BFZ Jund
Standard Deck Help forum
Posted on Oct. 1, 2015, 8:10 a.m. by capriom85
My son is dead set on playing Jund midrange for the KTR/BFZ standard season. Anyone have a list or a primer that can help me get this starteD? He would like to use See the Unwritten of its competitive enough. It's usually game over if you hit Atarka, World Render and can give it haste.
HorridBEAST says... #3
What kind of budget are you looking at? I think Jund can be very powerful, but the mana base can get crazy expensive with Fetch lands and battle lands. There are of course budget options, but they really slow down the deck reducing it's overall efficiency
Is you son planning to compete at FNMs or is this just a casual jund deck?
October 1, 2015 8:38 a.m.
Boza, how exactly does Drana, Liberator of Malakir fit into the picture with Surrak, the Hunt Caller? Or were those both just unrelated thing to include?
October 1, 2015 8:39 a.m.
HorridBEAST, no real budget. He has a ton of trade value and a lot of the needed Fetches already. He mostly just need the actual cards that he will be casting and hasMost of the appropriate RG stuff too.
October 1, 2015 8:41 a.m.
They are the best midrange cards for their respective colors. They also work well together and go along well with other parts of the deck.
For example, t3 Catacomb Sifter into t4 Surrak, the Hunt Caller means you have a hasty surrak. All tokens available to Jund work well with Drana.
If you specifically want to build a Midrange deck, these are the two key cards (that are flying under the radar right now)
October 1, 2015 8:45 a.m.
HorridBEAST says... #7
Shifter into Surrak isn't midrange play at all. A midrange play would be T2 Beastcaller Savant into a T3 Shaman of Forgotten Ways into a T4 Dragonlord Atarka.
This is a very quick first attempt at a Jund Midrange deck so it is far from perfect, but if I were to build the deck this is where I would start:
Creature: 2x Dragonlord Atarka 2x Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury 2x Tasigur, the Golden Fang 4x Whisperwood Elemental 4x Thunderbreak Regent 3x Surrak, the Hunt Caller 4x Shaman of Forgotten Ways 3x Rattleclaw Mystic 4x Beastcaller Savant
Non-Creature: 4x See the Unwritten 3x Frontier Siege 1x Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
Land: 4x Bloodstained Mire 4x Smoldering Marsh 4x Wooded Foothills 4x Cinder Glade 2x Haven of the Spirit Dragon 6 Basic
October 1, 2015 9:02 a.m.
Circle of Elders is a nice forgotten card, as well as Whisperer of the Wilds. Yasova Dragonclaw is a nice cheap 4 power creature to get the extra creature from See the Unwritten. Necromantic Summons is awesome to get discarded stuff back into play for cheap. I'd also run at least 1 Dragonlord Kolaghan for the haste to all and he gets double strike from world render. Not a big fan of more than 0-1 Whisperwood Elementals in here. From Beyond and Catacomb Sifter seem good too
October 1, 2015 2:48 p.m.
HorridBEAST says... #9
Circle of Elders is a terrible card. 4 mana is way more than you want to pay for a mana dork and this one doesn't even come online until after you get your first threat on board. You want your mana dorks to be as cheap and reliable as possible, it really is a shame that their is no longer a 1 mana dork. Whisperer of the Wilds is decent, but once again it doesn't get you 2 mana until after you already have a beater on board and more importantly can't color fix like Beastcaller Savant or to a lesser extent Rattleclaw Mystic (no black) which is crucial in a tri-color deck.
Yasova Dragonclaw dies to Wild Slash... A 3 drop dying to a 1 mana burn spell is already bad, but when you are relying on that creature to activate all of your Ferocious and Formidable effects then that is terrible
Whisperwood Elemental is just amazing. It provides so much long term value. Every single turn you get a free 2/2; use it for attacking, blocking, stalling, whatever it's free! It is a great way to cheat creatures onto the field against control because they cant counter the manifest or the flipping, and if your opponent uses Languish, Planar Outburst, or Crux of Fate you can sac Whisperwood to replace your entire team with manifests, a bunch of 2/2s may not seem like much, but it's a hell of a lot better than nothing.
From Beyond is far inferior to Frontier Siege. The 1/1 scion is susceptible to removal and only gets 1 mana a turn. Frontier Siege gets 2 mana per main phase (That's 4 mana per turn). Catacomb Sifter is the same cost and body (not including the scion) as Shaman of Forgotten Ways except the scion can only be used once for mana and Shaman has real late game relevancy (if you activate Shaman's ability while your opponent has no creatures they lose). If you wanted to run something like Deathless Behemoth then From Beyond and Shifter get better, but in the Jund list I proposed earlier, they have no room.
October 1, 2015 3:23 p.m.
Oh well, my G/R see the unwritten deck worked great before rotation. I assumed you would be running beastcaller and shaman already, too bad see the unwritten isnt a creature spell? Turn 2 whisperer of the wilds, turn 3 yasova, turn 4 see the unwriiten = 2 fatties in play = bad i guess.
October 1, 2015 4:17 p.m.
Oh and you dont "rely" on yasova, you run 2 and then 4 thunderbreaks and a few surraks
October 1, 2015 4:20 p.m.
HorridBEAST says... #12
What happens when you have Whisperer of the Wilds on the field, but you only have 1 source of red so you can't cast Thunderbreak Regent? Or you have no black mana so you can't dash Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury? What happens if the red deck Wild Slashes Yasova Dragonclaw before you get the 2 mana for See the Unwritten? What if you just don't have Yasova in your hand when Whisperer is on the field? I never said Whisperer was unplayable, just that color fixing is important and you can't consistently get the 2 mana.
October 1, 2015 4:30 p.m.
Nice new dual lands and the 4 beastcallers and rattleclaws can help that, all of which die to any burn spell. I wouldnt not play stuff just because it could get wild slashed :/
October 1, 2015 4:34 p.m.
HorridBEAST says... #14
Dorks are always vulnerable to burn, that's an unavoidable fact, but picking an offensive creature is very different, Yasova dies in combat with any creature with 2 power making her a glass cannon that you may be unwilling to enter combat with. We agree that Beastcaller Savant and Rattleclaw Mystic belong in the deck, you choose Whisperer of the Wilds+Yasova/Thunderbreak in order to get a turn 4 See the Unwritten where I've used Shaman of Forgotten Ways to get a turn 4 Dragonlord Atarka and then you can play See the Unwritten with Atarka as your Ferocious enabler
October 1, 2015 4:44 p.m. Edited.
eh, yer probably right, no room for all this stuff if it's supposed to be a 3 color deck anyway...
October 1, 2015 6:10 p.m.
I have used Yasova Dragonclaw with much success in Temur. Her ability is actually sort of relevant against aggro. She nets you an extra creature during combat, but in Jund I think she is without.
October 1, 2015 7:57 p.m.
allthingsMTG says... #17
Have your son check out this list and see if he likes it (shameless self promotion) Jund is the new Abzan
Boza says... #2
Another idea would be to not try to achieve 3 different things that take the deck as far away from midrange as possible. There are several key cards that go into a Jund midrange deck:
Drana, Liberator of Malakir and Surrak, the Hunt Caller - giving haste to every midrange creature is very key.
4 Beastcaller Savant to power them out.
4 Catacomb Sifter for early body
Now, things can diverge from here into eldrazi and not:
Not eldrazi focuses on value - sacrificing dudes like Carrier Thrall with Evolutionary Leap and Smothering Abomination for profit.
Eldrazi - 4 From Beyond, 4 Conduit of Ruin and more of the colorless cards in the set.
October 1, 2015 8:26 a.m. Edited.