Change is a fact of life, and in order to stay alive in this world, you have to keep adapting.
Hello, and welcome to my Jund
Eldritch Evolution
midrange-control deck, now with 100% more Dredge! The power of this deck lies in all aspects of this deck; every card included is specifically designed to out-value our opponents, both by just doing what Jund does naturally (Tempo / hand disruption, removal and value creatures), as well as synergistic turn progressions that I will illustrate below.
Now, this deck is designed to stall out the game whilst building toward getting
Pyromancer Ascension
online, then cast
Eldritch Evolution
twinned by the Ascension. This means several things for the overall deck construction;
1) any creature that we'd want to sacrifice should be 3 cmc or above, and they need to all be even /or/ odd. We chose 3 and 5, as these creatures rock hard, and sacing a 3-drop to get a 5-drop on turn four is where you want to be.
2) We get to include a fair number of 1x "silver bullet" creatures in the mainboard; as a control deck, you want to have a "60-card sideboard" so to speak, having a maindeck specifically tailored to the meta you'll be facing. In light of the
Faithless Looting
ban, moderately quick midrange / aggro decks are picking up the scraps left by the combo / unfair degenerate ones enabled by Looting.
3) In contrast to our creatures, the instants and Sorceries should all be 3s and 4 ofs, to increase the chances of turning
Pyromancer Ascension
online.
Everyone loves loot!
Many decks were hurt or made downright unplayable with the 2019 banning of
Faithless Looting
, and this deck's first iteration was no acception. I had to jostle around some card slots to make room for more card-draw (as we have various ways of discarding, so we don't need to worry too much about that). Three
Tireless Tracker
s are our best sources of carddraw, making use of our fetchlands and being a decent 3-cmc beater on the ground. Nothing's going to compare to Looting's sheer efficiency and hand-sculpting power, so we'll have to lean on higher cmc draws fron Tracker, and situational draw spells like
Risk Factor
-- both of which put pressure on our opponent's lifetotal!
The lackluster inclusion of
Cut / Ribbons
and
Inquisition of Kozilek
over other Jund staples such as
Lightning Bolt
and
Thoughtseize
are due to the presence of
Pyromancer Ascension
. Are these the best mana/power value? No. But not only do these cards help facilitate Ascension (or in the case of Inquisition, doesn't double the drawbacks of the spell once Ascension starts twinning your spells), but once it's online, these cards are arguably better than Bolt and
Thoughtseize
.
Dredge is a powerful mechanic, and is exactly what this deck wants to do... But I'm not going to take out powerful spells like
Kolaghan's Command
just so I can dredge a bit with
Darkblast
... So that's where
Dakmor Salvage
comes in. Salvage pairs beautifully with our
Collective Brutality
, filling your yard bit by bit without taking up a cardslot.
What kills me only makes me stronger...
Sprouting Thrinax
is our creature of choice when popping off with
Eldritch Evolution
, and is still an aggro-halting monster when on its own. Sacrificing it to make 3 Saprolings, then cheating a 5 cmc creature into play? we have 3 sweet creatures to hit.
Goblin Dark-Dwellers
is what puts our combo into action. Gobo gives you more usage out of your graveyard, as well as the potential to string
Eldritch Evolution
s together, and if you're twincasting E.E with Ascension, you'll be able to clog up the board with big cmc threats. We use this scenario to put lethal, hasty damage into play for (1)(G)(G) mana. Being able to flashback
Kolaghan's Command
s and
Collective Brutality
s is nothing to sneeze at either. Some say he's a weaker Snappy, but this combo wouldn't work with
Snapcaster Mage
.
We also have
Archfiend of Ifnir
, and
Samut, Voice of Dissent
, and excellent flying threat that can cycle himself away in the early game or nuke a board from orbit when we cast our disruption magic, and a Haste-enabler that we end Evolution chains with to let us swing with all our newly tutored bodies.
Barring all that we have good ol'
Eternal Witness
and
Fulminator Mage
. E-wit is a classic creature that does insane work in this build (+1 K-Command or Trophy? Yikes)! And Fulminator Mage is an excellent creature that is 1) immune to path the exile, and 2) can be tutored up to kill an important land against Tron, D & T and Ponza (which pairs nicely with
Surgical Extraction
btw).
Our deck discards a tonne of cards with Escalates and Jumpstarts, to even targetting ourselves with K-Commands, so being able to nuke a board with
Archfiend of Ifnir
can be massive. This guys is our silver bullet to Bogles and Token strategies, and can get around indestructible threats pretty easily.
Samut, Voice of Dissent
is our deck's main haste-enabler, who comes in at the end of a Twinned-Evolution chain to lets all the creatures we pooped out swing out for lethal!
Dragonlord Kolaghan
could also make an appearance here, and could even fit in the sideboard as a great way to punish creature / Planeswalker strategies, but ultimately it's too difficult to build around for a situationally good ability. Storm and Burn doesn't care about half of his textbox!
I made a mistake
Indeed! When I first brewed this deck months ago, I thought that
Eldritch Evolution
's sacrifice trigger WASN'T an additional cost, but it is. If it wasn't, a twinned E.Evo would = 3cmc > 5cmc > 7cmc, but with it as an added cost, it's instead 3cmc > 5cmc + 5cmc. This is why
Goblin Dark-Dwellers
is the perfect card for re-enacting the deck's previous idea, because without a 2nd casting of
Eldritch Evolution
, no matter how many Pyros you have, you'll only get X 5 drops, so a way to flash it back for free gives you access to 6-7cmc creatures (
Dragonlord Kolaghan
is our only target, but
Molten Primordial
or
Giant Adephage
are also decent choice).
What's up with the sideboard?
Most of the time, a mainboard is for your "theme" -- each card should be included to either do what your deck wants to do, or protect it in some way, and your sideboard is meant to be for answers to the decks circulating the meta that could potentially outpace our deck.
3x
Chalice of the Void
: primarily, I see this played against Bogles and Storm (X = 1). Our deck has tonnes of removal, from
Cut / Ribbons
,
Collective Brutality
and
Kolaghan's Command
(which can't deal with a bogle), to our curve topping
Archfiend of Ifnir
(which can). Having a Chalice on 1 shuts off their
Rancor
s,
Ethereal Armor
s, as well as their Bogles and Scouts, with only really their
Aura Gnarlid
s, kor spirit dancers and
Daybreak Coronet
s to talk about, which makes our Removal suit much more reliable. Be careful with Mulliganing when you board in both Chalice and
Surgical Extraction
(though definitely do it against burn and other aggro decks like Infect).
1x
Pithing Needle
: perhaps one of the best Sideboard cards to ever see print,
Pithing Needle
can (if played correctly) hose your opponent's entire strategy. Choosing the right card name is crucial (like saying
Borborygmos
when you meant
Borborygmos Enraged
), but you shut off everything, fetchlands, planeswalkers, to even allstars like
Walking Ballista
,
Scavenging Ooze
,
Aether Vial
... Literally anything with "do this thing : and this happens" is fair game!
4x
Surgical Extraction
: another tried-and-true sideboard staple, I would happily board in a card that says "pay two life to exile
Griselbrand
from your opponent's graveyard before they
Goryo's Vengeance
it into play to kill you on turn 1". Against Tron (or any problem permanent), just Trophy one of their Urza lands, then follow it up with S.E to seal their fate.
4x
Life from the Loam
can do some real work against tax and LD decks like Death & Taxes, Ponza and Smallpox, but can even come in as a 1x or 2x as a way for us to fight past the dreaded mana-screw. A big portion of our landbase can send itself to the graveyard (Ghost Quarter, Fetches, Peatlands, Cycling Duals), so being able to bring them back for value every turn can be insane. We're drawing off of hitting our lands with Trackers, gainig value from discarding cards from Brutality, and we're getting closer and closer to an online
Pyromancer Ascension
. What's not to love?
Lastly however, we're packing a fun little build-around card, 3x
Waste Not
! What the hell is this doing here? Two words.
Graveyard Hate.
We are a type of Dredge deck, so the mainboard gets hurt really badly if our opponent brings in a
Leyline of the Void
or something.
Waste Not
comes in to adjust our strategy to be strong without the bin. Inquisiton of kozilek,
Kolaghan's Command
, and
Collective Brutality
work well with Waste Not to gain massive advantage from forcing discards. What would your opponent think when you took all your Dredgers, Dark-Dwellers, Ascensions and Risk Factors out in favour of Trophies, Extractions, Chalices and Waste Nots?
And that concludes my revised decktech! How did the
Faithless Looting
ban effect you, and are you glad to see it gone? Please let me know what you think in the comment section, and have an awesome day!