So, down to the nitty gritty.My basic goal for this deck was to build an attrition-based midrange deck as close to Modern Jund as I could manage with the Pauper card base.A major part of what makes Jund so good is the cheap removal that can be played early against more aggressive decks, as well as a robust discard suite that gives it game versus control, all together, this makes for a very resilient deck well suited for a big portion of the meta game.This deck attempts to achieve the same by utilizing early removal options like Firebolt, Flame Jab, Terminate, and Chainers Command. These removal options also play well with most of the main engines in the deck, which we will get to in a bit. The discard suite is not as robust as its modern counterpart, with only Ravens Crime being included, however, this card does more work as the game goes longer, accomplishing the same goals versus control. The new card Invasive Species is also amazing, and I think the deck would not work without it. It offers an extremely relevant ability on a respectable body, the next closes replacement would be Horned Kavu, and its not even close. The ability to return any permanent offers so much game to the deck, as evident by the various Kitty decks floating around.
The main engines in this deck are
Tilling Treefolk/Satyr Wayfinder/Mulch + Ravens Crime/Flame Jab
for recursive disruptions for various matchups
Invasive Species + Tilling Treefolk/Satyr Wayfinder/Utility Lands
to abuse ETB effects as well as getting lands back in hand to feed to your retrace spells.
Tilling Treefolk + Haunted Fengraf + Unearth
as a versatile engine that allows you to recur creatures and get them into play under counterspells
Faithless Looting + Mulch + Dredge
are our main engines that for card advantage, filling our graveyard for our other cards to abuse
About Moldervine Cloak. We need a way to turn some of our smaller creatures into threats so we can close out the game in a timely fashion. I picked this over Rancor because of the ability to return it from the graveyard consistently, as well as adding to our game plan, the added toughness also helps our guys to survive a lot of common removal. In all, I think those two factors make the card worth the extra mana requirements.And finally we have the creature that does the best Goyf impressions, Gurmag Angler. Cheap, and dodges most common removal.
The Sideboard is where I think this deck can become very competitive by tailoring our decks with very versatile options.Golgari Brownscale is great against most aggressive creature decks as well as other grindy midrange creature decks. The life gain is also nothing to scoff at for things like burn.Ancient Grudge is great against Affinity, Kitty Variants, as well as a host of other decks playing tons of artifacts, it also hedges against graveyard hate that opponents may bring in, as most are in artifact form.Electrickery for decks that play X/1s, pretty self explanatory.Pyroblast for control and blue decks.Stinkweed Imp is for decks with lots of flyers, it also acts as a rattlesnake for decks that like to attack with one big creature.Raze is mostly for Tron and Familiars, but any decks that rely on nonbasic lands could be hurt by it. We dont really need to worry about saccing lands when we can so easily get them back. However, we do have to be careful of playing it into a counterspell or a Snap least we get 2-for-1d.Swirling Sandstorm is a decent sweeper for when Elecktrickery just cant do the job, but it does also kill all of our guys, so its more like an emergency button.
