Locations
As I write this, my flight is descending into the Indianapolis airport.
It is the eve of the SCG Tour Open in Indianapolis, where the new Ravnica Allegiance Standard format will burst onto the tournament stage with its first results. There is of course a small lead time when it comes to content, which means that by the time you read this I may have won the tournament or come in dead last. What I can tell you right now is I'm extremely happy with the work I've put in this week, as well as the deck I am playing.
There's no doubt in my mind that this event will be the coming out party for Hydroid Krasis, one of the best cards in Ravnica Allegiance. Hydroid Krasis slots into the many multicolored midrange decks of the format and loves to be surrounded by many small mana and utility creatures.
We've built a deck that takes an already established shell, adds a powerful combo, good mana, a great sideboard, and most importantly is very good at killing mana creatures and trumping Hydroid Krasis with Angrath, the Flame Chained. It also has excellent tools against the other expected popular decks in the format, including aggressive Red decks and Wilderness Reclamation decks.
Presenting, Jund Chainwhirler:
Time Stamps:
Match 1 - 00:07:08
Match 2 - 00:39:32
Match 3 - 00:49:57
Match 4 - 01:21:49
Match 5 - 01:49:50
Jund Chainwhirler | Allegiance Standard | Jim Davis
- Creatures (13)
- 2 Siege-Gang Commander
- 3 Legion Warboss
- 4 Goblin Chainwhirler
- 4 Rekindling Phoenix
- Planeswalkers (4)
- 1 Karn, Scion of Urza
- 3 Angrath, the Flame-Chained
- Instants (10)
- 3 Shivan Fire
- 3 Shock
- 4 Status // Statue
- Sorceries (4)
- 4 Lava Coil
- Artifacts (4)
- 4 Treasure Map
- Lands (25)
- 7 Mountain
- 1 Cinder Barrens
- 1 Overgrown Tomb
- 4 Blood Crypt
- 4 Dragonskull Summit
- 4 Rootbound Crag
- 4 Stomping Ground
- Sideboard (15)
- 3 Duress
- 4 Cindervines
- 1 The Eldest Reborn
- 1 Karn, Scion of Urza
- 2 Dire Fleet Daredevil
- 4 Fountain of Renewal
This is a perfect example of a "don't focus on the results" kind of league.
Yes we went 2-3, but the most important thing to gather from your play-testing is a general sense of how the deck felt. How did the wins feel? Were they close games? How good or bad were our opponent's hands? How did the losses feel? Were they close games? What kind of things were we losing to? What kind of games were we winning? What cards over or under performed?
I've 5-0ed leagues with plenty of awful decks on stream where I've drawn well and my opponents have mulliganed or blundered a bunch, and I've done poorly in leagues with many good decks where things just went wrong or I blundered. Your goal is to figure out what the results mean beyond just the numbers.
We almost beat Mono-Red Aggro in Game 3 on a mulligan to four because our Fountain of Renewal plan worked so well; that's great! We lost to a Domri, Chaos Bringer in a game versus that weird Temur deck, not necessarily because Domri is a good card (it's not) but because we seem to be a little soft to resolved planeswalkers; that's a problem that needs fixing.
Then you take these actual results and work to use that info productively.
I'm going to be trying Skarrgan Hellkite in the Siege-Gang Commander slot going forward as a direct result of what we've learned in our practice so far, and I'm very excited for the deck as a whole. It's packed full of powerful cards, has great plans for each matchup, and has a great sideboard as well.
It's also jam packed full of mythic rares, what more could you need?
