Windgrace

Intro

I am an old player of MTG, but I've only started playing casual EDH back in 2014 -- about 30% of my MTG years. And then I could never go back into playing quick 60-cards formats, as interactions always happen in a much smaller scale and predictible way. This deck is based on the 2018 precon list (which to be fair I changed straight out of the box -- I don't think WotC knew how to balance precon lists the way they do now).

Power Level

I don't know cEDH at all and all my playgroups through my entire EDH life have been casual, so you tell me.

Theme

While I am a red person all the way and Jund is centered around that in terms of color pie, the theme here is lands and because of that it is nearly impossible to build this list not in a predominantly green. And, of course, Jund makes it all about sacrificing, so it's graveyard-based lands.

Money Cap

Because of the theme, it has the potential to be very expensive, as this is on average (of rares/mythic rares) the most expensive type of permanent in the game. Not only the land cards, but effects that put lands into play very efficiently tend to also come in expensive cards. I've always played casual, so sticked to this deck to buy cards over the years until it eventually sits in most of the expected things in its pool.

Pace

This is a slow deck. You are not winning by exploding before everyone else, but rather by recovering quicker from board wipes and cementing your advantage. There is some control, but you do boarding better than cracking. Like I said, green rather than red. If left unchecked, you may populate the table with a very respectable speed, and your creatures are diverse. So there are enough resources to hold your back while keeping enough threat until a couple of wipes later. That's when you start to shine in a lot of cases, but it may be earlier with a bit of luck.

Strenghts

1. Ramp

Goes without saying this is the first thing it should do well. I don't think it would make any sense to run a Windgrace with fewer than 40 lands, so you will likely have a lot of lands in your opening hand, you need to put them into the battlefield or graveyard quickly. Your commander is also engine-based: you won't win with it only, but it's an insane boost that gets you going almost by itself. Landfalling is central mechanics whenever possible, and you only need your commander and two discarded fetch lands to achieve 4~5 triggers a turn. Any of the usual goodies (Azusa, Lost but Seeking, Oracle of Mul Daya, Crucible of Worlds, Ancient Greenwarden...) increases this number very quickly.

2. Card Advantage

The most reliable way to throw lands in your graveyard is hands-down with your commander, as you get two cards and improve his survivability each time you do it. As the deck is well able to play with the graveyard, in many situations you will also count cards in there, so any milling (Valakut Exploration, Deadbridge Chant) or entombing (Buried Alive, Realms Uncharted) effect is very effective to give you more resources. In fact, after a dredging card hits the graveyard or beasts like Underrealm Lich / the Gitrog Monster get going, you will reach a graveyard critical mass quickly.

3. Recover

While the commander has built-in land recover, the deck ideally plays a lot of creatures so it packs reanimation effects too. You will mill your own spells every now and then, so Eternal Witness is a must. I am usually satisfied with Charnelhoard Wurm, but I know many people find it clumsy. Retracing spells also are so good Windgrace should have tatooed them, so WotC is very careful to not print many cards with it (I am still saving money for a Wrenn and Six).

4. Board

All of the above means you have mana to do whatever you want to (long turns), but you also pack enough creatures to deal with aggroballers. And it's a Jund, you don't waste time crying because they died but rather reanimate/throw in the next batch. So loads of disposable tokens (Field of the Dead, Worm Harvest, Nesting Dragon, Omatnh, Locus of Rage, TItania, Protector of Argoth), unexpected value (Dragonmaster Outcast is surprisingly good to draw resources against and save more important engine pieces -- or else Sylvan Safekeeper shields them) or big legendaries (Darigaaz Reincarnated) always keep you in the game.

5. Removals

Like you will see soon, you deal with weaknesses mostly by cracking permanents, so the deck needs to be reliable on this. Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire is the ideal combination of fun and utility. This is not a control deck and it benefits from assessing my opponents' resources to save mine, so sometimes you may also trust your own ability to outpopulate the board instead of shrinking it -- and save your removals to the actually complicated problems. This makes the deck very strong against control decks (aside from graveyard clearing, which brings us to the next section).

Weaknesses

1. Graveyard Clearing/Hate

Bojuka Bog is a very scary land. Ask any Meren player. When playing against milling decks, it's all about opressing them with your extended graveyard before they are able to exile it. Otherwise, you may be permanently paralyzed and ask for the next game. While general graveyard-hate effects halt your triggers pretty badly, you may still be able to handle them if it only takes one permanent removal. I guess a Tomik, Distinguished Advokist EDH deck would be pretty tricky too, but then again I never ran into one!

2. Lifegain

For a slow deck, you don't really gain any life and this makes it harder to sustain too much pressure. Really, the only thing I put there is Retreat to Hagra -- but it's not that great of a card. Having it on by turn 3 will make you look like you're ahead in the game, but it doesn't come any close to compare to the actual stuff, white decks or green/black lifegaining staples. The workaround is damage prevention -- Glacial Chasm and Constant Mists are reliable bounces --, but steady life loss is much trickier to revert.

3. Planeswalker Commander

This is a bit of a nuanced weakness. As far as planeswalkers go, Windgrace is a solid one -- up to 7 counters in the first turn and it's not cracking any permanents aside from its ultimate (that you will very rarely use, unless of Evolution Sage), so people usually see it as a manageable threat. But this is still the worst type of permanent to protect against single removals, and you don't counter spells. Having a good graveyard and table already set up helps you a lot in reducing this setback, and it's easy to play him again on your next turn as you don't have mana problems. But without him, your pace is visibly affected.

Winning

One thing that pisses me off a lot about EDH players is how they think winning is about having few cards that win. No, winning is mainly about bringing your opponents' life to 0. That can (and should) be done by beating them down with nice creatures. This is a reality here for a slow and populating deck, but of course you can also count on reliable cards to do so to.

1. Marit Lage

Any land-tutoring effect (Scapeshift, Elvish Reclaimer) will let you pull Dark Depths + Thespian's Stage -- that's the bread and butter to win. Once these lands are anywhere in your hand/battlefield/graveyard, either your opponents exile it or it's easy to bounce them back and make another token (in the weird opportunities you need to).

2. Landfallers

Moraug, Fury of Akoum in a late game may give you just enough combats and channel your board to kill, say, at least one and a half opponents by the time it hits the table. While Ob Nixilis, the Fallen won't make you kill a healthy player in a single-turn, it may be a matter of two or three. In the case of someone with less then half starting life, it definitely can be a single turn. All up to how many triggers you're managing.

3. Pure Beatdown

Like I said before, simply punching your opponents with consistent blows is more than enough in a lot of situations. Avenger of Zendikar after a board wipe is a tyrant. Then there are many other options, ranging from numerous chunky tokens (Omnath, Locus of Rage, Rampaging Baloths, Titania, Protector of Argoth) to scaling towers (Multani, Yavimaya's Avatar, Centaur Vinecrasher, Crash of Rhino Beetles). One element of surprise here is Anger in the middle of your graveyard pile -- I've seen many people thinking they would have one turn more to deal with my reanimated beast and learning it's not the case in the worst way.

4. Fireball

Last but not least, Kessig Wolf Run in a lands deck constantly catches many players off guard. You also shouldn't underestimate Jaya's Immolating Inferno, Flameblast Dragon or even Lavalanche in a post-wipe wasteland.

Fun

I don't usually have much fun with this deck when the playgroup is more casual and has less money in cards, but it only takes one Spike playing Sultai or sub-combinations to turn that around. I think this deck is the funniest against people who do hard instant controlling at the beginning in the hopes of just about managing their wincon combo, because Windgrace keeps them in check by surviving and constantly threatening. Full Stax decks are a slightly different story -- who likes playing against that, really? In those cases, it's more fun to team up with other people sharing your hatred, and you're likely to outboard them by the time the Azorius player died, so always worth it too. I personally like losing to aggro decks, as they are formidable matchups generally leading to balanced and unpredictable games.