Overdriven! 67

Modern: Huge Tracts of Unexplored Land

It has been said of Modern: “The most important thing about Modern is diversity. It’s by and far the most open format right now, there are huge tracts of land no one has explored. It’s the new frontier of competitive Magic,” and, “The nice thing about Modern is that the format is very open. There’s a lot of room to explore and find decks that can work.” And just to hammer that point, here are maps from some recent explorations:

This deck has been showing up a lot in the past few week.

Scavenging Ooze has been showing up a lot since Magic 2014 hit general population. This card saw a bit of play in Legacy: you’d use Green Sun’s Zenith to tutor it up when facing Glass Cannon/Reanimator decks. It was, and still is, a very effective “Silver Bullet” against a specific stratgey.

But we’re talkin’ ’bout Modern. Many people seem to think this is a budget ‘Goyf. It’s not. Tarmogoyf is too versatile and efficient at what it does to be replaced: it stops aggro because it’s a massive blocker, and it puts pressure on combo and control as a massive attacker. Scavenging Ooze plops out and lays there. Ya gotta dump mana into it before it can do any of the stuff you want Goyf to do. The Oooze may sit as a supplemental Goyf, kinda, but it will never replace it.

That being said, it’s still a great critter with good utility. In Jund/Junk decks, I’d think Scavenging Ooze could replace/fit in Kitchen Finks, Thragtusk, Baloth, etc. slots both main board and side.

Well! When the last Overdriven! was submitted, Melira Pod was at the top of the pops. Guess who’s back on top this week? That’s right! Jund, baby! After a few weeks of R&R, the King of the Hill has kicked Melira Pod in the tenders and taken back it’s rightful place back at the top of the pops.

What Is Jund?

In it’s purest sense, Jund is one of five shards of the Alara plane. It is primarily red-aligned, with black and green as secondary colors. However, most of the time when people talk about Jund, they are not referring to the shard, but to a very specific deck that came out of Alara Standard.

For those of you who weren’t around for Shards of Alara Standard, Jund was a midrange RGB deck that burst onto the scene in the wake of Faeries. While Jund was in many regards an aggro deck, it also had serious control elements. As a midrange deck, Jund focused on gaining card advantage as well as tempo, mainly through Bloodbraid Elf and the cascade mechanic.

After Alara rotated out of Standard, Jund lived on in the Extended (ye olde Extended, not the recently deceased Extended) format; Modern had not been invented yet. Other than the manabase, and Goyf, Extended Jund was almost identical to its Standard forebearer. Many of the cards we take for granted in Jund today had not been printed yet, or were otherwise not in the card pool. Ravnica had just rotated out. Inquisition of Kozilek wasn’t coming out until Rise of the Eldrazi Block. Deathrite Shaman was only a glimmer in R&D’s eye.

Jund has also made it to the top of the Legacy arena. “You realize you’re playing a Modern deck with Hymns and Wastelands, right?” opens Pat Cox’s article on taking Jund to 2nd place at GP Denver.

Modern Jund has gone through some interesting changes since Bloodbraid Elf was crushed by M’banor, the Ban-Hammer. The core of the deck remains unchanged: Abrupt Decay, Deathrite Shaman, Lightning Bolt, Liliana of the Veil, Tarmogoyf, and (Inquisition of Kozilek/Thoughtseize). While the “little black dress” the different Jund decks wear are all basically the same design, the accessories make all the difference.

Huntmaster

This is the most common form of Jund these days. This deck simply replaces Bloodbraid Elf with Huntmaster of the Fells. With Huntmaster dropping in price as people start to anticipate rotation, this version is showing up more and more.

While Huntmaster does not provide the two-for-one value that Bloodbraid Elf did, lifegain and Wolf tokens are nothing to sneeze at! He’s not legendary, so it’s not unusual to see 2 or more plopped out there late game.

If he sticks, he’s usually a game-ender.

Did you notice the Chandra, Pyromaster there?

TFO

TFO is my own shorthand for Troll/Finks/Olivia. This version of Jund replaces Bloodbraid Elf with a varying combination of Thrun, the Last Troll, Kitchen Finks, and Olivia Voldaren.

This deck, along with Huntmaster, are the only “true” Jund decks currently in the Jund sub-meta. The remaining decks present us with a bit of problem.

Jund + Junk = Junkd?

Here is the quandary: is a GBRW deck still Jund? GBW is usually referred to as Junk. In fact, if you replace Lightning Bolt with Path to Exile in that “little black dress” above, you have the basic core of most Junk decks. Sometimes, it seems the only difference between Jund & Junk is that one little (Bolt to Path) switch, and mebbe an Elspeth or two. Both are midrange decks. Both have very similar game plans. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if one of these decks is a Junk deck splashing R or a Jund deck splashing W.

Since late last year, W has started showing up in Jund decks. At first, this was for Lingering Souls, which gave Jund amazing late game reach. This became known as White, or Spirit, Jund.

Soon thereafter, Ajani Vengeant started making appearances, giving rise to the name Ajundi.

 

Ajundi

Ajani Vengeant in Jund is one of those things that seem so obvious in hindsight, but were totally “wha-Wha-WHAT!?!?!” when they burst onto the scene.

Keep my opponent’s resources tapped? Lightning Helix on a stick? Blow up all my opponent’s lands?

Yes, please!

W Thundermaw

Here we see Lingering Souls used as classic durdling chumps until the Thundermaw Hellkite comes swooping over the top to smash face. This deck is basically Ajundi with a dragon, although I have seen Thundermaw builds without Ajani.

A Case Of The Heeby GBs

When I first saw the GB deck featured at the top of this article, I thought it was a Jund deck. I had already added a new category to Jund called “Scavenging” to cover this new build when I did that scene from Home Alone and facepalmed. There’s no red! What the heck? That deck eventually ended up in the GB/W(Junk) submeta. But the deck feels like Jund to me, not Junk. Maybe it’s a small distinction. Maybe this is the first step of a merging of Jund and Junk archetypes into a unified GB/x umbrella; there’s not that much difference between TFO Jund and GBW Midrange.

 

Modern’s Second

As with any cult, there is some ambiguity about Modern’s “birthday”. Some argue that it’s May 27, when we first saw A Modern Proposal. Others say May 19, when Modern was first announced as a format for the Community Cup Challenge. Another faction declares June 16, when it was actually played at the CCC. I choose to use August 24, which is when it became a sanctioned format online.

Last year, I started the tradition of throwing a free tournament with wazoo prizes in celebration of Modern’s birthday. I am continuing that tradition. Since August 24 is a Saturday this year, choosing a time is relatively easy: 1800 UTC (2PM Eastern/11AM Pacific) is a start time convenient for most of the world on a Saturday.

Where Does This Happen?

Games will be played in the Menu > Play > Casual Play > Anything Goes (v3) / Constructed Open Play > Getting Serious (beta) room.
Game chat happens in the M2 room. Type /join M2 in your v3 chat window, or join channel #M2 from the drop down in beta chat.
Registration is open via Gatherling. Decklists are required.
Players and Prize Pool can be found here.

How Many Rounds Is It?

8-16 Players: 4 Rounds/T4
17-32 Players: 5 Rounds/T8
33-64 Players: 6 Rounds/T8
65-128 Players: 7 Rounds/T8
129+ Players: 8 Rounds/T8

What Can I Win?

There will also be door prizes.

The Prize Pool

The above images are “live”, and will update themselves as things change.

The Sponsors

I’d like to take a moment here and give a big shout out and thank you to the wonderful people that are helping throw this shindig:

Alphabot
anonymous
CardShop
Gatherling
MTGO Traders
ValueBot
Wizards of the Coast

I am still contacting people, and waiting to hear back from others, and this list will hopefully keep growing.

Fine Print

• Games must be set as Constructed Modern, timed at 30 minutes, watchable, best 2 of 3, and be marked “M2 Round x”. First person listed makes table. Players have 10 minutes to make and join tables after pairing announcements complete.
• Players must enter match results in their Player CP on Gatherling. Match results entered in the main chat room, or via PM, will be ignored.
• Match results must be posted before intermission. Results not reported prior to intermission will be declared a draw.
• Players must play all rounds to be eligible for any prizes.
• WotC employees are welcome to play, but are not eligible for prizes. Other than bragging rights.
• Bullying, mobbing, foul language, & general rudeness will not be tolerated. This includes “snide remarks” about decks/playing ability, personal attacks, racial slurs, etc. A player will get 1 warning. Repeat violations will result in disqualification from the event. Violations may be screenshot and reported to WotC.
• Please refrain from talking in other players’ games or PMing players in a game. This will allow players to concentrate fully without interruption.

 

Overdrive! is the original Modern format Player-Run Event! In fact, it’s even older than Modern, having started out as an event in the Overextended format. Overdrive! is free to enter, and happens every Monday evening at 8:30PM Eastern time. Eurodrive!, a Euro-time friendly Overdrive! clone, happens every Saturday at noon UTC.

Overdrive! #103 Champion: pk23 / kiki Pod
Overdrive! #104 Champion: andres_1995 / Robots
Eurodrive! #84 Champion: Garlan / RDW Burn
Eurodrive! #85 Champion: SBena / Aura Aggro
Decks from all Overdrive! events can be found here.
Decks from all Eurodrive! events can be found here.

 

 

Where Angels Fear To Tread is a limited-seating Modern format Player-Run Event that follows the same structure as the MTGO Daily Scheduled Events: 4 rounds of Swiss pairings, with prizes going to all 4-0 and 3-1 players. As with all of my events, it is absolutely free to enter! WAFTT happens every Sunday at 1800UTC (2PM Eastern, 11AM Pacific).

Where Angels Fear To Tread #64
Players: 17
4-0: fatkiddestroyers, pk23 ~ 3-1: fliebana, longtimegone, No_Outs
Where Angels Fear To Tread #65
Players: 14
4-0: pk23 ~ 3-1: SBena, wolftree, MagicGatheringStrat
Decks from all WAFTT events can be found here.

 

Interesting Tidbits

TNMO for August 15 will be Modern.

MOCS Season 8 Preliminaries (August 9-10) and Finals (August 17) will be Modern format.

Online PTQs for PT Born of the Gods will include two Modern Masters Sealed events, one on September 28 and November 29.

Modern’s Second is scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 24 at 1800 UTC (2PM Eastern, 11AM Pacific). This event will be 1v1 Modern, Swiss pairing, and the number of rounds will be determined by attendance. There will be a T8 cutoff. I will be starting to hit up sponsors, Wizzos, etc., at the beginning of August.

I wasn’t able to track attendance during my netless period, hence the gap.