At the recent GP: Kuala Lumpur standard tournament, we saw a remarkable Top 8. No less than SIX Jund decks lined up in the quarter finals, with a Boros deck and an unusual Red deck adding just a pinch of flavour. We also saw an eight year old make day 2 with Jund, which some believe says more about the ease of winning with the deck than the prodigious skill of young Kurt Porter. These events prompted a fresh round of standard doom-saying, with people grumbling about the dominance of the red, green and black menace.

The red deck was the most interesting to my mind, as I'm a sucker for a good Goblin Guide deck. What really excited me about this list was the fact that its pilot, Ding Leong, beat Jund in the quarter finals, the semi finals and the finals to claim the GP trophy! I decided to examine the new list and in particular the Jund matchup to see why it was so one sided.

The Philosophy of Fire

Jund is undoubtedly a powerful deck. Bloodbraid Elf, Blightning, Maelstrom Pulse and Lightning Bolt are some of the best cards in the format and jamming them into the same deck has been a recipe for success. It is far from flawless however, and these flaws need to be exploited if you want to have a chance in the current metagame. At the end of last year, at Worlds, we saw a lot of deckbuilders attack the wonky manabase of Jund decks of the period. Conley Woods with Magical Christmas Land, Gerry Thompson with Spread 'Em, and every pro and his dog jamming 4x Goblin Ruinblaster into their sideboard. Jund has evolved since and Simon Goertzen's winning Pro Tour list of a few weeks ago featured a whopping 27 lands and 2 Rampant Growths in what is nominally quite an aggressive deck. Lauren Lee had a fine article on this site last week discussing the ways to attack the current builds of Jund, and rather than rehash it I will move right along to discussing Mono-Red's angle: The Philosophy of Fire.

The issue here for Jund is that it has a strict limit on its life total. It has no way to gain life, like Basilisk Collar or Baneslayer Angel, and it uses up its life with fetchlands and Putrid Leeches. It doesn't have defensive creatures like Wall of Denial or Rhox War Monk, relying on Sprouting Thrinax to hold the fort. Jund papers over this sizeable hole in its fortress in two ways. Being able to race almost like an aggro deck means Jund can put the opponent on the back foot – the best defence is a good offense, as it were. Turn 2 Leech, Turn 3 Thrinax, Turn 4 Bloodbraid Elf into Blightning will very nearly kill the opponent on turn 4. The other thing Jund has in its favour is its large amount of removal and ways to find it, and using Lightning Bolt and Terminate to control the opponent's early creatures can enable Jund to reach the midgame with a reasonable life total, which is just where it wants to be.

Red (and Black) Deck Wins

So, how do the mono-red decks take advantage of Jund's limited life total? In the way red decks always have, by reducing it as fast as possible with little regard for other game resources like card advantage, board advantage or their own life total. Goblin Guide can give the opponent a card a turn which seems like a terrible deal, but the Red deck intends to kill the opponent before that extra card really matters. Ball Lightning hits for 6 and then goes away, unable to block or attack again – but it hits for 6 as early as the third turn. Every non-land card in the red deck is devoted to reducing the opponents life total, at a cheap cost, and with haste. In addition the red deck has a lot of reach, meaning that even if Jund manages to stall the board with blockers the tramplers, fliers and straight burn cards can close the deal and put the opponent at zero. Red decks counter Jund's other defence – removal – by playing hasty creatures that kill themselves anyway, meaning most of the time Terminate and Maelstrom Pulse will be stuck in the Jund player's hand.

Ding's GP winning deck is a little different than the traditional red decks that have been with us since Zendikar's release. He's added in 4x Dragonskull Summit and 4x Lavaclaw Reach which enable the 4x maindeck Blightning, but more importantly they enable the sideboarded black removal cards. How does Deathmark help to beat Jund? It doesn't. Let's see what Ding has to say about these sideboard choices in the coverage:

[easybox]What was the best card in your sideboard this weekend? Deathmark

What deck do you NOT want to play against in this Top 8? Decks that have Kor Firewalker.[/easybox]

What Deathmark does do is ease the pain that decks with Kor Firewalker cause mono-Red. Two Firewalkers is practically game over for red, and even one is bad enough. It also has obvious utility against Baneslayer Angel and Knight of the Reliquary. I found myself hardly touching the sideboard while testing this deck against Jund which is a testament to the main deck's strength in that matchup. Even the Goblin Ruinblasters – which as previously noted used to be automatically brought in against Jund – were left alone, as I fiddled the maindeck numbers to bring in just the two Quenchable Fires. Without further ado, let's get to the testing.

Ding Red/Black vs Goertzen Jund

[cardlist]4 Arid Mesa

4 Dragonskull Summit

4 Lavaclaw Reaches

8 Mountain

4 Scalding Tarn

4 Ball Lightning

4 Goblin Guide

4 Hell's Thunder

4 Hellspark Elemental

4 Blightning

3 Burst Lightning

3 Earthquake

4 Lightning Bolt

2 Quenchable Fire

4 Searing Blaze

Sideboard

4 Deathmark

2 Doom Blade

4 Goblin Ruinblaster

3 Manabarbs

2 Quenchable Fire[/cardlist]

I grabbed Jay, one of my testing buddies from Sydney, and we duked it out online. Jay is a long time Jund player who has his own unusual take on the deck, but in the interest of testing against what you'll probably see in your own events I asked him to play Goertzen's PT winning list.

Jay won the die roll and I kept 2 Dragonskull Summit, Arid Mesa, Hellspark Elemental, Searing Blaze and 2 Ball Lightning on the draw. Jay played tapped lands on the first two turns while I got in with Hellspark for 3, and his 3rd turn Verdant Catacomb activation put him down to 16. He summoned Sprouting Thrinax and threw it in front of my Ball Lightning, going to 13. He attacked back with his tokens, made Garruk Wildspeaker, untapped two lands and played Putrid Leech. On my fourth turn I played a mountain, cast Searing Blaze on the Leech (redirecting the 3 to Garruk) and after he paid 2 life to pump it, I Earthquaked for 1 to finish it and Garruk off. With both boards clear, all Jay could muster was a Raging Ravine attack in reply to put me to 11. I cast my second Ball Lightning to take him to 5, his second Ravine attack knocked me to 6, and I finished him off with a Burst Lightning and a Lightning Bolt after untapping.

1-0

I sideboarded in two Quenchable Fire for two Ball Lightning, not wanting to see my 6/1 haste guy killed with a Lightning Bolt. I kept Goblin Guide, Hellspark Elemental, Burst Lightning, Blightning, 2 Scalding Tarn and a Hell's Thunder – slightly land light, but I was happy on the draw. Jund was on the play again and opened with 2 more tapped lands – my Goblin Guide got in for 2 but ate a Bolt on the second turn, which let my Hellspark hit Jay down to 15. On the 3rd turn Jay made a Thrinax while I replied with Hell's Thunder. Jay followed up with a second Thrinax and I had Quenchable Fire putting him to 8, with 3 more due on my next upkeep. Unfortunately for me Jay's 5th turn play was Blightning, saving his bacon by making me discard my hand of Burst Lightning and Lightning Bolt. Jay got his nose in front in the race and managed to win at a precariously low life total.

1-1

Finally on the play, I didn't write down my hand for this one but I opened with Goblin Guide, which gave Jay a Raging Ravine on its way to hitting him for 2. His tapped land couldn't stop me hitting him again, but he played a Putrid Leech and traded with my Guide on the next turn, not willing to pump in the face of my open mountains. On his turn 3 he once again played Sprouting Thrinax, and at the end of turn I sacrificed my Scalding Tarn to give me a landfall trigger and let me Searing Blaze his creature and his face. On my turn I earthquake for 4 to put him to 10, and myself to 15. I eat a Blightning on my turn and discard my own Blightning and another Earthquake. Once again this empties my hand, but I draw a Lightning Bolt and throw it at his face after his casts a Bloodbraid (turning up a useless Terminate). The life totals are 7-9 at this stage, and he has a 3/2 in play to my empty hand. On turn 6 I pass the turn and Jay plays Master of the Wild Hunt and swings with his Bloodbraid Elf, while I kick a Burst Lightning and put him to 3. On my turn I rip Ball Lightning off the top and run over his 3/3 token producer for exactly enough damage and take the match.

2-1 to Red.

Post Testing Thoughts

This match was fairly typical of our testing, with games being close races but Red edging it most of the time. In one game Jay ran me over with Putrid Leech, Thrinax, Bloodbraid Elf into 2nd Thrinax. In another I played Hellspark, Ball Lightning, Quenchable Fire, and Lightning Bolt which with a Leech activation was enough to finish him with four cards.

Both sides are greatly benefited by being on the play, as Jund did not win once going second. Turn 1 Goblin Guide spells real trouble for Jund, especially if it has a tapland heavy start. Quenchable Fire is exceptionally strong, being a Ball Lightning that can't be killed or blocked, however it is quite weak in matchups against blue so I think it is correct to only have the 2 maindeck. Earthquake is not the greatest card in the matchup, but it is still a powerful burn spell that can protect you if things are turning sour and I was never unhappy to draw it. Blightning, on the other hand, seems pretty poor in this matchup. When Goblin Guides are filling your opponent's hand with lands and they are getting inherent card advantage out of their Bloodbraid Elf and Sprouting Thrinax it is much less painful to have to discard 2.

If Jund manages to score a good hit with Blightning however, it can force the red deck to run out of steam. If you expect to get Blightninged – and you should – hold on to your Hellspark Elementals, as discarding them really takes the sting out of it. Searing Blaze lets you deal with Jund's creatures like Putrid Leech and Sprouting Thrinax without slowing your damage to their life total, and it really is a fantastic card. Attacking with Lavaclaw Reaches never really became relevant in this matchup, though I was glad to have the option and I can see it could be excellent against decks without Lightning Bolts and Thrinaxes.

I think Ding Leong has found a real winner with this deck, though I really want to test it against White Weenie to be sure. It is advantaged against Jund even if many games are close, and as Jund is making up a third of the metagame these days Ding Red is a great choice. I expect the white matchup to still be pretty horrible, but at least Deathmark seems like a better plan than Unstable Footing. If you've got any thoughts on the deck or the match or have your own experiences with it to share, please do so in the comments below!