Years gone by, Korvold was the name that struck fear into those across the table as the Jund Commander to be feared. Has Korvold’s Crown been usurped? Are there any contenders? Let’s investigate who the scariest Jund Commander really is.
If we truly wanted to look at a history of Jund Commanders, we’d also be looking at Prossh and Food Chain here, but Prossh is a little over the hill now. Yes GrandProssh, I’m sure they did exploit the full Food Chain in your day. But come on, it’s time to get you some meatloaf before your game of Bingo.
KORVOLD’S RISE TO PROMINENCE
Korvold launched in the Brawl deck product in 2019, the first and to date only Brawl product released. While plenty of folks threw together a casual Jund aristocrats deck with him, it didn’t take long for his true power to be unleashed on tables everywhere.
You have access to a ridiculous amount of value generation in the Command Zone with Korvold, with the dragon enabling plenty of two and three card combos, including Blood Pet and Mortuary, which allows you to keep drawing cards until you’re satisfied.
Korvold’s consistency and access to so many good engines was enough to make him a name in cEDH, too.
I mean that, and Dockside Extortionist, of course. So much of a name did Korvold make for himself, in fact, that he was quickly identified as a “high-power” and cEDH Commander, and all but soft-banned from more Casual tables.
Despite a Dockside ban setting the deck back quite a bit, leading pilots of cEDH Korvold have adapted. Builds have adapted into more landfall focused builds, featuring Edge of Eternities cards, and adding the Chain of Smog + Witherbloom Apprentice combo.
The thing about Korvold, though, is he has threat memory. He’s been hanging out at cEDH tables for so long now that people automatically veto playing against it in their Bracket 3 games. To me, that’s not scary. That’s just being sensible and giving it a wide berth, like when you see an alligator chilling. What’s scary is when someone’s in your house, looming in the doorway, and you’ve no idea what they want.
IT’S TIME TO JOIN THE UNION
The rough-around-the-edges impish fellow in your front room is Henzie, and he’s really interested in whether you’re joining the union. You’re joining, right? Right?The problem with inviting Henzie into front room for a game of Commander is that this deck can be terrifying. While it reads as a reasonable way to get value and fill your yard in a reanimator deck, in practice, this deck is as Jund as Reid Duke. It’s all 2-for-1s or better, and it’s a concentrated barrage of removal and value to gain advantage over the entire board.
Giving creatures with strong enter and attack or damage triggers haste and drawing a card off of them, it turns out, is scary good.
The deck can set up surprisingly fast, too. Getting extra value out of a cheaper to cast Primeval Herald or Roxanne can help you leapfrog the table in mana, and all the while, the graveyard is being set up for Living Death.
Henzie has access to some blood-curdling plays, too. While it’s going to generally be all the removal that gets people hot under the collar, it’s the extra quick value you get from an Evercoat Ursine or the star of the deck, Ojer Kaslem. Blitzing Ojer Kaslem on Turn 4 can ramp you two lands, draw you a card, and cheat out another haymaker – while also dealing up to 6 damage. All for the low cost of four mana.
Henzie is a scary deck because it’s not often a combo deck, and nor does it rely on gamechangers. You’re in for a real slugfest of a fight, and you’re going to need some good interaction to slow it down – interaction that Henzie himself just shrugs off.
Thankfully, most invested Henzie players are astute enough to call their deck a Turn 2 or Turn 3 Henzie deck (in reference to how many dorks and other mana sources they run to enable a T2 or T3 Henzie). If you’re going up against one of the Henzie faithful, you’re much more likely to experience a well balanced pod, as the archetype has been worked on by one of the biggest communities outside of cEDH.
That said, what can be scary is going up against someone who doesn’t speak that language. Henzie scares me more than Korvold at this point, that’s for sure.
A NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHES
There’s another Jund Commander taking names right now, and it’s a new entity. It’s only just entered orbit, in fact. Hearthhull, the Worldseed has been dominated Commander tables ever since the precon dropped, and hasn’t had trouble taking games by playing just the precon, unedited. It’s so good, in fact, that it’s one of the small number of precons – including the MH3 ones, and some Final Fantasy ones, that have the honor of being “not really a Bracket 2 deck, and closer to Bracket 3 out of the box.”
Other lands decks like Lord Windgrace focus on using fogs and build slow value, or going for combo like The Gitrog Monster. As such, they’ve found a home in higher power tables. Again, they’re a known quantity. You know you’re at risk of a cougar attack if you’re on the trail, or not to lick a poisonous frog.
Hearthhull, on the other hand, is a deck that moves towards its endgame with a singular will, and it it does so in a way that can seem unassuming to more casual players. The win condition is obviously written on the card, but because it doesn’t scream “combo”, and it feels like it’s hard to pull off, people give it a wider berth until they realize that they’re dying at a point in the game before they calculated it should be possible.
Landfall has so many tools and toys now in Jund that Hearthhull is a Commander that scares me. It puts the fear of God into me, and it has me digging for lifelink or gunning to drop that capital ship as soon as I can get my proton torpedoes online.
END STEP
The Jund Commanders of old are ready for their equivalent of Only Murders in the Building or The Expendables. We’ve been there and done that, and it’s the new kids on the block that are the scariest to see across a table – and it’s in no small part due to how they are definitively decks that can play in Bracket 3 and dominate it.
Kristen is Card Kingdom’s Head Writer and a member of the Commander Format Panel. 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.