Jund 'Em Out with Xira Arien

Jund is one of my favorite color combinations to play with. It allows you to use powerful destruction spells in black, fast burn spells in red, and resiliant creatures or ramp spells in green. Multicolored spells that fall into this color combination are some of the best and most loved in Magic. The spells available to the Tiny Leaders brew master in these colors are no exception.

(Concept by Graham, but actually made phenomenally badass by Mackenzie Shubert. © 2015 LoadingReadyRun Store. All Rights Reserved.)

I present to you:

Xira Arien Junds 'Em Out

Leader of Choice:

Xira Arien

The Deck List​

Creature (13)​

• 1x Birds of Paradise

• 1x Bloodhall Ooze

• 1x Courser of Kruphix

• 1x Dark Confidant

• 1x Deathrite Shaman

• 1x Eternal Witness

• 1x Guul Draz Assassin

• 1x Predator Ooze

• 1x Reclamation Sage

• 1x Scavenging Ooze

• 1x Sprouting Thrinax

• 1x Troll Ascetic

• 1x Vampire Nighthawk

Instant (6)

• 1x Abrupt Decay

• 1x Kolaghan's Command

• 1x Lightning Bolt

• 1x Magma Jet

• 1x Smother

• 1x Terminate

Planeswalker (2)

• 1x Domri Rade

• 1x Liliana of the Veil

Land (18)

• 1x Blackcleave Cliffs

• 1x Blood Crypt

• 1x Bloodstained Mire

• 1x Command Tower

• 3x Forest

• 1x Overgrown Tomb

• 1x Raging Ravine

• 1x Stomping Ground

• 4x Swamp

• 1x Twilight Mire

• 1x Verdant Catacombs

• 1x Wooded Foothills

• 1x Woodland Cemetery

Sorcery (6)

• 1x Bonfire of the Damned

• 1x Green Sun's Zenith

• 1x Hymn to Tourach

• 1x Inquisition of Kozilek

• 1x Maelstrom Pulse

• 1x Thoughtseize

Artifact (1)

• 1x Swiftfoot Boots​

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Bitterblossom

• 1x Song of the Dryads

• 1x Sylvan Library

Sideboard (10)

• 1x Ancient Grudge

• 1x Dismember

• 1x Drown in Sorrow

• 1x Engineered Plague

• 1x Gaea's Blessing

• 1x Glaring Spotlight

• 1x Pithing Needle

• 1x Pyroblast

• 1x Rakdos's Return

• 1x Sirocco

​In Tiny Leaders, only a few outlier decks run under ten creatures. That means the remaining decks are chalk full of targets for us to kill. Xira Arien Junds Em' Out is a resiliant tempo/control/mid-range deck set to destroy every living thing in its path. Xira Arien may not look like much at first glance but the spells she gives you access to, combined with her card draw and evasion, will make you a fan soon enough.

Here's the Tappedout list for easy reference:

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/29-07-15-xira-arien-junds-em-out/

Early Game

Most of your deck is geared for later in the game, but you do have powerful T1 spells to keep your opponent from fulfilling their plans too early. Ideal opening hands usually have one or more of the following: Thoughtsieze, Inquisition of Kozilek, Hymn to Tourach, Smother, Terminate, and/or Abrupt Decay. These spells help to stave off death in the early game by disrupting your opponent's hand or by removing their threats. Deathrite Shamman, Guul Draz Assassin and Bloodhall Ooze are decent creatures to open with and will scare the enemy into casting their removal to clear them from the battlefield. Don't worry! Let them waste their ammo early. If these creatures do manage to stick around long enough to have impact on the game, then you'll be "winning more," as they say.

Mid Game

Your early discard spells and arsenal of removal in the early game should have set you up for a fairly easy mid game. You'll want to start casting creatures like Sprouting Thrinax, which replaces itself with tokens that are useful for blocking, and Scavenging Ooze, which can gain you some life while it grows into a larger threat. As you are doing this, your goal should be to grab up as many answers as possible. You acheive this by having your filter/draw engine up and running smoothly by the mid game. The key cards to build this engine are as follows: Dark Confidant, Sylvan Library, Domri Rade, and Courser of Kruphix. Get two to three pieces of this engine running and you'll be able to filter out unnecessary cards and continue to draw only the best cards to suit your current game state. This will push you into a "grindy" and slow play speed. It's best to have lots of testing done before you take this to FNM so you don't have to "go to turns" in every match. Once you master the engine, know what is important, and know how to effectively filter into it, you will become a strong force in your local meta.

Late Game

In the late stages of the game, you should be runngin down your opponent's life total. Creatures like Predator Ooze, which can't easily be removed or dealt with, and Troll Ascetic, which is extremly resilient, have been tutored up with Green Sun's Zenith and have caused major upsets for the other player. Well-placed removal throughout the game has cleared most of the threats. You've likey used Song of Dryads to completely shut off a combo piece or a Leader that the opponent was counting on. Maelstrom Pulse is keeping things dead and Kolaghan's Command has provided extreme versatility when you needed it most, pulling creatures back from the grave or possibly even getting that last needed two life from the opponent. You might be feeling the sting from Dark Confidant and Bitter Blossom, but hopefully Vampire Nighthawk has gained you some life while keeping the skies clear. If all is well, game one is yours.

Sideboarding and Game Two/Three

Remember that the sideboard is a tool that should be finely tuned to your own meta. Everything here reflects what I've experienced in the format locally. That being said...

My sideboard is still being tuned but it has a lot of answers for what's out there right now. Ancient Grudge is a classic artifact hate spell that comes in against anyone wielding one or more swords of x/y. Often they board in multiples for game two because of the tri-color deck I'm running. Dismember helps with pesky indestructible creatures. Drown in Sorrow clears strategies that hope to go wide. Engineered Plague is great for Goblins, Elves, Humans, and Zombies if you ever come across any. Gaea's Blessing saves you against the mill decks that are popping up now that the basic framework for the list has been standardized. Pyroblast is everyone's favorite blue hate but I've found that another sleeper card is Sirocco. Not only does it have the likeness of LeVar Burton in the artwork, but you can seriously cripple any creatureless/creature-lite blue deck that has tapped out and then passed you the turn. Rakdos's Return is a spot I will upgrade at some point but for now it comes in against control and other midrange decks in hopes to cause damage and hand destruction in the late game. Pithing Needle is a catch-all for the majority of the Leaders in the format. I recomend that Pithing Needle be in every sideboard. Glaring Spotlight helps in the ever persistant Geist of Saint Traft match up.

Considerations

There are so many possibilities in this color combination. I've seen everything from Swarmyard Tribal variants to Land Destruction to pure "Spike". You should see what you have and try to find interesting and new variations. Don't afraid to use different things you haven't seen them in a list yet. Experiment and, above all else, have fun!

#MagicTheGAthering #MTG #TinyLeaders #DeckTech