fulminator + Huntmaster help you to mitigate that.
Grudge is obviously great with Looting itself, plus its well positioned due to KCI/Tron and Affinity.
CB is very flexible and helpful for a handful of matchups.
And the extra Push is needed to help with creature based matchups like Humans.
I've managed to borrow some cards for tonight to try the list out in my local meta. Might have to swap the Leylines for Spellbombs tonight - the guy I can borrow those from might not make it. There's usually not that many GY decks in my local meta anyway - would love to try the Leylines though.
Looking at the list I really like it as well, it seems a bit threat light to me though, but I suppose the lootings help find the threats. Has finding threats been any issue or does the looting make it work exactly as it should?
I'll use the same list as a starting point (I'm not a fan of Blooming Marsh in Jund, and think the 1 Terminate makes total sense).
Well in Mardu you have 12 threats in the form of 4 YP/4 Reveler and 4 Souls. In this version you have 13 threats in the form of 4 Goyf/2 PKN/2 Reveler/2 Ooze and 3 Ravine. This should be totally fine threatwise. Additionally, you have Fulminator + Huntmaster in the board to help with that.
I agree there should be enough threats in the deck so this shouldn't be a concern. You also have Faithless Looting and Bedlam Reveler which help you to find (more) threats. Mardu plays even less threats (typically 12) and I've never had troubles with finding them.
Btw FlyingDelver you and Kastermester said that you play the exact list as Jaberwocki does but cut Blooming Marsh to add 1 Terminate. So, if I'm right you play 23 lands... Is this enough? The deck plays a lot of 3 drops and two 2 drops in the maindeck along with Ravine which is very mana hungry manland. I haven't tried this version just yet but I was wondering how this works.
It feels natural to have 23 lands only if you include 4 Looting.
If we compare Mardu with Jund here, we have 17 one drops (in both versions), 9 two drops in Mardu (7 two drops in Jund) and 14 three+ drops in mardu (13 three + drops in Jund) it seems pretty okay.
However of course, In mardu Souls can be seen as 2 drops also and in Mardu Reveler can also be seen as 2 drops basically (or both at least between 2 and 3 drops). So maybe its like this:
17 one drops for both
17 two drops in Mardu and 7 two drops in Jund
8 three drops in Mardu and 13 three + drops in Jund.
So I am not sure how you can calculate the 3 extra lands in here, but it seems fine at least. Might be too greedy but I feel with 4 Looting and 24 lands you might be flooding a lot.
As I said I haven't tested Jaberwocki's list so it might be totally fine. Also regarding to my 24 lands preference in a regular Jund build which worked perfectly fine for me (with the higher number of 1 drops) 23 lands with Looting should be fine I guess. Looting can help you to find more lands when needed or even discard higher cmc cards if you don't have enough lands to cast them. Perhaps I'm just being paranoid and there is no reason for it. Like you said if this works in Mardu (and this version has similar mana curve) it should work in "Looting Jund" as well.
If you try it, keep us updated though, it might be too greedy, so multiple experiences on it are quite useful.
I think 23 lands is more than enough with 4 lootings. Your curve largely stops at 3 which is pretty given with 23 lands alone, and the four lootings should be sufficient to hit land drop 3 close to 100% of games and land 4 in the majority of games. There are always outliers, but I noticed jaberwocki frequently drew too many lands so I think you’re right to cut one.
If it were me, I would cut a ravine though personally. The card disadvantage from looting combined with being incentivized to pitch lands in the mid to late game makes ravine a lot worse imo. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I feel like looting and ravine butt heads a bit too much.
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I can only say I really like the approach of jaberwocki. I would suggest everyone to give it a try. I think Looting is the real deal, despite the negative CA. Reveler, KCommands, PKN and LtLH can certainly grind hard.
don't like the synergy of looting in jund but I will say that Faithless Looting shines on top deck wars when you're filtering your dead land cards. And I think that's the appeal to it. But definitely not good early or mid.
I can only say I really like the approach of jaberwocki. I would suggest everyone to give it a try. I think Looting is the real deal, despite the negative CA. Reveler, KCommands, PKN and LtLH can certainly grind hard.
don't like the synergy of looting in jund but I will say that Faithless Looting shines on top deck wars when you're filtering your dead land cards. And I think that's the appeal to it. But definitely not good early or mid.
Oh it is great early game in specific matchups. We have dead cards against most matchups, either due to the matchup itself or to specific situations. That being said you should not cast Looting asap. If you know every card in your hand is useful but Looting then simply don't cast it. I know in that case the card itself is useless, but as soon as you deployed your cards and you are topdecking nothing relevant you can fire up looting.
What I personally like Looting in the early game, even if I have all good cards in a matchup, is that I can fire up Looting in desperate situations to find specific needed cards which would help me to claw back if I have fallen behind. There are matchups right now in the meta where you can certainly loose even with a handful of good spells (Hollow One would be a good example).
I can only say I really like the approach of jaberwocki. I would suggest everyone to give it a try. I think Looting is the real deal, despite the negative CA. Reveler, KCommands, PKN and LtLH can certainly grind hard.
don't like the synergy of looting in jund but I will say that Faithless Looting shines on top deck wars when you're filtering your dead land cards. And I think that's the appeal to it. But definitely not good early or mid.
Oh it is great early game in specific matchups. We have dead cards against most matchups, either due to the matchup itself or to specific situations. That being said you should not cast Looting asap. If you know every card in your hand is useful but Looting then simply don't cast it. I know in that case the card itself is useless, but as soon as you deployed your cards and you are topdecking nothing relevant you can fire up looting.
What I personally like Looting in the early game, even if I have all good cards in a matchup, is that I can fire up Looting in desperate situations to find specific needed cards which would help me to claw back if I have fallen behind. There are matchups right now in the meta where you can certainly loose even with a handful of good spells (Hollow One would be a good example).
But this is why I feel like we don't necessarily want 4 of them.
Thats fair, I am also not off the idea of running 3 only, its just that I started messing around with jaberwockis list and see where it goes. So far though, I never had negative experiences with Looting, only positive ones, so right now there is no reason for me to go below 4.
I didn't have much luck with the build - I think mostly it is due to not being used to this style of build - not knowing which hands are keepable etc. I'm not sure I will pursue this build much more right now (looking towards other decks) - but I would take my results with a grain of salt. I think it is very much possible that there's a good deck in the Jaberwocki build when the pilot knows the deck and possibly with a bit of fine tuning.
My matchups (we were only 8 people) were:
Living End (really missed the Leyline's in that I didn't manage to get here, but would figure the matchup is still not favorable post board with them)
Grixis Control (I boarded out a lot of my removal and ended up having issues casting Reveler in the postboarded games - got blown out by maindeck anger in G1)
Blue Tron (I think this matchup is probably alright with this build - somehow I just couldn't manage to draw the right cards and was 1 turn too slow both games)
Maybe the conclusion of Reid Duke's result is if you are a very good jund player, not try to brew just play old fashion Jund.
I not like a lot of things in his list too but it's the master, i think we can disagree but we can't say he's wrong imo.
I mean, we all here are pretty good at the very least, and there are other videos of Reid where he absolutely had such a rough time with Jund. So I think this plan doesn't work on a consistant basis. He is not wrong, but with the classic approach you also just can die. Skill can mitigate that, sure, but overall it feels a little bit too dicey for me to play classic jund.
I want skill to be the major deciding factor for winning or loosing, not the deck build, and lately classic Jund has just that the deck build itself is more often the deciding factor.
Well, I have loved the 25-land build when I'm on a traditional list. I've never really understood why people dislike it.
I will say that I was very surprised by how he boarded for Burn. I'm glad it worked out for him but not having 2 Collective Brutality just seems wrong, but Reid made some nice plays that I didn't consider as well.
You are living in the assumption that you can mitigate the deck builds weaknesses (like consistancy issues) of classic Jund with skill on a consistant basis. If you watch the below linked video series of Reid, you'll see that even Reid cannot win with skill since the deck build made it so that the deck can just let you down completely: https://www.channelfireball.com/videos/jund-modern-channel-reid-2/
The point is that with classic jund right now, you have to accept certain losses which you cannot really influence by skill. Even Reid says this in the third match of the new series when he talked about his opening hand in game 1.
That being said, don't let yourself get discouraged from playing classic Jund. But these "free losses" is in many minds (not only mine) a pretty set fact for this particular build right now. I personally don't want that. And thats why I really enjoy playing the Looting build from Jaberwocki lately. I exactly know what the deck can do, and that on a relative consistant basis. I know the weak points and the strengths of the build. And the fact that it is consistantly working that way, I can use my skill to a maximum advantage of leveraging weakpoints and encouraging strenghts. I think you can much more rely on skill in a consistant deck compared to a lesser consistant deck.
The following things are the facts (i think they are) about faithless looting which say me to not play it :
-Mardu have lingering souls and never any 4-ccm spell or manland.
-Jaberwocki does something, ok, i prefear follow Reid Duke.
-The speed of Modern not changes since the delve spells.
-Jund is THE 1-for-1 deck, looting does 1-for-0 and "just" tempo.
Some food for thought and the way I see Looting, as opposed to your assessment of Looting:
I agree Looting is better in Mardu, no doubt about that.
On your point 2, in some ways there is never anything wrong about following a pro about his/her signature deck, but I want to point out that this point of view might ne a little narrow sighted overall. I respect Reid for what he does and he is an amazing player, but sometimes I stick to my personal feelings and I am also able to disagree with him at times. I think if you believe everything one person does is gold, then you might miss something out. I like to have a good sense of critique for everything magic related. But thats also just me, its a food for thought.
I don't think that the speed of Modern has kept the same level since the printing of delve spells, I think Modern, which is natural behaviour of getting to enlargen its cardpool whith each and every set, naturally means the format finds more efficient, faster and more synergistic stuff to do. Naturally this means the format will slowly but steady increase in speed. At the Twin era Modern was a turn 4 format (delve spells did exist at that time already), and right now we are quite on the verge of being a turn 3 format.
The last point means that you are trying to keep that 1-for-1 mentality up for Jund. If that is true that more or less means you are restricting yourself from newer ideas, which is fine if its what you want, but ultimately not a rule. Looting is a card way more complex than being a simple 1-for-0 like you say. You cannot generalize it that way. If you are up against a matchup like Tron and you happen to keep a hand with Push, you are effectively kept a mull to six. If you get to bin complete dead cards against a given matchup your Looting suddenly turns into a 1-for-1 with selection, or if you have 2 dead cards to bin into a 2-for-1 with selection. Looting in the GY is the best thing to have in a topdeck war, you will surely beat a classic Jund list that way. Again, this is the other side of the spectrum. It seems you are more concerned about the negatives of Looting rather than the positives. That is fine, but its important to look at things from both sides. And your assessment only looks at the bad sides, which is not the complete truth.
Pretty sure this is where yriel’s objections are, ayiluss. I think he and I see eye to eye in the sense that we don’t think that you have to sculpt the perfect hand every time to win. Not that I have anything against sculpting the perfect hand, but the cost of doing so with a card disadvantage spell like faithless looting is quite real.
In general, I do think classic jund has kinda high variance, but I think a large part of that comes down to BBE and bob. Both cards don’t do much on their own and require the top of your deck to play nice. Sometimes BBE spins the wheel into a blank, and sometimes bob flips 9cmc worth of useless cards and kills you. Both cards are obscenely powerful when they cooperate, but I agree a tad more with the “inconsistency” argument upon reflection. There’s something a tad distasteful about having to check your horoscope and the alignment of the planets to know whether you’re gonna have 0 damage bobs and 3-for-1 BBEs, or whether both cards will lead you to an 0-3 drop. But I generally agree with the philosophy of Reid’s build more than Logan’s “spicy jund”. I think jund’s variance can be reduced drastically to a stomach-able level by just not playing the higher variance cards. Not every victory has to be flawless where you answer everything the turn it’s cast. That’s important to mardu because it has a pretty weak proactive gameplan. Jund has few struggles there; it’s very easy to win games with literally two cards; t1 discard, t2 goyf.
Anyways, I was really hoping Reid would post the video after seeing his result. Even if I think his list is a tad out of date, it’s obviously very powerful when things work and a really fun watch.
EDIT: to provide a counterpoint here though Delver, if you’re playing against tron, what exactly are you hoping to find with a faithless looting in game 1? We have 0 maindeck LD. Your chances in game 1 are truly abysmal even with a perfect hand, and in games 2 and 3 the bad cards should be out of your deck.
I get where you’re going with this argument, but if you have a hand with 7 cards, one of which is dead and the other is a looting, and then you cast looting and pitch the dead card+one other, you’re now on 6 useful or semi-useful cards. How’s that any different than replacing the looting with a spell in the first place, and having 6 useful or semi-useful spells plus a dead fatal push? And against a deck where almost all of our cards are live (like affinity or humans), now every card is live except faithless looting. You’ve basically just introduced a dead card to your deck in this case.
@Ayiluss we’ve definitely talked the whole “tracker vs bob against aggro” discussion to death, but my general feeling here is that if tracker is a C or a D against aggro, bob is a pretty fat F. Tracker is slow but locks up the game when you’ve stabilized. Bob can help you stabilize, but he can also provide the reach your opponent needs once you’ve controlled the board, or he can speed up your opponents clock. Beyond those matchups, tracker is way more valuable against midrange, and bob is way more valuable against combo. Personally I value the former matchups more than the latter, as combo is largely irrelevant thanks to humans, and the few combo decks that remain are so resilient to disruption that you likely don’t have many cards that matter in g1 if any. The meta right now is dominated by aggro and control/midrange, and in that meta I’d rather have tracker. I get that some people don’t agree with my philosophy behind jund deckbuilding, but I’m fairly confident in my evaluation of each card on a matchup to matchup basis.
Also as an aside, that list I posted a page or two back with lootings plus reveler and tracker was pretty powerful. I don’t personally enjoy looting in jund (even if it might be more powerful) but that list leveraged it quite well. 24 instants and sorceries felt like enough to cash in reveler for 3-4 mana consistently which is still quite powerful. Reveler is so strong that I think a third is quite reasonable, my only hesitation is the grave hate issue. Personally, I think that maindeck is great, but could maybe get away with one fewer land (it’s iffy), probably wants 4 looting, and might want 3rd reveler maindeck. With 4 lootings and 3 reveler, perhaps 2 trackers is ok since you’ll see them more often.
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Are you still just running jaberwocki's list with -1 Blooming Marsh, +1 Terminate? I can't quite figure out if the sideboard looks the way it does due to still being a work in progress, or if it is really the way to go (so many playsets, also 3 grudges with 3 k commands main seem like a lot to me).
I'm really hooked on the idea of playing 4x leyline of the void in the sideboard though - which seem like a very strong card atm (vs. hollow one, mardu and kci) - but just not doable in regular Jund IMO - looting should help quite a lot here.
Yes, the same list.
The SB is just very streamlined and focused. You got many decks which suffer from good GY hate and therefore Hollow One, KCI, Mardu and any other GY based decks can be beaten with Leylines.
Fulminator is just great vs Big Mana and really helps against Control. Running Looting means you have some negative CA to cope with and Fulminator + Huntmaster help you to mitigate that.
Grudge is obviously great with Looting itself, plus its well positioned due to KCI/Tron and Affinity.
CB is very flexible and helpful for a handful of matchups.
And the extra Push is needed to help with creature based matchups like Humans.
Looking at the list I really like it as well, it seems a bit threat light to me though, but I suppose the lootings help find the threats. Has finding threats been any issue or does the looting make it work exactly as it should?
I'll use the same list as a starting point (I'm not a fan of Blooming Marsh in Jund, and think the 1 Terminate makes total sense).
It feels natural to have 23 lands only if you include 4 Looting.
If we compare Mardu with Jund here, we have 17 one drops (in both versions), 9 two drops in Mardu (7 two drops in Jund) and 14 three+ drops in mardu (13 three + drops in Jund) it seems pretty okay.
However of course, In mardu Souls can be seen as 2 drops also and in Mardu Reveler can also be seen as 2 drops basically (or both at least between 2 and 3 drops). So maybe its like this:
17 one drops for both
17 two drops in Mardu and 7 two drops in Jund
8 three drops in Mardu and 13 three + drops in Jund.
So I am not sure how you can calculate the 3 extra lands in here, but it seems fine at least. Might be too greedy but I feel with 4 Looting and 24 lands you might be flooding a lot.
If you try it, keep us updated though, it might be too greedy, so multiple experiences on it are quite useful.
If it were me, I would cut a ravine though personally. The card disadvantage from looting combined with being incentivized to pitch lands in the mid to late game makes ravine a lot worse imo. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I feel like looting and ravine butt heads a bit too much.
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don't like the synergy of looting in jund but I will say that Faithless Looting shines on top deck wars when you're filtering your dead land cards. And I think that's the appeal to it. But definitely not good early or mid.
Oh it is great early game in specific matchups. We have dead cards against most matchups, either due to the matchup itself or to specific situations. That being said you should not cast Looting asap. If you know every card in your hand is useful but Looting then simply don't cast it. I know in that case the card itself is useless, but as soon as you deployed your cards and you are topdecking nothing relevant you can fire up looting.
What I personally like Looting in the early game, even if I have all good cards in a matchup, is that I can fire up Looting in desperate situations to find specific needed cards which would help me to claw back if I have fallen behind. There are matchups right now in the meta where you can certainly loose even with a handful of good spells (Hollow One would be a good example).
But this is why I feel like we don't necessarily want 4 of them.
My matchups (we were only 8 people) were:
Living End (really missed the Leyline's in that I didn't manage to get here, but would figure the matchup is still not favorable post board with them)
Grixis Control (I boarded out a lot of my removal and ended up having issues casting Reveler in the postboarded games - got blown out by maindeck anger in G1)
Blue Tron (I think this matchup is probably alright with this build - somehow I just couldn't manage to draw the right cards and was 1 turn too slow both games)
I mean, we all here are pretty good at the very least, and there are other videos of Reid where he absolutely had such a rough time with Jund. So I think this plan doesn't work on a consistant basis. He is not wrong, but with the classic approach you also just can die. Skill can mitigate that, sure, but overall it feels a little bit too dicey for me to play classic jund.
I want skill to be the major deciding factor for winning or loosing, not the deck build, and lately classic Jund has just that the deck build itself is more often the deciding factor.
I will say that I was very surprised by how he boarded for Burn. I'm glad it worked out for him but not having 2 Collective Brutality just seems wrong, but Reid made some nice plays that I didn't consider as well.
You are living in the assumption that you can mitigate the deck builds weaknesses (like consistancy issues) of classic Jund with skill on a consistant basis. If you watch the below linked video series of Reid, you'll see that even Reid cannot win with skill since the deck build made it so that the deck can just let you down completely: https://www.channelfireball.com/videos/jund-modern-channel-reid-2/
The point is that with classic jund right now, you have to accept certain losses which you cannot really influence by skill. Even Reid says this in the third match of the new series when he talked about his opening hand in game 1.
That being said, don't let yourself get discouraged from playing classic Jund. But these "free losses" is in many minds (not only mine) a pretty set fact for this particular build right now. I personally don't want that. And thats why I really enjoy playing the Looting build from Jaberwocki lately. I exactly know what the deck can do, and that on a relative consistant basis. I know the weak points and the strengths of the build. And the fact that it is consistantly working that way, I can use my skill to a maximum advantage of leveraging weakpoints and encouraging strenghts. I think you can much more rely on skill in a consistant deck compared to a lesser consistant deck.
Some food for thought and the way I see Looting, as opposed to your assessment of Looting:
I agree Looting is better in Mardu, no doubt about that.
On your point 2, in some ways there is never anything wrong about following a pro about his/her signature deck, but I want to point out that this point of view might ne a little narrow sighted overall. I respect Reid for what he does and he is an amazing player, but sometimes I stick to my personal feelings and I am also able to disagree with him at times. I think if you believe everything one person does is gold, then you might miss something out. I like to have a good sense of critique for everything magic related. But thats also just me, its a food for thought.
I don't think that the speed of Modern has kept the same level since the printing of delve spells, I think Modern, which is natural behaviour of getting to enlargen its cardpool whith each and every set, naturally means the format finds more efficient, faster and more synergistic stuff to do. Naturally this means the format will slowly but steady increase in speed. At the Twin era Modern was a turn 4 format (delve spells did exist at that time already), and right now we are quite on the verge of being a turn 3 format.
The last point means that you are trying to keep that 1-for-1 mentality up for Jund. If that is true that more or less means you are restricting yourself from newer ideas, which is fine if its what you want, but ultimately not a rule. Looting is a card way more complex than being a simple 1-for-0 like you say. You cannot generalize it that way. If you are up against a matchup like Tron and you happen to keep a hand with Push, you are effectively kept a mull to six. If you get to bin complete dead cards against a given matchup your Looting suddenly turns into a 1-for-1 with selection, or if you have 2 dead cards to bin into a 2-for-1 with selection. Looting in the GY is the best thing to have in a topdeck war, you will surely beat a classic Jund list that way. Again, this is the other side of the spectrum. It seems you are more concerned about the negatives of Looting rather than the positives. That is fine, but its important to look at things from both sides. And your assessment only looks at the bad sides, which is not the complete truth.
Pretty sure this is where yriel’s objections are, ayiluss. I think he and I see eye to eye in the sense that we don’t think that you have to sculpt the perfect hand every time to win. Not that I have anything against sculpting the perfect hand, but the cost of doing so with a card disadvantage spell like faithless looting is quite real.
In general, I do think classic jund has kinda high variance, but I think a large part of that comes down to BBE and bob. Both cards don’t do much on their own and require the top of your deck to play nice. Sometimes BBE spins the wheel into a blank, and sometimes bob flips 9cmc worth of useless cards and kills you. Both cards are obscenely powerful when they cooperate, but I agree a tad more with the “inconsistency” argument upon reflection. There’s something a tad distasteful about having to check your horoscope and the alignment of the planets to know whether you’re gonna have 0 damage bobs and 3-for-1 BBEs, or whether both cards will lead you to an 0-3 drop. But I generally agree with the philosophy of Reid’s build more than Logan’s “spicy jund”. I think jund’s variance can be reduced drastically to a stomach-able level by just not playing the higher variance cards. Not every victory has to be flawless where you answer everything the turn it’s cast. That’s important to mardu because it has a pretty weak proactive gameplan. Jund has few struggles there; it’s very easy to win games with literally two cards; t1 discard, t2 goyf.
Anyways, I was really hoping Reid would post the video after seeing his result. Even if I think his list is a tad out of date, it’s obviously very powerful when things work and a really fun watch.
EDIT: to provide a counterpoint here though Delver, if you’re playing against tron, what exactly are you hoping to find with a faithless looting in game 1? We have 0 maindeck LD. Your chances in game 1 are truly abysmal even with a perfect hand, and in games 2 and 3 the bad cards should be out of your deck.
I get where you’re going with this argument, but if you have a hand with 7 cards, one of which is dead and the other is a looting, and then you cast looting and pitch the dead card+one other, you’re now on 6 useful or semi-useful cards. How’s that any different than replacing the looting with a spell in the first place, and having 6 useful or semi-useful spells plus a dead fatal push? And against a deck where almost all of our cards are live (like affinity or humans), now every card is live except faithless looting. You’ve basically just introduced a dead card to your deck in this case.
UMerfolkGBW
Melira PodRIPGBW Abzan Midrange
GBR Jund Midrange
EDH
GBR Prossh