Welcome to The Jundle
Out-value your opponent with cards that are very mana efficient or offer 2-for-1 effects. In Jund you get the disruption of black, the burn of red, and the ramp of green.
Threats
The main threats are Gurmag Angler and Hooting Mandrills, chosen to have synergy with self-mill outlets like Stinkweed Imp and Satyr Wayfinder (along with all instants, sorceries, and fetches). Vulturous Aven serves as an evasive threat while potentially acting as a 'free' Sign in Blood.
Removal
Removal comes in the form of Tragic Slip which offers great flexibility (having synergy with Vulturous Aven and Nest Invader), Diabolic Edict to remove protected creatures (especially those in Bogles, Heroic, etc. decks), Stinkweed Imp as recursive removal, or Terminate to offer a final solution. Lightning Bolt, of course, offers flexibility as well as efficiency, which this deck is all about.
Mana
For mana, we have 4 Evolving Wilds, which are crucial for fixing mana and serve the side-purpose of filling the graveyard along with mixed duals two bounce lands. The mana base in this deck favors green for T1/2 mana fixing utilizing the likes of Crop Rotation (which can fetch a bounce land), and Satyr Wayfinder. Having a large amount of duals in pauper sadly means that this deck has fewer T1/2 plays than other decks, which is why we run many low/efficient CMC spells to reduce the risk of the Mana Screw. Additionally, spells that cost CC are not included in favor of cards that cost either one color or different colors to reduce the need for more than one source of each color.
Value
Blightning serves as a Lava Spike stapled to Mind Rot for the same CMC and in a 1-card package. What's there not to like? Pulse of Murasa is flexible in that it can recur dead lands for fixing/ramp or negate removal spells from the opponent while giving us a bunch of life to sit on while we rebuild.
Sideboard
The sideboard is heavily dependent on your local meta. As a general guide (or in unknown metas), the sideboard should have an answer for every major deck archetype.
For affinity and tron, Ancient Grudge is an efficient option that stalls their progress long enough to advance your board state to a point that you can overwhelm them. Luckily for us, R/G offer many other artifact destruction cards in case the meta is heavy on artifacts.
Duress is like Thoughtsieze but targets spell-based decks. This is a great side-in option for many matchups, especially difficult ones like tron that use Capsize to great effect. Combo decks are greatly hindered by the disruption and information you gain from this. Addle is a possible inclusion that hits mono colored decks (and creatures) harder too, but at a greater cost. Distress simply is not worth it due to its BB mana cost.
Echoing Decay is a great card against stompy and creature decks. The potential to kill more than one creature is worth running this against decks that have particular creatures they rely on. The -2/-2 effect makes it unique in its value, which makes it a difficult card to not run here.
Electrickery is an obvious inclusion in any red deck to clear out elves, tokens, etc. Two of these should be sufficient in conjunction with the other removal this deck has to offer. Shrivel is a second option against elves/token heavy metas, but keep in mind that it kills your own creatures too.
Nihil Spellbomb is used to hinder not only the greatest threat in the format, Gurmag Angler, but it also does quite a number against tron and reanimator (the scariest deck yet). Relic of Progenitus works here too.
Tranquility is a blow out against Bogles and is useful against Mono White Heroic as well as other decks that utilize any number of enchantments. The downside is that it's slow. Natural State and Naturalize are faster and hits artifacts as well, so it's up to testing to determine whether Tranquility is worth having or not.
Pyroblast is a must-have for the abundance of blue in the format. Until the day Gitaxian Probe, Ponder, Preordain, Brainstorm, Counterspell, Hydroblast, and Delver of Secrets
are all banned forever, this card will be a must-have.
Strengths
The main strength of this deck is the efficiency of the spells you cast. A large and diverse suite of removal ensures that most decks will not be able to develop a very large board state against you. Big creatures that often cost very little is an upside that allow us to put a fast clock on our opponent and leave up mana for removing their creatures. Because this deck has access to three diverse colors, it allows us to get the best of all three. From black we derive multipurpose/utility creatures (except Angler) and hard removal. Green gives us efficient creatures, ramp, and fixing. Red allows us to play Blightning and Terminate along with Lightning Bolt to get in some easy removal and burn.
This deck's greatest weakness is itself. Being tri-colored in pauper ensures that a lot of duals (all of which enter tapped) and fixing are required to consistently get all three colors out in a reasonable time. This often makes the deck somewhat clunky in the first 3-4 turns when you're trying to get mana to cast something. Being a fair midrange deck usually means that games will be won by thinner margins than other types of decks. That means small mistakes can cost us the game if the deck is not piloted properly. Compounded with that is the fact that the deck itself opens slowly and clumsily. Fortunately, pauper is a slower format which not only mitigates some of the clunkiness, but gives our opponent more opportunities to make mistakes of their own.
Mitigations
The ramp and fixing in this deck often serve secondary purposes. Satyr Wayfinder is a chump blocker that adds at least 3 cards to your graveyard for casting your delve creatures. Crop Rotation can ramp and fix by getting us a bounce land, all while pitching two cards. A potential improvement to our slow mana problem could be to add more basic lands and remove some, but not all, of the duals.
Update No. 1
Since I will be participating in pauper events that allow ANY card printed at common, I will be adjusting this deck to accommodate for the increased card pool. Additionally, changes have been made based on playtesting of the deck. The changes will primarily focus on improving the deck's staying power and giving more cards a use throughout the entire game.
Desert added because of its effectiveness against aggressive decks, and especially Mono Blue Delver, as an uncounterable solution to its many x/1 creatures that try to outvalue us. It's also useful to push an extra point of damage to kill a creature just tougher than we can deal with our creatures.
Haunted Fengraf and Mortuary Mire allow us to recur creatures, and can both be fetched using Crop Rotation (as can Desert!).
Faithless Looting was added as a way to filter through dead cards, of which this deck wants as few of as possible as the game progresses. It also fuels delve, which is a nice bonus.
Raven's Crime is a low opportunity cost way of giving extra lands value in slow match-ups, especially against control decks that want to keep their hand as full as possible.
Ash Barrens replaced Evolving Wilds because it gives us the color we want immediately as well as coming out untapped if we already have the mana we want.
Ashes to Ashes is extremely efficient (and final) removal, even if it does cost us some life. The fact that it is a 2-for-1 lets us use mana more efficiently and save other removal. Only 2 are included because of the fact that it damages us and requires two targets to be cast in the first place. Luckily, we have many tiny creatures that can be pitched in a pinch.
Dual tap-lands were reduced in favor of additional basics, and bounce lands were removed entirely (even though they play nicely with our Crop Rotations because they were too slow. The sideboard now has an extra Tranquility in favor of Duress simply because we now have Raven's Crime in the maindeck which serves a similar purpose.
Update No. 2
The deck has gone through some more playtesting, and I have determined the following changes to be suitable for the deck's weaknesses:
- One copy of Lightning Bolt has been exchanged with Forked Bolt to give more versatility in burn spells with minimal loss in effectiveness. The deck's Delver matchup should be improved by this.
- Haunted Fengraf has been replaced by a Rakdos Carnarium because its effectiveness was proving to not be worth the colorless mana it produced. The bounce land gives us an opportunity to ramp with Crop Rotation as well.
- One copy of Gurmag Angler has been removed for Thorn of the Black Rose. This should improve long matchups greatly. Protecting the monarchy should not be difficult in this deck given the large amount of creatures and removal we run. This card has been working extremely well, and it may be worth adding more in the future.
- One copy of Ashes to Ashes has been removed for another Pulse of Murasa. Conditional removal (2+ creatures) in addition to large life loss is not something we want multiple times in a deck that already takes a beating getting set up (and damages itself to Vulturous Aven). Pulse buys us time while recovering something that got milled, killed, or countered. It should also improve our matchup against burn and, to a lesser extent, Tron with their Rolling Thunders.
Warning
Ashes to Ashes, Desert, Forked Bolt, and Circle of Flame are not officially pauper legal for some reason or another. Mostly it is due to them being paper commons only (not Circle of Flame though) and not available as common on MTGO. Because of this this deck cannot be legal in many pauper events. I would suggest the following changes to fix that:
