Shards of Alara: Primordial Jund Review (Part 2 of 2)
With Jimi having acted as foil for much of Mirrodin Besieged, it’s Sam’s turn to get back in the hotseat and do battle with the preconstructed decks. Everyone has a favourite world, and Sam’s is Alara. From the book to the mechanics to the cards, she’s a huge fan of the block and a natural choice to take lead against me.
For the match, Sam opts to go with Naya Behemoths, hoping to win the attrition war in the red zone through that deck’s massive beaters. Here are our notes from the match.
Shards of Alara: Primordial Jund Review (Part 1 of 2)
Ahh, Jund. Certainly no other shard conveys the same resonance by the mere utterance of its name. Filled with incremental-advantage cards like Bloodbraid Elf, Sprouting Thrinax, and Broodmate Dragon, and Blightning, “Jund decks” had a solid run at Standard dominance until Shards block rotated out and Scars block rotated in, and now content for their rightful place at the Extended table. Of course, this isn’t constructed, but no doubt the Jund deck here secretly longs for the soul-withering success its older brother achieved.
2005’s Ravnica, with its ten dual-coloured guilds, showed how just a little branding could turn groupings of the five colours of Magic into easily-graspable concepts for the playerbase. Although most of the guilds have faded into shrouded obscurity, we still here talk of Boros decks even now, indicating a deck that has both White and Red. Three years later, Wizards would repeat the trick, this time with tri-colour “shards.” A shard consists of a single colour and it’s two allied or “friendly” colours. (For those keeping score at home, a grouping of a colour and its two ‘enemy’ colours is called a wedge). For Jund, that primary colour was Red, supported by both Black and Green. In the setting, this revealed Jund to be a place of elemental fury, with a landscape littered with volcanoes, skies filled with dragons, and inhabitants engaged in a neverending struggle for survival.
Welcome to primordial Jund.
Ertai's Lament 
