Much Abrew: Yargle Jund (Modern)
Hello, everyone! Welcome to another episode of Much Abrew About Nothing. A little while ago, we played Yargle in Standard, and it went a lot better than expected. So today, we're taking things up a notch and playing Yargle and Multani in Modern! While it is possible we'll cast a Yargle and Multani and use the 18/6 to beat our opponent down, our primary plan is to manipulate the game into a position where Yargle and Multani is the last card left in our hand, play a Cragganwick Cremator, discard the Yargle, and hit our opponent for a massive 18 damage, which—thanks to all of the fetch lands and shock lands running around in Modern—should win us the game on the spot! Can the plan work? Is Yargle finally Modern playable? Let's get to the video and find out on today's Much Abrew About Nothing!
Just a quick reminder: if you enjoy the Much Abrew About Nothing series and the other video content on MTGGoldfish, make sure to subscribe to the MTGGoldfish YouTube channel to keep up on all the latest and greatest.
Much Abrew: Yargle Jund
Discussion
- Record-wise we finished 3-2 in a Modern league, which is a very Jund-y record. Along the way, we played some really wild games. Every single one of our matches went the full three games, and win or lose, pretty much all of them were super close!
- Our deck's goal is pretty simple: use Traverse the Ulvenwald to find Cragganwick Cremator and Yargle and Multani. Dump the rest of our hand, play Cragganwick Cremator, discard the Yargle and Multani, hit our opponent for 18, and win the game!
- While, in a perfect world, we'll always wait until we are mostly out of cards before going for the combo kill, this isn't always possible in practice. Some of the most exciting moments of Yargle Jund come when we have to play a Cragganwick Cremator with multiple cards in our hand. Since its enters-the-battlefield discard ability is random, we might discard the Yargle and Multani and win the game, but we also might discard a harmless land and deal zero damage. I think we rolled pretty high during our league, both by discarding Yargle and Multani when we needed to and, a couple of times, by top-decking a Yargle and Multani or Cragganwick Cremator at a critical moment.
- As far as the rest of the deck, it's basically a really weird take on Jund with a bunch of different card types to try to turn on Traverse the Ulvenwald. We have Dragon's Rage Channeler to surveil cards into our graveyard, Mishra's Bauble and Haywire Mite as artifacts, Fable of the Mirror-Breaker as an enchantment, Wrenn and Six for planeswalkers, Lightning Bolt as an instant, Thoughtseize as a sorcery, and even a Tarfire to get the little-used tribal card type in our graveyard.
- Along with turning on Traverse the Ulvenwald, these card types also help grow Tarmogoyf. On the MTGGoldfish Podcast, Richard is always talking about how bad Tarmogoyf is in 2023, and I think our league showed that this was mostly true. We had a couple of very fair "Jund" hands with things like Thoughtseize, Lightning Bolt, and a couple of Tarmogoyfs, and these hands didn't even come especially close to winning us the game. They would have been great in 2015 Modern but don't really hold up in 2023. We also had a game where we drew double Tarmogoyfs and grew them up to 6/7s early in the game only to have our opponent play a single Urza's Saga and make two 7/7 Constructs, making our Tarmogoyfs useless. I had always thought Richard was maybe exaggerating the demise of Goyf, but after this league, it seems like he might be telling the truth. It was so bad it might be worth cutting from the deck altogether.
- Overall, I was impressed with the power of the combo itself. Cragganwick Cremator discarding Yargle and Multani is a really good way to win games by surprise. But I wonder if Jund Midrange is the best shell for the combo. In the somewhat distant past, we played a Cragganwick Cremator deck that was more creature focused, looking to use mana dorks to ramp into Cremator and Eldritch Evolution to find it. I wonder if a shell like that, maybe with Fauna Shaman, could be a better way to harness Yargle's power.
- So, should you play Yargle Jund in Modern? Maybe. The deck certainly felt like it could grind out wins based on the combo's power, and we played some absurd games with it. But as we discussed before, there might be an even better home for Yargle and Multani and Cragganwick Cremator. If you like the idea of Jund Midrange but want a combo kill that can pick up free wins, this seems like a pretty hilarious and somewhat effective option, although the deck did feel a bit underpowered and clunky in games where we didn't draw the combo. Basically, I think that the Cremator Yargle combo has a home in Modern, but I'm not 100% sure Jund is the one. If you have some other ideas on how to build around the combo, let me know in the comments, and maybe we'll try another build soon!
Conclusion
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
