Jund Midrange in New Capenna Standard

Hello! I’m back again, and this week the Standard deck I will be highlighting is Jund Midrange. Now there are multiple directions you can go while playing the Jund colors in this Standard environment, but they all involve new additions from New Capenna. One option is to be a base Red-Green Dragons deck, and the other is to try to be a bit more controlling, and less mana ramp oriented. Let’s go over the options.

This deck incorporates some aspects of the Red-Green Dragons shell we are already familiar with, from before the release of New Capenna. The combination of Jaspera Sentinel, Magda, Brazen Outlaw, and Prosperous Innkeeper remains a potent one, as a way to quickly access a lot of mana early in the game. We also see payoffs in the form of Dragons with Inferno of the Star Mounts, Moonveil Regent, and Goldspan Dragon at the top of the curve. Esika’s Chariot and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker are both super powerful plays the deck has access to in the middle of the game, so it isn’t fully reliant on early mana ramp into a Dragon.

Where the deck deviates from what we are used to seeing is the black splash. While splashing black in a Dragons deck isn’t a new concept, this version has added a planeswalker into the mix, in the form of Ob Nixilis, the Adversary. Ob Nixilis, the Adversary is a card that seems to be popping up in places even when it’s not expected. Cards like Jaspera Sentinel lose value pretty quickly as the game goes on and become good sacrifice fodder for Ob Nixilis.

This deck is able to have a consistent manabase by accessing treasures, despite being a three color deck, which definitely makes it an appealing choice. However, I do also want to look at a Jund deck that embraces the black cards a bit more, and is more of a straight three-color list, rather than having a splash color.

This deck does include Goldspan Dragon, just like the previous list, but is much less of a Dragons based deck in the way we are used to. We don’t have the ramp package of Jaspera Sentinel and Magda, Brazen Outlaw, but instead have Bloodtithe Harvester and Tenacious Underdog. The deck wants to have some two drops that it can potentially sacrifice to Ob Nixilis on turn three, but these are also capable of pressuring the opponent’s life total. Tenacious Underdog being a recursive threat makes it especially nice to sacrifice, and then bring back later by using its Blitz cost.

We also see more black based removal, with both Bloodchief’s Thirst and Infernal Grasp being versatile options. The Graveyard Trespasser’s provide some lifegain to help offset life lost from casting Infernal Grasp. Graveyard Trespasser is actually a very potent three drop if there are a lot of Tenacious Underdogs being played, to stop that card coming back from the graveyard.

This deck does incorporate some additional New Capenna cards that may surprise some players. Titan of Industry in my experience is a super powerful card, as long as you are able to get it into play. While seven mana is a lot, treasures created from Fable of the Mirror-Breaker or Goldspan Dragon can help you to cast Titan of Industry without needing to have 7 lands on the battlefield. We also see the full playset of Ziatora’s Proving Ground, which is necessary due to the mana requirements here.

Riveteer’s Charm also indicates that this is more in the direction of Jund “good stuff” which is the type of Jund deck many players enjoy playing with. It more closely resembles a Modern Jund deck, as there are some additional forms of disruption in the sideboard, including discard spells. I suspect as this standard format develops a bit more, we will start to have a more defined version of Jund Dragons make its way into the metagame. The New Capenna Championship is a week away and that will likely further shake up the Standard format as a result.

Thanks for reading,

Seth Manfield