bro the end of this video made me laugh uncontrollably. "I give this deck a D- pretty much terrible I mean it's not even really playable" they can't all be winners
I **somewhat** understand the concept here, but I think the concessions you're making to try and get there are not worth the cost in deckbuilding or the resulting overall power level. This comment is going to read pretty negative, but trust that I am not just needling you here and am trying to offer some insight on identifying the biggest problems I see. For the record, I haven't watched any of the actual games you've played at the time I'm writing this, so keep that in mind. Tl;dr will be at the end if you'd like the Reader's Digest version of my thoughts. Since you want to be playing all these deserts to try and enable a bunch of what are honestly very mediocre cards, your overall mana base is extremely cumbersome. Without Spelunking being in play, you have eight lands that come into play untapped beyond turn three. That's a really bad place to be when you're trying to jam a bunch of 4-5cmc cards to the board that need to be played on time to be even somewhat relevant. You should never predicate the function of your mana with the idea that another card will help enable it; it needs to stand on its own two legs. Aside from that, your overall card quality is really low so you aren't even getting paid off all that often when you actually get to play your cards on time. Outcaster Greenblade is just a glorified Borderland Ranger, Dance of the Tumbleweeds is hardly ever going to be better than a marginally stronger Lay of the Land, and I don't know what Cactusfolk Sureshot is doing in here as that is not a constructed-level card. Spelunking in a deck with only 24 lands is often going to be 3cmc Amulet of Vigor because there are going to be a lot of games where you don't have a land to put into play with it, making it worth less than a card in those situations. Even if it does hit, what are you ramping towards? A few five drops to possibly play a turn earlier? That doesn't seem worth it to me at all. All of your actual good non-removal cards are only present in one or two copies and there's a giant spread of them, so your consistency is severely lacking. Some games you're going to go something like: 1: Cut Down 2: Bitter Triump 3: Glissa 4: Sheoldred ... and that's going to feel pretty good. More often than not though, your games are going to play out completely disjointed and you're going to have a bunch of conditional removal that may or may not be relevant, a bunch of underpowered cards that don't have a lot of worthwhile synergies, and maybe one of your good top-end cards if you're lucky. And again, that's all with the understanding that your mana is often going to be hamstringing your ability to actual play the things you want to at key points in the game. Lastly, you have a pile of removal and will at times be able to trade card for card for a little while before one of you gasses out. The issue is that aside from Glissa and to a lesser extent Bonehoard Dracosaur, you don't have any way to generate meaningful card advantage to maintain that kind of transactional gameplay. So often, you are going to gas out before your opponent and if their threats are equal to or better than yours (not hard to do in this deck, I'm afraid), they're going to be able to pressure you with whatever their leftovers are. This is a deck that would LOVE to be able to play Insatiable Avarice, but your mana would never allow you to cast it for the Painful Truths mode with any degree of consistency. There's an instant-speed 3cmc draw two, lose two common in black that I can't recall the name of, but I would take a set of those over a lot of the other cards in your deck in a heartbeat. ****Tl;dr: 1. You're sacrificing a LOT to try and make desert power work and the benefits just aren't there. In my mind (and I think most peoples', to be honest), those cards are for limited and that's it. 2. Similar to the above, your mana is atrocious because of what you're trying to do and you're going to lose a lot of games on that basis alone. 3. Card quality and overall consistency is mostly nonexistent, which is about the polar opposite of what you want to be doing in constructed. I believe there is a playable Jund deck to be had in Standard, but not with all these caveats you've imposed on yourself here. That said, there's a difference between a "playable" deck and "good" deck, so the juice could very well not be worth the squeeze no matter what cards you jam together.
Definitely not worth the squeeze. As you mentioned I'm sacrificing speed and efficiency for desert nonsense with little late game payoff. I simply enjoy play testing cards & mechanics to showcase why they are or aren't valid in the current meta. Tysm!
bro the end of this video made me laugh uncontrollably.
"I give this deck a D- pretty much terrible I mean it's not even really playable"
they can't all be winners
Someone's gotta playtest the cards 🤷♂️
I **somewhat** understand the concept here, but I think the concessions you're making to try and get there are not worth the cost in deckbuilding or the resulting overall power level. This comment is going to read pretty negative, but trust that I am not just needling you here and am trying to offer some insight on identifying the biggest problems I see. For the record, I haven't watched any of the actual games you've played at the time I'm writing this, so keep that in mind. Tl;dr will be at the end if you'd like the Reader's Digest version of my thoughts.
Since you want to be playing all these deserts to try and enable a bunch of what are honestly very mediocre cards, your overall mana base is extremely cumbersome. Without Spelunking being in play, you have eight lands that come into play untapped beyond turn three. That's a really bad place to be when you're trying to jam a bunch of 4-5cmc cards to the board that need to be played on time to be even somewhat relevant. You should never predicate the function of your mana with the idea that another card will help enable it; it needs to stand on its own two legs.
Aside from that, your overall card quality is really low so you aren't even getting paid off all that often when you actually get to play your cards on time. Outcaster Greenblade is just a glorified Borderland Ranger, Dance of the Tumbleweeds is hardly ever going to be better than a marginally stronger Lay of the Land, and I don't know what Cactusfolk Sureshot is doing in here as that is not a constructed-level card. Spelunking in a deck with only 24 lands is often going to be 3cmc Amulet of Vigor because there are going to be a lot of games where you don't have a land to put into play with it, making it worth less than a card in those situations. Even if it does hit, what are you ramping towards? A few five drops to possibly play a turn earlier? That doesn't seem worth it to me at all.
All of your actual good non-removal cards are only present in one or two copies and there's a giant spread of them, so your consistency is severely lacking. Some games you're going to go something like:
1: Cut Down
2: Bitter Triump
3: Glissa
4: Sheoldred
... and that's going to feel pretty good. More often than not though, your games are going to play out completely disjointed and you're going to have a bunch of conditional removal that may or may not be relevant, a bunch of underpowered cards that don't have a lot of worthwhile synergies, and maybe one of your good top-end cards if you're lucky. And again, that's all with the understanding that your mana is often going to be hamstringing your ability to actual play the things you want to at key points in the game.
Lastly, you have a pile of removal and will at times be able to trade card for card for a little while before one of you gasses out. The issue is that aside from Glissa and to a lesser extent Bonehoard Dracosaur, you don't have any way to generate meaningful card advantage to maintain that kind of transactional gameplay. So often, you are going to gas out before your opponent and if their threats are equal to or better than yours (not hard to do in this deck, I'm afraid), they're going to be able to pressure you with whatever their leftovers are. This is a deck that would LOVE to be able to play Insatiable Avarice, but your mana would never allow you to cast it for the Painful Truths mode with any degree of consistency. There's an instant-speed 3cmc draw two, lose two common in black that I can't recall the name of, but I would take a set of those over a lot of the other cards in your deck in a heartbeat.
****Tl;dr:
1. You're sacrificing a LOT to try and make desert power work and the benefits just aren't there. In my mind (and I think most peoples', to be honest), those cards are for limited and that's it.
2. Similar to the above, your mana is atrocious because of what you're trying to do and you're going to lose a lot of games on that basis alone.
3. Card quality and overall consistency is mostly nonexistent, which is about the polar opposite of what you want to be doing in constructed.
I believe there is a playable Jund deck to be had in Standard, but not with all these caveats you've imposed on yourself here. That said, there's a difference between a "playable" deck and "good" deck, so the juice could very well not be worth the squeeze no matter what cards you jam together.
Definitely not worth the squeeze. As you mentioned I'm sacrificing speed and efficiency for desert nonsense with little late game payoff. I simply enjoy play testing cards & mechanics to showcase why they are or aren't valid in the current meta. Tysm!
@@officialtoofknbusy Fair enough, if that's the premise then I'd say you were quite successful in framing why these cards are far from such 😅
@@canman87 at the end of the video I explain why the deck can't work in the current meta but I had to cook 🤷♂️
Is the deck really that bad?