Hi everybody !

After the Pro Tour I went back to focus on standard and tested with my friends. After several matches I decided that the deck to play in the current metagame is Jund Midrange, especially since it’s a deck that fits very well with my strategy (which is very important if you want to have fun as well as win) and has the added bonus of not having terrible matchups.

The PTQ is not really close to where I live, however, we decided to go because the day after the PTQ my friends would play the WMCQ; I decided to play the following list:

Jund Midrange

I drop on round 4, winning against Junk Rites and Aristocrats but losing twice to Naya Aggro mostly because of the wrong deckbuild (in Italy people often play aggressive decks because they consider them easier to play. I know this well so my build choice was way off).

The next day my friend playing the WMCQ asked me to borrow my deck, adding Blood Baron of Vizkopa main deck though to, allegedly, always win against aggressive decks. I had doubts on the side effects of adding a fourth color without testing and I thought it was a gamble, but it wasn’t me playing anyway; so here’s the list that he played:

Baron Jund

He finished 9th for rating losing to UWR control and drawing against Esper only because of a misplay.

At this point I’m pretty intrigued by the list and I start to test it for the next PTQ, which is close to home so I can’t miss it, but after forty games against the various decks of the field this list doesn’t convince me because sometimes you can’t cast the Baron and on top of that the white shocklands might not let checklands come into play untapped. I dislike taking these risks in a tournament where if you lose two match you’re out, so I opt for a return to the origins and play the Jund list with which I qualified for the WMC, adapted to the current metagame.

During the swiss my score was 6-0-2 winning against 2 Grull Aggro, 1 Junk Rites, 2 UWR Control, 1 Naya Aggro and drawing with Junk Tokens and Naya Blitz . In the quarterfinals I beat a Junk Rites and then in the semifinals I conceded to a friend because I wanted him to play at the PT but he lost in the final so my plan was a failure. At least now I have a story about not winning a tournament even though I never lost! =)

Before finishing up, I leave to you a plan with siding in and out against the various archetypes that you can find at a tournament:

Vs UWR Control – Esper Control:

Side In: +2 Underworld Connections +3 Slaughter Games +2 Sire of Insanity +1 Vraska the Unseen
Side Out: -3 Bonfire of the Damned -2 Pillar of Flame -1 Tragic Slip -2 Mizzium Mortars

Vs Grull Aggro – Naya Aggro – Bant Auras – Naya Blitz – Aristocrats :

Side In: +2 Vampire Nighthawk +2 Tragic Slip +1 Pillar of Flame +2 Gaze of Granite
Side Out: -3 Ground Seal -2 Garruk, Primal Hunter -2 Rakdos’s Return

Vs Junk Rites:

Side In: +3 Slaughter Games +2 Sire of Insanity
Side Out: -2 Arbor Elf -2 Mizzium Mortars -1 Garruk, Primal Hunter

Vs Jund Midrange:

Side In: +2 Underworld Connections +2 Sire of Insanity +1 Vraska the Unseen
Side Out: -3 Ground Seal -2 Pillar of Flame

I hope that you enjoyed my article and that you’ll find it useful for your tournaments.
See you next time.

Emanuele