Welcome to Cadet's Arche-Typing! In Cadet's Arche-Typing I will be taking a known archetype from a random format and scrubbing together a list of my own. No netdecking. I will be going off what I know about the format and the archetype, and playtesting and/or asking for help (only later in the process) to find out what I could improve. The goal: get a playable deck in the end. I'll be telling you what the deck is and how much I know about the deck.
Week 2
Archetype (1): Jund Control/Midrange
My knowledge thereof: I built the deck and literally changed three cards.
Hey guys. Double-whammy this week. Instead of my usual, one deck, I'll be bringing you two. Or rather, one and a half...
Jund Control. This deck has been gaining popularity, and I can honestly say why, pretty easily. First of all, it trashes most weenie-aggro decks with its sweepers (Fae; Tokens until they hit two pump-enchantments; to an extent Kithkin). Second, cards like
Bloodbraid really make life hard for control decks. Third, it's so simple a baby could build it.
I came to this article looking for a deck that was a little harder than my last build, Retard Bant Weenie [Editor's note: Link these last three words to said article]. Instead, [I got perhaps the easiest build ever] [This could be worded better] . It was basically "throw four of almost every good Jund card in
there" then add land and check the curve. The hardest thing was the sideboarding.
My first build looked like this:
That was the first version. The singleton
Lightning Bolt was a little iffy, but I needed something to fill a slot and had forgotten that
Maelstrom Pulse existed.
I went online and started playing a few games. Here's an example or two:
Turns one-to-three we just drop lands; he drops a turn-three
Knotvine Paladin and a turn-four
Doran. I kill the Paladin with Fallout, then play a Leech and he lays down a
Wilt-Leaf Liege. Ugh. I block with my leech. Next turn I cast Bloodbraid, cascading into Anathemancer, taking him down to 13 (Fallout+'Mancer+
murmuring bosk damage). He then drops a Behemoth Sledge. Seeing my hand full of trash I concede.
Game two I draw good stuff. I play lands turns one-to-three, while he starts with
Harbinger to turn three Doran. This time, though, I have an answer. I
Terminate his Doran after he attacks with Harbinger. Miss my land drop. He plays a
Behemoth Sledge and ends the turn. He equips the Sledge to the Harbinger and I answer with
Deathmark. From that point on, I grab a
Chameleon Colossus and go aggro. Add an
Anathemancer and he has trouble stopping the rush. I end the game with a massive
Banefire to his head.
Game three he starts fast--turn-two
Knotvine, turn-three Doran. The Doran hits a Deathmark. Turn four,
Birds of Paradise and another Paladin. My fourth turn is a little more eventful--I play a
Bloodbraid and cascade into
Jund Charm, killing off his small army and swinging for three. He responds by playing one turn after the other a
Kitchen Finks,
Dauntless Escort, and
Quasali Pridemage. I kill the Pridemage and the Escort, then on my turn drop a
Broodmate Dragon. He was at 10, and a Doran won't save you at two life when an Anathemancer is staring you in the face.
I played a few other decks and then made one change to the deck--I cut a few cards here and there to make room for Banefires.
Basically, a typical Jund build. And it isn't hard to do. I mean, after all, it's hard to go wrong. Just throw the good Jund cards together and it works. So I thought to myself, "Cadet, is this really enough for a full article? Wouldn't it be disappointing to my readers?" So here we go with the second archetype this week.
Week 2
Archetype (2): Polyprog (control build)
My knowledge thereof: Very Low
Polyprog is a deck that has been buzzing around the web for a while. It's kind of iffy, but I'm immediately attracted to any deck that can pull out a 10/10 with protection from everything on turn 4. It's a Timmy's wet dream. The deck is also hauntingly similar to the
Oath of Druids decks of the past. Ideally, it runs only creatures that win the game when they hit or aren't technically creatures (think
Mutavault or
Planeswalkers). The most obvious example of the former is the deck's namesake,
Progenitus. Very few decks can deal with him when he hits-they either have to trample over your ass in two or three turns or pull a Wrath. And seeing as the best Wrath effect is leaving standard (RIP
Wrath of God), surprisingly few decks are running mass destruction of that form. Another option would be
Darksteel Colossus, but there are a lot of
Path to Exiles and
Oblivion Rings running around so he's subpar. He can also be chump blocked.
So I thought about what should go into the deck. It seemed to be working out to be a mainly blue control deck with a splash of white for token producers and removal. I started and immediately put in four each of the most essential cards for the deck. Then I needed more non-creature creatures. I decided on Elspeth,
Repel Intruders due to its dual nature fitting a control deck well, and
Mutavault. Mutavault is nuts in this deck. I also decided that it would be nice to have black to both control the opponent's hand and have access to tutors.
The first list looked like this:
I'll admit, this was mostly poor construction on my part. I neglected that the entire deck lacks any kind of removal once a creature is there. I forgot things like Path to Exile. And the manabase was shaky. I got trashed a couple of times and didn't fix anything important. What I did do after about 5 games of losses was remove the black. I realized that it didn't seem like it was worth as much for a control build as it should be for the color screw. I also added mass removal and some more counters, securing this deck in control.
This worked a little better. A few games followed.
vs. DrunkenMaster
He starts out with swamp, I play an island and ponder. He plays
Drowned Catacomb and at the end of my turn drops a
Spellstutter Sprite. Great. Faeries. Next turn a
Scion of Oona, which would've ended the game very quickly eats an
Essence Scatter and he drops a
Bitterblossom. I play
Jace Berelen, and he makes a huge mistake and keeps attacking it. Had he attacked me, he would've won relatively quickly. As such, he plays almost nothing the entire rest of the game, and I have time to play Silence->Polymorph on Mutavault. He can't deal with the Prog in time and disconnects.
vs. xXx
He starts out with a
birds of paradiseon the play, followed by
Doran, The Siege Tower. I essence Shatter his next turn's Wilt-Leaf Liege. Then, the turn after, he plays
Gaddock Teeg. I fold. Look at my decklist. There is not a single card with a CMC less than 4 that can deal with teeg, provide creatures (other than Mutavault), or win around Teeg. Note to self: build better deck!!!
After this loss to Teeg, I realized that this deck has some flaws that I would either need to build around, resulting in a less solid control base, or rebuild. But then I heard about a version of not this deck, but B/W/u tokens running blue only to be able to do the combo. The genius part is, the deck wouldn't need to run a massive control base, and it wouldn't rely completely on Progenitus-we know, after all, that B/W tokens has pretty damn good records. And M10 gave it another great tool to compete. So in two weeks, I'll be finishing off Polyprog by taking it in a totally different direction.
Totally is not overcompensating-if I wanted to overcompensate, I would've used DSC,
-The Cadet
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