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Video Series with Ryland: Bloodbraid Jund

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Well you had to know it was coming. We played with Jace, the Mind Sculptor last week, so this week was a bit obvious. I just wanted to give Bloodbraid Elf her time in the sun too! Frankly, Bloodbraid Elf is doing plenty fine without me giving her attention. Jace is the one who seems to need the extra help. Jund is all the rage these days, not to mention the many other Bloodbraid "brews" floating around. Sure, Bloodbraid has found her familiar home in the usual shard, but she has also appeared in Ponza decks, various tribal decks, and RG Eldrazi.

In all my testing so far, Bloodbraid decks have vastly outperformed Jace decks, with Jund unsurprisingly being the best of those. It's certainly possible, as many have alleged, that we simply haven't found the right home for Jace yet. While I think this is partially true, I do expect Bloodbraid to continue to outperform Jace in the coming months. Time will only tell as the format settles down and more results start coming in.

As far as the particular Jund deck we are battling with today is concerned, there is really not much to say—it's still a pile of good cards lacking almost entirely in synergy. Some changes to traditional lists have come with the entry of Bloodbraid and Jace into the format. Twenty-five lands seems to be the way to go from here with four Bloodbraids in the deck. Jund did not previously have that many four-drops, and these ones are particularly good! In addition, red is more prominent than it once was, with Bloodbraid in the list and Lightning Bolt back on the rise. Most lists are on 4 Bolt, 4 Bloodbraid, and 2 Kolaghan's Command, so you'll see a lot more red symbols in the list than in recent months. As such, I am an advocate of the basic Mountain; these days I think it would be a mistake not to register one.

The removal suite is pretty flexible and easy to change from week to week depending on the broader shifts of the format. I usually advocate playing a breadth of different options in decks that can support it, and you'll see that present in my list below. Other than that, there is not much else to say about the deck. It's Jund. It's got some good ones. Bloodbraid Elf was a great (re)addition. All very shocking, I know!

I made some decklist changes mid-series this time (which I go over in the videos). If you do or don't enjoy that format, let me know for future weeks. I hope you enjoy the matches and, as usual, I'm interested to hear what kind of content you'd like to see moving forward, so I can continue to evolve and improve my videos. Please let me know your thoughts, and any improvements you would like to see concerning formatting, presentation, or whatever else strikes your fancy. If you'd like to see similar content, check out my Twitch channel for some more live Modern!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL261kJ_cAQC_dVJ3zTWtRMTBeOIc8YqB5]

2 thoughts on “Video Series with Ryland: Bloodbraid Jund

  1. Suggest taking a page from mtggoldfish and including a summary in the text of your overall results and any relevant observation or conclusion. Makes the article still worth reading if someone doesn’t care to watch the full videos (i may be in this crowd)

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