Jund Another Bitterblossom Deck, and More Jund Too

Hi! Welcome back to The Brewery, and I hope you enjoy another Brewery exclusive This time, the topic in question is Jund & Bitterblossom.

My attempts to combine Bitterblossom and Jund date back a week or two when @Grant_champion on Twitter lent me some MTGO Jund cards and showed me his list featuring Bitterblossom and Goblin Assault. I thought it was pretty slick. For reference:

Bitterblossom
1B : Tribal Enchantment – Faerie
At the beginning of your upkeep, you lose 1 life and put a 1/1 black Faerie Rogue creature token with flying onto the battlefield.

Typically, Bitterblossom has been the focal point of arguable Top deck UB Faeries. Even though the Faeries deck gets to play some of the format’s most powerful and defining cards (Cryptic Command, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, Mistbind Clique, Spellstutter Sprite, and Vendilion Clique being most notable), it’s undeniable that Bitterblossom is the most important card in the entire 75.

Polymorph aside, why then has Bitterblossom never crossed lines into the other Black decks of the format?

Jundblossom

Enter Jundblosom:

4 Putrid Leech
4 Bitterblossom
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Anathemancer
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Demigod of Revenge

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Blightning
2 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Terminate

2 Forest
2 Swamp
1 Mountain
4 Savage Lands
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Twilight Mire
3 Copperline Gorge
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
4 Raging Ravine
1 Lavaclaw Reaches

The numbers should look very familiar, as most of the deck comes straight from my conclusions in Piecing Jund Together on Quiet Speculation. The “supporting cast” for the deck should remain fairly close to a more typical Jund deck, with Bitterblossom in this case replacing Fauna Shaman and Shriekmaw. The change should be obvious on the surface; swapping one set of 2-drops for another, and when decreasing the overall creature count by adding Bitterblossom, Fauna Shaman itself gets a lot less exciting.

The Maelstrom Pulses are to be partially replaced by Terminate, as Pulse loses value against opposing Bitterblossoms when Bitterblossom is such a huge part of your own gameplan now too. This could perhaps be overstating the dilemma though, and extra Maelstrom Pulses could live in the Sideboard or Maindeck as needed.

The rest of the choices seem rather elementary, and the baseline Jund list should work quite well with the Bitterblossom addition.

Kitchen Finks helps negate the life lost from Bitterblossom, as well as being an exceptional card in almost all non-Combo matchups.

Anathemancer provides extra damage straight to the face, essentially functioning as an evasive threat with haste, and should work very well in conjunction with Bitterblossom’s aggressive tendencies.

Putrid Leech and Bloodbraid Elf are, in my opinion, Jund’s most important cards. There is such a huge correlation between casting Putrid Leech on turn 2 and winning games, especially in certain matchups, and Bloodbraid Elf is extraordinarily powerful in any deck that features it.

Demigod of Revenge rounds out the creature core, as every single top-8 Jund list this season has so far run 4 of the card. Two new lists from Roanoke, Virginia over the last weekend (played by Lauren Lee and Ken Adams, decklists to follow) further confirmed that trend, even as Adams’ decklist in particular ventured from the consensus list in many notable ways.

Jund, played by Lauren Lee, 4th Place PTQ: Nagoya, Roanoke, Virginia, 01-08-2011

3 Anathemancer
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Demigod of Revenge
3 Fauna Shaman
3 Kitchen Finks
4 Putrid Leech
1 Shriekmaw

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Thoughtseize

2 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
3 Copperline Gorge
2 Fire-Lit Thicket
1 Graven Cairns
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
4 Raging Ravine
3 Savage Lands
3 Twilight Mire
2 Verdant Catacombs

Sideboard:
2 Obstinate Baloth
3 Nature’s Claim
1 Terminate
4 Volcanic Fallout
3 Blightning
2 Deathmark

Lee’s decklist is mostly consensus, though there is one glaring difference: Thoughtseize replaces Blightning in the maindeck, and this is a change that I can certainly get behind. In fact, on paper, I love it. Blightning sits in a very strange position in the Jund mana curve, and it can be summed up in a very simple question: On turn 3, if you have no threats on the board, do you cast Blightning or Kitchen Finks? Blightning or Anathemancer? The 3-drop spot on the Jund mana curve is packed, especially when you add Maelstrom Pulse into the mix or, post Sideboard, when you add Great Sable Stag or Volcanic Fallout.

Lauren Lee solved that problem with 4 Thoughtseize instead. Thoughtseize should keep Bitterblossom off the board far better than Blightning ever could, although Faeries is the one matchup in particular that Blightning thrived in, and Thoughtseize does much more to fight most decks in the format than the 1RB Super Sorcery.

In short, I like it. Note too that 3 Blightning reside in the Sideboard here.

If you were to netdeck a Jund list for your next tournament, I would highly recommend looking at this list (as well as my list from Piecing Jund Together) to start with.

Jund, played by Ken Adams, 2nd Place PTQ: Nagoya, Roanoke, Virginia, 01-09-2011

2 Anathemancer
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Boggart Ram-Gang
4 Demigod of Revenge
4 Fauna Shaman
1 Kitchen Finks
1 Master of the Wild Hunt
4 Putrid Leech
1 Shriekmaw
3 Sprouting Thrinax

2 Lightning Bolt
1 Terminate
2 Maelstrom Pulse

1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Swamp
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
3 Copperline Gorge
2 Fire-Lit Thicket
2 Lavaclaw Reaches
4 Raging Ravine
4 Reflecting Pool
3 Savage Lands
3 Twilight Mire

Sideboard:
2 Anathemancer
2 Great Sable Stag
2 Shriekmaw
2 Deglamer
1 Terminate
3 Volcanic Fallout
1 Sarkhan Vol
2 Thoughtseize

Ken Adams leaned on Fauna Shaman to an extreme, playing 4 of the Elf Shaman and an extra suite of creatures to replace even Lightning Bolt. Boggart Ram-Gang makes its first appearance of the season in a Jund top-8 list, as does Zendikar Standard all-star Sprouting Thrinax, and Master of the Wild Hunt shows up as a 1-of as well. I especially like that last point, and I think Master of the Wild Hunt should be showing up in more Sideboards as Naya Shaman decks (and other creature-based strategies) start gaining in popularity. MotWH can take over a board like few other cards in Jund can.

It appears as if Adams made room for Boggart Ram-Gang mostly by cutting Kitchen Finks, a change I’m not sure I agree with. If Path to Exile’s stock rose (likely at Lightning Bolt’s expense), I could see Boggart Ram-Gang being more appealing; however, most decks have to burn through multiple cards to deal with Kitchen Finks, and against an Aggressive deck especially, Finks can be an absolute backbreaker by soaking up so much damage.

All in all, the Jund lists are starting to show more and more coherence, at least as far as creating a “core” of the deck is concerned.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ve all enjoyed the recent focus on Extended Jund! Best of luck at any PTQs or tournaments that you game in, no matter what the deck choice!

Dylan