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The Flying Iguana

Commander / EDH Bracket 2 BRG (Jund) Dragons Indestructible Sacrifice

FunkyGraham

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Land (38)

Planeswalker (1)

Sorcery (1)

Creature (25)

Enchantment (12)

Commander (1)

Commander: Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire

Artifact (22)

Jund, Jund never changes.

Except in EDH where you occasionally get something very new.

The eternal enemy for an entire generation of 60-card Magic players. Dense, thick, inapproachably expensive for any 2010s teenager and whose dominance as a musclebound juggernaut saw it just as revered by the weak-minded. It was seen by many as the driving force for more and more desperate control and degenerate combos to bypass its immovable mass in its formats. One could say it started the chain reaction that drove the exodus to EDH itself.

It's rare that I could consider a core set Jund legendary to be buildable since there are so few Jund commanders in the library and they're almost all identical in deck design. It often lacks a direct vision. You have goodstuff Xira, goodstuff Thantis, goodstuff aristocrats Korvold. On rare occasion you get Kresh Voltron which while plucky and creative barely gets off the ground compared to its contemporaries in Bant and Grixis. The density of card quality required to push Jund to equitable levels almost demands uniformity. This color trio was a long-time enemy of free thought and budget constraints. Everything I believed in as a Magic player was offended on a basic level by Jund and its simian adherents. Only a fringe deck could ever satisfy me in these colors.

So for Jund, the road less traveled is certainly the new Vaevictis, the flying iguana that surgically Chaos Warps everyone's boards for free each combat. This is as top-down as a commander can get, completely built around the idea that he must see the board, he must attack, not necessarily win via commander damage, and that He Must Not Whiff. Which means the whole deck should be permanents so you always have the home advantage. And of course in a permanents-only deck, that would naturally lead to a very good fit for an otherwise forced and uncomfortable Primal Surge strategy. Jund is just as well known for its heavy-hitting removal spells and constant tutors as it is its thick creatures, so taking the instants and sorceries out of the question would shake up uniformity very well and provide a challenge to design rather than just to the sensibilities and to the pocketbook. This is a deck that has proved to be troublesome, and has taken the entire lockdown to brew, let alone assemble. And you can guess why.

It's not just that it needs permanent-based answers to all a deck's problems, it's that you need to be able to have all of them work together simultaneously with zero nonbos in the event that your whole deck is on the field. You can't win with Revel in Riches if you get out a Bane of Progress at the same time. So you need another removal option, smoother win conditions, indestructible artifacts, extra-turn permanents to grease up your upkeep-wins, and no shortage of ramp and utility Timmy midrange cards to flip into for a more smooth and competent combat victory in the often case that you don't see Primal Surge.

It's my most engineered deck since Breya, and you will no doubt see it improve over the coming months. If I'm lazy enough to not change the description, it probably already has. This is the ultimate is engineering. Perfect synergy from scratch. Nothing will be wrong with it by the time I'm done. The dude who designed this card will be able to die happy knowing that someone made the perfect deck out of it. And when it is done, it will be safe to say...

"Jund... has changed."

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96% Casual

Competitive