Despite the best efforts of Wizards of the Coast, the now-legendary Modern Horizons 3 leaks have continued. Today a huge batch of MH3 Commander leaks arrived, most of which are for the Jund deck, Graveyard Overdrive. If you’re a fan of this particular three-color combo, then you’re in for a treat when these new decks arrive come June.
Based on these leaks you can expect giant Dragons, efficient burn effects, and even some retro callbacks, the likes of which you’d expect in the main set. As always, these leaks are unconfirmed, but there’s nothing so outlandish here that we doubt its authenticity. Saddle up, buttercup: today we’re taking a trip into Alara’s most dangerous Shard.
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Big Jund Dragons
If there’s one thing Jund the area is known for, it’s massive, powerful creatures. While the namesake Modern deck tended to focus more on efficiency and disruption, lore-wise it was all about the big beaters, and these new leaks bring two of them. Broodmate Tyrant is a very simple card. For seven mana, you get two 5/5 Flying Dragons. Not a bad rate, but not exciting in Commander. What is exciting is the Encore ability here, though, which lets you summon a temporary copy of the Tyrant for each opponent, all of which will come with a permanent Dragon token of their own.
The card seems solid in any Jund deck with ramp, or indeed any Jund deck that can leverage tokens. It pales in comparison to the other Jund Dragon revealed today, however. Gluttonous Hellkite is a neat new support card for the long-running Jund sacrifice theme. It comes down for Jund and two X and makes each player sacrifice creatures equal to the X value. This makes the card a scalable Edict, which can be incredibly effective against crowded boards, particularly given the abundance of protective Auras and Equipment in the format. Gluttonous Hellkite also scales up in terms of stats really quickly with its sacrifice effect, coming down as an 11/11 even if you just cast it for X=1 in a four-player game.
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Fuel For The Fire
Jund is also well-known for its direct damage-dealing capabilities, and there are a couple of new cards to support this style among the leaks too. Sawhorn Nemesis is a damage doubler, in the same vein as cards like Furnace of Rath and Dictate of the Twin Gods. What makes this one special, however, is that it’s localized. Rather than affecting everyone, Nemesis only doubles the damage dealt to a single player, chosen by you on entry.
This is much more powerful than past versions of the effect, balanced out by the fact that it’s on a creature, making it easier to remove. You can definitely set up turns where you can drop the Nemesis followed by a lethal alpha strike, though, so the card will likely see play in a tonne of aggressive red decks in the format. Pyrogoyf is one of the many new Lhurgoyfs MH3 brings to the table. It’s a standard Tarmogoyf for three and a red, with the added bonus of burning a target each time it or another Lhurgoyf enters play. Effects like this are always ripe for exploitation in a combo shell, but the fact that this is likely always overstatted may let it see play in fair decks too.
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Spellslinger Support
Jund decks don’t tend to indulge much in spell casting, but that may well change with the advent of Graveyard Overdrive. Exterminator Magmarch is an extremely efficient piece for a Jund spell slinger brew, letting you spread the love by copying a spell cast on one opponent’s permanent to another opponent’s permanent. The most obvious application here is to get more value out of one-for-one removal spells, but it can also play well with Threaten effects and the like. It also has Regenerate, which is a novelty in the modern game. This gives the card built-in protection, which is handy given how much of a lightning rod it’ll probably be.
Tempt with Mayhem is a great spell in and of itself. It resurrects the Tempting Offer mechanic from Commander 2013, in the form of a Fork that scales to the limits of your opponents’ greed. Most players will probably take advantage of the extra copy this card offers. As a result, you’ll end up with 4+ copies yourself, which can seriously swing a game depending on the spell. While not particularly Jundy, for lack of a better word, this is still a great political piece for red decks. It also hints at a new cycle of Tempting Offer cards, which is exciting in itself.
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Retro Retreads
Next up in our MH3 Jund Commander leaks, we have two blasts from the past. Both Infested Thrinax and Bloodbraid Challenger hearken back to classic Jund staples, these being Sprouting Thrinax and Bloodbraid Elf, respectively. Sprouting Thrinax was a straightforward 3/3 for three that created three 1/1 tokens on death: a great deal back in 2008. Infested Thrinax takes the same concept and applies it to your entire board, if only for a turn. Thanks to Flash, this is a great response to the many, many board wipes that see play in Commander. It’s also incredible alongside any kind of free sacrifice outlet, like Ashnod’s Altar.
Bloodbraid Challenger is a bit less of a deep cut. There are few players who haven’t heard of Blodbraid Elf, and the things it can do in the Modern format. This new version is scaled up by one in every respect: power, toughness, and mana cost. While this seems like a bad deal, it actually widens the range of cards you can Cascade into, which is a nice bonus. It also has Escape, which lets you Cascade again later if you need to. While it’s based on an iconic card, I don’t foresee this newcomer challenging the original Bloobraid’s title any time soon. It will likely be fine in most aggressive Gruul commander decks, however.
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The Lone Simic Card
Among all the MH3 Jund Commander leaks, there was a single Simic card: Aggressive Biomancy. Due to its color identity, we can assume that this card will be part of the Tricky Terrain deck, rather than Graveyard Overdrive. It’s a fairly straightforward multi-copy effect, the kind Simic has seen a few of in recent years. What makes it special is the Fight effect stapled on, however.
Letting each copy you make Fight another creature turns it into a pretty powerful removal spell. You can take out any problematic utility creatures or mana dorks in play, all while developing your own board with efficient copies. The ETB value on the tokens themselves would likely make this card playable alone, but the extra removal aspect may push it to staple status, especially in Simic decks packing ramp. That is to say: most of them.
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