Hello everyone! I’m back with another deck guide for Bo1, and once again, we’re coming in with a midrange deck! However, this isn’t just your typical midrange deck. While Bo1 is starting to get more diverse in archetypes, I’m still seeing a lot of midrange decks, mostly Mono Black, with a sprinkling of aggro decks. I was thinking if there was a deck that can be good on it’s own, but also well positioned in the metagame to help take advantage of this heavy midrange metagame. Looking through my options, I realized that taking inspiration from the world’s best player is likely a good strategy.
Best of Three Standard is mostly midrange decks, so why not use the deck that PV has been crushing with? With some adjustments from his base list to have more game against the aggro decks, this has been serving me well against the Mono Black Midrange menace. Let’s see what I landed on.
Bo1 Jund Midrange
by DoggertQBones
Standard
Midrange
best of 1
8 mythic
36 rare
8 uncommon
8 common
0
1
2
3
4
5
6+
Planeswalkers (1)
Creatures (14)
Artifacts (2)
Enchantments (10)
Lands (26)
60 Cards
$588.32
As I said, quite close to the original, but with enough changes to be better suited towards Best of One. Let’s break down these choices!
For our early proactive plays, we have three solid options.
First off, and an unsurprising inclusion, Bloodtithe Harvester is here in full force with the full playset. Harvester does a bit of everything: it attacks well, it defends well, it can act as removal, and it allows you to filter (which works double duty to put Titan of Industry in the graveyard.) Not playing it in a deck that can play it would be a huge error.
While technically two drops, I lump Reckoner Bankbuster and Teachings of the Kirin in the same category as “two mana plays that don’t feel like two mana plays.” Bankbuster is a much more obvious example of this concept as it doesn’t actually do anything by itself with only two mana invested into it, but if you invest more mana or crew it, then you start getting your money’s worth. Obviously we aren’t playing it for it’s excellent early game applications, rather that it’s such a strong grindy tool if the game is going late.
Teachings of the Kirin on the other hand, is a little bit of a weird one. It doesn’t do anything particularly well, but it does a lot of things. It creates two bodies, it helps mill towards reanimation targets, and it provides some graveyard hate. All these little advantages do add up, and most importantly, this is excellent Invoke Despair insulation as the 1/1 and the Enchantment can happily take two of the three hits from it. If you have an errant Blood or Treasure token laying around, then you functionally leave Invoke Despair ineffective.
Moving up the curve, we have our insanely powerful three drops.
Kicking us off, and while it may look weird, we’re playing the lone Liliana. While the card can be good, having one copy has felt like enough to do what I want it to, whether it’s dismantling the opponent’s board or hand. You could go for more copies, but I think PV explained excellently on why one Liliana is likely the move.
Next we have Graveyard Trespasser, while not as multifaceted as Graveyard Trespasser, is just as ubiquitous. It’s a strong body that’s incidental graveyard hate and life gain which is definitely good enough for me!
Finally, we have Standard’s best Red card with Fable of the Mirror-Breaker. It almost goes without saying why this is here, but I will note that the second chapter is much more powerful here than normal. A really common play for this deck is to loot away a Titan of Industry on the second chapter, attack with your token to bring you to five mana, then slam The Cruelty of Gixto get a Titan into play way ahead of schedule. Beyond that, Fable is just an insanely powerful card that should be played in pretty much every deck that can afford to do so.
Now we reach our midgame and the big reason we’re playing Jund in particular.
Like many Black decks, we have to play some Sheoldred, the Apocalypse in here! While it is a bit susceptible to the bigger removal spells that midrange decks have been playing, if it survives, the card is just a huge pain to deal with. Whether it gains you a bunch of life or increases your clock, Sheoldred is going to be a problem for any opponent.
A nice middle ground between an anti-aggro card and good against midrange strategies, Workshop Warchief is filling multiple roles for us. If you’re being beaten down, having a 5/3 that gains three life on entry then gives you another large bocker on death is excatly where you’d want to be. If you’re facing a midrange deck, having two good bodies is one is similarly powerful as there’s not too much exile based removal in Best of One.
Finally, we have the reanimation part of the deck with The Cruelty of Gix We are mostly playing it to cheat Titan of Industry into play, but being able to get a Despise and/or Grim Tutor can obviously be quite powerful as well.
The other half of the reanimation package, Titan of Industry is HUGE and is so difficult to beat once it enters play. Almost always two large bodies and an additional effect, this is back-breaking when cheated in, but is similarly difficult to handle if you just cast it on turn seven. If you aren’t already dead, Titan of Industry can really pull you back from the brink.
Finally we come to the interactive portion of the deck.
We have the usual suspects in terms of removal, but versus other midrange decks, we have slightly more early removal with Voltage Surge and Cut Down versus just a few copies of Cut Down to greater respect aggressive decks. Beyond that, the common pairs of Infernal Grasp and The Meathook Massacre shore us up against larger creatures and wide boards respectively.
Overall, I’ve been enjoying this deck as you have a lot of respect for both aggro and midrange decks without many holes to exploit. Plus, who doesn’t like reanimating seven drops?
Tips and Tricks
- Although tempting, you don’t always have to activate Liliana of the Veil every turn if you think your cards have more equity than your opponents.
- You can loot more aggressively if you have Sheoldred, the Apocalypse out as the two life is extremely relevant.
- Against the midrange decks, blitzing Workshop Warchief can be a very powerful play. Furthermore, if you need a reanimator target, a blitzed Warchief is a great option. It’s very common to play The Cruelty of Gix on chapter one, tutoring for Warchief to blitz, then getting it back.
- You’ll pretty much always want the Rhino off of Titan of Industry, but the other three options I use rather evenly.
- Be mindful when you’re putting Titan of Industry into your graveyard as there’s a lot of Graveyard Trespasser running around still. Try to get it on your graveyard as late as possible to maximize the odds of you reanimating it.
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DoggertQBones
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