Five With Flores

At long last, another edition of You Make the Play!

This time it’s an easy one… Do you keep this hand or not? Why or why not?

This is a seven card hand. You lost the flip so there are 53 cards in your deck and you are playing second. The deck list is the one we have been bandying about the past week or two — Jund Mana Ramp. 

So… Keep or no?

LOVE
MIKE 

Currently Reading: The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists (obviously a re-read), Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (actually I just lent it to @jonnymagic00)

PS Did you cats see that the great Luis Scott-Vargas (LSV) and long-lost RidiculousHat posted on Mis-assignment of Strategy = Options Amputation? Might want to check out the forums from the previous post!

I have gotten a flurry of questions about my opinion on Luis Scott-Vargas’s most recent article on ChannelFireball.com about mid-range decks and Jund Mana Ramp in particular. Luis is a player who for a long time came out of the tradition of The Rock. Even when he was not actually B/G on his colors, Luis played with Loxodon Hierarchs, hand destruction, incremental advantage in general.

Though Luis had a great deal of success with those strategies (US National Champion and all that), he did not enjoy the kind of colossal Pro Tour success that he is riding today until he changed from playing The Rock to combo decks. You will remember his Extended win was with a combo Elves deck; he has since played all manner of Swans, Storm, and so on with peerless results.

This is great for Luis! We have always liked him and wish him every fortune in the world.

The emails and Tweets, though, come from another angle. Luis says that mid-range is an intrinsically flawed strategy, and argues quite strenuously against the strategy that Will Price and I like the best today: Jund Mana Ramp.

To wit:

This is a classic example of the midrange non-blue control deck. It can’t compete with the Cryptic Commands and Cruel Ultimatums of 5-Color Control, and has to settle for running much worse stuff like Primal Command and Garruk Wildspeaker. You may consider this as a 5-CC deck that doesn’t lose to aggro Red, but in return for a better (and not necessarily even good) Red matchup you are so much worse against Faeries or Reveillark. I’m not even convinced that Jund Ramp (or any non-blue Ramp) even beats Token decks.

Well my reaction to this part — which is really the genesis as that is what readers have been asking about specifically — is that it must not apply to us. Let’s look again at our version of Jund Mana Ramp:

Jund Mana Ramp

3 Makeshift Mannequin
3 Shriekmaw

4 Broodmate Dragon
4 Kitchen Finks

4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Cloudthresher
4 Gift of the Gargantuan
4 Rampant Growth

4 Banefire
3 Volcanic Fallout

4 Fire-Lit Thicket
8 Forest
2 Mountain
4 Savage Land
1 Swamp
4 Treetop Village

sideboard:
4 Anathemancer
1 Shriekmaw
1 Terror
3 Caldera Hellion
1 Volcanic Fallout
4 Primal Command
1 Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund

I have for some time been a vocal opponent of the Garruk Wildspeaker version of Jund Mana Ramp as slow and clunky and overly vulnerable to Faeries. Heads up I am not convinced that Garruk does anything … Though it is obvious that the potential for a Violent Ultimatum fueled by the Fertile Ground + Garruk + seven drop draw that only occurs on daytime soap operas is quite the boogeyman. Before I get into details (and what today’s title means), I will address Luis’s paragraph on Jund Mana Ramp…

I would agree that this deck probably doesn’t want to get in a Cruel Ultimatum fight with Reflecting Pool Control. However that has not historically been a problem, and I anticipate it to be less of a problem this coming weekend. At New York States last year, I handily dispatched every Reflecting Pool + Cryptic Command deck I played in that tournament, albeit with the help of Mind Shatter + Gutteral Response (which was like the simpler, faster, Cruel Ultimatum). Point being, I respect the Ultimatum, but don’t anticipate the matchup as being a huge issue. In fact I would have been very happy to play Reflecting Pool Control all day at States; it was in fact the deck I tested against the most and I felt like I had a superb understanding of how to dominate.

For Regionals I am not sure how to consider the comparison. For one, I think that Reflecting Pool Control is a disaster. Not a disaster for Jund Mana Ramp… like it’s an unplayable time bomb waiting to blow up in the face of whoever has decided to play it. I don’t have Mind Shatter + Gutteral Response any more because I don’t plan to have to have those cards. If I did, I would commit the sideboard space. Instead I have a much improved main deck that can torch the opponent out at will and a sideboard that features the card that I believe should extinct the Reflecting Pool Control strategy: Anathemancer.

I already said I don’t like Garruk Wildspeaker… but I grandly disagree that Cryptic Command is in any way better than Primal Command. Remember I have included Primal Command as a four-of… but a sideboard four-of that only comes in when it is an appropriate tool. I have steadily increased the number of Primal Commands in my sideboard because I really want to draw them in these matchups where I want to draw them (beatdown decks, Sanity Grinding, and the mirror). When I played Blightning Beatdown, there was nothing I wanted to play against more than a deck with Cryptic Command, whether it was Reflecting Pool Control or Fae. In both cases I felt like I was a heavy favorite, and I got to play with Gutteral Response to force mana commitments while I still resolved my threats.

Perhaps in agreement with Luis, I actually don’t think Red Decks are that easy for at least my version of Jund Mana Ramp. I feel like I have a good chance, but I would much rather play Fae or Reflecting Pool Control or certainly G/W Tokens than a Red Deck. That is why I have Primal Command. I want to grind the Red Deck into the floor, and gaining seven life while loading up on Kitchen Finks and Broodmate Dragons is the most appropriate way to do that in this format. Against Sanity Grinding, a Primal Command is actual card advantage, trading for multiple spells the opponent has played, and hwen it resolves, demoralizing the Millstone strategy. And of course in the mirror Primal Command is arguably the single strongest card, setting the opponent back on a comes into play tapped land and putting Karrthus into my hand.

I don’t look forward to playing Reveillark, but I actually think Fae is a very easy matchup for this version of Jund Mana Ramp. I lost to Fae to miss Top 8 of States, but I think that that deck — and even more this deck — were and are heavy favorites against Faeries. In fact, I think that my version of Jund Mana Ramp is a nightmare for most Faeries players. I side into eight copies of Volcanic Fallout and Cloudthresher (seven starting) and I have very little dead weight (only Shriekmaw) and no obvious targets. The paths to losing are being manascrewed or the opponent drawing multiple uncontesed Mistbind Cliques. I respect the latter, though, and am considering playing a second Terror in the sideboard specifically to help deal with this draw.

But Tokens? In our testing B/W Tokens can be competitive but Jund is the favorite; I don’t think G/W Tokens has very much of a shot. Testing online (where admittedly G/W Tokens doesn’t have Dauntless Escort yet we have yet to drop a game. Will Dauntless Escort matter? Sure! It will have a non-zero impact but we don’t tend to rely on sweeping the opponent to win, more dominating with tempo plays until we can get the opponent to concede with Broodmate Dragons.

So we’ve already decided that Luis must have not been talking about us when he made his comment. After all, he invoked the name of Garruk Wildspeaker. But would he dislike our deck anyway? I think maybe not.

You see our version of Jund Mana Ramp isn’t a mid-range control deck. I think that that is the source of the misunderstanding. Jund Mana Ramp — ours anyway — is a Tinker deck (in the sense of “Finding the Tinker Deck”). This is a deck that is full of mana and bombs. It doesn’t really seek to interact with the opponent’s cards like most mid-range control decks so much as to dominate them. I don’t want to get a one-for-one on a Thoughtseize; I want you to commit four mana to your Wilt-Leaf Liege so that I can get a two-for-one on you with my Makeshift Mannequin. Once I hit turn five or six I am going to tap out for a card every turn, each copy being more dramatically powerful (not necessarily “better”) than any card in your deck.

That is not a “mid-range” strategy. That is a power strategy.

Is interesting because Luis’s passion in argumentation comes as someone who sees himself as having “recovered” from the plague of mid-range mediocrity. I would reiterate that I very much respect his opinion and recent accomplishments, but would argue that his stiff-backed model may ultimately lead down a path of inflexibility. Mid-range can be sub-optimal in some rooms (especially formats with good Extended options), but be the absolute best deck to play in other rooms. It might tend to be wrong, but removing mid-range from our palettes in its entirety teaches us essentially nothing. Magic is a game of options, and the players who preserve their options tend to be the most successful. Mid-range (even if the deck at hand is not necessarily mid-range) is just another tool to be used or left in the drawer. I see no reason to remove it entirely.

LOVE
MIKE

You probably know that Will Price (aka @sloppystack), Brian David-Marshall (aka BDM aka @Top8Games), and I did some playtesting with Jund Mana Ramp earlier this week. This post is going to be relatively detailed information on that testing, but you can get more information on what we have published so far by…

• Following me on Twitter,
• Listening to the most recent batch of Magic Podcasts at Top 8 Magic, or
• Checking on the Jund Mana Ramp post I made there yesterday or thereabouts

To make a long story short, I tested out a couple of different decks, including the more Cascade-centric Ramp deck I talked about here last week, Borderpost Tezzerator, and good old Reflecting Pool Control; Will liked the Jund Mana Ramp deck we talked about during the BBQ Podcasts from two weeks ago best and convinced me to spend more time on that deck, particularly as we were having a hard time going Ultimate on Tezzeret due to the cheap damage sources available in Standard.

That deck originally had Bloodbraid Elf… but I cut it the night before live / live Twitter testing after I had flipped one of the two main deck Banefires.

“Never again.”

Banefire was like the best card in the deck!

Ultimately, this was the list I ran in testing:

Jund Mana Ramp

3 Makeshift Mannequin
3 Shriekmaw

4 Broodmate Dragon
4 Kitchen Finks

4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Cloudthresher
4 Gift of the Gargantuan
4 Rampant Growth

4 Banefire
3 Volcanic Fallout

4 Fire-Lit Thicket
8 Forest
2 Mountain
4 Savage Land
1 Swamp
4 Treetop Village

We didn’t test sideboards, but if I were to play Regionals tomorrow, 1) I would definitely play this deck, and 2) this is the sideboard I would play:

4 Anathemancer
1 Shriekmaw
3 Caldera Hellion
1 Volcanic Fallout
1 Terminate
4 Primal Command
1 Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund

I decided to play Primal Command over any Mind Shatters. With eight Cloudthreshers and Volcanic Fallouts, you simply don’t need to max out on Mind Shatter and Gutteral Response to beat Faeries like you had to for the States-era version of Jund Mana Ramp. Anathemancer does the same duty against Reflecting Pool Control. Anathemancer is simply irresistible in a long game, especially in concert with Banefire, another tool we did not have at States. Moreover you kind of need two Swamps to run Mind Shatter (I tested tonight on MTGO with no new cards to confirm this)… and I don’t really want to play another Swamp.

The bigger shift was to remove most of the Terminates in favor of Caldera Hellion. The reasons are twofold. First of all, while it is pretty easy to play Shriekmaw or Banefire, and you usually have the mana for Broodmate Dragon… Terminate under pressure is another matter entirely at BR. I might cut them all and play a Lash Out, Terror, or even Murderous Redcap (RR being pretty easy to play thanks to Fire-Lit Thicket). You can’t play a filter land to get BR because Graven Cairns doesn’t filter Green mana. Caldera Hellion is pretty exciting, and should help give the deck a nice lift against G/W Tokens.

Anyway, back to real-life testing.

The first matchup was me on Jund Mana Ramp, Will on B/W Tokens. I am not 100% sure on the version, but I believe it was either a deck that Luis Scott-Vargas posted or the PTQ winner from the first week of the current Standard season. In either case, the deck was an evolution from “regular old” B/W tokens to incorporate Ajani Goldmane + Persist (Murderous Redcap and Kitchen Finks).

For reference:

3 Glorious Anthem
3 Plains
1 Swamp
3 Zealous Persecution
3 Caves of Koilos
3 Path to Exile
4 Fetid Heath
3 Cloudgoat Ranger
2 Marsh Flitter
3 Ajani Goldmane
4 Windbrisk Heights
4 Bitterblossom
2 Mutavault
4 Knight of the White Orchid
4 Tidehollow Sculler
3 Arcane Sanctum
3 Kitchen Finks
4 Spectral Procession
4 Reflecting Pool

Sideboard
2 Wrath of God
2 Identity Crisis
3 Mark of Asylum
2 Celestial Purge
3 Thoughtseize
3 Wispmare

Will and I traded the first four games, with the player going first winning each one. I felt like I could have won either of the games that I didn’t win in the first four, and Will felt like he definitely should have won the first game I won (it was a lethal Banefire off the top). I eventually broke serve on a game where Will had both lands and spells but where B/W as a non-Blue, non-Green, yet reasonably mana-intensive deck (WWW, BB, etc.) showed one of its vulnerabilities… Will hit his first four land drops but did not do anything to make me care. Meanwhile I kept a one-land six-card hand on the draw, but with a Rampant Growth and two Civic Wayfinders. These cards vastly improved my board position (especially with Will doing nothing) until I was dropping Dragons. I won the other two games on the play in the first seven, and we called the match at 5-2 in favor of Jund Mana Ramp.

Why did we call it at 5-2? This is something I got from playtesting with Zvi for Worlds last year. This was a matchup where both of us were enamored of one of the decks, and where the opposite deck did nothing to shake our interest. Since we didn’t really care about the performance of B/W as it was not dramatic, it was more efficient to move on.

The B/W matchup is a pure “Trish” matchup. Basically from Jund side you want to survive and get lots of two-for-ones. Your cards are so vastly superior to the B/W cards that they can’t possibly win outside of early Stage Two unless they lock you with Ajani. So the goal is just to trade. Eventually you will crush them with Cloudthreshers and Broodmate Dragons and Banefire for nine. So basically it is a default for Jund to win. The two games Will won were:

1. Thoughtseize-into-Tidehollow Sculler: He correctly ignored my early game acceleration and just took my bombs. So when I got to six lands, I had nothing to do.
2. Double Tidehollow Sculler: He slowed me down and got super duper Spectral Processions. My Broodmate Dragons were too small!

My favorite kill was probably when Will took my Cloudthresher with Tidehollow Sculler, I drew and passed against his Cloudgoat Ranger and Spectral Procession tokens. He attacked with all and I revealed that I had drawn another Cloudthresher, cleared the board, and followed up with a big Banefire. This was particularly super awesome as I also neutered Ajani

The next matchup was against B/G Elves, which was a Top 8 finisher in the first PTQ; according to Will and his partner in crime @zielend B/G Elves is also one of the top finishers in big MTGO events.

For reference:

1 Swamp
4 Forest
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Lord of Extinction
4 Llanowar Wastes
3 Noble Hierarch
4 Twilight Mire
4 Gilt-Leaf Palace
3 Profane Command
2 Eyeblight’s Ending
2 Cloudthresher
4 Wren’s Run Vanquisher
2 Mutavault
3 Chameleon Colossus
4 Civic Wayfinder
3 Kitchen Finks
4 Wilt-Leaf Liege
4 Treetop Village

Sideboard
4 Shriekmaw
2 Primal Command
3 Avatar of Might
2 Necrogenesis
1 Kitchen Finks
3 Pithing Needle

The testing was kind of strange.

I won the first three games with B/G Elves.

We switched decks.

I won the next three games with Jund Mana Ramp.

We tried to analyze why this might be (I mean other than my being super awesome); but I actually won one of the B/G games on a mulligan to four, and I shipped to Paris five times in the three games I played from Jund side! This is actually quite telling as I realized what was going on from playing both sides and consistently shipped not just to land and spells, but any Shriekmaw. Basically if you draw a Shriekmaw it is quite easy to beat B/G Elves from Jund side.

From B/G Elves side I elected to play B/G as a singular big threat deck rather than as a swarming deck. That is, I would attack with one Chameleon Colossus or Lord of Extinction rather than exposing myself to getting blown out by Volcanic Fallout.

At this point BDM sat down with us and helped play Jund from Will’s side. The main contribution he made was to torch any and every mana accelerator I played; with Brian’s help Will won the last three games 2-1. This led to a 5-4 lead for Jund Mana Ramp over nine games, with essentially no pattern based on who went first. However from playing both sides I think that Jund should be the heavy favorite.

Just look at the sideboards. Jund gets the fourth Shriekmaw and as much removal as it likes. It would be a complete blowout if Jund actually got ahold of more Terminates, but you can only do what you can.

Tonight I played several matches with Jund (albeit with no new cards in the sideboard) and finished my session at 4-1 or 5-1 with the only loss being to Faeries. I might have won actually. I kept a one-land six-card hand on the draw in Game One and conceded in frustration when my opponent hit Bitterblossom, Jace Beleren and I still hadn’t played my second land. It turns out I had multiple lands and a Volcanic Fallout on top (I obviously kept a hand full of acceleration and two-for-ones)… I actually think I could have gotten out of it. I took Game Two, and lost Game Three on a judgment call. Basically my opponent passed with three mana up and I had six mana on my turn with Cloudthresher and Broodmate Dragon in hand. I was annoyed at his double Vendilion Clique draw, which had robbed me of a ‘Thresher and Makeshift Mannequin and thought I could resolve my ‘Thresher main. He had not shown me Broken Ambitions in the first two games, so I decided if he had Remove Soul there was nothing I could do about it. Of course my original plan was to test-spell the ‘Thresher at the end of his turn and untap into the Broodmate, but like I said, I hadn’t seen Broken Ambitions.

He had Broken Ambitions.

The game took a bit longer, and I was one turn off of winning with Banefire, but he ended up having me to -2 as I failed to draw either a third Cloudthresher or a Volcanic Fallout to stall. All that said, I feel like Faeries has to be a winnable matchup with the package we plan to present.

More before Regionals,

LOVE
MIKE