Hey everyone!
As promised I am going to share my suggested deck for the 2008 State Championships.
I have been pretty good at this tournament in the past (won in 2006, finished 2d in 2005 losing the mirror to Julian Levin), usually playing an unusual deck for the metagame.
This year I am going to play Jund Mana Ramp. Because you probably care more about the deck list than the analysis, here it is:
1 Broodmate Dragon
4 Firespout
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Jund Charm
4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Chameleon Colossus
4 Cloudthresher
2 Farhaven Elf
4 Gift of the Gargantuan
2 Primal Command
4 Rampant Growth
4 Fire-lit Thicket
8 Forest
1 Mountain
4 Savage Lands
2 Swamp
4 Treetop Village
sb:
3 Mind Shatter
2 Broodmate Dragon
4 Gutteral Response
2 Primal Command
4 Lash Out
My decision to play this style of a deck is based on two things, 1) the lack of good two mana acceleration in Standard (save Rampant Growth) and 2) the fact that I think that Gift of the Gargantuan is the strongest card for Standard Constructed in Shards of Alara. This card is exceptional. Until you have flipped up a Cloudthresher and a Treetop Village against a Five-color Control deck you don’t know how good it is.
I played the pair for a long while in my Reveillark deck (which I was going to play until about mid-way through this week) but I came to the conclusion that it was not strong enough against Five-color Control (which I estimate will be the most populous deck of the 2008 State Championships). The problem with Reveillark, Four-color Control, and similar decks was that I was worrying about stopping a Five-color Control’s Stage Three game plan of Cruel Ultimatum / Nucklavee by sandbagging cards like Cryptic Command and Hindering Light but the clever Five-color Control player (in sideboarded games at least) can just wait until he has eight mana and beat me with Vexing Shusher or Gutteral Response.
Ultimately I decided to tune towards a more proactive strategy.
The secret of this deck is that it plays very much like an Onslaught Standard era Beasts (“Bests”) deck. That is, it plays very deceptively towards card advantage. Jund Ramp is almost Blue in its implementation.
Gift of the Gargantuan – two for one.
Civic Wayfinder – two for one.
Farhaven Elf – two for one with acceleration.
… Right on down the line.
It’s like I have my own little squad of Mulldrifters.
The acceleration lets you get ahead of the opponent on mana even while you are proactively dealing with other aspects of the game.
The advantage is most pronounced in sideboarded games against Five-color Control. You ramp out your mana, test spell them with a Cloudthresher; usually they will counter this. Now you untap and go at it with Mind Shatter, ideally with Gutteral Response waiting. The game will usually be yours!
So anyway, that’s my deck, at least as of right now. This deck is pretty powerful and has some really good board presence and defense in an eight -pack of sweepers; it has a superb matchup against Five-color control, and has the tools to be competitive with Faeries. Broodmate Dragon came from Evan Erwin as a solution to Red Decks in State Three with Demigods crashing into me every turn. “Double Dragon” produces multipe relevant defenders.
Post any questions in the comments below and I will try to get to them asap.
Thanks for reading, and good luck tomorrow!
LOVE
MIKE
P.S. Were I not playing Jund Mana Ramp for States, I would likely be on Blightning Beatdown. After tonight’s Mock Tournament — where Brian David-Marshall went 3-0 — BDM said that he would be on Blightning Beatdown as well (Blightning itself being very powerful). Brian did a short writeup on the deck at Top8Magic.com.
6 comments ↓
Mike, when you first mentioned Jund Mana Ramp for states, I went and checked DeckCheck for a list, as i’ve never heard of it. I found a list of GerryT’s that has four Resounding Thunder maindeck. What do you think of playing that?
Also, is calling forests “Flores” a new joke?
Hey Reece.
Sorry it was late and my muscle memory probably errs towards “Flores” just because I have probably typed that word many times over the last 18 or so years. It has been corrected.
I am not familiar with Gerry’s deck but he is a strong deck designer so I assume it’s great. I did not so much reject Resounding Thunder as ignore it; I like the card but I am focusing on aggressive metagame reaction — per usual — rather than figuring out what I can do once I already have a tremendous amount of mana. You can probably see that my deck is geared towards a strong early Stage Two game rather than the best Stage Three game; I assume Gerry’s deck has Violent Ultimatum? I am probably out-gunned in Stage Three in the “mirror” but I think I have good matchups against Five-color Control and Faeries.
This deck seems quite a bit better than the more ponderous versions i’ve seen. With mind shatter out of the board it shouldn’t be that big of a problem to deal with more stage three oriented decks. That card is the beating of the century simply because a turn 6 mind shatter trumps an ultimatum of any variety, as well as just being a good wrecking ball (turn 4 or 5 mind shatter is still great).
I completely agree with your opinion of gift of the gargantuan. It truly is the green compulsive, and once you play with it you realize that. And it’s also a cheaper harmonize.
I’ve already got my deck, but this deck excites me.
What do you think about a deck packing 4x Profane Command, 4x Cryptic Command, 4x Punish Ignorance, 4x Batwing Brume and 4x Bitterblossom? Here’s a hint, you can’t race it 😛
I’m thoroughly enjoying the resurgence of top8magic.com and now the creation of fivewithflores.com. When i spotted your one of your videos for this site on youtube i couldn’t believe it was true!
[…] This deck seems to have the tools to beat both, so I will definitely be testing it out.Sources: Jund Mana Ramp for States and Jund Mana Ramp at the New York State […]
Great site! I was hoping that you’d have something like this after you left Flores Fridays. Top8Magic isn’t updated as regularly as I would like (although it looks like this is changing) and the transition from Swimming with Sharks to Top Decks has narrowed the focus of your column on the Mothership quite a bit.
Also, I’m jazzed about the shift from “Phases” to “Stages.” The concept is strong and will prevent pundits from disregarding it based on nomenclature alone.
Thanks for the kind comments. I think “stages” is just better than “phases” for this purpose and I am going to make sure it catches on 🙂
I had wanted to work on a blog for basically forever… so I am glad you like it. You can probably tell that am putting quite a bit of work into this. But on the other hand, I am totally jazzed about Magic (again) and hope to ascend once again to the first tier of deck designers.
Please tell all your friends to come!
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