Standard: Jund Midrange Deck Tech & Sideboard Guide

Jund Midrange () is a versatile deck ready to fight the decks that have been appearing in Standard the most. At the time of writing this article, I achieved an Overall Winrate of 62% and had good results against decks like Jeskai Control (), Esper Midrange () and Rakdos Sacrifice ().

Our general strategy is to remove major threats from our opponents as soon as possible to turn the tables in our favor from mid to late game. We will use Tenacious Underdog and Bloodtithe Harvester to give us Card Advantage, and Sarulf, Realm Eater, Riveteers Charm and Unleash the Inferno to remove threats.

Let's go to the list:

In this list, I tried to fight the archetypes that are more difficult to deal with, and also that are more present in the meta, so it includes some modifications, such as a copy of Ray of Enfeeblement to deal with Esper, but also with Mono White Aggro. Both decks have cards that can put on +1/+1 counters quickly, so I think it's essential to deal with these threats quickly.

We might face threats that are too big to take away with just -4/-4, so we abuse the sacrifice of Riveteers Charm, which can also give us a valuable card advantage in later turns, or even Infernal Grasp in many cases will also solve our problems with large creatures.

But perhaps the biggest stars on this list are Bloodtithe Harvester and Tenacious Underdog. These creatures are fundamental to our Wincondition. The first can serve as removal, with the ability to give the target creature double -1/-1 equal to the number of blood tokens, have reasonable power, and blood tokens can still help improve cards in our hand, and the second performs a very similar function, giving cards each time it dies when cast with Blitz.

I still highlight the power of Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki. This card can correct our curve with treasures and enable us to play Titan of Industry more easily and earlier, allow us to "recycle" cards from our hand and still be able to copy Bloodtithe Harvester, giving more blood tokens and a removal for basically one mana.

Like most Midrange decks, we're going to try to control Aggro and have a more proactive stance against Control while attempting to increase our Card Advantage. That's why I say that the game posture will vary according to what we're playing — which makes it important to have this information as early as possible in the game, either by deducing it from opponents' plays, or using a Duress as soon as possible.

The matchup against Aggro in the current meta are not so favorable, but the scenario is also not favoring these decks very much in BO3, so they haven't been appearing frequently, as I will explain in the Unfavorable Matchups topic.

Mulligans

This is a 3-color deck, but 50% of it is black, so we have to keep an eye on the lands. It's not enough to have some lands in hand, we also need a fair amount in the right color to be able to play every turn if possible.

I also recommend holding a Mulligan that doesn't have at least one creature, either Bloodtithe Harvester or Tenacious Underdog.

The ideal hand will look something like this:

Favorable Matchups

In general, our best matchups will be against Jeskai Control, Esper Midrange, and Rakdos Sacrifice. Even though Rakdos takes more work than other decks, this Jund was made to try to overcome these Controls.

Esper Midrange

Here we have the nemesis of the format, in my opinion. Raffine, Scheming Seer is an extremely difficult card to deal with, so I've been keeping a copy of Ray of Enfeeblement in my main deck, and as soon as I have the opportunity, I'm already trying to remove it from play.

In this matchup, if we remove Raffine and Luminarch Aspirant early on, we only need to worry about Wedding Announcement, but we can also deal with this threat using Sarulf, Realm Eater, or we still only deal with tokens created, using The Meathook Massacre.

In the second game in general the Esper becomes more Control against our deck, so we have to do pretty much the same, so our sideboarding against that deck will look like this:

Side Out

Side In

Jeskai Control

Here I would say it is probably one of the most favorble matchups for Jund, we will be able to take advantage of the Aggro potential of the deck, and we only need to remove Hinata, Dawn-Crowned and Goldspan Dragon. We can do this primarily with Riveteers Charm to not give the opponent treasures.

Our opponent is usually over 4 Flame-Blessed Bolt, so we can take Tenacious Underdog out of the deck in game two, but we should still focus on being aggressive.

Side Out

Side In

Rakdos Sacrifice

It's a very long matchup, but favorable for Jund. This deck is extremely resilient, and we will have to work to beat it — it's no use trying to race too much, it takes patience to deal with the various small threats during the game, the main ones being Oni-Cult Anvil, Ob Nixilis, the Adversary and Sorin the Mirthless

In general, in the game, the 2 opponents usually add Graveyard Trespasser and more Sorin, if they have available. We go like this:

Side Out

Side In

Unfavorable Matchups

Mono Green Aggro, Mono White Aggro and Boros Aggro.

The most unfavorable matchups for this deck are against Aggro decks, mainly against Mono Green. In these games, it's extremely difficult to control these decks in time for us to turn the tables.

Mono Green Aggro

The worst matchup for our deck, cards like Invoke the Ancients generate a lot of value for our opponent, and we generally can't keep up with removals enough. Here, our objective will be to try to control the board until we have a sweeper to end the opponent's game.

Side Out

Side In

Mono White Aggro

A tough matchup, but we're better prepared than we were against Mono Green, as we have better tools to deal with our opponent.

Side Out

Side In

Boros Aggro

Here's a variation of Mono White that I haven't seen much presence yet, but it will always give us work.

Our strategy for sideboarding will be the same as against Mono White, but we'll have to pay more attention to using Ray of Enfeeblement, as it only works on white creatures, about half of the opponent's deck.

We will also have to pay attention to the day and night cycle, as there are two critical opponent cards that gain a lot of advantage with these exchanges, so we should try to prevent the cycle, or at least play around them.

Side Out

Side In

Some alternate lists may run Valki, God of Lies and Briarbridge Tracker to try to get more advantages against Aggro decks. I would only recommend these exchanges if you find your Metagame is full of these decks, which is not what I've seen in most of my games so far.

We can also have additions like Reckoner Bankbuster and Unlicensed Hearse in Mirror matches, where it will be even more important to have Card Advantage, while we clean up our opponents' options.

Conclusion

To conclude, I'm enjoying using this list from the beginning of the article, and I've had good results with it! I leave the comments space to receive tips or other lists that you have been using out there, especially if they are effective against Aggro.

See you next time!