Jund in All Formats

By Sam Black

Sam Black is a Platinum Pro Player and longtime writer for StarCityGames.com. He is a respected deck builder and took over Daily Decks for the first half of 2013.

Last time I wrote about Return to Ravnica Block Constructed , I mentioned that the WBR midrange deck was basically that format's Jund.

Well, that's still true, but on March 18, Gui_BR won a Block Constructed Premier Event with Aggro Jund, and now the format has a popular Jund-colored deck in addition to a popular deck that has a Jund-style strategy.

The strategy of this Block deck is nothing new, as both aggressive and midrange Jund strategies have enjoyed success in Standard. This deck shares a lot of cards in common with its Standard ancestor, but it shows that the mana in Block can be pushed in ways it hadn't previously been.

Without the "friend duals" from Innistrad and Magic 2013 , people have avoided three-color aggressive decks in Block Constructed, but in the weaker format, Guildgates might be good enough to support extra colors to earn more powerful spells.

The spells closely mirror the spells in Standard, except that Flinthoof Boar has been replaced by the weaker Gore-House Chainwalker, and Falkenrath Aristocrat has been replaced by Desecration Demon.

Interestingly, this strategy that first succeeded in Standard had already been successfully ported to Modern, so perhaps it's no surprise that it can succeed in the much-weaker Block format, where it gets to keep a surprising number of its cards. This deck is an excellent example of how portable strategies often are between formats these days.

Gui_BR's Block Jund Aggro

Decklist Stats Sample Hand

Creature (30)

4 Burning-Tree Emissary 4 Desecration Demon 4 Dreg Mangler 4 Experiment One 4 Ghor-Clan Rampager 4 Gore-House Chainwalker 2 Hellhole Flailer 4 Rakdos Cackler