Jund Fling Mastery: Farming Packs & Gems in MTG

Farming Packs and Gems with Jund Fling

Maximize your MTG rewards with a deep dive into Jund Fling strategies. Learn how to efficiently farm packs and gems while enjoying competitive play.

Playing Jund is usually a fun time no matter what archetype it is. Whether it's using silly combos, cheating out some dragons/dinosaurs, or just simply flinging creatures in the face of our opponent, it's hard to have a bad time. In this week's deck, we will be trying to fling some creatures in the face of our opponents, but we will also be using a new card from Murders at Karlov Manor that has kind of flown under the radar, and almost acts as a standard version of The Great Henge.

I personally believe that the deck and archetype are better suited for best-of-one due to its "gotcha" type of win condition. I also decided to try something different this time to see if we could use it to generate some resources in a Standard Bo1 Event.

MKM Cards Used in the Deck

Magic the Gathering Card - The Skullspore Nexus - MTG Circle

We use the Nexus in this deck for the exact reason that one would think, to double the power of a creature whose power is already pretty high. We have a few three mana creatures with six power and we are able to double that, and hopefully even fling it after attacking. The six power is particularly helpful in this scenario, because it also reduces the cost of the Nexus and allows us to cast it for two green mana. It allows us to get crazy value out of our creatures, and the triggered ability from our new artifact doesn't sound so bad either.

Magic the Gathering Card - Deadly Cover-Up - MTG Circle

You may have seen my appreciation for this new boardwipe previously, and if you haven't, there's another cool article recently published on MTG Circle about the new mono black deck to play in Standard where I discuss it more. Aside from that, we use it in case things get too out of control in our matchup. What's nice about it is that we do include Archfiend of the Dross in our deck, so if we do cast the board wipe while that card is out, we are able to generate some additional life loss from our opponent, and possibly use it as a finisher.

The One Trick Pony

Okay, you've seen which new cards I've included in this deck, and you can see the potential, so now what will we use to properly combo off against our opponents and pull off the sought -after one turn kill? First we will get our two large creatures on the board. We can either use Shakedown Heavy, or Pugnacious Hammerskull. While we do have other creatures that can get big enough to help us pull off our combo, these are the two options that will help us get there in the quickest and most efficient manner. The final piece to all of it after we get one of the creatures out and can connect with it for damage while having its power doubled with Nexus is Callous Sell-Sword. While the creature part of this adventure card isn't too bad either, we are particularly looking for the adventure spell that it has: Burn Together. This will allow us to use a one mana finisher post-combat to connect for twenty or more damage. Ideally, we can pull this off by turn four or turn five.

Mana Base Restrictions

We have a lot of demanding mana costs in the spells we are casting, and we want to have things properly set up for turn two and turn three to ensure that our combo is not delayed. This required running almost exclusively fast lands that won't enter the battlefield tapped as long as there are three lands or less on the board for us. We do use two Ziatora's Proving Ground, but those can be dropped on turn one at no penalty, and can be cycled to draw another card later in the game if need be. I opted to use little to none of the lands that require three or more on the battlefield to come in untapped, because it could interfere with sequencing. Due to this restriction, we also must rely pretty heavily on pain lands. Since we are looking for a quick win when our deck is working properly, we don't mind using our life total as a resource with pain lands.

Reasoning for Testing in Standard Events

A lot of the time, I might test decks on the ladder, but this time I wanted to take something unique into a Standard Bo1 Event to see how things play out. It never hurts to try this when a new set comes out, because there are always more packs to be opened, and more wildcards and gems to be acquired. I have personally been using this method for close to a year now, and I haven't had to buy packs within that time frame either. Usually you can use the gold that you acquire from completing daily quests to enter, and provided the win rate is over fifty percent, you can begin to farm. You will get gems and packs in return for this. Even if you are getting cards that you think you might not need, opening the packs still works toward your wildcard count. We all know that hitting mythic is the major monthly milestone in MTG Arena, but playing the events and even drafting can often provide great value in resources. If you do well enough, you can even earn play -in points from these constructed events, and that can get you entries into the events that a high-ranking ladder finish in a given season would yield anyhow. Not only do you get enough points for entry, but you earned way more packs and gems in doing so. There is value in putting time and effort into both sides of it during a given season, but at some point, the benefits of playing on ladder can plateau, while the rewards for doing well in events are constant.

Anyhow, enough of my banter on how I believe one should play the game. It's time to go out there and see how much damage we can do to our opponents' face.

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I am a Magic The Gathering competitive player, and streamer. I specialize in homebrew decks. My favorite formats are: Standard, Pioneer (Explorer on Arena), and EDH. I first started playing MTG in 2001, and have played on and off since then.

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Explore the new Aetherdrift mechanics in Magic: The Gathering, rated for Limited and Constructed play. Discover which mechanics excel in Standard format.

Examining the Aetherdrift Mechanics, and Rating them for Limited or Constructed

Every time a new set comes out, there always seems to be a mechanic we are excited for, but maybe it doesn't pan out to be as powerful as we thought. Sometimes we think it will be good in constructed, and it ends up only being good in draft. There are other times when it is a sleeper, and we may have overlooked it when we were predicting what might be good. When we examine set design, sometimes we can also see the clear intent for the mechanics to be good in both the limited and constructed environments, and there are cards with power levels for each different environment. One might be watered down a bit to be more limited-friendly, and another might be that overpowered card that you need to be a bomb in constructed. There are a few ways to go about it, and we do what we can to identify which mechanics we should be mindful of in constructed, particularly in Standard, where the new cards affect the format more than other constructed formats. What we will do today is look at the mechanics that are prevalent with the new cards. There are some that are familiar mechanics, and I will still go over those. There are a couple of new ones that I think are quite interesting, and I have opinions on. Let's check out these mechanics, and give them some ratings! Exhaust You guys can tell that I am pretty excited about this one. The deck that I made for exhaust seems like it will run pretty smoothly. I believe that Exhaust is a mechanic that has cards that are intended for limited, and cards that are intended for constructed, and that the mechanic will be useful in both environments. One of the reasons that I believe it can be so good in draft is that you can almost consider the ability to act as another card later on in the game. You could have no cards in hand, but if you have two exhaust creatures, it is almost like you have two cards in hand that can make something happen. I'm excited for the mechanic, and I'm excited to draft the set and see if I can get a good bit of Exhaust cards going. I think it will be relevant in constructed because of the crazy value that you can get from some of the rares, and because there is one that allows for graveyard recursion.

Zombies are Coming back from the Dead with Aetherdrift

Whenever I see the word "Zombie" in a new set, I always like to revisit the archetype a bit in order to see if anything could be good. I decided to raise these zombies from the dead due to some cards that I saw from Aetherdrift, and I thought that we could at least make a deck that is fun, and who knows, it may be competitive too. We have received decent support lately with cards like Gisa, The Hellraiser. Although she isn't a zombie herself, she creates them every turn, and acts as a lord for them. Not to mention, the ward cost on her makes it so that she adequately fills out the top end of our list. She will help us immensely with swarming the board with skeletons, and efficiently rebuilding after board wipes. There are also going to be some ways to play our zombies from the graveyard, whether it be re-casting or embalming. Since we have the opportunity to raise our dead, we have to give it a shot. There is too much flavor that entices me. This will be my mono black list for the new set, as I think this is the best mono black deck to showcase as many new cards as possible. Any other mono black deck would likely just be adding one or two cards into an already good mono black deck, so I wanted to give you as much as I can with the new cards showcase. Without further ado, let's check out the deck! As you can see, we have plenty of lords in the deck. We are going to make these vanilla zombies huge, both to use as infinite blockers, and to have a threatening attack. We also brought back Unstoppable Slasher for some extra fun, and to guarantee that we have alternate win conditions when needed. In typical zombie fashion, we also don't mind getting rid of some of our creatures if it produces extra value for us. We can get rid of one of our zombies to deal with any problematic creature with Final Vengeance. I chose this over Eaten Alive because it allows us to sacrifice enchantments too, and there are some useful enchantments that support our zombies, so that could prove useful too. There are new cards in the deck, so let's take a look at those. Aetherdrift Zombie Support Cards

This Deck is Sure to be EXHAUSTING to Play Against

Gruul is an archetype that is usually reserved for the aggro decks in Standard. I'm sure that you guys have had enough of that, so I will spare you another Gruul Aggro list that you only play because the deck is good. We are trying something new with this one, and we are taking advantage of the Exhaust mechanic from the new set. It is something that remains to be seen if it is a constructed-playable mechanic, or something that is better suited for limited. I believe that I am pushing the limits of its capabilities here, and that we can do some pretty cool stuff with the deck. One thing that I am excited about is that the deck features a TON of new cards. It will be really difficult for anyone in Early Access to say that this deck didn't showcase any new cards - the creatures and vehicles are almost all exclusively new! We are looking to reduce the activated costs of abilities within the deck, and then get crazy value from it that overwhelms the board. If we play our cards right, we can do some activated abilities for next to nothing, and gain a strong advantage from it. We can possibly also have a Fireball finish if we play our cards right. This deck does a little bit of everything, and I am excited to try it out. Allow me to present to you: Gruul Exhaust! There are some staple cards that we include when we have activated abilities of creatures. One card that forces its way into the deck is Agatha's Soul Cauldron. It is too powerful not to include. We have a couple of ways to mill our cards, and the meta is pretty removal-heavy. We should have enough ways to get things into our graveyard, and if we don't we simply add one or two more Hedge Shredders to mill more cards. With the Exhaust ability, you sadly can only activate it once, BUT we are going to put multiple instances of said abilities on one creature, thus making it much more palatable. We also will reduce the cost of all exhaust abilities with one of the new cards to be shown later, and with Agatha of the Vile Cauldron. I was surprised to see this card - I did not know that it came out with the Soul Cauldron itself. We have seen the Cauldron so much, but we haven't seen a ton of the actual Agatha Creature. The deck has a few removal spells, but some of our vehicles also have a way to do direct damage, so we don't need to include as many as we normally would. We kept it pretty simple on the lands due to the demanding mana values in some of our cards, and because the deck is a little faster. There are multiple cards that have two pips of each of the colors represented, so we do not want to stall when it comes to having the right mana. Although I have a bunch of new cards from the set in this deck, I will showcase to you five of the ones I think are the most impactful. Relevant New Cards

These Aetherdrift Aristocrats are Racing to Victory!

We are coming to the end of spoiler season, and we are ramping up for early access for Aetherdrift. Almost all of the cards have been revealed, so Magic players are dashing to find the new deck that will work for them. This is an exciting time for creators as well, because it is our chance to make predictions on what the most impactful cards will be. We can straight up make a prediction, we can come out with a top 5 or 10, or we can theory craft new decks. I'm going to be dropping a few decks over the next couple of days that I think will be really fun to play in Standard, and that I will be playing in early access for Aetherdrift! Here is a look at the first deck I made that is an Orzhov Sacrifice Combo Deck! This new Orzhov Creation looks to take advantage of a lot of low-mana high-value creatures. We have multiple different sacrifice outlets, and a couple of different ways to interact with our graveyard. Most of the creatures are two mana value or lower, so we can even use a card from Foundations to bring them all back at once! We will draw a ton of cards, drain our opponent's life total, and have tons of blockers for the various aggro decks that we may come across. We can even punish the opponent for killing our creatures. The deck also features 23 lands due to the fact that our curve is pretty low, and we can operate pretty well with two or three mana. You might be wondering: "OK, so what is actually new about the deck?" We are looking to take advantage of the Start Your Engines mechanic that has been brought to us in this set. If you are unfamiliar with how that works, you can read my most recent article for a deep dive! For now, let's take a look at some relevant new cards from the set! Relevant New Cards

This New Mechanic in Aetherdrift WILL Have BIG Implications!

Aetherdrift is upon us, and everyone is ready for a refresh to the current Standard format. It's not particularly bad, but it could use a bit of a shake up. Foundations beefed up some of the archetypes that were already good, and it did so to the point that it is impossible to play a few matches in the format without seeing some type of Dimir. There are so many good different artchetypes of it currently that it is difficult to decide against playing it. Aetherdrift is bringing us a ton of vehicles, and it appears that this card type will force it's way into relevancy in the format. These new vehicles are announcing themselves with a little bit of flavor, however. There is a new mechanic that is coming to MTG that is called Start Your Engines. Initially, this mechanic didn't stand out to me too much. I had to take a bit of a deep dive into how it worked, and how to get to what is called "Max Speed" before I realized that we can do some broken stuff with this. Before I did my research, I went from thinking that it would be a draft-only mechanic, to thinking this might be the most powerful mechanic in the entire set. Let's take a look at how exactly Start Your Engines works, and then we will look over some examples of cards in Standard that should allow it to be ridiculous in all of the best ways. How Does Start Your Engines Work? This is an interesting one, and it fits in perfectly with the flavor of the set. We will have the Start Your Engines mechanic on a few of the cards, and it's ability instantly starts when the permanent enters the battlefield. If it is the FIRST Start Your Engines card played, it will instantly give you a Speed of 1. This is something that automatically happens as the permanent enters, and it is not a trigger that can be stifled, or fizzled by removing the permanent giving the Speed. Now, what I initially thought for this mechanic was that you got more speed by playing cards that had the Start Your Engines ability, but that isn't how it works, and I'm glad it's not that way. So how do we gain speed? In order to increase our speed past 1, we will have a trigger of an increase in speed once per our turn when an opponent loses life. What is pretty fun about this is that we do not need the permanent to stay on the board in order for the speed to increase. This means that the mechanic is comparable to The Ring Temps You from LOTR.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Recapping MTG in 2024

2024 was a huge year for MTG. It was a lot of things. Controversial, exciting, frustrating, promising, and refreshed. We saw some formats get ruined, then fixed, then ruined again. We saw some great changes to Standard that not everyone was fans of at first, but they seemed to quickly warm up to them. We saw Wizards effectively abandon a format in favor of propelling Standard into a more prominent position. We saw some great cards printed for Standard, and some promising things to come in the next year that were announced. Along with that, a fair amount of people were still bothered by the new trajectory of the format. Some are calling into question the longevity of MTG now with the heavy lean into Universes Beyond. A little bit of everything happened this year in the MTG world, and it was interesting if nothing else. On a personal level, it was also a hell of a year for me, as I took down two different events and grew a lot as a player. We are going to look at The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly from this year! The Good I have to admit, I'm pretty excited that we have an infinite gain and drain combo in Standard right now. With Enduring Tenacity and Bloodthirsty Conqueror having made a lot of my dreams come true in my favorite format. Although the deck isn't the most viable in the format, it is incredibly fun to play, and I'm just happy that we had such exciting cards printed in the format. It leads to good card design going forward, and gives us promise for what's to come in the next year.

Examining the Aetherdrift Mechanics, and Rating them for Limited or Constructed