Some Kind of Monster: Jund Ramp in the New Format

[josephhancock]

So rotation is upon us, and everybody's looking ahead to what the new key players will be in the pro circuit. People are seeing what decks are plain out dead (Faeries, Kithkin, and 5cc as we know it right now), and what decks can adapt and change to the new format (RB Aggro, Non-Kithkin White Weenie). One deck that falls into the last category is Jund Ramp, a deck I played heavily pre rotation, and in my opinion the new Landfall mechanic can put this deck into the Tier 1 ring quite easily. Let's take a look at a few things before we jump right into deck construction.

//What We Lost//

Seeing what pieces of the deck were lost to rotation gives us a good idea as to what we will need to add to this deck in order to maintain the balance. We need to find the best way to replace these roles in order to keep this deck functioning smoothly, without deviating too far from it's original intensions.

Most obvious losses for this deck are Kitchen Finks and Chameleon Colossus, which both have shoes too big to be filled by anything in the format right now. Finks bought you time to dig for land via card advantage and life gain, and the Colossus was nearly invincible in the format and could easily win games on it's own at such a small price to pay.

Other significant losses for this deck are Shriekmaw, Cloudthresher, and Primal Command, which all worked together as the tech base of the deck, as they all complimented eachother well. Command was another great stall card, that doubled as a creature fetch, most commonly Broodmate Dragon or the Thresher.

Taking a look at the card pool of what we lost, it's pretty clear that we're not going to be able to play this deck like we did before, so we really have two options at this point: dig deeper into the ramp in order to play our beaters even faster, or clog up the midrange with creatures and defensive spells while we ramped.

//What We Gained//

ZEN has been, by far, the best thing to happen to Ramp since Birds of Paradise was printed. Landfall is the most abusive, obsured mechanic to even been captured by Ramp, and I think it would be wrong for Jund to not showcase just how abusive this thing can get.

First off, we got Fetchlands, which are a great way to trigger Landfall mechanics, but we'll get to the landbase a bit later. Right off the bat we get a rather deluxe Ramp/Fast Mana package in the reprint of Harrow, along with Khalni Heart Expedition and the amazing Lotus Cobra. We are actually at the point now where we have too MUCH mana fixing for the deck!

Zen also gave us some great creatures to play with, along with some hot picks off of M10 as well. Rampaging Baloth and Scute Mob seem interesting as right away picks, while cards like Ob Nixilis, the Fallen, Bogardan Hellkite, Lightning Bolt. and Master of the Wild Hunt can be good in certain context.

So, let's start buffing out a list.

//Creatures//
4x Broodmate Dragon 4x Master of the Wild Hunt 4x Rampaging Baloth 4x Lotus Cobra 4x Bogardan Hellkite 4x Scute Mob 4x Great Sable Stag 4x Borderland Ranger 4x Bloodbraid Elf

I think this is a good place to start with a creature list, since it features old favourites, and showcases the new talent rather well. As I previously mentioned, we lost a bunch of really good creatures to rotation, and we have to try and fill these gaps as best we can.

Chameleon Colossus' roll in the deck was to be evasive, which it did not only through Pro Black, but with the pump ability that made opponent's think twice before just letting it through unblocked. It's casting cost was right on par of where the deck needed a threat to be in case we missed Garruk Wildspeaker turn three, which is something else to keep in mind. In these regards, we have no steadfast winner in this category, but there are two ways to go with this. If we look from the straight aggro side of Colossus, we could probably replace it with either Scute Mob (five lands is nothing for this deck), Great Sable Stag, or Rampaging Beloth. Beloth is slower obviously, but it's ability to pump out a steady supply of 4/4 tokens means it's just as deadly as Broodmate Dragon for this finisher in this deck, since if you untap with it, they'll lose. It turns every topdecked land fetch, or land itself, into a threat, which is nothing to be taken lightly. Stag is also a good choice since it a big body for 3cmc, and has evasion from black removal. Masters are also an ok choice, but I think it's a bit too fraile for this role in the deck at 2/2. By turn four, our creatures need to be sticking around through our sweepers and enemy spot removal. Final option would be for Bloodbraid, but we'd need to see what the rest of the deck's 1cmc, 2cmc, and 3cmc spells would be first.

Kitchen Finks' roll in the deck was to buy us some time to ramp out. T2 Fertile Ground, t3 Garruk Wildspeaker + Kitchen Finks was always such a bomb play, but it's ability to come into play, gain us some life, block/trade with an attacker, gain two more life, and block and trade again for the investment of 1 is probably never going to be heard of again, which is why finding it's replacement will be next to impossible in this cardpool. Not a single new card has the ability to be card advantage as soon as it resolves like Finks did, which means we'll probably be running something different in this spot in the final deck.

Shriekmaw's loss isn't a major one, as we still have a lot of new applications in creature removal, and with Black/Red being as popular as it is now, it's probably not the best idea having this in my deck anyways.

Cloudthresher was an incredible creature in any matchup, but let's be honest here, it was meant as the anti-fae card. It was meant to play in response to the Clique tapping out your lands, while you sweep his board, giving the Clique nothing to Champion. Everybody knew that. I'm not saying that this card will not be missed, but I am saying it might have been on it's way out of many people's lists because Faeries has moved on to extended. If we were to replace it, i'd go with either Bogardan Hellkite since it flashes and kills things, or even Terra Stomper since it's big, can't be countered, and will ruin people's faces if you untap with it.

//Support//
4x Rampant Growth 4x Harrow 4x Garruk Wildspeaker 4x Khalni Heart Expedition 4x Volcanic Fallout 4x Pyroclasm 4x Terminate 4x Doom Blade 4x Lavalanche 4x Banefire 4x Blightning 4x Lightning Bolt 4x Resounding Thunder 4x Duress

Stuff in this section are really spaced out over the whoel board of playable expansions right now. M10 and ZEN gave us Harrow and Khalni Heart Expedition for Ramp, as well as Lightning Bolt and Duress as great utility for the non-green protion of the deck. The rest of the deck's choices should be fairly familiar to anybody foloowing my dozens of ramp postings, as staple removal and sweepers for the archtype, as well as Banefire/Resounding Thunder as a finisher. Garruk Wildspeaker is always welcome to a Ramp deck, regardless of Fertile Ground being legal or not.

The only loss spell-wise to this deck's mainboard was Primal Command, but it was a serious one. Primal Command was a way to distrupt Lark player's graveyard, find us a wincon in either Colossus or Broodmate, or put the opponent back a bit with gaining seven life. The vesatility of all the Commands will not be seen in the format for a while now, but I think with the shifting meta, this might be a good thing to cut for a more streamlined strategy in the long run anyways.

//Lands//
4x Mountain 4x Swamp 4x Forest 4x Terramorphic Expanse 4x Dragonskull Summit 4x Savage Lands 4x Rootbound Crag 4x Verdant Catacombs

We lost big time in the land Rotation, probably half of our picks. We did, however, get a Fetchland cycle, and while we can in theory run any of the fetches we want, we only really get maximum effectiveness out of the Catacombs. Finding a balance between these new fetches, the new "duals" out fo M10, and the Basic Land count for Ramp is going to be what makes or breaks the deck, I think.

So, all things considered, let's start fleshing out some lists.

Jund Ramp 2: The Return
//Creatures (12)// 3x Lotus Cobra 4x Broodmate Dragon 3x Rampaging Baloths 2x Bogardan Hellkite //Ramp (13)// 4x Rampant Growth 3x Harrow 3x Khalni Heart Expedition 3x Garruk Wildspeaker //Support (13)// 4x Maelstrom Pulse 4x Terminate 3x Lavalanche 2x Banefire	//Land (22)// 6x Forest 2x Arid Mesa 2x Mistry Rainforest 4x Verdant Catacombs 4x Rootbound Crag 2x Mountain 2x Swamp	//Sideboard (15)// 4x Great Sable Stag 4x Deathmark 4x Doom Blade 3x Volcanic Fallout

So there's my first draft of the new Jund. I had to make a few sacrifices here and there, but I decided to go with a more aggressive ramp and devote a lot fo my resources to getting mana quick, especially now with the lack of mana burn. I wanted to get into my 6cmc drops and x-power spells as quickly as I could, so the almighty Lotus Cobra made an apperance along with 13 other ramp spells. I threw in Broodmate Dragon as my finisher faithful, and added some Baloths and a few Hellkite to round out a big fat end on the creature spectrum.

With my support, I had to cut Volcanic Fallout, for two reasons. First, the double red was going to be hard to hit turn 3 without Reflecting Pools and Filter lands, and secondly it would kill off my Cobras, which I absolutely couldn't have. With the fall of token based cards due to rotation, I don't think Fallout is as vital to red anymore as it once was. Fallouts are in the board, just in case though. I managed to keep eight solid kill spells, a one sided sweeper, and a finisher, and i'm happy with this portion, though I wish I could squeeze in a bit of love for Lightning Bolt. And Violent Ultimatium.

Running a Ramp deck with only 22 lands might seem like suicide, but with all the mana accelerant in this deck, I'm actually finding 20 lands might be possible. You can keep almost all two-land hands with this deck, and still ramp out to six lands turn 4 with a suprising amount of reliability. I might go up to 24 once I flesh out a more consistant build, but for now i'm finding 22 lands just right for my mana guzzling needs.

Sideboard is straight and narrow as to what each card is there for. No need to explain.

Interested to hear what you guys have to say about the deck, so please answer away. I'm working on a Naya ramp build as well, which I will get to eventually.

[Psychomagus]

Well, let's take a look at this deck in terms of how it will fair against other decks in the format, particularly for me a couple newer better decks with Zendikar out. First off, I am showing a mono red deck that is on the forums here. I take no credit for it and in fact the title of the decks will show the creator:

Mantra's Mono Red Goblins
Creatures: 28 4 Goblin Guide 4 Goblin Bushwacker 4 Hellspark Elemental 4 Warren Instigator 4 Goblin Chieftain 4 Ball Lightning 4 Siege Gang-Commander	Instants: 8 4 Lightning Bolt 4 Burst Lightning Land: 24 4 Teetering Peaks 4 Arid Mesa 4 Scalding Tarn 12 Mountain Side Board: 15 3 Pithing Needle 4 Magma Spray 2 Goblin Assault 2 Manabarbs 2 Earthquake 2 Banefire

This deck provides you with some very big problems. Primarily, the ability to even keep a lotus cobra alive to do anything more than be bolt bait and the fact that Burst Lightning takes out everything in your deck aside from Bogardan Hellkite. The question remains as to whether you can ramp up fast enough to avoid getting overrun in the early game. The deck has so many ceratures and regularly can kill you easily by turn 5. The question is no longer can you necessarily kill him(you do have a fair bit of removal to get rid of some creatures, but what does it do to your ramping progression. This deck would seem to slow your ramping progression by a good one turn, otherwise you get way behind the eight ball on some nasty draws this deck gets. That really does seem to be the problem in this deck. If left unmolested, you can quickly ramp up and bring out the bashers. However, this deck shows that you have to go a different route, which seems to make your big bashers a bit more ordinary.

Looking further, we come to R/W. While I like a lot of elements of the R/W control in these forums, the biggest concern for this deck is the deck form I saw on Brainburst fairly recently:

Josh Silvestri's W/R Speed Boros
4 Elite Vanguard 4 Goblin Bushwhacker 4 Goblin Guide 4 Hellspark Elemental 4 Ranger of Eos 4 Steppe Lynx 2 Act of Treason 4 Burst Lightning 3 Harm's Way 4 Lightning Bolt	4 Ancient Ziggurat 4 Arid Mesa 1 Marsh Flats 4 Mountain 3 Plains 4 Scalding Tarn 3 Teetering Peaks	Sideboard: 2 Act of Treason 4 Goblin Assault 1 Harm's Way 4 Path to Exile 4 Volcanic Fallout

This deck, simply put, is one of the fastest decks I have seen in a while. It never lets up and may never let you get to play your finishers. The question is, can you deal with the constant onslaught that comes from this deck. Can you survive the early turns and still consistently ramp up. I think it becomes a bit of a problem as ramping slows down due to the ultimate necessity to deal with a lot of damage in the early game. As your deck only has Lotus Cobra in forms of early turn blocks, it gets taken out of its element.

I am not sure game 2 gets any better. They will certainly side in the 4 Paths and perhaps even Act of Treason to deal with your big brutish creatures, IF they should become a factor.

Anyway, just a couple of decks to consider when seeing how competitive this deck can be. I know it is not every deck in the format, but figured brute speed would be the biggest issue for this deck, so I presented two of the fastest decks I could find. I did not include vampires here as I am not sure it will be Tier 1. It may very well be a strong Tier 2, but I don't really think Vampires presents as many problems for you as these two decks.

[AtriumXP]

I like the Speed boros deck list but it does seem prone to cards like Jund Charm, Volcanic Fallout, Earthquake, and even Lavalanche, if anyone actually uses that. Not to mention the obvious Day of Judgement and Maelstrom Pulse.

I can see its potential, but I'm not sold on the idea that there isn't a viable control-based deck that can handle it. Although it definitely makes me wish they reprinted Æther Flash, lol.

[rabbit]

I think the only replacement I could think of is to replace your 3 Lavalanches with 3 Resounding Thunder. I like the ability to cycle and deal 6 damage (un-counterable damage), and draw a card that could be another threat. And I can just see Lavalanche being countered everytime.

As for your Sideboard I think you're running a lot of removal either way so Deathmark is really unnecessary. I know you're more than likely running it for Baneslayer Angel but she is still prone to all the removal you have in your deck. I would much rather see Thought Hemorrhage in SB since it can get anything out of your opponents library, and possibly deal damage to your opponent. Just my opinion.