Hi, everyone, I hope you all had a fabulous time at the Gatecrash prerelease. Of course, the release of a new Magic the Gathering set does not only mean new cards in Standard; it nowadays also means that the new banned and restricted announcements are released. This time, there were a couple of changes to the Modern ban list (among other changes), leading to this deck …

[Deck title=”Jund by Lukas Jaklovsky”]

[Creatures]
*4 Deathrite Shaman
*4 Dark Confidant
*4 Tarmogoyf
*2 Kitchen Finks
*4 Bloodbraid Elf
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*3 Inquisition of Kozilek
*4 Lightning Bolt
*4 Thoughtseize
*2 Abrupt Decay
*4 Liliana of the Veil
[/Spells]
[Land]
*4 Blackcleave Cliffs
*1 Blood Crypt
*1 Forest
*4 Marsh Flats
*1 Overgrown Tomb
*3 Raging Ravine
*1 Stomping Ground
*2 Swamp
*2 Treetop Village
*2 Twilight Mire
*4 Verdant Catacombs
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
*1 Grafdigger’s Cage
*2 Grim Lavamancer
*2 Ancient Grudge
*1 Deglamer
*1 Torpor Orb
*2 Maelstrom Pulse
*2 Olivia Voldaren
*2 Slaughter Games
*2 Batterskull
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

… no longer being a legal choice in the Modern format. Now, we could just replace [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] with one of either [card]Olivia Voldaren[/card] or [card]Huntmaster of the Fells[/card], so maybe the biggest loser of the weekend is this card: [card]Boom // Bust [/card]

[card]Boom // Bust [/card] only functioned as an [card]Armageddon[/card] when [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] cascaded into it. With [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] out of the picture, this card will most likely not see play anymore.

Replacing Bloodbraid Elf

Let’s go back to replacing [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] for a bit though. While we have some obvious possible replacements, there are also less obvious ones. Perhaps we should cut Red altogether and take a page out of Mathieu Hautot’s book to play BUG:

[Deck title=”BUG by Mathieu Hautot”]

[Creatures]
*4 Deathrite Shaman
*4 Dark Confidant
*3 Snapcaster Mage
*4 Tarmogoyf
*3 Vendilion Clique
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*3 Disfigure
*1 Duress
*4 Inquisition of Kozilek
*1 Thoughtseize
*3 Abrupt Decay
*3 Mana Leak
*2 Liliana of the Veil
*1 Threads of Disloyalty
[/Spells]
[Land]
*1 Breeding Pool
*3 Creeping Tar Pit
*3 Darkslick Shores
*1 Forest
*1 Island
*4 Misty Rainforest
*1 Overgrown Tomb
*1 Scalding Tarn
*2 Tectonic Edge
*4 Verdant Catacombs
*1 Watery Grave
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
*2 Tectonic Edge
*2 Grafdigger’s Cage
*2 Deprive
*2 Hurkyl’s Recall
*3 Spreading Seas
*1 Damping Matrix
*2 Threads of Disloyalty
*1 Creeping Corrosion
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

This deck finished in the top four at the Modern GP in Lyon, and testing it after that tournament made me feel like it already should have been a player in the metagame. It never truly showed up anywhere, even though it finally solved the issue of how to fit countermagic in your [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] deck: you simply make the Elf a blue card. [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card] fulfills a similar role to [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card], only “cascading” into spells you’ve already cast rather than spells you haven’t cast yet. It is also less random, but it never gets you an extra creature. To remedy that lack of power, this deck plays three [card]Threads of Disloyalty[/card] between main and side, so that it still has a card that can swing a board position drastically in your favor.

Instead of [card]Lightning Bolt[/card]s, you have [card]Disfigure[/card] (which might have to become [card]Dismember[/card], or perhaps a split is in order to limit the life loss), and you get to play with some counters and other spells, like [card]Vendilion Clique[/card], that mess with combo decks.

Don’t pay too much attention to the sideboard: it most likely needs some updating.

Another option would be to replace BBE with another card advantage machine that Jund previously even splashed for: [card]Lingering Souls[/card].

[Deck title=”Junk by Jay Lansdaal”]

[Creatures]
*4 Deathrite Shaman
*4 Dark Confidant
*4 Tarmogoyf
*2 Kitchen Finks
*1 Obzedat, Ghost Council
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*1 Disfigure
*2 Path to Exile
*4 Inquisition of Kozilek
*2 Thoughtseize
*2 Abrupt Decay
*1 Dismember
*4 Lingering Souls
*4 Liliana of the Veil
[/Spells]
[Land]
*1 Forest
*1 Gavony Township
*1 Godless Shrine
*4 Marsh Flats
*1 Overgrown Tomb
*4 Razorverge Thicket
*1 Stirring Wildwood
*2 Swamp
*1 Temple Garden
*3 Treetop Village
*2 Twilight Mire
*4 Verdant Catacombs
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
*2 Grafdigger’s Cage
*1 Disfigure
*1 Path to Exile
*3 Stony Silence
*1 Ghostly Prison
*3 Rule of Law
*1 Creeping Corrosion
*2 Batterskull
*1 Baneslayer Angel
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

Obzedat could easily be another [card]Kitchen Finks[/card] or discard spell, but the card is powerful enough that having access to one in the maindeck might be right. It is a five-drop you can flip with Confidant, but it does gain you life back upon entering play, which almost makes it feel like another three-drop in that regard.

I kept a variety of removal spells in here, as [card]Path to Exile[/card] remains a bad removal spell against Birds, Pilgrims, and [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card], whose popularity I doubt will drop, despite the bannings.

This Junk variant of Jund deck should be extra good against decks like Affinity and Infect, thanks to the full [card]Lingering Souls[/card] suite, and it will probably fare worse against fast combo decks, as [card]Lingering Souls[/card] can’t put down a clock like [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] could do.

If we’re going with White instead of Red, though, maybe we should just be playing Doran?

[Deck title=”Doran by Christian Calcano”]

[Creatures]
*4 Deathrite Shaman
*1 Noble Hierarch
*4 Dark Confidant
*4 Tarmogoyf
*4 Loxodon Smiter
*3 Kitchen Finks
*3 Doran, the Siege Tower
*1 Restoration Angel
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*2 Inquisition of Kozilek
*4 Path to Exile
*3 Thoughtseize
*2 Abrupt Decay
*2 Liliana of the Veil
*1 Profane Command
[/Spells]
[Land]
*1 Forest
*1 Godless Shrine
*1 Horizon Canopy
*4 Marsh Flats
*1 Misty Rainforest
*1 Murmuring Bosk
*2 Overgrown Tomb
*1 Plains
*1 Stirring Wildwood
*1 Swamp
*1 Temple Garden
*3 Treetop Village
*4 Verdant Catacombs
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
*2 Nihil Spellbomb
*1 Thoughtseize
*2 Spellskite
*2 Stony Silence
*2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
*3 Fulminator Mage
*2 Creeping Corrosion
*1 Baneslayer Angel
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

Doran and [card]Loxodon Smiter[/card] almost function like [card]Tarmogoyf[/card]s 5-11, which can be very important in the right matchups (for example, versus UWR, where all their removal does three damage). The white in the deck also gives you access to some of the better sideboard cards in Modern.

The deck is an already proven commodity. Christian Calcano finished in the top 16 of the last Modern Pro Tour with the above build. The list might need some updating, but it should be a good place to start.

While we no longer have any colors left to utilize in place of red, perhaps we can just keep red and do something out of the ordinary with it. On Twitter, Aston Ramsden (@cheesevsninjas) suggested replacing [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] with [card]Falkenrath Aristocrat[/card], playing more [card]Kitchen Finks[/card], and sideboarding into a Melira Combo deck. This seemed like an interesting suggestion, so let’s examine what such a deck might look like:

[Deck title=”Melira Jund by Jay Lansdaal”]

[Creatures]
*4 Deathrite Shaman
*4 Dark Confidant
*4 Tarmogoyf
*4 Kitchen Finks
*4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*2 Inquisition of Kozilek
*4 Lightning Bolt
*4 Thoughtseize
*2 Abrupt Decay
*3 Liliana of the Veil
[/Spells]
[Land]
*4 Blackcleave Cliffs
*1 Blood Crypt
*1 Forest
*4 Marsh Flats
*1 Overgrown Tomb
*3 Raging Ravine
*1 Stomping Ground
*2 Swamp
*2 Treetop Village
*2 Twilight Mire
*4 Verdant Catacombs
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
*1 Grafdigger’s Cage
*4 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
*2 Ancient Grudge
*1 Deglamer
*1 Torpor Orb
*1 Maelstrom Pulse
*2 Murderous Redcap
*2 Slaughter Games
*1 Batterskull
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

This issue here is where to make the cuts for the Melira combo, and how many slots do you need to make it a reliable plan after boarding? Can we make do without [card]Birthing Pod[/card]? With the above list, we have four sacrifice outlets, six sac-able creatures, and four Melira but no way to find the missing pieces. I doubt that will be enough, and it comes at a hefty price: six sideboard slots in a deck where one of the main strengths has been that it had one of the better sideboards in the format, with strong cards to fight every possible opponent.

Adding the Melira combo shifts Jund’s position in the matchups where you bring it in, and it remains to be seen whether that’s a change for the good or the bad. It could very well be the case that the deck becomes a schizophrenic pile, but it could also become the next Twin-Blade. I doubt the latter is the case, because if you think about it, what matchups are you bringing in this combo? You can’t expect to reliably find your three-card combo, of which you have 4(-6) pieces each, before Twin, Storm, or Eggs goes off. Nor does it seem likely against Scapeshift. In these matchups, you seem better served with more discard, which I had to cut down on in the maindeck (down to three Liliana and six maindeck discards spells) to make room for the extra [card]Kitchen Finks[/card].

So do we bring in the combo against other “midrange” decks? Isn’t that where regular Jund was already king? Do we need the combo there? Probably not: a creature like [card]Huntmaster of the Fells[/card] or perhaps a Huntmaster/Olivia split should be fine replacements for [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] in these mirror-like matchups.

You are probably better off sticking to a “normal” Jund-like build or just playing Melira Pod (perhaps with a [card]Master Biomancer[/card] as a Pod target). The absence of ways to find your combo pieces makes trying to combo off a lot harder than in Pod lists.

The other banning: Seething Song

Was [card]Seething Song[/card] really the card that made consistent turn-three kills possible? Not according to Neale Talbot (@wrongwaygoback on Twitter), who has been goldfishing Storm and posting his results on Twitter. A better ban, he said, might have been [card]Manamorphose[/card], or if Wizards really wanted to kill the deck, they should’ve just banned [card]Grapeshot[/card]. They haven’t, though, which means that, just like with the [card]Bloodbraid Elf[/card] banning (and the [card]Wild Nacatl[/card] banning before it), diversity is a main motivator for Wizards. Why kill a deck when you can neuter it, and perhaps force multiple (slightly worse) versions to pop up. Perhaps we’ll see a RUG Storm deck that utilizes [card]Channel the Suns[/card]. With a little retooling of the manabase, we can take a “standard” storm list and turn it into this:

[Deck title=”Channel by Jay Lansdaal”]

[Creatures]
*4 Goblin Electromancer
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
*3 Past in Flames
*3 Pyromancer Ascension
*3 Grapeshot
*4 Desperate Ritual
*3 Desperate Ravings
*4 Gitaxian Probe
*4 Serum Visions
*4 Sleight of Hand
*4 Manamorphose
*4 Pyretic Ritual
*3 Channel the Suns
*1 Epic Experiment
[/Spells]
[Land]
*1 Breeding Pool
*2 Gemstone Mine
*2 Island
*4 Misty Rainforest
*1 Mountain
*4 Scalding Tarn
*2 Steam Vents
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
*3 Empty the Warrens
*2 Goblin Bushwhacker
*1 Grapeshot
*4 Lightning Bolt
*1 Pyromancer Ascension
*1 Pyromancer’s Swath
*3 Shatterstorm
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

This is basically the same deck as the old Storm deck but with some green mana available. [card]Gemstone Mine[/card] might be a good fit to help with the mana, as we don’t ask that many activations from our lands. (We hope to win turn three or four, so as long as it’s not your first land, you should be fine). We are a little more susceptible to non-basic land hate, but the best non-basic hate isn’t even good against us. ([card]Blood Moon[/card], [card]Ghost Quarter[/card], and [card]Tectonic Edge[/card] don’t effect us all that much; we have enough basics, and don’t need that many lands).

Another option would be to go more all-in on [card]Pyromancer Ascension[/card] and [card]Pyromancer’s Swath[/card]. With the latter, you don’t need that high of a storm count to kill with [card]Grapeshot[/card], which makes the enchantment function like a [card]Seething Song[/card] in some ways: instead of giving you extra mana to cast extra spells, it just ups your storm count immediately.

Going forward

While I’m not sure these bannings will have a huge impact on the quality of decks like Jund and Storm, it will impact peoples’ perception of these decks. The decks must be weaker, right? This might cause people to try new things, which in the long run is a good thing for Modern. Just beware that fewer people might play Jund, which makes a deck like Scapeshift slightly worse and Twin a lot better. A lesser Storm presence makes other combo decks that are slightly slower, like Eggs, better.

All in all, it should be an interesting time to play some Modern tournaments.
Good luck and have fun!

Jay Lansdaal
iLansdaal on Twitter and MTGO