New Decks Review

Today I was reading an article over on Daily MTG about some new decks that are gaining some respect in the standard format. Jund has been the standard staple for a while now. If you haven't played against a Jund deck consider yourself lucky because it can be a very annoying matchup for a lot decks. Jund wins for one reason, card advantage. Take a look at the card every Jund deck has four of Blightning. It sends three damage at your opponent's face and forces them to discard two cards. That is some serious card advantage but, it doesn't stop there. Bloodbraid Elf is the amazing 4 drop 3/2 haste with cascade (more free spells for more card advantage). Maelstrom Pulse can take out several permanents with the same name for 3 mana. But most of us have seen this all before. So why was Jund being mentioned as a new deck at all? Take a look at this deck list:

Land:
4 Evolving Wilds
3 Forest
3 Mountain
4 Raging Ravine
4 Savage Lands
1 Scalding Tarn
3 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs

Creatures:
4 Bloodbraid Elf
2 Borderland Ranger
4 Plated Geopede
4 Putrid Leech
4 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Sprouting Thrinax

Spells
2 Bituminous Blast
4 Blightning
2 Lightning Bolt
4 Maelstrom Pulse

Sideboard
1 Bituminous Blast
1 Burst Lightning
1 Chandra Nalaar
3 Consumping Vapors
2 Doom Blade
1 Island
4 Sedraxis Specter

When have you seen a Jund deck with a Sedraxis Specter in the sideboard? Well, just now. Because Blue-White Control and Blue-White Tapout have become serious threats this Jund version was designed to be a Jund deck that can masquerade as a Red-Deck-Wins or Grixis Burn. Spreading Seas has been Blue-White's main way of messing up the Jund mana base while providing a replacement card. This deck takes advantage of that to force the opponent to discard cards. This a great concept because everyone knows Jund and expects to see certain cards from all Jund decks. But playing cards not seen in Jund like, Sedraxis Specter, puts your opponent on their heels. They don't know what is coming next so they can't respond as well when you play that turn 4-5 Blightning when they thought you were mono red because you played Plated Geopede on turn 2 and 3. In my opinion, John Pham, creator of the deck, took Blue-White's strategy and turned it against them. That is a head's up play. John Pham is this week's sneaky beaver.

Also on this list are Polymorph and a deck called Spread 'Em. The Spread 'Em deck is really interesting. It plays mainly Bant colors but has a splash of red for Bloodbraid. The other creatures are Baneslayer, Rhox War Monk, and Wall of Omens. All of which are powerful cards that get the job done. This deck's sideboard has a card that we don't see too often at the pro level, Trace of Abundance. For R/W and G you can enchant a land, give it shroud, and lets it produce 1 mana of any color whenever you tap it for mana that it produces normally. When you enchant a card like Celestial Colonnade you can get a lot of mana options but also a 4/4 flying, shroud, vigilance for 3WU. The deck also runs Ardent plea which in the main deck configuration cascades into either Wall of Omens or Spreading Seas, both of which draw you a card. In this sense a Blue-White deck has gone slightly Jund-like to get card advantage and creature advantage.

On a more personal note, my close friend Ryan put together a Polymorph deck. If you want to learn how to build this deck at a fraction of the cost I would suggest checking out his blog Casual MTG Creations, the link is the top right of this page. Now, onto the deck. Polymorph tries to do one and one thing only, get the biggest, baddest, most dangerous creature onto the field and use that creature to make your opponent cry like a baby. Polymorph does this very well. All the cards in Polymorph either prevent damage, produce a token, mana accelerate, counter a spell, or draw cards. Polymorph wants to get to 6 mana by turn 5 so that it can cast polymorph, targeting one of their tokens, and then reveal the only creature in the deck: Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. The extra mana is necessary in order to cast a counter-spell. Other creatures that have seen use are Iona, Shield of Emeria and Progenitus. If Polymorph gets one of these creatures on to the battlefield, shake their hand, resign, and move on to game 2 because it is over, I know from experience.

My current best Standard deck is Vampires. I don't know why but the only time it has performed badly was at an FNM when I kept a 1 land hand (all the cards in my hand costed either 1 or two mana) and didn't get a second land until turn 4 or 5. By which point I had lost all hopes of winning against a red-green eldrazi ramp deck that wasn't even very good. (This meant I came in second place for the night and he in first) My point is that I want redemption for my deck and knowing that polymorph will probably be played at the next FNM, cause Ryan told me he was playing it, I needed a solid way to beat it. Here is the card I came up with: Sadistic Sacrament. This card has not seen any pro level play because there are very few decks that this card has even a remote impact on. But against Polymorph it is absolutely amazing. For BBB you can search your opponent's library and exile any 3 cards. In this case you choose their Polymorph targets, Emrakul, Iona, or Progenitus. Rarely will you see a total of more than 3 targets so if you can successfully cast Sadistic Sacrament you pretty much win. But their deck is full of counter-spells so timing is everything. Another card I would add in is: Consuming Vapors.

My deck runs 3 Kalastria Highborn main deck so if you can get the Polymorph down to a small amount of life, leave mana open after they play Emrakul. When his Annihilator 6 ability activates, be sure to sac all your vampire creatures then pay B for each vampire and watch their life total tick down to 0. So to do this effectively you need 6 vamps on the field and your opponent at 12 or less life. (Or any number of vampires and land equal to half of their life total So 10 life, 5 vamps, 5 land works too) But watch out for cards like into the roil which foil that plan by returning Kalastria to your hand. Thats all on these few new decks. Peace.