I spent Tuesday testing the Jund matchup against Mythic with the deck's creator, Zvi Mowshowitz. He'll probably be writing an article for StarCityGames from his own perspective, but I think that article will be premium. None-the-less, I highly recommend reading his articles on Mythic, if you're interested in the deck at all. (StarCityGames Premium? Worth it.)

For testing purposes, we decided to go with Simon Gortzen's Jund build, which won Pro-Tour San Diego. As witnessed at recent tournaments like the Midwest Masters Series and the ChannelFireball 5K, many players have begun to conform to Gortzen's build of Jund: more manlands, more lands in general, less removal spells in the maindeck, and Putrid Leech with a couple of mana accelerants.

Jund by Simon Gortzen

[cardlist]4 Savage Lands

4 Verdant Catacombs

4 Raging Ravine

2 Lavaclaw Reaches

2 Dragonskull Summit

1 Rootbound Crag

4 Forest

3 Mountain

3 Swamp

4 Lightning Bolt

2 Rampant Growth

3 Maelstrom Pulse

4 Blightning

2 Garruk Wildspeaker

4 Putrid Leech

4 Sprouting Thrinax

4 Bloodbraid Elf

3 Siege-Gang Commander

3 Broodmate Dragon

Sideboard

4 Deathmark

4 Great Sable Stag

1 Maelstrom Pulse

3 Master of the Wild Hunt

1 Pithing Needle

2 Terminate[/cardlist]

And the contender, Mythic. I've been testing with this deck myself recently, and I find it very fun to play. Although you do have to drop about $600 to fashion it from head-to-toe. This may prevent some players from picking it up. However, the principles behind the deck justify having so many expensive rares.

Mythic by Zvi Mowshowitz

[cardlist]4 Celestial Colonnade

3 Stirring Wildwood

6 Forest

2 Island

1 Plains

4 Misty Rainforest

4 Verdant Catacombs

2 Sunpetal Grove

1 Sejiri Steppe

4 Birds of Paradise

4 Noble Hierarch

4 Rhox War Monk

4 Knight of the Reliquary

3 Rafiq of the Many

4 Baneslayer Angel

1 Thornling

2 Rampaging Baloths

3 Finest Hour

Sideboard

2 Admonition Angel

3 Bant Charm

1 Day of Judgment

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

4 Mind Control

3 Negate[/cardlist]

Session 1: Ten Pre-Board Games

Gortzen certainly did a number of interesting things with his Jund build, some of which I still find hard to swallow. One of the issues I had was the complete absence of [cardTerminate[/card]s and Bituminous Blasts, while not using the full complement of Maelstrom Pulses (to make up for the resulting lack of removal). Despite the lack of answers to Baneslayer Angel, game one is certainly not unwinnable. The strategy is simply different pre- and post-board.

Game one is a Tempo game. Jund cannot act as the Control player as it simply does not have the resources to deal with all the Problems that Mythic poses. So you can't just go shooting down creatures willy-nilly. However, if Jund tries to be all-in aggressive, that doesn't work either, since the Mythic player is clearly in the Beatdown position. The damage it can deal quickly escalates from 3 or 4 to chunks of 8+ at a time.

You basically just end up chump blocking and getting in damage where you can until you can play some Siege-Gang Commanders or Broodmate Dragons and hope that that's enough. It helps if you also cast a Maelstrom Pulse or two. Because of the lack of relevant spells, Cascading is a really desperate out. The chances of hitting what you need (probably Pulse) are really small.

It's also important to always pay attention to what's going on with the lands on the other side of the table. The manlands are always there to enter combat when summoned. Usually there's at least one or two since the deck runs 7 total. On top of that, if they don't have Forests or Plains, you know the Knight won't be able to get activated – you can also try forcing the Knight to switch out the last Forest/Plains for a Sejiri Steppe, if you think that's profitable.

We also tried the reverse, where Zvi piloted Jund, and I played Mythic. (Another ten games.) To ensure that a difference in play skill wasn't affecting the results too much. I don't remember the exact records, but the Jund deck pre-board probably can win around 3 games out of 10 against Mythic. So a pretty subpar record. Going first may have made a difference, but I don't have the data to prove that.

When do you Bolt the turn-one Mana Dork?

In general, during the pre-board games, I always Bolted the Manadork on Turn one. This ensured that his second turn wouldn't involve dropping a Rhox War Monk or a Knight of the Reliquary, either of which I probably couldn't answer. (At least, not without spending my entire turn, and the manadork would likely just throw something else down that would give me more problems.) More problematic is the issue that, if I don't use Bolt then, there may simply be no other good opportunity to use it.

The post-board games, I did things a bit differently. I preferred leaving the manadork out for a turn, to see what happened. This meant a one-drop led into a three-drop usually. Both of which I could then deal with using a combination of Bolt and Deathmark or something similar. If I had killed the manadork on turn one, this might have led to the opponent simply dishing out another manadork or a Lotus Cobra, which would pose the tougher question: should I kill this or not? By not killing the turn one dork, I could create the situation where I was using removal spells on the more legitimate threats and not wasting it all on manadorks. The game was no longer about slowing the opponent down, just about removing all their problematic creatures until they were left with nothing. (It's possible that if the Mythic deck has a choice between playing another manadork on turn two and a three-drop, it should just play the second manadork as long as Pulse can't take out both of them.)

Session 2: Ten Post-Board Games with Mind Controls

Zvi's current sideboard plan, which he wrote extensively about in his StarCityGames Premium article, against Jund involves boarding in 3-4 Mind Control and removing some number of Finest Hour, Rafiq, or Rhox War Monk. The deck doesn't have a lot of space for adjustment, so it's often correct to just shave the numbers a little without removing all copies of a card.

Mostly the deck remained the same except for the added 4 Mind Controls.

However, the Jund deck changes entirely. Using Gortzen's sideboard…

The number of answers to large creatures suddenly goes from 3 to 10, not including creature-based removal like Siege-Gang or Master.

Is the removal of Rampant Growth correct? Personally, I don't think it's one of those cards you never board out anyway. You probably board them out fairly often. In this particular matchup, I'm in no particular hurry to find my lands – I still have 27 of them to draw, and they'll come eventually. I don't have to play Bloodbraid Elf on turn 3, and I don't need to ensure Siege-Gang drops on turn 5. Time is on my side now. And whiffing on a Cascade is very dangerous.

I left a couple Cascade "Whiffs" in the deck – namely the two Sprouting Thrinax. But Thrinax isn't that terrible in the matchup since it provides a bunch of chump blockers.

Post-board, the games were more in my favor (it's possible I could've mulliganed more aggressively into removal-heavy hands to make it more favorable). Anyway, ten hard removal spells is generally enough to control the board to a comfortable point. To be conservative with removal, I usually never touched Rhox War Monk. Although this netted him lots of life and time of his own. There was one time I had Broodmate Dragon out and didn't leave one back to block, letting him continue to swing in with War Monks. This was a mistake since I was no longer dealing any real damage with my Dragons.

Master of the Wild Hunt also was a card that, when it got going, basically won the game by itself, if he didn't have the Mind Control. If he did have Mind Control, I would need to find a Pulse to get it back or a way to kill it. Either way, the card itself proved to be a lot of trouble for the Mythic deck since generally it didn't have an answer.

Session 3: Ten Post-Board Games with Alternative Sideboard

The alternative sideboard plan included using less Mind Controls and instead using threats that were inherently hard to deal with for Jund, like Thornling and Sphinx of Jwar Isle.

This made games a little more challenging, since Sphinx and Thornling were probably just game over if they landed. I simply had to try a little harder to keep the mana difficult and apply pressure. Or use Blightnings. This plan definitely seemed to even the matches up more.

For these games, I tried using Malakir over Master of the Wild Hunt because people tend to have one or the other, not both. Sphinx is interesting in that it gets around both Malakir and Master. Arguably Thornling can as well. I was happier with Masters, but Malakirs weren't shabby.

Conclusion

Zvi came to the conclusion that the deck could probably just give up a couple slots in the mainboard to improve the Jund games (by maindecking Thornling or Sphinx). And if there were a tournament tomorrow, he'd probably still bring the Mythic deck since its matchup against Jund is winnable. Especially if people trended to Simon Gortzen's build, which they are clearly doing.

As for myself, I still have to say Jund seems favored – even though game ones are terrible. As long as my opponents aren't all Zvi Mowshowitz, I think winning against "average" Mythic players is probably a lot easier. (Besides that, I would not go into a tournament copying Gortzen's build anyway.) After all that, 40 games in total, I am more familiar with the matchup and can just try to outplay my opponent and his or her sideboard plans.

That being said, the Mythic deck is a lot of fun to play and since I have it built, I might as well give it a whirl. The matchup against Jund is not nearly as bad as people are making it out to be, as long as you play well and know what's important. I don't even think the matchup against Boss Naya is all that bad either. Since the sideboard can easily answer the Cunning Sparkmage combo. And after that, all of Mythic's creatures outclass the Naya deck.

I had a lot of fun testing the matchup. We concluded many things, but some questions are left in the air. Perhaps I can answer them in a future writeup. And hopefully I can test more using the Mythic deck myself, to see what its stance is in today's metagame.