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Jund Space Marine - Thunderscape Battlemage PDH

Pauper EDH BRG (Jund)

svendviking

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Commander: Thunderscape Battlemage

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Introduction

It should be immediately obvious to anyone seeing this deck that I could have picked a "stronger" commander such as Mr. Orfeo, the Boulder or Sprouting Thrinax. The 2/2 body of Spacemarine and the relatively limited effects that it has, will make us seem less of a threat. Which we also are, compared to the other two commanders mentioned.

So... What is it that Thunderscape Battlemage let's us do, that the others cannot?

The short answer is just that Spacemarine is a flexible sideboard-card. It can cost 4, 5 or 6 mana, depending on the situation. It let's us always have access to enchantment removal. And the discard can be used to keep specific players from getting too far ahead of the pack.

The deck itself is quite transparent in what we do and how well it's going, which means that opponents should threat assess us easily and accurately. We will be playing "fair magic" all the way, and won't be trying to surprise our enemies with insane combos and synergies. Instead we will play card-for-card, threats and interaction, untill someone pulls a win(hopefully us).

Concept and Philosophy

What are we doing?

This is were i would normally start listing the best cards to play in combination with eachother, but this time the philosophy of the deck is different. The commander is rarely very powerful other than serving as a easy-access enchantment removal, so the power must come from the 99 instead. The card-choices of the deck may seem unorganized and not very focused, and this is very much by design. I didn't want to focus on one specific aspect too much, like going wide/tall or playing for combo etc. The deck needs to be robust and able to adapt to any matchup like a true jund deck. We will win with whatever "Big Boi" we happen to have around, when the game needs ending. It's not as important to have powerful synergies. Instead the idea is to have lots and lots of cards that are powerful by themselves, and have synergy only when it emerges naturally from those cards. That being said there are still some pretty powerful synergies between some cards, but the main point is that those cards can also stand alone or work well with any other card in the deck.

A good example of a card that fits the philosphy is Gluttonous Slug. It is a decent blocker that will grow into a threat with litterally every creature in the deck. It has inherent synergy with other creatyres without caring at all about what the rest of the deck is doing. It can be buffed. It can eat removals. It can beat down enemies. It's comparable to Tarmogoyf in many ways, except slower to grow, but with a nice extra keyword.

Anoher examples is Cleansing Wildfire, that can fix our mana in a pinch. With an indestructible artifact-land in play, it becomes a better Cultivate. Additionall, being able to hit lands gives us the chance to make some high-value trades other decks can't, like shooting a land instead of the Overgrowth enchanted to it or hitting bounce-lands to set a player behind. Timing, tempo and versatility is key.

Removals that have as many targets as possible, like Pick Your Poison and Return to Nature, or removals that come on bodies like Wickerbough Elder and Chain Devil are also perfect for the deck.

It could be tempting to push the deck in the direction of more tokens from things like Sporemound and Rapacious One in combination with Impact Tremors and Witty Roastmaster. Or push for more +1/+1 counter synergies. Or play bigger creatures like Annoyed Altisaur and Ulamog's Crusher to overwhelm the opponent etc. All of these strategies are strong, but all of them would fit better with a commander that cares more about it. The focus of Spacemarine is... well... nothing except navigating the game to a win. There are no specific direction other than straight value and having answers for whatever we may face. The cards in the deck are picked because they singlehanedly can fill their respective role, without having to rely on synergies from the rest of the deck.

Simply put, the deck will play all the best cards in the colours without caring much about synergy. And since the commander doesn't have any inherent strategy it forces upon us, the strategy becomes to simply adapt to the matchup and play "good" cards.

What are we not doing?

A lot of the decks i've seen with the same commander have been trying really hard to get a lot of value from the commander itself, by bouncing it back to hand to kick it over and over. This strategy does not speak to me at all. It's entirely too much work and mana investment, for way too little actual advantage. This deck will not be doing that at all except with Horned Kavu that is just big enough on it's own to be worth it to alternatively bounce something else. instead the commander will likely sit in the command-zone for a long time just waiting for a worthy enchantment to hit. Or sit silent until we have nothing more important to do than cast it kicking for the discard.

Strategy

Ofcourse this whole text is about strategy in some form or another. The "gameplay strategy"(as in how does the games ideally play out) of the deck is stupidly simple, and very basic. We are playing "normal magic" in the sense that we win with creatures and damage, by developing advantage, by trading effeciently and by outplaying the opponents.

As an example: We want to play a creature(a threat) or ramp during the first 2-3 turns(Something like Utopia Sprawl or Experiment One. Then we want to develop an advantage by playing further threats to chip in damage(Crawling Infestation and Avenging Hunter etc.) or answering the opponents' threats effectively with removal. To end we have a few "Bombs" and some recursion to grab whatever was most useful from the things we've already played. Standard stuff.

We should aim to play the commander as often as possible, whenever there is somewhere to reasonably target both kickers. Each play of the commander is straight card advantage, costing us 0 cards in hand, and removing 3 cards from the opponents(1 Enchantment + 2 Discards). In this sense our commander resolving is guaranteed advantage. Compared to some of the other commanders, where the value comes later and is at risk of being removed before doing it's thing, Spacemarine just gives us the value and thats it. This is one of the slight advantages Spacemarine has over other commanders.

We should recognize our place somewhere in the lower end or middle of the tables powerlevel, and we can try to play that position to our advantage. Instead of being the archenemy, we will try to be surviving and still have gas when the archenemy is out of the game. It's, in my experience, from this position that politics can be done most effectively. Not being viewed as the biggest threat, while having big dudes and spot-removals, will allow us to cut deals on who to attack and who to punish with answers, perhaps trading The Monarch and The Initiative back and forth between us and the "weak" players to catch up.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Quick disclaimer. I had trouble figuring out what a bad matchup looks like, and i haven't really experienced being in a game where any one deck could dominate this deck completely. On the other hand, i've pretty much always experienced being "outgunned" initially when comparing to the opposing commanders. So i ended up throwing "Bad Matchups" on both strengths and weaknesses, knowing that it is ofcourse contradictory. I suppose the point is that it's a "weak" deck, but it has an incredible ability to participate in games of high powerlevels regardless.

Strengths

  • No "Bad" matchups.

  • High Card-quality.

  • Broad selection of effective answers.

  • Consistency and speed in developing a board-precence.

Weaknesses

  • Only "Bad" matchups.

  • Little to no "Explosiveness" a.k.a. No sudden surprise wins.

  • Vulnerable to Powerhouse commanders. (Erinis+Street Urchin, comes to mind)

Card Choice (Categores explained)

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98% Casual

Competitive

Date added 8 months
Last updated 1 week
Legality

This deck is Pauper EDH legal.
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.76
Tokens Dungeon: Undercity, Eldrazi Spawn 0/1 C, Elephant 3/3 G, Food, Insect 1/1 G, Saproling 1/1 G, Skeleton 4/1 B, Spider 2/4 B, Squirrel 1/1 G, The Initiative, The Monarch, Treasure
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