The King of Standard - Take a look at the top 10 deck lists from the first few major tournaments since Zendikar’s release and you’ll find that Jund-aggro is holding half or more of those slots, finishing in first place in every one.  Before you abandon all hope and join the masses running Jund, let’s take some time to examine why this deck is so dominant and just what it will take to topple the current king of the standard format.

The Mold – Presented here is Jack Wang’s SCG $5k Philadelphia championship winning deck from the first major tournament since Zendikar’s release.  I will be referring to this build throughout due to most top 10 finishers being variants on this specific build.

Jund Post-Zendikar - At first glance Jund-aggro seems to have lost some staples due to set rotation, and has not gained anything outside of Goblin Ruinblaster in the sideboard.  Jund-aggro has shifted its approach to victory rather subtly.  This build contains less haste, with Boggart Ram-Gang and Tattermunge Maniac gone.  Gone are the days of win early or not at all.  Jund-aggro has developed a much stronger middle-late game. With Garruk Wildspeaker making three Broodmate Dragons feasible, as well as a cycled Resounding Thunder within reach due to Garruk’s “Untap two target lands” ability, add to that Sprouting Thrinax’s tokens blocking until you get the lands needed, Jund-aggro is still a viable force after the initial rush.

What Jund lost and gained is not what matters most to why it is dominating the tournament scene post-Zendikar, but rather what control decks have lost post-rotation.  Cryptic Command’s exit is the most obvious blow to control builds, however the loss of Broken Ambitions is just as detrimental.  Control has no reliable option for disrupting Jund’s early assault with counterspells.  There are options, yet none as reliable or flat out good as this pair of “no” spells.

The Aggro Competition - On paper Naya-aggro looks to have better creatures with Baneslayer Angel, Woolly Thoctar, Bloodbraid Elf, Ranger of Eos, Wild Nacatl, etc.  It’s simply not as aggressive and lacks the key component to Jund-aggro’s dominance over the current field.  That component is Blightning.  Forcing an aggro build to top-deck before you or discard removal spells is an enormous advantage.

Why Jund-Aggro is Dominating – Now to delve a little bit deeper into just what makes Jund-aggro so darned good.  Card advantage, board presence, direct damage, removal:  This deck has it all.  Every single main decked card outside of Lightning Bolt and Terminate is a two-for-one.  Bloodbraid Elf and Bituminous Blast being the most gratuitous by granting a free spell.  Broodmate Dragon and Sprouting Thrinax giving free creatures.  Blightning dealing 3 damage and forcing an opponent to discard 2 cards.  Maelstrom Pulse destroying multiple creatures, enchantments, and artifacts as well as handling Planeswalkers.  The cheap mana costing Putrid Leech pumping to a 4/4 for two life points.  Garruk Wildspeaker being a creature generator, mana ramper and possible overrun game-ender.  Add to these Goblin Ruinblaster destroying lands, the best counter-control cards in Duress and Thought Hemorrhage, as well as Jund Charm’s versatility out of the sideboard and anyone can see why this is a frightening deck to play against.

Help! – So what can be done to take down this monster of speed, aggression and now mid-late game viability?  The answers are slim as of right now with standard having a very small card pool to choose from until Worldwake and the subsequent expansion are released but there are answers out there.  Let’s examine just what cards pose the biggest threats to Jund-aggro.

1. Sphinx of Jwar Isle: 5/5, flying, shroud, look at the top card of your library whenever you like.  When a jund player says he’d rather face Baneslayer Angel than this creature you know it’s special.  Jund’s mid-late game has improved significantly but still relies heavily on stacked removal and burn spells to kill an opponent’s bombs and clear the way for a Broodmate Dragon or its mate to deal the game winning blow.  Jund currently has very few options to deal with this card.  Double blocking with dragons or plucking them from the deck with Thought Hemorrhage are jund’s only options for survival against the mighty sphinx.  Don’t discount the “you may look at the top card of your library whenever you like” ability either.  Deciding what cards to discard when hit with a Blightning, or whether to use that Celestial Purge or not can be a lot easier when you know what you’re drawing next.  The high cost makes surviving long enough to play this card a tough obstacle to overcome.  In a deck stacked with removal and counter spells playing very few creatures this jund killer is playable and could be a key component in ending jund’s reign of terror.

2. Wall of Denial: 0/8, Defender, Flying Shroud.  For three measly mana a jund creature of your choice is nullified for the entire game.  Jund has no answer to this card outside of swinging with more creatures because surely your deck will contain larger threats that would be targeted by a possible Thought Hemorrhage.  The fact Wall of Denial is flying helps against Broodmate Dragon immensely.  Just hope that the jund build you’re facing hasn’t main decked or sideboarded Great Sable Stag which will happen if this card and the aforementioned Sphinx of Jwar Isle see more play.

3. Double Negative: Counter up to two target spells.  Bloodbraid Elf is arguably the best card in standard.  This card nullifies it as well as Bituminous Blast.  Stopping the flow of jund dead in it’s tracks is phenomenal.  If blue and red reside in your deck consider this as an option for disrupting jund’s aggression.

4. Celestial Purge: Exile target black or red permanent.  Any deck relying on Path to Exile as its primary source of removal needs to run this card in the sideboard for jund matchups.  Giving jund-aggro a free land early is not a good idea.  It’s fast enough as it is without your helping matters.  Late game Path to Exile isn’t so bad but good luck getting there without Celestial Purge.  Sprouting Thrinax being unable to birth tokens if removed by Celestial Purge is a great bonus.  Sprouting Thrinax tokens and Beast tokens generated by Garruk being immune to this card show just how versatile jund has become.

5. Goblin Ruinblaster: 2/1 Haste.  Kicker: Destroy target non-basic land.  Jund gives up a secret to defeating it in it’s own sideboard.  These are in the sideboard for the mirror match and for good reason.  More than half of the deck’s lands are non-basic.  If a player can get this out with kicker on turn four or earlier they could possibly cripple their jund playing opponent by denying him the third mana color required to run the deck effectively.  At worst destroying a land slows things up a bit giving you time to draw that key removal spell or gain significant creature advantage.

6.Baneslayer Angel: 5/5, Flying, First-Strike, Lifelink, Protection from Demons and Dragons.  Protection from jund’s Broodmate Dragons, First-Strike means it can’t be blocked and bolted.  Lifelink kills an opponent while giving you life.  Sounds great.  So why so low on the list?  Every jund deck holds onto that maelstrom pulse or terminate in anticipation of this bomb.  I’ve seen Baneslayer Angels pitched to the graveyard to early Blightnings in favor of removal for the coming rush.  Malakir Bloodwitch is another option for the jund player, though she hasn’t reared her head yet due to there being no need as of right now.  Whenever a Baneslayer Angel does win the game against Jund more often than not it’s due to a misplay or bad draws rather than superior strategy.  Every jund player knows she’s coming and holds onto that removal spell especially for her.  With most white decks not finding room for Brave the Elements the threat is not that large.

7. Rhox War Monk: 3/4 Lifelink.  Just out of Lightning Bolt’s kill range and the Lifelink ability make this a great creature against jund.  At worst he eats a Maelstrom Pulse that would have otherwise hit a Rafiq of the Many or Baneslayer Angel.  At best he does some damage and you gain some life.  The life gain is not to be marginalized.  Jund has shored up its late game effectiveness quite a bit but it is still not without faults.  Some extra life points could be a deciding factor.

8. Day of Judgment: Surprised to not see the board sweep higher up in the list?  You shouldn’t be.  Sprouting Thrinax generates tokens and maintains board presence but this is not the key reason for Day of Judgment’s relatively low placing.  Experienced players know that nearly any deck running white will have this in it and play accordingly.  “Slow rolling” is a phrase I use to describe the strategy when jund faces a deck containing this card.  The strategy involves not overextending your creatures.  Play just enough to consistently deal damage or stand against their threats while holding onto a key Broodmate Dragon or other creatures for after the sweep.  It’s not always possible, however it is fairly effective when you consider how much removal and burn most jund decks contain to maintain creature advantage and force the sweep.

9.Pithing Needle: Activated abilities of sources within a chosen card cannot be activated.  An oldie but goodie.  Pithing Needle has bounced in and out of top deck sideboards over the years but nobody ever trades their last two and for good reason.  Costing only one mana, Pithing Needle early keeps that Putrid Leech a puny 2/2.  Drawing a Pithing Needle in the middle to late game stops the creature generation and “Untap two target lands” ability of Garruk.  The “Untap two target lands” ability nullified could mean not seeing a Broodmate Dragon on turn five or a cycled Resounding Thunder on turn 6.

10. Various Protection from Black Creatures: White Knight, Great Sable Stag, Devout Lightcaster, Valeron Outlander.  With most of its creatures and nearly all of its removal having a black mana symbol in its casting cost protection from black seems like it would be a great ability to have on your creature.  It is for the most part but jund has cards available to adapt to this rather easily.  You can see this in some tournament winning builds already.  Including less terminates and more burn spells such as Burst Lightning seems like the most accepted method to dealing with the pro-black beasties.  Great Sable Stag, Beast tokens and Sprouting Thrinax tokens are another reason this isn’t a sure-fire strategy to defeating jund.  It is still very plausible though as the meta-game evolves because there are still builds that over stack Terminate and Maelstrom Pulse while skimping on the required burn to deal with protection from black.

Other Options for Dismantling Jund: Mind Sludge, Dauntless Escort, Sphinx of Lost Truths, Woolly Thoctar, Volcanic Fallout, Harm’s Way,Ajani Vengeant, Elspeth Knight-Errant, Vampire Hexmage, Enlisted Wurm, Rampaging Baloths, Oblivion Ring

I hope this article stirs the creative juices of those who read it, and inspires players to try out some of these cards in your own build, in hopes of slaying the dragon that is Jund-aggro.  While some are obvious choices and others are a bit less apparent, all of these cards are a problem for the Jund player and there is no doubt in my mind some will be included in the first non-red,-black-green deck to win a major tournament post-Zendikar.  While the standard card pool is rather small at the moment there is still room for improving all deck types and I believe Jund will be equaled or dethroned well before Worldwake’s release.

Outside of Jack Wang’s championship winning deck list I gathered all information for this article by running a similar Jund-aggro deck since Zendikar’s release.  I’ve been playing Jund variants since 1995 when I splashed green with Karplusan Forest to fit Ernham Djinn’s into my black and red aggro deck.  I truly love the flavor and feel of running Jund but feel there are too many Jund decks being run presently and it’s making standard format somewhat un-enjoyable.  I want to face decks that are equal or better outside of a mirror match and look forward to doing so.  So far the best candidates I’ve faced are Boros Landfall which if functioning on all cylinders is faster than Jund and odd control decks that contain a few creatures, but these decks aren’t nearly as versatile or well-equipped to face other deck types as Jund currently is.

Update!: The same day I wrote this article a Blue-White-Red control deck was guided to victory at a major tournament (Pro-Tour Austin LCQ).  The following day a Blue-White control build won another.  Perhaps The king was crowned a bit early?

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The idea of playing Magic the Gathering on the internet with friends and strangers is a wonderful concept. For seven years we’ve been able to do just that and for the most part, it’s been a pleasant experience. But even the most ardent MTGO aficionados would admit that there are several things Magic Online could do better. In an interview with a WotC staff member, MTGO was confirmed to account for upwards of 50% of Magic’s overall business. For the rest of this article I want you to think about that. Magic Online is 1/2 of Magic the Gathering. Couldn’t some of those funds be used to elevate this program from its current state? While no application is perfect, the following are items that could easily be addressed and updated in the next major release of MTGO.

More Offline and Online Linkage -When I posed the question of “biggest MTGO peeve” to our twitter community, the most common peeve was the inability to use copies of paper cards that you already own, online. This probably will never happen for several reasons. Wizards of the Coast very much values their paper trading game. It will be the backbone and primary way of playing Magic the Gathering for the foreseeable future. They will do nothing that jeopardizes it. If players were able to create a second copy of their cards online it would cause irreparable turmoil in both the MTGO and MTGOffline economies. Cards would be less special and you could theoretically play only online. Wizards wants you to play both online and offline (as I do) supplementing one form of play with the other. They are staging a careful balance by keeping them separated in important ways. While I do not agree with the twitter community that wants a 1 for 1 card exchange online, I do think the two could be linked more effectively.

Pro Tour Qualifiers have come to MTGO already but why not a Pro Tour Event? Why not include “1 free Event Ticket” inserts in offline boosters? DCI rankings could be more appropriately connected at least in PTQs and online Grand Prix’. Even a free foil promo would be acceptable. As the lines continue to blur between online and offline Magic, there is no excuse for avoiding the further linkage between the two.

Mac Support – The Mac community is approaching 10% of the online user population. I would be willing to bet that the Venn diagram of Magic players and Mac users includes much more than 10% corresponding parts. If you take in to account that, in terms of home computers (as opposed to the windows dominated business scene), Apple, by some estimates, accounts for nearly 20% of users. Today, it is no longer acceptable to simply say “we do not support Apple” for seven years and have that be an okay business policy. As Apple continues to grow its empire, Magic needs to get on board with support for the increasingly mainstream platform. On that note, an iPhone/Smartphone application couldn’t hurt either!

Tournament Oversight – Online tournaments aren’t monitored by DCI or WotC officials… even Pro Tour Qualifiers. Just this month I participated in the first ever online PTQ. Going 4-1 I was about to go 5-1 and qualify for the next round when the game crashed. I came back to discuss this with an official and none were to be found. The only recourse in this instance is to “file a report” and get your money back three days later. Not exactly a 1 for 1 trade. If only there were one or two officials who actually had the power to restart games, reinsert players and monitor the events. I realize staff cost money but with Magic Online constituting 50% of your business and now with PTQs being an every week affair, Wizards should consider putting staff in place for proper monitoring and disaster resolution. ORCs (Online Response Crew) are very friendly and helpful but have no real power to make things right.

Stability – As a webmaster and IT specialist by trade, I empathize with WotC. Coding is tricky business, and supporting thousands of computers with thousands of different configurations is nearly impossible. But fortunately, games like World of Warcraft, and even Call of Duty have managed to do online without major bugs. During any given session, Id give MTGO a 25% chance of crashing or requiring me to log out. I can forgive a once in a blue moon crash but 3-4 times per week?… silly. This is one of the more major complaints with the game because it prevents you from actually playing Magic the Gathering. An overall stability overhaul is needed in every department. Drop the cash to get as many servers and coders as you need. You’ll make it all back with customer satisfaction.

Visual Face Lift - If you haven’t played Magic the Gathering Online, the interface looks like it was taken straight from Diablo. Yes, Diablo I not Diablo II. With clunky buttons and blurry trimmings, MTGO gives Everquest a run for its money in the “best looking game of 1999″ category. Perhaps they think it adds charm to the game? Perhaps they just don’t have the budget? Either way, MTGO is in desperate need of a visual face lift from top to bottom. When I can play better looking 300K apps on my iPhone, you know your 800MB game is lacking in the graphics department.

Revamp the Trading/Singles System -When I first started online I had no idea what I was doing. Packs seemed expensive at four dollars so I wanted to make my money count while quickly grabbing some decks that would allow me to actually play. I grabbed the Jace vs. Chandra set for $20. Not a bad deal, I thought at the time. But after I figured out how the MTGO singles market works, I was upset. Magic’s economy is based on things called “event tickets”. These tickets are used to enter events and such but have become more like “Magic Bucks” online when buying/trading from online vendors. For example a Baneslayer Angel costs 30 “tickets” which essentially means $30.

None of this is explained, you have to to figure it out on your own. Trading/Buying singles involves “trading” with automated 3rd party bots in the “classifieds” room. The whole process is somewhat of a mystery to the uninitiated and dangerous for first time buyers. Why not give some of these automated bots their own “stores” with easy to use features and universal prices? The whole idea of buying Event Tickets from Wizards to pay automated bots for cards isn’t intuitive. It would be better if they were just called “Magic Bucks” and you spent them on packs, cards, tournaments, in 3rd party stores etc. Trading, collecting and visiting shops is a huge part of MTG. Why not make it a pleasant and simple experience? I guarantee people will spend more money if this were the case.

Change the Official Store – - MSRP is fine for new sets. I understand not wanting to compete with the cardboard bread and butter stores that have made Magic great. But why not charge $3 for sets that aren’t standard like Lorwyn/Future Sight? Is that really competing with card stores? They aren’t even in print. And most of the time the offline stores only charge $3 for old sets anyway. Paying $4 for a pack of Kamigawa and $12.99 for a theme deck that doesn’t include anything of value is nuts and Wizards is not only discouraging their purchase but ends up forcing us to visit 3rd party trade bots by charging so much. I’d also like to see better options for beginners such as a discounted package with 5 packs of each standard set and five event tickets that you can only purchase once. How about booster boxes at a discounted rate? 36 packs at $4 a piece ($144) is madness and has no basis in offline or online reality. I don’t mind the official store being the most expensive place to buy cards but MSRP on everything, all the time isn’t encouraging me to buy. I’ll take the confusing and often scam-o-riffic bots over the current official store any day and that’s saying a lot.

Voice Chat – Played Xbox live lately? It’s totally possible to have an online game with voice support simply by plugging in a microphone and using a $2 application I could code in my basement. Why not integrate it into MTGO? Sure the servers are strained as it is but that’s another problem that could be easily solved with that 50% income ration MTGO brings in. Social experiences are part of what makes the game “sticky” so why not have real, trash talking friends online? Cursing? Get over it. Ban people’s entire accounts if they continue to break the rules. That’s how they deal with that sort of thing in other games. They should pay moderators to moderate. It’s one thing to be an internet fuckwad and get banned in World of Warcraft. You might lose your level 40 paladin and have to start over. But losing all of your Magic cards if several complaints come your way? That will be a control in and of itself. You have to pay 20 bucks just to start an account and cards cost about the same as they do offline so people wont be as vulgar as you think they’ll be. The risk is too great. Voice is a modern feature of most online games and should be in MTGO’s future.

For all its flaws, I would recommend MTGO to any serious Magic player. Though it might sound silly, playing in a PTQ, in your underwear, watching the Seahawks and grabbing something to eat from the fridge at your leisure is one of the most enjoyable things I have ever done. The fact that I no longer have a closet full of useless commons is also a plus. This article isn’t to suggest that Magic Online is better than offline or vise versa. It is simply a list of things I’ve noticed that could be easily remedied by the game’s tenders. Last week, several MTG community leaders were given a sneak peek at the next version of Magic Online. Set to be released in the latter half of 2010, the new version is said to address several of the aforementioned beefs. Even so, software updates often get left on the cutting room floor so it is important that we let Wizards know just how much we care about this game’s future. Magic Online is far from a perfect experience but it is inevitably the future of MTG and all CCGs for that matter. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get out of these restrictive pants and on to MTGO.

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