Modern Horizons 3 marks for a departure from the standardized Modern Horizons 3 release: It’s shipping with 4 Commander Decks. Graveyard Overdrive is a love-letter to Jund, filled with Lhurgoyfs, making Tarmogoyf tokens, and otherwise junding-’em-out. How is it out of the box? What tweaks can kick things up a notch? Let’s get our hands dirty and find out.
NEW COMMANDERS: ENTER THE JUNDERDOME
Disa the Restless is the face Commander, and she’s a hell of an engine for a Jund deck. It’s easy to concentrate on her second ability, which makes Tarmogoyfs – already a respectable ability in the right build – and forget just how busted that first ability actually is.
Whenever you’re milling or discarding cards, you could be putting Lhurgoyfs into play. That’s incredibly strong, and we will be building around her for this upgrade guide today.
Your other choice is still pretty cool: Coram, the Undertaker. Getting to play a land and any spell from among cards in yards put there from libraries this turn is really quite universal, especially considering you can achieve this with innocuous pieces like Altar of the Brood while taking advantage of Jund’s excellent treasure production.
Both are fine Commanders, and pretty powerful – which seems fitting for Modern Horizons 3.
DIGGING DOWN FOR NEW CARDS
Graveyard Overdrive contains a smattering of brand new cards, and while a good chunk of them are Lhurgoyfs – and hence, very tied to this particular Commander – there are some attractive options that can fit into plenty of decks, too.
Our “Grisly Salvage” contains the spiritual successor to Farewell, Final Act, a board wipe that some black decks will be elated to snap up.
Also included is one of Wizards’ pet new creature types, a Dinosaur. More than just being a Dinosaur card, though, its perfectly usable as a Group Slug piece or as an accelerator for aggressive decks. It’s not going to feel great when the Gishath deck plays this and then attacks you.
One of my favorite mechanics sees a return: Lieutenant, with a nice nod back to a classic Goblin card, and a very obvious reference to Bloodbraid Elf too. The whole deck is a love letter to Jund.
Don’t miss this little Construct, either; while it’s something I was happy to cut from my Lhurgoyf-focused build, it’s a stellar pickup for spellslinger decks.
Overall, Graveyard Overdrive has a solid selection of new spells, and some pretty stellar reprints, too. You can pick up Archon of Cruelty, Selvala, Heart of the Wilds and The Reaver Cleaver among others. With the pricepoint of the deck being above the Standard releases, I think it’s only fair that the reprints are more impactful.
Out of the box, Graveyard Overdrive plays really comfortably, with the Commander being a very strong value engine. Provided you can get her in play and keep her there, you can expect to have little issue in getting a gameplan rolling. I think this deck received a little too much hate on social media when it previewed, because I’ve had a lot of fun testing it out – especially with some choice upgrades.
GRAVEYARD OVERDRIVE $50 BUDGET UPGRADES
In order to upgrade this deck, I wanted to keep the following in mind:
- We need to fill the graveyard as fast as possible
- We need to be able to bounce back from having our yard exiled
- We need to pack plenty of recursion
- We need to protect key pieces
- We could do with paying attention to card types for Lhurgoyf’s P/T
All in all, the spread of card types was super important here, and is a big consideration for upgrading the deck. With that in mind, I ended up opting for 12 cards to upgrade the deck on a budget.
First up, some Battles, which can give us another card type for our strategy. Invasion of Shandalar is perfect for our strategy, netting us some key cards back that we end up milling. It flips into Leyline Surge, the best bit of Court of Bounty, which makes for an underrated Battle IMO. I also opted for Invasion of Innistrad. It’s decent removal, with a nice graveyard engine on the reverse, and crucially, keeps us on budget. There are more expensive Battles to consider, which I’ll cover later.
Next up, we need some strong and effective self-mill. Sludge Titan and Incarnation Technique are brilliant here, as not only do they mill us for a decent chunk, but they also give us cards back to hand or to the battlefield. Keep in mind that if we pull off these effects with Disa in play that it’ll rescue any Lhurgoyfs and put them into play, which is wild. I also added the new Ripples of Undeath for more of this effect.
A classic Animate Dead gives us an Enchantment for our type-count, and Jund Classic Life from the Loam is ideal for any deck doing self mill. It just has to be played!
The deck was a little light on removal, so I opted for some hot new MH3 tech in Pyretic Rebirth. It’ll buy back a creature while removing another, which is a really nice two-for-one. I also opted for Lich-Knights’ Conquest over Living Death. While I’m a big Living Death fan, and some versions of this deck could and should probably run it, I also think it could come back to bite us. Conquest allows us to cash in Tarmogoyf tokens and treasure from Reaver Cleaver for actual creatures. I also included a cheeky Dread Return, as it’s a no-brainer when you’re milling.
Rounding things out, there’s Bolt Bend, a handy way to keep us from being Bojuka Bog’d or having our Commander removed, and World Shaper, self-mill that can also ramp us massively in the midgame.
The cuts are in the sideboard on Moxfield, and in short, I opted for cutting cards that were either too cute, not focused on our strategy enough, or a bit “win more”.
FURTHER UPGRADES
Some of the initial upgrades I’d make with a higher budget are pretty straightforward. Invasion of Ikoria is a great way to fish Pyrogoyf or other roleplayers out of our deck, and if we flip it, it allows our ‘goyfs to beat face unrestricted.
Next up, the big ones are Altar of Dementia, and The Great Henge, upping our artifact count while providing the best source of self-mill we could wish for, and a lot of card draw.
Depending on the amount of reanimation effects, I think Buried Alive could do a lot of work for us – with Entomb being an option if we include dredge cards like Life from the Loam, or cards we can cast from the yard. Better removal like Assassin’s Trophy will also be very useful.
Cards with two supertypes are obviously a great way to get a little more juice out of the deck, with Nyx Weaver slotting right into our overall strategy with Disa, and Haywire Mite providing great removal.
The biggest way to get more out of this deck will be the manabase. MDFCs now allow us to replace a number of lands with spells, and in a deck that cares about card types in the yard, milling more nonland cards than lands will often prove the key to success. Upgrading the manabase with Fetchlands and other expensive options can also increase the power level for the deck, while offering us some of the best lands-matter cards because we’re in Jund.
Much like MDFCs, Changelings are another potential avenue for consistency. The deck already has Graveshifter, but you could stand to look at adding more of these especially if you move toward a build that likes to sacrifice its board for value and re-use creatures that go to the yard.
END STEP
Graveyard Overdrive is a super fun deck to pilot, and with a few upgrades, it can really start to take off. You’d be surprised at the velocity this deck is capable of, and it’s a great place to use my favorite reanimation tech Incarnation Technique. What are you upgrading with?
Kristen is Card Kingdom’s Head Writer, and member of the Commander Advisory Group. Formerly a competitive Pokémon TCG grinder, she has been playing Magic since Shadows Over Innistrad, which in her opinion, was a great set to start with. When she’s not taking names with Equipment and Aggro strategies in Commander, she loves to play any form of Limited.