Historic Jund Food Deck Guide: Mythic Invitational Top 8

Hello everybody!

My name is Sam Rolph, some of you may know of me as Phill_Hellmuth on Magic the Gathering Online. I’m 23 years old and from the United Kingdom but I’ve travelled all over and lived in a variety of different places throughout my life! I’ll try to keep my introduction short as possible. I’ve played professional Magic since I was 15 years old and have been living off Magic Online and tournaments for the better part of a year. However, now I am embarking on a new journey to create content daily for MTG Arena Zone and I’m incredibly excited to share it with you all! My focus will mainly be on competitive content and trying to help progress people’s goals in competitive Magic! Let’s get into it!

Today I will be writing about the deck I piloted at the Mythic Invitational, with a quick sideboard guide and a few tips and tricks.

So, as you all can see, this is Shoop’s list from the top 8 of the Historic Mythic Invitational, which I built with the help of my friend Owen (check out his Twitter!). It’s a midrange deck utilizing the food engine for card advantage. As we all know, Cauldron Familiar and Witch’s Oven have put up significant results within various Standard formats over the last year or so, but why is it good in Historic?

The Jund Sacrifice deck’s biggest weakness was combo decks that didn’t play to the board; things like Temur Reclamation had a good matchup because the axis that this deck tries to attack on is long term inevitability, and Reclamation could create a huge burst of card advantage very quickly that just goes over the top. Historic really does not have anything left that is doing anything similar. The Historic metagame is all about playing to the board right now with cards like Muxus, Goblin Grandee, God Pharaoh’s Gift, and Collected Company. Barring a high roll on Muxus, Jund Food can survive them all and eventually drown them in card advantage.

The first big draw to this strategy has been Mayhem Devil, because of how good it is vs the creature decks. This deck abuses Mayhem Devil the best with Gilded Goose, Cat/Oven and Woe Strider, where other Devil decks have a harder time assembling all of these pieces because of their lack of Trail of Crumbs.

Another card that is utterly unassuming that blew me away in testing was Korvold, Fae-Cursed King! On the surface, it’s an incredible card advantage engine, but once you start playing more and more with the deck, you realise its hidden potential. Casting Korvold creates a scenario where if your opponent is unable to answer it, the game will usually end on the following turn so action is forced on your opponent: either kill the Korvold or finish the game that turn. However, you realise after some matches that Korvold secretly has hexproof: It is immune to Cast Down, Heartless Act, Eliminate, and Redcap Melee, and these are all cards people will want vs Food to answer Mayhem Devil.

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPRcW4mvzJc

Sideboard Guide

Sultai Ramp

On the play

In	Out
+2 Thoughtseize +2 Bolas’s Citadel +1 Murderous Rider	-2 Woe Strider -2 Mayhem Devil -1 Cauldron Familiar

On the draw

In	Out
+2 Thoughtseize +1 Soul-Guide Lantern +1 Murderous Rider +2 Bolas’s Citadel	– 2 Woe Strider -2 Mayhem Devil -1 Cauldron Familiar -1 Claim the Firstborn

A few things to note: If they have Narset, Parter of Veils in their deck post-board or Grafdigger's Cage, I would play the second Vraska, Golgari Queen over a Devil on the draw, as answering those cards with Vraska is usually quite a big swing. The issue with Vraska is that she is quite bad as a proactive threat on clear boards and Sultai is trying to clear and then play a threat. Additionally, when you’re bringing in Citadel, your deck becomes quite clunky and you can’t afford to have so many high mana plays, but it’s worth having her to answer those cards.

Goblins

In	Out
+2 Thoughtseize +1 Recap Melee +3 Abrade +3 Witch’s Vengeance	-4 Woe Strider -2 Vraska, Golgari Queen -1 Trail of Crumbs -1 Cauldron Familiar -1 Claim the Firstborn

Matchup is relatively easy: you want to assemble Devil and sacrifice cards as quickly as possible. Woe Strider doesn’t really impact the board and only plays well with Devil, but it’s a very clunky way of doing so and usually you will be better off answering threats with your suite of removal spells. One important thing is to hold Witch’s Vengeance for as long as possible to deal with a post-Muxus board, as it’s quite difficult for Goblins to kill you in one turn through Cat Oven or a Mayhem Devil, unless you are completely high-rolled by the top 6 cards of their deck.

Jund Company

In	Out
+1 Liliana’s Defeat +1 Murderous Rider +3 Abrade +2 Thoughtseize	-4 Woe Strider -1 Cauldron Familiar -1 Trail of Crumbs -1 Vraska, Golgari Queen

Your role in this matchup is to be the control deck; your game plan post-board is to 1-for-1 them every time, and let cards like Korvold and Trail of Crumbs take you over the top. It’s potentially the case that post-board you want Citadel, if they are boarding in a few Act of Treasons or Leyline of the Void. I haven’t tested that far yet, but that’s the next step in how to sideboard.

Tips and Tricks

Cat, Food, and Devil: If you have a Cauldron’s Familiar in the graveyard and a bunch of food in play and you’re left without a Woe Strider, you can sacrifice all of the food in one go to turn each food into a ping. You have to go into full control mode to do this.

Golgari Queen and her Food: You can actually sacrifice a food to Vraska’s ability to trigger Trail of Crumbs! The same thing works for Korvold, but is utilized a lot less.

Baking the Dragon: Korvold also has ANOTHER secret ability: you can sacrifice him to an Oven to generate 2 foods, trigger his ability and draw a card. So make sure to sacrifice him if your opponent has a removal spell. The same works with Mayhem Devil to get an extra ping, but we’ve seen that a lot in Standard and even during the Invitational.

Redcap Melee for Game!?: Redcap Melee can sometimes be used as a way to push an extra point of damage through with Mayhem Devil or Korvold, as you can use the land sacrifice “drawback” proactively. Does not come up all too often but it has done work for me over the course of testing.

Wrapping Up

Anyways, this was my short guide to Jund Food! I was very pleased with the testing I did for the deck – it got my team an SCG Online Victory, 1 player in the Invitational top 8, and 2 people qualifying for the Zendikar Rising Championship. Even if it didn’t serve me quite as well, Jund Food is here to stay in Historic and, in my opinion, will be a force to be reckoned with even with new Zendikar set shaking things up! Tomorrow I will be posting a video of me piloting the deck through the fierce opponents of the Arena Ladder, so catch you then!

Anything I missed? Anything you want to ask? Leave a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you so much for reading!