Jund Creativity Primer

Introduction

Hello, since I’m a creativity player and alemilan19 posted a primer in his twitter I made this blog post in order to create another way to display the information he put together and write additional information. Give all the credits to alemilan19.

The post is here.

Why creativity?

Without Cascade decks in the mix, FoN is at a historical minimum in terms of playability: a great time to dust off a combo deck! Creativity is a very good one, because it goes over the top with its unfair plan, but it’s also capable of playing a longer, fair-ish game, where you force your opponent to respect your plan and grind them out. This is especially important postboard, when the games become slower and more interactive. Because of that, you naturally prey on slow reactive decks like UW and 4c Omnath. Being fairly good in topdeck mode, Creativity also has a solid mu vs discard based strategies like Scam and tempo decks like Murktide. Against big mana strategies you’re behind in G1s, but postboard you get Terastodon and PyP and the mu takes a huge turn: overall, I’d say you’re favored vs Tron and 50/50 vs Amulet. Aggro decks are not your best pairing: Domain Zoo is very close and it all comes down on how good is their sideboard; Prowess is a complete disaster.

Why jund?

I like the Jund version more than the 5c one for a bunch of reasons:

• Your manabase is miles better than theirs. You can safely cast your spell on curve and you can fetch for surveil lands without color concerns. Surveil lands are amazing for this strategy, because they help you sculpt your hand and find the right piece at the right time, and they can also end up being literally an Entomb, enabling broken starts.
• I like having two plans for cheating Archon, because relying too hard on Creativity ends up being too slow/fragile in many matchups, and the reanimate plan can steal a lot of G1s. This version isn’t unhappy to draw Archon: it has less dead draws and it’s actively better at filtering. Bitter Reunion might seem a bit over costed for this format, but giving the Archon haste came clutch in a lot of situation during the tournament, and it’s especially good against Grist, the Hunger Tide and in the mirror. Because of your fast starts, you’re better in an open metagame like the one I was expecting in Bologna, and games are easier to navigate.
• People ends up sideboarding a lot versus you, because they need to cover both plans. This makes their decks less consistent more prone to dead/situational draws, while you can easily filter the bad part of your deck with Fable/Bitter.
• Your interaction is fine anyway: you’re giving up on Binding, Pierce, Reprieve, and Prismatic Ending, but I don’t think that’s a huge deal. Sure, Leyline Binding is an amazing card, but it’s not particularly good in this meta because of opposing Bindings, Boseijus and Pick Your Poison. I think Spell Pierce sucks at the moment and I strongly prefer Thoughtseize, even though it’s a bit more taxing in terms of life total; Reprieve is fine but not good as it used to be in the Cascade meta. I’m not a fan of counterspells in the archetipe, because Creativity wants to tap out a lot, especially in game 1s, so I prefer a more proactive/flexible approach. Pick Your Poison is an amazing sideboard card: it helps you cover a lot of angles the Jund version struggled with in the past, and makes Binding/Ending less necessary.

Mulligan Strategy

In general, your deck is fairly consistent and mulligans well, so don’t be afraid to ship back hands that seem prone to flooding or that seem too slow. In the blind, I tend to keep most functional hands with a turn 1/2 play and a reasonable development. With surveil lands in the equation, I’m more prone to keep 1-landers with a fetch and a Wrenn otd.

If I know my opponent is on an unfair strategy like Amulet, Goryo, or Tron, I mull every 7 and 6 that doesn’t contain a way to reanimate a fast Archon or Creativity+Thoughtseize. Against Prowess I want at least 1 removal in my opening 7, unless I have a turn 3 Archon; same for Zoo, except that otp a Wrenn and a Creativity is also decent. Against Coffers I’m not as aggressive as I am against other big mana, since they are more interactive and slower at assembling their “combo”. Wrenn and Fable are much better vs them.

WEAKNESSES

Creativity is a powerful deck, but, like every other strategy, it has flaws. Keep them in mind if you want to pick up the deck, or you want to beat it!

Sometimes, you just draw the wrong part of your deck and die doing nothing: you end up with a bunch of Persist without an Archon in your graveyard, or you get flooded with Creativities, or you don’t find a payoff. Scenarios like these are not very likely, and in my experience they’re often due to sloppy keeps, but you have to bear in mind that, being a combo deck, you have a failure rate. There are a bunch of popular sideboard card that are very good versus you. Blood Moon can shut down your plan completely, and you have very few ways to deal with it (mostly Thoughtseize).

Luckily Fable of the Mirror Breaker exist, and it’s a great way to punish it and get ahead. Surgical Extraction is a nightmare, because it’s so cheap that you can’t really play around it, unless you’re super far ahead. In some spots, postboard, it makes sense to keep your Archon rotting in hand not to expose them to Surgical, but 90% of the times you just bin them aggressively and hope they don’t have it. Orvar is a tough one to beat, but it’s not very popular right now. Other pieces of hate, although annoying, are easier to navigate through: you can beat Counterspells setting up Seize+Creativity or just being redundant, Explosives can be ignored relying on the Persist plan, and grave hate is manageable because you have Creativity. Elesh Norn, Mother of the Machines is annoying, but you can get rid of her targeting her with your Creativity alongside the Dwarves.

Tips and tricks

• Even though you’re favourite against almost every strategy that includes it, The One Ring is a very annoying card to face. Keep in mind that its trigger counters Archon’s ability for a turn: most of the times, after it resolves, it makes little sense to go for it on the following turn, since you’re basically presenting a Colossal Dreadmaw with a fancy attack trigger, giving your opponent a full turn to deal with it. I’d rather wait and set up a bigger Creativity later in the game.

• Surgical is very good versus you, but you can counter it with your own Surgical, or a Turn to Earth, or a Cling to Dust (if you play it).

• Thoughtseize has a secret mode: remember that you can target yourself to discard an Archon, if you plan to cast a turbo-Persist.

• Bitter Reunion is a tricky one. If you have Archon in hand, discarding it is kinda free; if you don’t, and you have a reasonable development, it’s better to hold it and wait to draw Archon, in order to have a way to enable the Persist plan. I’d rather fetch a surveil land than cast it on turn 2 without a purpose.

• You end up hard casting Archon quite a bit, especially if you have an uncontested Wrenn/Fable. Don’t discard it by default in the midgame.

SB map

These are my sideboard plans. Keep in mind that they’re flexible: adapting to a specific sideboard strategy from opponent is key. For example, if you see they don’t respect your GY at all in the MUS where you’re supposed to take out some Persist, just keep them in; if you see they overload with grave-hate, take out the full 4 and an Archon.

Caption:

• otd: on the draw
• otp: on the play
• pyp: pick your poison

Conclusion

To wrap things up: I don’t think Creativity is broken or anything, and this version is fairly easy to target. On the other hand, the deck is very consistent and capable of winning out of nowhere. I think it’ll remain a tier 1,5 going forward, unless people start overloading with Surgicals and Orvar.

Thanks for reading and see you in Naples! -alemilan 19