Welcome to Death’s Shadow Jund, the newest and most successful iteration of both the Jund archetype and Death’s Shadow archetype in modern. What this deck defines is raw power: Efficiency, Effectiveness, Flexibility and Explosion. In this archetype, all these key words merge together to form a deadly weapon, which will ride any owner to straight victory as long as this weapon is used properly. That being said, playing Death’s Shadow Jund is not easy. Due to its high flexibility, many different decisions concerning either constructing the deck, or playing the deck have to be made. As this deck is very efficient, the player operating it has to utilize this to maximum benefit. Lastly, every game can be a challenging puzzle which has to be figured out over the course of it.
Efficiency stands for this deck’s low mana curve and its spells, which are by no means any less powerful for modern because of their low cost. If you want to cast gaint Death's Shadows, impactful Terminates or valuable Mishra's Baubles then read on!
Flexibility stands for the different modes this deck can run on. You can be a simple beatdown deck with your giant ass creatures coming down as early as turn 2, or can be able to grind opponents out in longer lasting games, topdeck wars included! If you like Lingering Souls or Liliana of the Veil then you will love this deck!
Explosion stands for the possibility of closing games fast and out of nowhere. Death’s Shadow can grow insanely fast in this deck, on turn 2 you can easily have a 5/5 + Death’s Shadow on board. It is imaginable how fast the game will end if you attach a single Temur Battle Rage to it.
If all those aspects seem thrilling and motivating to you, then Death’s Shadow Jund is probably the deck for you!
”The shadow of the candle looms tall even as its light grows dim.”
Death’s Shadow Jund emerged from various Magic Online Leagues (created by the fellow MTGO grinder “Butakov”), where it started to become successful right when Gitaxian Probe and Golgari Grave-Troll was banned from modern on January, 9th, 2017. Ironically, Death’s Shadow as a card was used before in a more glass-canon build running Probe and Become Immense. Looking back, the ban was not harming for this deck at all, far from it, it actually allowed the real Death’s Shadow Jund deck to emerge, which does look quite different than its predecessor and also operates on a different axis. This deck still utilizes self-damaging spells like Street Wraith or Thoughtseize along with the well-known fetch + shockland combo, in order to cast an early and giant threat in the name of Death’s Shadow. However, instead of going for a glass-canon build and trying to kill the opponent as fast as possible, this iteration utilizes the traditional aspects of a disruptive, grindy midrange deck. This is also the reason why this current iteration decides to run Jund colours. It reaches all back to its godfather of midrange decks: Jund Midrange itself. The combination of fast to establish threats combined with the disruption and grind of the midrange aspect of the deck makes the deck so powerful and flexible. For more insights about the history of Death’s Shadow Jund, have a look here: Deck Evolutions: Death’s Shadow. Now what makes up this deck? Which cards does it run? Let’s take a look!
”Knowledge is such a burden. Release it. Release all your fears to me.”
-Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
Death’s Shadow Jund has some core cards which should not be changed ever. Beyond those, which will be covered in a second, a variety of different flex slots are available to you. These slots should be used in order to fit your personal metagame. In the following, we will go over the cards you can use in order to build a Death’s Shadow Jund deck. Basically, there are 2 main versions of this deck: The one which uses the white splash for getting access to white sideboard cards and the one which doesn’t. Whether you want to play the white splash or not depends on your meta and personal preference basically. Over the next sections, you should get a basic idea on which version will serve best for you.
For the landbase, you generally want to have 17 lands. Since the beginning and emerging of the deck, this number hasn’t changed really, so this is your best bet and I would encourage you to go for the 17 lands. Among these 17 lands, usually, 6-7 lands will be your mana producing lands. This may seem like a little bit too few, but this deck is very tight in its playstyle and therefore manabase, that 6 are sufficient. But of course attacking our manabase is something which opponents will try to do if they can, it’s one of the weak points in playing this deck. Subsequently, 10-11 lands will make up your fetchland suite for the deck. Below are the recommended lands to play for each version of the deck:
Mana-producing lands (6-7 copies):
Overgrown Tomb (2 copies) : This is one of the best or if not the best land you have. Black and green are the most important colours to the deck and usually you need both of them very early in the game. Green you will hardly need on turn 1, but black more so. Having access to black mana on turn 1 is crucial in order to cast our disruption spells or removal spells right away, in order to slow opponents down. Therefore, if you play the regular Jund version without the white splash, you want 2 copies of that land in your deck.
Blood Crypt (1 copy) : This land is your second best land, granting not only black as the most important colour but also red, which is still a very important colour to this deck. Sometimes you want to get this land on turn 1, in order to take out opposing creatures with Tarfire for example. We want one copy of that land in our deck.
Stomping Ground (0-1 copy) : This land has its weakness in not being able to produce important black mana, but can get the other two main colours at least. It’s not the best land generally, but we need it sometimes to have all of our colours available if we happen to have a basic swamp on the battlefield.
Swamp (1 copy) : Having access to a basic swamp is what you really want to have in this deck, in order to help playing around Blood Moon which is a very scary card for us. In addition, this land helps if we get Path to Exiled or Ghost Quarterd.
Breeding Pool (0-1 copy) : Since we want to utilize the best spells in every colour, blue is needed in order to cast Stubborn Denial which greatly helps protecting our threats. Therefore we need to run blue producting lands, and Breeding Pool is propably the best option here, since we get to cast Traverse with it also.
Watery Grave (1 copy) : Since we want to utilize the best spells in every colour, blue is needed in order to cast Stubborn Denial which greatly helps protecting our threats. Therefore we need to run blue producting lands, and Breeding Pool is propably the best option here, since it also has access to our main colour: black.
Godless Shrine (0-1 copy) : This land is most commonly seen in the SB actually. It basically has the same purpose for white spells as Watery Grave for blue Spells. For grindy matchups, we have powerful white sideboard cards we want to utilize, therefore we need a white source to play them. Again, only use this land, as it also produces the main colour black. However, I would suggest running it in the SB in the first place. For more detail on that one, visit the SB construction section.
Fetchlands (10-11 copies):
Verdant Catacombs (4 copies) : If Overgrown Tomb is our best mana-producing land, then Verdant Catacombs is our best fetchland. Always play 4 copies, no budget replacements or whatsoever. You need this land in order to not get manascrewed by your own deck. Especially if you run the basic forest, then this land is very important, as it can get both basics in the deck if needed.
Bloodstained Mire (2-3 copies) : This land is the second best fetchland, as its in Jund colours and also a black fetchland. Along with Verdant Catacombs it builds your 8 land fetchland configuration which can find any land in the deck (even Godless Shrine in the SB). So those lands are equally good in the deck.
Polluted Delta (4 copies) : This land is another fetchland able to find almost every shock in our deck, except Stomping Ground. You can basically use Marsh Flats also as a replacement, it technically does the same thing.
As for creatures, the slots are pretty much locked. You run 12 creatures, which are the reason why this deck functions so great. In some lists you will see a 13th or 14th creature depending on preference and meta, which I want to explain in a bit. But lately, no extra creature has been seen play in this deck, so I would basically stick to the same 12 creatures. Here are the 12 main creatures to have when building Death’s Shadow Jund:
Death's Shadow (4 copies) : The namesake of the deck. This creature enables incredible fast finishes alongside with its brother Tarmogoyf. You absolutely have to play 4 copies in the deck, without any exceptions.
Tarmogoyf (4 copies) : The other half of our threats is straight old Tarmogoyf. Its just on its own the most efficient creature in modern and deserves its place in the deck easily. You must run 4 copies of that card. Due to the big number of card types run in the maindeck (usually 7: Land, Instant, Sorcery, Creature, Artifact, Planeswalker and Tribal) Tarmogoyf’s average Strenght and Thoughness will be beyond 4/5 most of the time. Usually the average is more pushed 5/6 or 6/7 here, which just fits our main gameplan: killing opponents very quickly with a fast clock and using efficient creatures when doing so.
Street Wraith (4 copies) : One of our ways to damage ourselves to make Death’s Shadow bigger and to cycle through the deck. It’s essentially a free cantrip at instant speed only requiring to pay 2 life, which we happily want to do playing that deck anyways. But, this card has also a secret hidden mode often overseen by the players: Actually hardcasting that creature! Going for that route is an excellent strategy when you play the mirror match. One of our weaknesses is that it’s hard for us to deal with Fatal Push proof creatures, which Street Wraith can be when been cast as a creature. So keep that in mind when playing the deck.
Next, I want to give suggestions for creatures, which keep popping up sometimes, but aren’t considered being a core to the deck. Its up to everybody him/herself if he/she wants to play with those creatures. Generally, I would not go over 14 creatures in the deck total. In fact the most common number to play is 13. We really need the rest of the maindeck slots to make room for our disruptive spells, which we will talk about later.
Ghor-Clan Rampager (0-1 copy) : This creature was originally the 13th creature of the deck, and its main purpose is to have a tutorable creature for Traverse the Ulvenwald to get the extra few points of damage needed to win. However, on its own the card is pretty weak and only adding +4/+4 and trample won’t generate wins out of nowhere like Temur Battle Rage does. So in that regard it’s more of a win more card than secret tech. It’s still popular though, but I guess mostly because of it being in the original list. It’s up to you to decide whether you want the card or not.
Grim Flayer (0-2 copies) : I’ve seen list running Grim Flayer as up to a 2-of in the maindeck. The reasoning is that this is another creature which can hit reasonably well (delirium is in this deck easy to reach) as well as grind to find needed answers/threats for something. The downside being that Grim Flayer is very weak when delirium is activated, and if you Traverse for a threat, most of the time you would want to get a bigger threat, which both Goyf and Death’s Shadow provide most of the time.
Architects of Will (0-1 copy) : It sees play sometimes, but this card is only an additional cycler for the deck and helps with delirium as it is both a creature and artifact alike. Having to spend one mana in order to cycle the card is obviously worse than paying life like we can with Street Wraith. As we don’t have access to blue mana, the card can’t be hardcasted, which I think is a major drawback, otherwise the card could be kinda decent for the deck when you have this possibility available for you.
Ranger of Eos (0-1 copy) : This is a card obviously only available to the white splash version. Usually, this card is in the sideboard in the white splash version, and has the application for grindy matchups where you want to maximize threat density. In other cases, Ranger is incredibly clunky and slow, because usually we do not play spells with a CMC of higher than 3. Due to this reason I would advise playing the card in the Sideboard than mainboard. But some lists did play him mainboard for which reason its worth mentioning.
Renegade Rallier (0-1 copy) : Rallier saw play in some lists already, but only shortly. In theory the card provides great value in recurring one of our main threats (goyf or shadow) but practically, it’s kinda conditional. You need to get several factors right in order to make him work. The targeted creature must be in the graveyard (bad sign if you are up against Path to Exile decks) and you need to have revolt active on that turn. Both theses factors often make it so that Rallier is just a 3 mana 3/2. Which is just not good enough for this deck. So let’s say it like this: If he works it’s great, but if he doesn’t work it’s devastating.
Varolz, the Scar-Striped (0-1 copy) : A fancy little interaction do we have with Varolz and its Scavenge mechanic and our Death’s Shadows in the graveyard. When you scavenge one of the shadows, Varolz will get 13 +1/+1 counters on it and grow into a giant ass creature. This may lead to hilarious moments. It definitely has some power, but we need to have the creature in the graveyard for this to work. So sometimes it just won’t.
As Death’s Shadow Jund does play few creatures and lands, the noncreature spells are the ones which hold the deck together, making the little land and creature count still effective enough to win. Again, here are some spells which absolutely are set in stone. I will begin explaining those first and afterwards, go over the flexslots you have. Basically, since we do run 18 lands and 12 creatures, we have 30 slots for noncreature spells. For a deck able to operate like a midrange deck, this is a high spell count there. So lets go over the core of the noncreature spells:
Core noncreature spells:
Mishra's Bauble (4 copies) : This card serves multiple purposes for the deck. First of all it adds a card type to the graveyard, fueling our Tarmogoyfs and helping to reach delirium. Secondly, it is a cantrip which costs nothing (remember Street Wraith?), which allows us to dig deeper in our deck along simultaneously getting to cast our other disruptive spells. This is very important. If we would have to spend mana for our cantrips, they would be far less effective and efficient, since we almost always want to play say a turn 1 discard card rather than a cantrip. As Mishra’s Bauble gets to look at the top card of one library, you can either use it in combination with a fetchland upgrading this into a scry 1 effectively or use it on the opponents library to get more information on what to take with your discard spell. Playing with Mishra’s Bauble certainly requires some skill, as sequencing is key here. There is an article written by a fellow DSJ player (credits to AcademyRuins at this point) about using cantrips and Mishra’s Bauble specifically. You can check it out here: A Guide to Using Death’s Shadow Jund’s Cantrips
Manamorphose (4 copies) : Manamorphose is insane in this deck. It helps for delirium, fixes our mana, cantrips to find more threats and speeds up the deck in general. It helps to glue everything together. With SW and Bauble, this turns the deck basically into a 48 card deck. I really recommend playing 4 copies of the card.
Traverse the Ulvenwald (4 copies) : This card effectively is a Demonic Tutor for us and its totally accurate to call it this way. It can get every creature we need (which means tutoring for a threat or cantrip in the form of Street Wraith) and every land we need (effectively helping for mana fixing and also helping increasing the power of Death’s Shadow, as you can tutor for a fetchland, play it and shock yourself for the full 3 dmg). This card is just insane if we have delirium online. This card also allows us to kind of run a toolbox for catchy creatures in the sideboard if needed, like Ethersworn Canonist, Kataki, War's Wage or Ranger of Eos. It would be absurd to play less than 4 copies of that card, it is absolutely essential for this deck.
Inquisition of Kozilek (4 copies) : One of our two single target discard spells. As this deck has not many, but powerful threats, it needs to protect them from opposing removal or disruption of any kind. This is the reason why we need to run discard spells like these. Inquisition of Kozilek does not hit everything, but is good enough for modern to hit the most part of relevant spells from the opponent’s hands. In fact, it’s only topped by one other spell, which we do also run 4 copies of.
Thoughtseize (4 copies) : This is the best single target discard spell in modern, in most situations (one exception would be being up against burn). For most decks running this card, the life loss is something which they just take into account (it’s generally very much worth it) but for us, it actually serves a distinct purpose: Growing our Death’s Shadow. This card just fits perfect into our strategy. We want to disrupt our opponents, this card can hit every card (!) and we also get to loose life which makes our Death’s Shadow bigger. What can you ask more?
Fatal Push (3-4 copies) : This is also a card which has to be in any decklist. The number will depend on your meta, because Fatal Push has some clear restrictions, which some decks make use of. But in general, for modern, this card hits the biggest portion of creatures played. And it hits manlands. And it does only cost 1 mana. Usually, the most common number of copies is 3 in the maindeck and 1 extra in the sideboard. However, you can change that a bit. If you feel you need more removal you can go up to 4, or if you feel you need less, you can go down to 2. Generally though, Fatal Push is played as a 4-of in the whole 75.
Temur Battle Rage (2 copies) : This card is generally insane in the sense that it can steal games for us, which would be otherwise though to win. This card even allows us to steal games when we are behind. It is a scary tool and opponents will fear it when they play against you. The reason why we do not run many copies of the card is because on its own it does nothing of course. It is a horrible topdeck if you desperately seek for threats. Besides Tarfire, this card also often gets sided out in attrition based matches.
Terminate (2 copies) : Terminate is another catch-all creature removal which can be of great benefit for us. It can help dealing with big delve creatures and eldrazi, which we have a hard time dealing with, so it does make sense to run. Usually, the card sees mainboard play and is run at 2 copies.
Abrupt Decay (1-2 copies) : Abrupt Decay provides a flexible catch-all tool which finds applications in lots of matchups. Its obvious weakness is its restriction in CMC hitting cards and its inability to hit manlands. Nevertheless it’s a powerful card which should be used. I would advise to play at least 1 copy mainboard, with option to play a second one in the mainboard or sideboard.
Liliana of the Veil (0-3 copies) : One of the two planeswalkers available to us. There is not much to say about her, it’s the second best planeswalker printed and nowhere worse in this deck. Serves also as extra card type for growing Goyfs and reaching delirium. Usually, 2-3 copies of planeswalkers are played in the deck. Within those 2-3 copies, all kinds of mixes between the two available planeswalkers come up. Whether you want to run 0, 1 or 2 LoTV depends on your meta and personal preference.
Liliana, the Last Hope (0-1 copies) : The second planeswalker available to us. Some people prefer to run her over LoTV in the mainboard, or decide to run a split of both. With LoTV and Liliana, the Last Hope your planeswalker count should be 2-3 copies maindeck. As a fact, this Liliana is very strong for grinding and dealing with pesky small tokens or creatures, which we generally struggle to deal with. In that sense a great addition to the deck!
Optional noncreature cards:
Collective Brutality (0-2 copies) : Collective Brutality shines in its flexibility and its application for the burn matchup. It combines everything we need, discard, removal and life drain (relevant for burn and if our life totals get too low). Play at least 2 copies in the 75. You can play up to 2 copies mainboard, if you wish. But make sure to have 2 copies in the 75 at least.
Dismember (0-1 copies) : Dismember is a removal, which fits our maingoal of getting to a low life total and casting big Death’s Shadows. Its application is mainly to deal with the creatures Fatal Push can’t deal with (Tasigur, the golden Fang, Gurmag Angler, Reality Smasher, Drowner of Hope…). However, in the mirror this card is fairly weak, and also against aggro where you want to preserve your life totals to a certain extend. Therefor this is not our primary removal and can just be played as a singleton if needed, otherwise skip on this card.
Tarfire (0-2 copies) : When speaking of effectiveness and efficiency, if one looks at this card, it shouldn’t make much sense to call it efficient or effective, right? Well, on its own, that is right. The card is just worse than a Lightning Bolt. However, the thing which pushes it over Bolt in this deck is its tribal card type. We give up a single point of dmg by running it over bolt, but very much gain value in form or reaching delirium faster and growing our Tarmogoyf. For this reason it is recommended to run this card, it really helps. If it’s underwhelming in some matchups, it is sided out easily. When building this deck, I would recommend starting at 3 copies and then see how they perform. Lately, some players are cutting down on the card, but I think you really should play at least 1-2 copies, for its given synergy with the rest of the deck.
Kolaghan's Command (0-2 copies) : Speaking of attrition, this card is shining in those kinds of matchups. All modes are relevant and valuable. Whether its dealing some dmg to a target, destroying artifacts (looking at you Chalice of the Void), letting the opponent discard a card (you know the sexy drawstep discard trick?) or recur a creature from the graveyard. All modes are fantastic for this deck. The only downside is the high manacost, which makes the card clunky sometimes. Usually this card has been skipped in the past, since going for 5 colours require some cuts. Its nevertheless a nice option to have.
As for the sideboard, many different options are available in order to compensate for the personal meta. Due to this, sideboards will look different depending on the meta its used in. In the following, I will give a more or less standard sideboard as suggestion to build. It doesn’t mean it’s the best builds, but can be a starting point to begin testing and accommodating for your personal meta.
So, for a standard sideboard playing the regular 5 colour Jund Death’s Shadow deck, the sideboard slots should be filled with the following cards:
The following cards are also available to use in a sideboard:
Eidolon of Rhetoric :This cards power lies in the option to tutor for it with Traverse, and it’s a silver bullet to popular combo decks in modern like Ad Nauseam or Living End and Grishoalbrand. If you face a lot of these decks, you might want to consider this card. Basically there is another option out there as well: Ethersworn Canonist, which has the upside of being easier to cast, but being easier to remove. Eidolon is harder to cast but also harder to remove. Its up to you to decide.
Ethersworn Canonist : Has the same application like Eidolon. Is easier to cast but also easier to remove.
Kataki, War’s Wage : This card is a potential silver bullet for both Lantern Control and Affinity. Why we might want this card over Stony Silence is because we can tutor for it. It’s a solid choice but overall not as impactful as Stony Silence, because its easier to remove and can be played around to some extent.
Painful Truths : A solid choice if you feel you lack grindy cards for your sideboard. The life loss is obviously useful for us as well. Just a powerful card to round your sideboard up.
Grafdigger’s Cage : Another possible graveyard hate card. It is a powerful card performing well across the field, but doesn’t prevent delve and also does nothing against Living End.
Nihil Spellbomb : Probably the best graveyard spell as it can deal with possibly every shenanigan, but of course only once. However, it replaces itself at least. For an unknown meta I would absolutely go for this card.
Dismember : This card is a solid choice if you have a hard time dealing with delve creatures or eldrazi (basically fatal push proof creatures). If you have a lot of those in your meta, you can go for this.
Abrupt Decay : Usually sees play in the maindeck, but can be in sideboards as well. Nothing to say much here, solid catch-all removal relevant in many cases.
Anger of the Gods : This card in theory is amazing if you have the tools to play that card. Go wide strategies like Abzan CoCo or Elves are quite hard for us to deal with due to their endless blockers for our threats. This card could help here, but the problem is that is quite hard to cast. I would only really suggest playing that card when you are not playing the white splash and have the possibility of playing 2 copies of Blood Crypt which will support Anger better.
Now that we have covered the individual cards, how does a sample deck list look like? In the following, the core of the deck is again summarized and subsequent sample list for the regular Jund version, the white splash and recent tournament decks with good finishes are illustrated.
In this section I want to talk about basic sideboarding for specific matchups. I hope this helps to a certain extend, and if there is something wrong with the guide, feel free to contact me and discuss the issue with me. As this deck is still evolving, people still test different approaches and spins of this deck, the guide is not something which can be considered final. Its an early draft of an guide I want to improve over time. So, this should be an open and evolving source of information for every fellow Death's Shadow Jund player coming to this threat and seeking for relevant information about sideboarding, matchup analysis or deck construction. It should be helpful to have a gathered source of information on this and no widespread gathered information over the course of this threat, which would be quite hard to use in order to extract the information needed. So, I very much encourage everybody to help with this and give constructive feedback and suggestions. Working together on this is definitely the best approach I think.
What both the regular and white splash version have in common is that they share the same core of cards, that shouldn't be sided out ever, which are the following:
The 8 main threats are a no-brainer to keep, as well as 3 tutors and the 4 cantrips that are very important in every game I think. Sometimes you can shave one Traverse, if you side out too many cards that are helpful to enable delirium (like Street Wraith) therefore I set 3 Traverses as minimum to keep.
General guidelines
Now lets go for the sideboarding and matchups themselves. First, however, I want to give a bit of theory which I also learned and applied while playing regular Jund, so if some of you know the Jund Primer, there should be nothing new to read here. But for completeness, I'll give it anyway:
To get an idea of what to cut in which matchup, it’s important to recognize an opposing deck for what it is. For this purpose, I am going to categorize different deck types and will be dividing our deck into different categories of tools available for us, and then explain, what is good and what is bad.
The following kinds of decks are out there:
swarm aggro decks based on creatures (Zoo, Goblins)
Aggro decks based on mostly non creature spells (Infect, Death’s Shadow, Burn)
Midrange decks based on goodstuff cards (Jund, Junk, Bant Eldrazi)
Midrange decks including swingy/payoff cards (Abzan Company)
Big Mana decks (Tron, RG Breach, RG Titanshift, Amulet Titan, Eldrazi Tron)
Combo decks based on spells mostly (Ad Nauseam)
Combo decks based on the GY (Goryo’s Vengeance, Living End)
Control decks with an heavy endgame (Grixis Control, Jeskai Control)
Of course, each deck functions somewhat differently and attacks the opponent on a different axis, so it is hard to throw them all into one box and then play the same way against them every time, this just does not work. Always, always knowledge is key in order to beat a deck. We just have to know what our opposing deck wants to do, in order to stop it. In addition, we have to know what the SB plan of our opposing decks will be. Only by knowing this, we can squeeze the most win percentage out of being up against a given deck.
Our deck has certain tools to interact with the opponent, which are the following:
Targeted discard (IOK, TS, CB)
Non targeted discard (Kolaghan’s Command, Liliana of the Veil)
Single target removal (Tarfire, Abrupt Decay, CB…)
Edict effects (Liliana of the Veil)
Mass removal (Anger of the Gods, potentially Maelstrom Pulse)
Burn (Tarfire, KCommand, CB)
Grindy cards (KCommand, LotV, LtlH)
Threats (Tarmogoyf, Death Shadow, Temur Battle Rage, Ghor-Clan Rampager)
CA Engine (not exactly CA, but Card Quality: Mishra's Bauble)
Graveyard Hate (Nihil Spellbomb, Surgical Extraction)
Land Destruction (Fulminator Mage)
Our deck can attack the opponent on a lot of different axis, which gives us game against potentially every opponent. There is no single card which completely shuts down our strategy, which is the reason why Jund overall performs great.
Let’s see what (in general) is useful against which kind of deck:
This chart should generally show, which tools are good against which kind of strategy.
As a general advice for side boarding, always go for the question: “What can I cut from my main deck?” first rather than “What cards can I bring in?”. This applies to every matchup. For this reason, this guide is more focused on the cards to cut, whether on the cards to bring in, because generally, this is easier to determine.
Note: Before going into the detail analysis of each matchup, I wanted to stress, that the sideboarding suggestions are all listed according to priority. The first card in the list is the first card you should cut in this matchup, the second card should be cut secondly, and so on. Also, no exact numbers concerning how many copies of each card to cut is given. It generally wouldn't make much sense, since every list could potentially run different numbers of a given card in his/her deck. Thats why I found the priority approach to be better, and in addition, you can't just copy a sideboard suggestion and use it, which let's you sideboard more dynamicly. Here is an article by Reid Duke, which explains to determine a metagame:The Metagame. One last note for the sideboard guide itself, I will mark sideboard changes which are specific choices for the different versions with either W for the whitesplash and R for the regular version.
To conclude, these are the general guidelines for sideboarding in a given game. However, in specific cases, specific strategies are needed. For this reason, I want to go over all matchups present in this meta right now and go into a little bit more detail. For this guide, I am using a standard 5c deck list, which looks like the following:
This deck runs no cards which have higher CMC than 3. For this reason, Inquisition of Kozilek is strictly better than Thoughtseize. Since we generally don’t want discard, we will cut all Thoughtseizes from our deck after game 1. Depending on what cards we have in the SB to bring in, we can also cut some Inquisitions. I personally find IOKs sometimes very useful, as the affinity player tends to drop all his small cheap cards in the first turn, and will hold the payoff cards in the hand for another turn. Even if we are on the draw, snapping this payoff card is great. Still, I wouldn’t bring in more discard because of this. This is just a reason why some numbers of IOK are fine to keep in the MB. However, cutting all Liliana of the Veil is the first priority. Depending if you have any more sideboard cards to bring in, it is ok to cut some Street Wraiths, as Affinity is an aggro deck after all and will kill you fast, so Street Wraith is not the best here. So to summarize (in order of priority):
Burn generally is a spell based aggro deck. It still runs a fair amount of creatures nonetheless, especially the Naya version (running Wild Nacatl). Against this deck, you want to take as little dmg as possible, so be careful with fetching and thoughtseizing the opponent. Discard is great in this matchup (except Thoughtseize, this is horrible), especially IOK which can strip of a burn card from the opponents hand without taking dmg. So what cards do you bring in against Burn? Generally, cards which gain life like Collective Brutality and Stubborn Denial for potentially countering a spell from the burn player. The cards you absolutely have to cut are:
This gives you about 6 cards to bring in from you SB. But before talking about the SB, why is cutting TS important? I often hear people arguing that TS is not as bad against Burn, because you can potentially snatch a Boros Charm or Atarkas Command, effectively gaining 2 life, right? Well, its not that simple.
I look at Burn as being a combo deck, which just has to resolve 6-7 spells in order to win the game. Generally, each spell will do 3 or sometimes 4 dmg to the opponent, so for 20 life --> 7 spells with 3 dmg per spell or 6 spells with two spells dealing 4 dmg are needed. Burn is a very consistant deck. It will more often than not draw the needed spells and just win. Now, when you are playing TS and taking Boros Charm out of the opponent’s hand, you annul the effect of Boros Charm which would have otherwise dealt 4 dmg to your face. But what you also did through this, is effective casting a free Shock on yourself. Combines this with a simple fetch you potentially did prior to this (even if you only fetched for 1) you effectively cast a free Lightning Bolt on yourself. So what did TS actually do for you? Nothing. You took Boros Charm, but bolted you alongside. You gave the opponent 1 of the 7 spells needed to kill you. (And to note, even if you don’t fetch for 1, you effectively cast a combo spell piece on yourself by casting TS, going down to 18 life and the burn player now just needs 6 instead of 7 3-dmg spells) So to conclude, if you TS the Burn player, you take away one spell they have but they simply have to draw one less spell alongside, which is just doing nothing.
I think especially here, the white splash has a big impact on the outcome of the match as the SB cards are very strong here. Besides this, knowledge of the deck is also important to win the MU. Thus, playing Tarmogoyf only when he is bolt proof against Jund is self-explanatory as a simple example. You could argue about removing Liliana of the Veil against Junk, due to Lingering Souls and bring in other stuff from the GY, but I am leaning towards leaving her in the deck. She is still a great card and we have worse cards to cut and less good cards to bring in most likely. Also cutting Stubborn Denial is a good idea here, since it doesn't impact the board and is thus a horrible topdeck.
Bant Eldrazi is a pretty though matchup for Death's Shadow Jund. They have very good tools from the sideboard to attack us, among which Rest in Piece and Worship are one of the scariest ones. Combined with threats like Drowner of Hope and [/c]Eldrazi Displacer[/c] they can pretty much lock us out of the game. Its of great priority to have discard to disrupt their gameplan because of this. Killing Displacer on sight is also a must. The Problem with Eldrazi is, that they have way bigger creatures, which makes our removal awkward at times. Still, both Terminate and Fatal Push can be used against the deck very effectively, but as it happens, if you draw the wrong removal at the wrong point´, we can get screwed hard. I would cut the following cards:
Liliana, the Last Hope is actually decent against Eldrazi to pick their tokens, manadorks or Skyspawners and reducing the power of their creatures overall, which makes it easier to handle the threats. Lingering Souls is quite slow, but I think still worthwhile to bring in, just to increase threats which are more immune to single-target removal (path/displacer). The flying is relevant as most of their creatures don't fly and thus we can maybe slowly but shurely fly over them if we play Souls backed up by removal for displacer/skyspawner and discard for RIP/Path and Drowner.
By doing so, you can have about 5 cards to bring in is this MU. The best options we have to bring in are Stubborn Denials, Disdainful Strokes and Ancient Grudges. The main goal though, is to race them.
With this you have about 4 cards to bring in. Try not to play the long game against this MU. Generally, you want to close games as fast as you can. One of the most annoying cards they have is Chalice of the Void. But due to this, we keep in our answers for it in the deck (Decay, Stubborn Denial). It is important to keep soething around to trigger revolt at all times, in order to have Fatal Push online and effective. So fetch conservatively.
We bring in Collective Brutality, which discards and gains life which can potentially help getting out of the 18 life threshold for a 7 land shapeshift (also relevant against Breach). As an quick note on Abrupt Decay, it might be correct to leave those in to have an answer for Chalice of the Void, which is a card that Valakut decks sometimes run in their SB. If you expect this, maybe leave in Decay.
One side note concerning Fulminator (does see play sometimes) and Scapeshift: If the opponent plays Scapeshift and wants to sacrifice 7 lands, obviously destroy a land in response, so they can only sac 6 lands. If they scapeshift for 8 lands however, you can't deny the valakut triggers, as 7 lands will also be enough, however, you can reduce the dmg from 36 to 6, if you destroy one mountain in response to the valakut triggers (6 mountains and 2 Valakuts usually, which would normally grant 6 x 6 = 36 dmg). The other 5 mountains won't "see" the other 5 mountains required to deal damage, so those will fizzle. Only the land which was destroyed sees 5 other mountains in order to be triggered, which is just 6 dmg, 3 dmg from each valakut. Generally, if the Valakut player knows this as well, they will scapeshift for 7 mountains and only 1 Valakut generally. In that case its better to destroy one land pre-scapeshift, in order reduce dmg from 36 to 18. So its up to you to decide whether to take the risk of letting it resolve and potentially get rewarded or get screwed. If you would die to 18 dmg nonetheless, then its of course safe to just hope they mess up. You would die anyways otherwise.
You can exchange about 5 cards by doing so. Other than discard, try to go for their artifact mana ramp spells. I would always destroy them as soon as possible, e.g.: If Lotus Bloom resolves in the upkeep, I would immediatly destroy it before the drawstep, which makes it less likely that the opponent has the combo already in hand (doesn't get the extra card for this turn).
Abzan Company is generally a midrange deck, which does contain some combo and go-wide elements in it. It is known for playing sticky creatures and big payoff spells like Collected Company or Chord of Calling to find those threats and junk up the battlefield. In order to do this fast, it plays manadorks along those bigger creatures. As for Jund, we can't compete with this race of creature build up onto the battlefield, since we don't run these payoff cards. For us it is important to snap those payoff cards before they get to resolve, which means: targeted discard and counter. In addition, discard helps us to potentially snap manadorks which prevents the Abzan Company deck from being that explosive. However, the matchup can be grindy as well and discard is getting worse over time, so we don't want the full 8. Since the deck is creature based, obviously, sweepers are phenominal here (if you got any). As for MB changes this leads to the following:
Liliana the Last Hope is usually very good in this matchup, because it can kill manadorks, shrink their threats while ticking up an heading towards a win condition on her own. Among the best cards available for us is definitely Kozilek's Return. It will deal with the majority of their threats, which is really good value.
I've found that GY hate is the best we have against them. Stopping Snapcaster + KCommand shenanigans is what disrupts their extremely powerful engame of almost endless recursion of Tasigurs. I think, discard is the second best thing we have against them, as hand information is such an valueable thing to have against them. You can gain information about what card to play in which scenario and thus can get to a point where a threat of yours will stick, and which will be the best way to win: close games fast. So, if you have Nihil Spellbomb in the SB, then bring it in.
One thing to note: Pls don't board in artifact hate against Merfolk. It might seem great to include because of Aether Vial, but as it happens, experienced Merfolk players will absolutely side them out against you, as they are just terrible topdecks. If you are afraid of stuff like Chalice of the Void or Relic of Progenitus, then we have Decay. Concerning playing against Merfolk, I would suggest the following plan against them (especially on the draw): If you don't have turn 1 discard (which you should normally go for turn 1, unless you face a turn 1 Cursecatcher) then just play a fetchlands and pass. That way, you will prevent your land getting Spreading Seased right on turn 2, which could be devastating for you, and which every good merfolk player would absolutely do on turn 2, if they can. The reason to side out the watery grave is due to islandwalk.
Storm is a deck which has seen play in the past. Before the Gitaxian Probe ban, obviously this card was included in the deck and often builds using Pyromancer Ascension have been played. After the bans, a new version came up, including cards like the newly print Baral, Chief of Compliance and Gifts Ungiven. Pyromancer Ascension seemed to be disappeared as of now, the builds tend to focus more on Past in Flames now. So this means, our best cards against them are discard, GY hate and a quick threat. We also have a huge amount of single target removal to get rid of any Goblin Electromancer of Baral right away. Due to this, Storm usually is a good matchup. Removal is great, discard is great and a quick threat is great. Among the cards which are mediocre, I would cut the following:
A huge amount of small creatures (Emtpy the Warrens) is hard for us to answer, for which reason we want extra discard, to disrupt them to prevent them going off. Its a good idea to go for their rituals to slow them down. Note that the goblin tokens are their main game plan after SB, for which reason we bring in our sweepers. Some Storm players like to shave their creatures due to our massive amount of removal. If you know that your opponent sides out all creatures, cut all Pushes/Decay/Termiantes also. But be careful, depending on being on the draw/play, players might trick you into this and side their creatures back in again. A nice compromise is to side out a few amount of removal and have some safety removal ready to go. If you see fetchlands from your opponent, than Blood Moon might come in against you. In that case, leave Decay in.
If you have space for Anger of the Gods, then by any means, play it against dredge! Its one of the best things available to us against them. Generally, you want to race them and hold them off killing you by frequently removing their creatures with cheap removal. This is the reason I find cutting Decay makes sense, as its just clunky, and what you want to do is to be able to remove things while deploying threats and get to attack for a lethal Temur Battle Rage attached creature. Therefore the cheaper the removal, the better. Due to this all Liliana, the Last Hope does also make sense to bring in, since she can repeatedly get rid of their Blood Ghast or Narcomoeba. Izzet Staticaster is instant speed due though.
”What doesn’t grow, dies. And what dies grows the tarmogoyf.”
In the following, some aspects of technical play are explained. Death’s Shadow Jund is not an easy deck to play, it will take a while to know and learn the interaction of our cards, and more importantly, to use these interactions to our favorite. So below is a list of scenarios which you will eventually have to deal with while playing the deck:
How to use Mishra's Bauble?: First of all I want to mention a very helpful article about this topic done by AcademyRuins: A Guide to Using Death’s Shadow Jund’s Cantrips. When it comes down to using bauble, the first and important aspect is whether to use it on yourself or on your opponent. For example, if your opponent mulliganed and scried to the top of the library, you can use bauble to have a look at his card, which would give you information on what the opponent’s current hand is missing. You can figure out to some extent, what the hand is made up of. If you want to cast a discard spell in your opponent, its also a good idea to use bauble first in order to know which card he/she will topdeck next, which will in return help to figure out the card to take with the discard. Lastly, don’t use the bauble on your opponent when he/she has an untappend fetchland on board they most likely want to crack. On turn 1, as for using it on your own, you have to first figure out, if you want to play a discard spell on the same turn or not (and might be needing to fetch for this), in which case you don’t want to use bauble before fetching (if it’s the only way you will be able to cast the discard spell). If you have street wraith in hand, however, you can use bauble before and see if you want the card and then draw it with street wraith. The same goes, if you are either don’t able to cast a discard spell or have a non-fetchland in hand which could cast the discard spell. All these things can be done if you are looking for something specific that you would want in your hand. Otherwise, you will mostly want to use bauble on the opponent.
How to use Street Wraith?: Street Wraith essentially functions as a free cantrip only costing us 2 life, which is something we want to pay anyway. In that regard even the cost of 2 life are beneficial, for which reason this card is just absurd in the deck. The first application for this card is its interaction with Mishra’s Bauble and fetchlands, as you can look at the topcard of your library and decide whether to take the card with Street Wraith before fetching or not. If you simply want to dig for some specific cards, Street Wraith also helps for that. In addition to this, you can use Street Wraith as a combat trick to either make Tarmogoyf bigger (putting a creature into the graveyard) or making Death’s Shadow bigger (effectively giving it +2/+2). That being said, you do not always want to use Street Wraith right away when you have it in your hand. Due to this tricks, or especially if you don’t know what deck you are up against (might be burn or any fast aggro deck, where cycling street wraiths becomes worse due to the life loss), you might want to hold on to it for a while. Lastly, people often forget its secret mode when playing with it: Actually hardcasting the card and providing a decent threat. This is absolutely incredible in the mirror, as Death’s Shadow Jund’s weakness is in its pretty much inability of dealing with Fatal Push proof creatures. Having Swampwalk almost ensures unblockability also.
How to use Traverse the Ulvenwald: Traverse the Ulvenwald can do so many things for us, not just finding Death’s Shadow or Tarmogoyf. You can use it without delirium to find a basic for mana fixing if needed (although this is not the way we ideally want to use it, but still, it helps). That being said, its often perfectly fine to find a fetchland with Traverse, to either help for mana fixing or help pumping our Death’s Shadows. Most of the time we do however want to search for a Death’s Shadow or Tarmogoyf. Which one depends on the boardstate (are there any Engineered Explosives for example?) and on the fact, which one is bigger and if you want to cast other spells during that turn. If you want to cast another spell during that same turn, you could go for Death’s Shadow (unless your life totals say otherwise). If you play with Ghor-Clan Rampager, you can search for that as well to help finishing of the opponent or to deploy another threat later in the game. The same goes for Street Wraith. You can use it to get it in order to pump Death’s Shadow, play it as a threat or cycle it in order to dig for specific cards. So, when you think about it, Traverse with delirium could potentially get any card in the deck, as it gets each land and creature, and can potentially get every spell by searching for a Street Wraith and cycling it (this is of course very unlikely and this should only be done when you are desperate and have this last out to finding an answer to some threat). This should illustrate the power of Traverse in the deck.
General aspects of playing a Jund deck: For this, I highly recommend having a look at my Modern Jund Primer’s Technical Play section: Technical Play Jund Primer. There are some general things that also apply to Death’s Shadow Jund and are worthwhile to have a look on.
”Arcum is a babbling fool! Phyrexian technology is our greatest blessing. Take this delightful trinket for instance…”
- Heidar, Rimewind master
So this is the Death’s Shadow Jund Primer! If you have any questions or need any help for the deck, please feel free to post in this threat to discuss your issues with our fellow Death’s Shadow Junders. For any constructive feedback (which I am always happy with), either post in that threat or leave me a massage to let me know. I want to hugely thank the community, crexalbo for opening the primer in the first place and Momsie, for providing the sideboarding chart. For additional information have a look at the Subreddit of Death’s Shadow or the Modern Jund Primer. Link to the previous threat: Death’s Shadow Zoo.
This primer is under construction. It will be updated frequently over the coming days and weeks.
This thread is solely for discussion of the BRG variant (with optional W splash). For other threads concerning other Death's Shadow builds, please reference the Variants section below.
Shadow Jund still follows the basic philosophy of traditional Jund – disrupt your opponent's strategy early, then clock them out with a large, difficult-to-answer threat while keeping them off balance. Shadow Jund just trades some late-game power (Dark Confidant, Huntmaster of the Fells) for more disruption and a faster clock (more discard, Death's Shadow). It also includes a combo-kill element in the form of Temur Battle Rage, which can win games from nowhere when cast on a blocked or unblocked 7/8 Goyf or a 9/9 Shadow.
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My 0.2c is that, much like jund/abzan/sultai/grixis already exist as separate entities, we should keep threads separate and have this as the shadow jund thread.
Having seen grixis and BUG shadow lists, they are similar in style to delver tempo lists. This isn't the same thing (but it is cool)
In terms of white splash, it's been 100% worth it so far in terms of sideboard strategy, but I wouldn't run any white cards in the maindeck.
A big question for me so far has been about the maindeck spells. I'm keeping 1x abrupt decay but here are the rest:
1) Yes the white splash is worth it. Ranger of Eos/Lingering Souls help to grind out midrange/control matchups, sideboard silverbullets in Kataki and Ethersworn are strong against other decks. Basically the white splash gives the deck a better midrange angle, as it does Aggro and Control excellently.
2) Liliana of the Veil is better for mainboard inclusion. It's 2 modes help dealing with opposing threats and shreds control/combos hands. Liliana, last hope meanwhile is great in the grindy matchups. It's +1 is decent only, but its minus ability helps the deck against removal heavy matchups. Both ultimates are game ending.
3) Grim Flayer is very good for when you choose to go a more aggro route. This deck is flexible in changing modes from aggro/midrange/control, adding the Grim Flayer pushes the aggro and midrange side but you will have to make space for it, potentially losing TBR, Liliana's, or other control cards.
4) Yes any flavor should be discussed, but understanding that Jund is the strongest at the moment is crucial to go forward. Why play the combo/Sultai/Abzan/Jund (with or without the white splash) over the proven version of the deck (unless ofcourse you are testing other avenues and are showing your results
I've been wondering where we could get some discussion on the deck at. I finished my list about a week or so ago but I haven't had too much time to test it yet. I did watch the SCG Indy which helped out but I may go back and take notes. I've made some pretty big misplays I feel though so far by being too aggressive and either running into removal and or bolts. Either way I'm going to spend some more time with the deck in the coming days. I'll post my list later but it's fairly standard from what I saw on the SCG articles.
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Modern URGifts StormUR URBlue MoonUR URKiln FiendUR
First off, thank you for opening the primer crexalbo. I hope you know that now it's you that's responsible for maintaining the thread and not me.
I've already talked with DruggyJesus about the look of our new banner and i firmly believe he will have finished it very soon.
Then, i do believe we first need to make a core list from which we are tweeking the numbers and as a guidline for newcomers.
As for the Jund + white Version of the deck, something like this comes to mind:
This makes a total core of 54 cards and 6 "flex spots", but in reality the only flex spots for me are running Rampager/Battle Rage or not and which kind of Liliana you prefer in your maindeck. The removal suite will never bee set in stone and slightly differ in each list regarding the meta it was tuned for and the choosen planeswalkers.
The same could be made for the sideboard but things get more difficult here.
3 Lingering Souls
1 Ranger of Eos
2 Fulminator Mage
Seem to be the core, then the cards and numbers start differing:
1-2 more grindy cards (K-command, Liliana the Last Hope)
1 more Land Destruction (Fulminator, Ghost Quarter)
2-3 pieces of GY Hate (Surgical, Spellbomb, Grafdiggers Cage)
2-3 pieces of additional removal (Push, Maelstrom Pulse, Abrupt Decay, Dismember)
And the rest can be considered flex spots including additional artifact hate, sweepers, additional discard, Silver Bullets etc.
Do you guys agree with this?
@purklefuff:
I' running 3 Tarfire, 3 Push, 2 Decay and 2 K-command main. Has been totally fine for me but the second decay could also be moved to the sideboard.
Greetings
I absolutely agree with everything you posted. We can also list out all flex spots cards that are considered
Was doing relatively well on mtgo so was surprised to go 0-2 and dropping.
Faced Grixis Control and Then Storm Gifts.
I think cutting the white is a mistake, I was playing on mtgo last night without the white and it just felt more difficult. Also, it literally feels like MTGO is playing janky stuff to combat, I ran into 3 token decks last night.
I've been playing the 2x Lilliana, the Last Hope in the main, and I think it's a huge mistake. It has so many matchups it's just worthless in. LOTV never feels bad unless you're facing a creature swarm deck. She is a fantastic sideboard in the deck though
I played Affinity last night on mtgo, they had a nut hand and left me at 1 life, and winning with a 22/22 trampler
The more I'm playing, the more I think 2x Temur Battle Rage is a good idea, mainly against less interactive decks. It's definitely a backup combo package I've seen play out well thus far.
I've tried tweaking the decks a lot, so far Sam Black's GP list gave me the best results, but I haven't played his list in a bit, I'm going to be trying it again, minus the Rallier.
I noticed a lot of lists cutting down to 1x Temur, but I think having it for combo or people gumming up the board may be a mistake.
I'm fully aware that I'm responsible for primer maintenance. I'm on the forums every single day, and will make changes as appropriate. Props to DruggyJesus for making a new banner!
I'll make sure that this thread is solely for Jund (with white splash) discussion, and will make a separate thread for my Yidris build, kind of like how the various Twin builds used to have one thread for each kind (UR Twin, Grixis Twin, TarmoTwin).
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Is temur better than a split between that and GCR? They both allow you to push the final damage through, but GCR is tutorable and not counterable.
What's the consensus on 4th Tarfire vs 4th push mb? I've swapped to tarfire, but haven't tested it in any games yet. I just felt the reach and being able to more consistently set up delerium was good.
Was doing relatively well on mtgo so was surprised to go 0-2 and dropping.
Faced Grixis Control and Then Storm Gifts.
I think cutting the white is a mistake, I was playing on mtgo last night without the white and it just felt more difficult. Also, it literally feels like MTGO is playing janky stuff to combat, I ran into 3 token decks last night.
I've been playing the 2x Lilliana, the Last Hope in the main, and I think it's a huge mistake. It has so many matchups it's just worthless in. LOTV never feels bad unless you're facing a creature swarm deck. She is a fantastic sideboard in the deck though
I played Affinity last night on mtgo, they had a nut hand and left me at 1 life, and winning with a 22/22 trampler
The more I'm playing, the more I think 2x Temur Battle Rage is a good idea, mainly against less interactive decks. It's definitely a backup combo package I've seen play out well thus far.
I've tried tweaking the decks a lot, so far Sam Black's GP list gave me the best results, but I haven't played his list in a bit, I'm going to be trying it again, minus the Rallier.
I noticed a lot of lists cutting down to 1x Temur, but I think having it for combo or people gumming up the board may be a mistake.
your feelings are pretty much where I'm at as well.. liliana of the veil seems like the best maindeck option, with extra white cards (and new liliana) coming in for grindy matchups.
i'm currently on the 1 battle rage and 1 rampager maindeck split. I feel like that's right because I want to have 1 maindeck abrupt decay (it solves a lot of issues against a variety of decks).
I feel like we've nailed down quite a few choices to something optimal at this point, although i'm still debating 1 maindeck card:
the 3rd kolaghan's command, or 1x collective brutality. I'm tempted to shift the brutality to the board entirely, but it's so good against burn... k-command might just be the better option but it's very unclear whether the 3rd one is better than the 1st brutality. it's so hard to quantify the value of the third of a support card haha
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
Isn't Ghor-Clan Rampager mostly better than Temur Battle Rage as it can be tutored for with Traverse the Ulvenwald or be cast as a creature in the late game instead of rotting in your hand ?
Why not go with 3x GcR and 0x TBR over the usual 1/2 split ?
Isn't Ghor-Clan Rampager mostly better than Temur Battle Rage as it can be tutored for with Traverse the Ulvenwald or be cast as a creature in the late game instead of rotting in your hand ?
Why not go with 3x GcR and 0x TBR over the usual 1/2 split ?
if you've made the decision to run battle rage (i think it's worth it right now), you probably want to have the real, full-fat temur battle rage because it grants double strike, rather than just +4/+4. it's a better card, but having 1 of them tutorable and weaker (rampager) is worth it.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
I think both of them have their place, hence the 1 Rampager / 2 Rage split. Casting Rage is essentially GG, but Rampager is much more consistent and resilient. You don't really need more than one Rampager, because you can Traverse for it.
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I was reading Jerrys article on Shadow, he said he underestimated playing 2x Temur Battle Rage and will be playing 2x copies from here
My own testing found that game 1's Temur really did save the game, that difference between winning one turn ahead if the difference. Temur comes out against interactive decks that play the fair removal plan
After reading more into Sam Blacks articles, I'll be cutting the 3rd copy of K-Command.
Man, getting mana screwed feels bad. Went 2-2 tonight at Modern.
I played Bant Eldrazi and didn't hit my lands to do anything really. Got stomped pretty bad in the end.
0-1
Round 2 I played against Burn and wrecked him back to back. Best thing was turn 0 cycle wraith for fun.
1-1
Round 3 I played against White Exalted and wrecked him.
2-1
Round 4 I played against affinity and kept a high risk no land hand with wraith and bauble. It did not pay off. I lost in 2, but game 2 was a lot closer and would have been a win had I hit a second land sooner.
I love the deck and definitely need more time testing.
Try to play every game 1 like it's against your worst matchup or something. If you're in game 2 and you know it's a slow grixis deck, those sorts of hands can be keepable I guess. (I say this because last week I won my first ever fnm game in which I kept a no-land hand. I told my opponent as we started game 2 and we joked about it after I won).
Are people upping the battle rage count to 2? Seems OK I guess.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
Oh, I know. I got greedy. It was my first real run with the deck. I wanted to push it and I got greedy. I'm going to be testing it a lot for gp Vegas though. I love this deck and how fast we can grow goyfs.
I forgot about this rundown. It brings up an interesting point, how set are we on 8 one drop disruptions. They're bad top decks later on without a liliana to pitch them to.
The community centered around this deck looks to have come to consensus about a name with Death's Shadow Jund. You all mind casting your vote for that name on the deck breakdown for MTGgoldfish? We can all agree it's not much of an aggro deck, especially with the White transformational sideboard.
By the way, thanks for including the subreddit in the Primer, crexalbo
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0) Header and News
This thread is solely for discussion of the BRG variant (with optional W splash). For other threads concerning other Death's Shadow builds, please reference the Variants section below.
1) Strategy
Shadow Jund still follows the basic philosophy of traditional Jund – disrupt your opponent's strategy early, then clock them out with a large, difficult-to-answer threat while keeping them off balance. Shadow Jund just trades some late-game power (Dark Confidant, Huntmaster of the Fells) for more disruption and a faster clock (more discard, Death's Shadow). It also includes a combo-kill element in the form of Temur Battle Rage, which can win games from nowhere when cast on a blocked or unblocked 7/8 Goyf or a 9/9 Shadow.
2) Card Choices
Threats
4x Death's Shadow
4x Tarmogoyf
Discard
4x Thoughtseize
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
Removal & Recursion
2-3 Tarfire
1-2 Abrupt Decay
2-4 Fatal Push
2-3 Kolaghan's Command
Planeswalkers
1-3 Liliana (LotV / LtLH)
Consistency
4x Street Wraith
4x Mishra's Bauble
4x Traverse the Ulvenwald
Combo-Kill
0-1 Ghor-Clan Rampager
0-2 Temur Battle Rage
Lands (17-18)
Fetches
4x Verdant Catacombs (BG)
4x Bloodstained Mire (BR)
2-4 Wooded Foothills (GR)
0-2 Marsh Flats (BW) or Polluted Delta (BU)
Targets
1-2 Blood Crypt (BR)
1x Overgrown Tomb (BG)
1x Godless Shrine (BW)
0-1 Stomping Ground (GR)
1x Swamp (B)
1x Forest (G)
3) Decklists
2 Liliana of the Veil
Creature (13)
4 Death's Shadow
4 Street Wraith
4 Tarmogoyf
1 Ghor-Clan Rampager
Sorcery (13)
4 Traverse the Ulvenwald
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Thoughtseize
1 Collective Brutality
Instant (7)
3 Fatal Push
2 Kolaghan's Command
2 Temur Battle Rage
3 Tarfire
4 Mishra's Bauble
Land (18)
1 Godless Shrine
1 Stomping Ground
1 Blood Crypt
1 Overgrown Tomb
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wooded Foothills
1 Marsh Flats
1 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Collective Brutality
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Fulminator Mage
2 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Kataki, War's Wage
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
3 Lingering Souls
1 Ranger of Eos
4) Variants
5) Resources
MODERN – LANTERN (aka Fateseal or Barbershop)
Primer – Subreddit – Facebook – Decklist – Gameplay
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My 0.2c is that, much like jund/abzan/sultai/grixis already exist as separate entities, we should keep threads separate and have this as the shadow jund thread.
Having seen grixis and BUG shadow lists, they are similar in style to delver tempo lists. This isn't the same thing (but it is cool)
In terms of white splash, it's been 100% worth it so far in terms of sideboard strategy, but I wouldn't run any white cards in the maindeck.
A big question for me so far has been about the maindeck spells. I'm keeping 1x abrupt decay but here are the rest:
3x fatal push
1x collective brutality
2x kolaghan's command
Or
4x fatal push
2x kolaghan's command
Or
3x fatal push
3x kolaghan's command
I'm running 1 brutality in the side, but felt like 1 main was OK. Unsure as to the best configuration.
2) Liliana of the Veil is better for mainboard inclusion. It's 2 modes help dealing with opposing threats and shreds control/combos hands. Liliana, last hope meanwhile is great in the grindy matchups. It's +1 is decent only, but its minus ability helps the deck against removal heavy matchups. Both ultimates are game ending.
3) Grim Flayer is very good for when you choose to go a more aggro route. This deck is flexible in changing modes from aggro/midrange/control, adding the Grim Flayer pushes the aggro and midrange side but you will have to make space for it, potentially losing TBR, Liliana's, or other control cards.
4) Yes any flavor should be discussed, but understanding that Jund is the strongest at the moment is crucial to go forward. Why play the combo/Sultai/Abzan/Jund (with or without the white splash) over the proven version of the deck (unless ofcourse you are testing other avenues and are showing your results
Affinity
Legacy:
GBCombo Elves
EDH:
GEzuri, Renegade Leader's Elf Ball
Cube:
180 Peasant Micro Cube
URGifts StormUR
URBlue MoonUR
URKiln FiendUR
BURStormBUR
I absolutely agree with everything you posted. We can also list out all flex spots cards that are considered
Affinity
Legacy:
GBCombo Elves
EDH:
GEzuri, Renegade Leader's Elf Ball
Cube:
180 Peasant Micro Cube
Was doing relatively well on mtgo so was surprised to go 0-2 and dropping.
Faced Grixis Control and Then Storm Gifts.
I think cutting the white is a mistake, I was playing on mtgo last night without the white and it just felt more difficult. Also, it literally feels like MTGO is playing janky stuff to combat, I ran into 3 token decks last night.
I've been playing the 2x Lilliana, the Last Hope in the main, and I think it's a huge mistake. It has so many matchups it's just worthless in. LOTV never feels bad unless you're facing a creature swarm deck. She is a fantastic sideboard in the deck though
I played Affinity last night on mtgo, they had a nut hand and left me at 1 life, and winning with a 22/22 trampler
The more I'm playing, the more I think 2x Temur Battle Rage is a good idea, mainly against less interactive decks. It's definitely a backup combo package I've seen play out well thus far.
I've tried tweaking the decks a lot, so far Sam Black's GP list gave me the best results, but I haven't played his list in a bit, I'm going to be trying it again, minus the Rallier.
I noticed a lot of lists cutting down to 1x Temur, but I think having it for combo or people gumming up the board may be a mistake.
I'll make sure that this thread is solely for Jund (with white splash) discussion, and will make a separate thread for my Yidris build, kind of like how the various Twin builds used to have one thread for each kind (UR Twin, Grixis Twin, TarmoTwin).
MODERN – LANTERN (aka Fateseal or Barbershop)
Primer – Subreddit – Facebook – Decklist – Gameplay
Thnkr's Content: Gameplay – Datasheet
Each eye sees a different possibility for tomorrow.
CWUBBCCCCCCCBGBGBGCCCCCCCGGURC
What's the consensus on 4th Tarfire vs 4th push mb? I've swapped to tarfire, but haven't tested it in any games yet. I just felt the reach and being able to more consistently set up delerium was good.
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Playing:
Death's Shadow Jund
Played:
Kiki Chord, Zoo variants, Goblins, Burn
your feelings are pretty much where I'm at as well.. liliana of the veil seems like the best maindeck option, with extra white cards (and new liliana) coming in for grindy matchups.
i'm currently on the 1 battle rage and 1 rampager maindeck split. I feel like that's right because I want to have 1 maindeck abrupt decay (it solves a lot of issues against a variety of decks).
I feel like we've nailed down quite a few choices to something optimal at this point, although i'm still debating 1 maindeck card:
the 3rd kolaghan's command, or 1x collective brutality. I'm tempted to shift the brutality to the board entirely, but it's so good against burn... k-command might just be the better option but it's very unclear whether the 3rd one is better than the 1st brutality. it's so hard to quantify the value of the third of a support card haha
Why not go with 3x GcR and 0x TBR over the usual 1/2 split ?
if you've made the decision to run battle rage (i think it's worth it right now), you probably want to have the real, full-fat temur battle rage because it grants double strike, rather than just +4/+4. it's a better card, but having 1 of them tutorable and weaker (rampager) is worth it.
MODERN – LANTERN (aka Fateseal or Barbershop)
Primer – Subreddit – Facebook – Decklist – Gameplay
Thnkr's Content: Gameplay – Datasheet
Each eye sees a different possibility for tomorrow.
CWUBBCCCCCCCBGBGBGCCCCCCCGGURC
You should add the MtG Goldfish Death's Shadow Evolution to the history section.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/deck-evolutions-death-s-shadow-modern
My own testing found that game 1's Temur really did save the game, that difference between winning one turn ahead if the difference. Temur comes out against interactive decks that play the fair removal plan
After reading more into Sam Blacks articles, I'll be cutting the 3rd copy of K-Command.
I played Bant Eldrazi and didn't hit my lands to do anything really. Got stomped pretty bad in the end.
0-1
Round 2 I played against Burn and wrecked him back to back. Best thing was turn 0 cycle wraith for fun.
1-1
Round 3 I played against White Exalted and wrecked him.
2-1
Round 4 I played against affinity and kept a high risk no land hand with wraith and bauble. It did not pay off. I lost in 2, but game 2 was a lot closer and would have been a win had I hit a second land sooner.
I love the deck and definitely need more time testing.
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Playing:
Death's Shadow Jund
Played:
Kiki Chord, Zoo variants, Goblins, Burn
Are people upping the battle rage count to 2? Seems OK I guess.
Follow the link for nice cheap clothing.
Playing:
Death's Shadow Jund
Played:
Kiki Chord, Zoo variants, Goblins, Burn
I forgot about this rundown. It brings up an interesting point, how set are we on 8 one drop disruptions. They're bad top decks later on without a liliana to pitch them to.
Follow the link for nice cheap clothing.
Playing:
Death's Shadow Jund
Played:
Kiki Chord, Zoo variants, Goblins, Burn
By the way, thanks for including the subreddit in the Primer, crexalbo