States 2009 Deck Analysis

Here’s what I registered for States:

4 Bloodbraid Elf / 4 Broodmate Dragon / 4 Sprouting Thrinax / 3 Borderland Ranger / 2 Siege-Gang Commander

2 Chandra Nalaar / 4 Blightning / 4 Lightning Bolt / 3 Bituminous Blast / 3 Maelstrom Pulse / 2 Terminate

4 Savage Lands / 4 Dragonskull Summit / 4 Rootbound Crag / 4 Verdant Catacombs / 3 Swamps / 3 Mountain / 3 Frost

Sideboard (SB): 3 Malakir Bloodwitch / 2 Thornling / 2 Duress / 2 Mind Rot / 3 Jund Charm / 2 Terminate / 1 Maelstrom Pulse

Here’s the analysis:

4 Bloodbraid Elf (BBE) – Playing this card is trickier than you think. I often would hold on to BBE until my opponent had a creature in play because I have 9 removal spells & 11 non-removal spells main decked (MD). Hitting a removal spell with no creatures in play is a waste of this card.

To gain tempo and play BBE optimally, it’s best to play this spell when your opponent has a creature in play. If you hit removal that’s great, you just killed their creature and now you’re the only one with a creature. If you don’t hit a creature removal spell its okay, you either get a another creature in the form of Borderland Ranger or Sprouting Thrinax or you Blightning them. It’s a win-win situation for you if they have a creature in play.

4 Broodmate Dragon (BMD) – 4 sounds like overkill but I believe it’s the right number. No deck out there can deal with 8 4/4 dragons through out the course of game. In the mirror, first to Broodmate usually wins. Plus, if you Cascade past a Broodmate Dragon, it doesn’t hurt you as much. In fact, when you do Cascade past a Broodmate Dragon, stop and pretend to PANIC, so that your opponent thinks that you’re only running a couple of them, when in fact, you have 1 in your hand and two more in your deck. When you side in your 3 Malakir Bloodwitches, you can afford to take 1 or 2 BMDs out as well. 4 BMD, 2 Siege-Gang Commanders, & 3 Malakir Bloodwitch is pretty greedy for this decks mana base.

4 Sprouting Thrinax – I would normally side it out against any deck that played White because they would bring in Paths &/or Purges against me. So that made Thrinax a weaker card. Sometimes with Thrinax you think it’s actually “4 creatures,” but what happens is that they Path to Exile or Purge it and now you just lost your “4 creatures.” That’s why I sided it out against decks that have W in it. Plus it makes more room for cards to side in.

3 Borderland Ranger – deals with Spread ‘Em decks, Goblin Ruinblaster, or land destruction (LD). It smoothes out your mana and is a good chump blocker against agro decks, which is what the majority of the field is. Borderland Ranger can kill a BBE and will sometimes even prevent your opponent from playing their BBE.

2 Siege-Gang Commander (SGC) – I might drop them for either Garruk or Master of the Wild Hunt. Sometimes you don’t want to play a turn 4 BBE because your opponent doesn’t have a creature in play, and as explained above, you want to utilize BBE’s Cascade ability. Another 4-drop like Garruk or Master of the Wild Hunt would have been nice, because BBE was my only 4-drop!

SGC also clogged up my 5-drops and my following turns because it required mana to Shock stuff. At times I would be stuck in situations of choosing to play a turn 5 Siege-Gang Commander or leave up mana for Bituminous Blast. Rarely did I ever get a chance to “Shock” stuff with SGC.

It’s not optimal to play a turn 5 SGC then a turn 6 BMD. I learned that it’s better to not play SGC at all, but just wait and play a turn 6 BMD. If they Day of Judgment the board, then SGC on your following turn is a great way to regain tempo. I often would end games with BMD on the board swinging in for the win with a SGC in my hand.

SGC (main decked) and Thornling (sideboarded) are designed as game ending top-of-the mana curve type of spells. Decks that utilize SGC and Thornling the best are decks that either ramp so that they have lots of mana or if these 2 cards are the most mana intensive cards in the deck. SGC is great in R or Goblin decks because it’s on the top of the curve. Thornling is great in G decks because these decks ramp up with Birds of Paradise, Rampant Growth, Harrow, etc. In this deck, SGC and Thornling are both a little awkward because BMD costs more than them AND is a better finisher.

Granted SGC can stop Great Sable Stag (GSS) & White Knight but so can Master of the Wild Hunt and Garruk. I think if I had 3 Rampant Growths in stead of 3 Borderland Rangers then SGC and Thornling would have performed better for me, BUT like I said earlier, I’d rather have Borderland Rangers because the field is so agro that I want a chump blocker and it can prevent BBE from being cast, as well as kill it.

All 3 of my match losses came because of GSS. In the course of 7 games, I faced 13 GSS, and lost 6 out of the 7 games. GSS didn’t necessarily kill me out right but was able to do significant damage or forced me to use my cards in a less optimal way. I think Master of the Wild Hunt and Garruk Wildspeaker are better solutions to GSS than Siege-Gang Commander is. GSS comes out on turn 3, Garruk comes out on turn 4 and can either ramp you or make a G 3/3 Beast token that can stop GSS. How about Master of the Wild Hunt? Your opponent goes turn 3 GSS, you go turn 4 Master of the Wild Hunt. I’m more than willing to trade Master of the Wild Hunt for GSS if I don’t have a Lightning Bolt in my hand and if I’m low on life. GSS is Jund’s worst nightmare! I fear GSS more than I do Goblin Ruinblaster because of my Bordlerland Rangers MD! If they decide to keep their GSS back because they don’t want to trade with your Master of the Wild Hunt, then that’s great because now you’re getting 2/2 Wolves! With Siege-Gang Commander, they play a turn 3 GSS, you do something on turn 4, then on turn 5 you play your SGC, then on turn 6 you’re finally able to shoot it down. By this time, GSS may have already done 9 damage to you! The only change I would make to my deck would be to drop the SGCs and add 2 Garruks or 2 Master of the Wild Hunt.

2 Chandra Nalaar – this card was so awesome! It shot down Stags, Rhox War Monk, and Baneslayers, practially everything. It’s great against control decks and I even got it to go ultimate once for the win.

3 Bituminous Blast – I’ve seen decks running only 2, but I think 3 is the right number. Jund has the best Cascade spells and Bituminous Blast is one of them. Why would you not want to play a card with one of the best abilities ever made? 4 might be too many because it’s a blank against control decks, so I replaced it with a 2nd Chandra.

4 Blightning – The best card in the deck! People fear Blightning more than they do BBE. Combine the two and you’ve got an amazing synergistic combo!

4 Lightning Bolt – 3 damage for 1 mana! Think about it… it’s an amazing card! The only 1 mana card that’s better than this is Ancestral Recall where you play one U to draw three cards. Now that’s crazy!

3 Maelstrom Pulse – the best removal card in the game. I was going to play 4 but decided to do a 3/2 split with Terminate.

2 Terminate – not as versatile as Maelstrom Pulse or even Burst Lightning but with all of the agro decks out there like Boros Bushwacker or even a turn 2 Thoctar or Rhox War Monk, Terminate was a good choice because it flat out kill a creature.

4 Savage Lands / 4 Dragonskull Summit / 4 Rootbound Crag / 4 Verdant Catacombs – I played with as many as I could because Red was my main color and with all of the LD out there I wanted to make sure that I would be able to play my spells.

3 Forest / 3 Mountain / 3 Swamp

SB:
3 Malakir Bloodwitch – awesome against any deck with W in it. Great against Boros, WW, W Tokens, Naya Lightsaber, agro Naya, Bant, Dark Bant, anything W/G/x and it stops Baneslyer!

2 Thornling – On the way to States, I had two slots in my SB open and decided to throw them in for the mirror match because Blong was smashing me with them the previous night.

2 Duress / 2 Mind Rot – two great cards. Duress is great in the current Meta. In the mirror it helps you can predict their next few turns and removes a Blightning from their hand. Against control decks, it removes a DoJ or Fog.

3 Jund Charm – for Boros, Eldrazi Green, and Stnd Dredge

2 Terminate – more removal for Boros or W/G/x decks

1 Maelstrom Pulse – best removal card in the game

0 Goblin Ruinblaster – with Jund decks deciding to main 2-3 Borderland Rangers/Rampant Growths and playing 4 of both M10 dual lands, as well as 4 Savage Lands & 4 Verdant Catacombs, I felt that this adjustment nullified Ruinblaster’s effectiveness. In most games, by turn 5, I would already have all three different basic lands out, allowing me to cast anything.

The decks that I beat: Standard Dredge, Jund, Boros Bushwacker, Bant, U/B Nighthawk Control.

What I could have done to win my three matches that I lost:

Lost #1 vs. Eldrazi Green: Granted there’s not much you can against 7 GSS in 2 games but I should I sided in my 2 Mind Rots. Forcing him to discard Planeswalkers and Eldrazi Monument would have been awesome. I already talked about this above but I should of not played SGC and played with either Garruk or Master of the Wild Hunt instead. SGC works better with decks that actually ramp, not fetch more mana cards. Garruk and/or Master of the Wild Hunt would been great 4-drops for my deck as well.

Lost #2 vs. Agro Naya: He had better draws than me but I honestly can’t afford to get hit by Woolly Thoctar more than twice. I think if I had Garruk or Master of the Wild Hunt, I would have been able to chump block longer and more effectively, as well as take out his GSS. I also never got out a Malakir Bloodwitch because I was forced to play BBE early because I needed it to hit a removal spell. I think I might of Cascaded past one.

Lost #3 vs. Naya Tokens: I’m pretty sure that Bolting or Terminating a turn 2 Lotus Cobra is the right play, but now I’m not sure because he would follow it up with Woolly Thoctar, Master of the Wild Hunt, and Emeria Angel. I think I should of let the Lotus Cobra live and let him ramp up to his stronger creatures, which were the ones that killed me. I normally don’t Bolt a turn 1 Hierarch or Birds of Paradise, but there’s something about Lotus Cobra that makes it more dangerous. But since he was playing Naya, not Jund or Magical Christmas Land, Lotus Cobra was less dangerous and maybe I shouldn’t of wasted my removal on it and saved it for his bigger, more dangerous creatures. There was a moment in the 3rd game where I didn't need to be aggressive and played a BBE, Cascading past 2 Malakir Bloodwitches. I never got to play a single Malakir Bloodwitch through out the entire tournament, how sad. I think just one in play would of changed my record to 6-2.

What do you guys think? Don’t leave me a comment on this page in regards to my deck, instead add it to the “Jund” email chain. Thanks guys!