Tuesday 22 June 2010

Leeching the format





















So here I am, a little less than 2 weeks from the nationals. And the day will finally come, the day I will play Jund.
After struggling so much against it, the afterhours of a ptq fail with mythic were spent amusing myself on the dark side playing leeches and cascading into some blightnings.

I gave up, I will play Jund. I mean come on, the deck is awesome. It's an all around, it can be control and aggro, disrupts hand, manabase, sweeps the board, it wins any attrition war.
So my first steps with deck were playing a ML master, which I ended up 5-1-1, winning 2 mirror's, turboland, brilliant ultimatum and a mono red and losing to Next Level Bant.
Anyway, when the master ended, I went to check on the lists, and turns out the winner was Jund by Ykpon, and quite a list. So I took his list, and I am tweaking it now, and so far I got to this:

// Lands
3 [M10] Dragonskull Summit
4 [WWK] Raging Ravine
4 [ALA] Savage Lands
4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
3 [UNH] Forest
3 [UNH] Mountain
2 [WWK] Lavaclaw Reaches
3 [UNH] Swamp
1 [M10] Rootbound Crag

// Creatures
4 [ARB] Bloodbraid Elf
4 [ARB] Putrid Leech
4 [ALA] Sprouting Thrinax
4 [ZEN] Goblin Ruinblaster

// Spells
4 [ALA] Blightning
4 [M10] Lightning Bolt
4 [ARB] Maelstrom Pulse
1 [ROE] Sarkhan the Mad
4 [ARB] Bituminous Blast

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [ROE] Sarkhan the Mad
SB: 4 [US] Duress
SB: 3 [ZEN] Malakir Bloodwitch
SB: 2 [SC] Siege-Gang Commander
SB: 1 [ALA] Necrogenesis
SB: 2 [PS] Terminate
SB: 2 [M10] Doom Blade

So basically this has everything I wanted on main deck, my main problem is the sideboard.

On main deck I know I want 27 lands, and so far this combination has served me well.
Then, the locked spots are 4 pulses, 4 leeches, 4 thrinax, 4 bloodbraid elf, 4 blightnings.
The goblin ruinblasters are maindecked now, since I expect about 40% junds, plus the UW's and UWR's. So that's gotta be above 50% of the field, which is quite nice to got that edge.
The bituminous blasts are simply game turners, since it involves a powerful 2 cards swing to say at least.
The bolts are cheap removal, always handy for the first turns while laying down some tapped lands.
The lonely sarkhan is there because, I got no more room for another, and since I don't play terminates maindeck, I need the 4 blasts.

As for the sideboard.

There's the other copy of sarkhan, 4 duresses obviously, the malakir bloodwitches are crucial.
Then, I got 2 terminates-2 doom blades split, since I want terminates for mirror, but doom blades kill firewalkers.
The Necrogenesis is there for mirror and aggro decks and the latest adition, yet to test, the siege-gang commander, is for bant.

So far, on my testing, I only got negative matchup's against Bant and Naya.
So we can cross naya of the list, which leaves bant.
Bant will be surely played at the nationals, and I would like to enter a match without feeling like a match loss. So I tested already several cards against it. Bloodwitch is nice and all, but it's not enough, I need something more explosive, which leads to siege gang. Siege gang is everything you need, chumps and direct damage. In spite of this is not tested yet, I believe it will rise the matchup a little.

As for now I am siding like this:

UW/UWr

+ 1 sarkhan, +4 duress, +3 malakir, +2 doom blade
-4 bolts, -2 bituminous, -4 thrinax

The bolts are useless, the thrinax dont get through their walls, and they will always be purged, so no value in this guy here. The malakir bloodwitch is insane if backed up with a duress.

Mirror

+1 Sarkhan, +1 Necrogenesis, +2 terminate
-4 pulse, you may also cut 2 bolts for 2 siege gangs...

Bant

+2 siege gang, +3 bloodwitch, +2 doom blade, + 1 necrogenesis, +1 terminate
- 1 Sarkhan, -4 blightning, -4 ruinblaster

The blightnings are clunky early game, and that's your soft spot and the ruinblasters are pretty underwhelming, destroying a land is near useless and the 2/1 body can't trade with anyone.

These are the main sideboards, but I think I have not reached the final list yet.
Well cya then...

No comments:

Post a Comment