The Best Jund – Black/Red/Green

Summary

• Jund Commanders like Vaevictis Asmadi offer reusable removal and land synergies.
• Gyrus, Waker of Corpses generates token copies of creatures, providing offensive value.
• Sek’kuar, Deathkeeper creates tokens and supports aristocrat strategies in Commander format.

In Magic: The Gathering’s widely popular Commander format, you construct decks around legendary creatures, allocated as a deck’s commander. While your card choice is important in each of the game’s formats, it is especially so in Commander, as you can only include cards in your deck that are within their commander’s color identity.

For many, this is an incentive to select a commander that is of several colors, as it opens up access to a larger card pool. Of the three-color combinations, Jund – the identity of black, green, and red – is often known for its combination of aggression, land synergies, and removal. So today, we’re going to examine the Jund options available to you in the Commander format and see which are the most potent.

Updated on March 19, 2025 by Ryan Hay: Jund comes in with some very strong strategies to build around, from dominating creature types to effective removal and board control. If you’re on the hunt for a new commander to build around or want to possibly swap out your commander for something new, you should definitely check out Disa the Restless, Winter, Misanthropic Guide, and Vazi, Keen Negotiator, three very good commanders that have tons of potential in the format.

23

Vaevictis Asmadi, The Dire

The Elder Dragons Return

Though the Elder Dragon Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire may cost six mana to cast, it can reliably deal with nearly any permanent in play, serving as a great piece of reusable removal. A 6/6 with flying, whenever it attacks, Vaevictis Asmadi’s controller can choose a permanent under each player’s control and force those cards to be sacrificed.

As these cards are sacrificed, this can get around indestructible and can be used to remove anything, from creatures and Planeswalkers to enchantments or lands. Once these cards are sacrificed, players reveal the top card of their library, putting it into play if it’s a permanent. However, this is a small price to pay for such great removal.

22

Gyrus, Waker Of Corpses

More Heads Are Better Than None

A Jund option for a graveyard Commander deck, Gyrus can function as both an offensive threat and a means of gaining temporary access to creatures in your graveyard. A 0/0 for three mana and X, Gyrus enters the battlefield with a number of +1/+1 counters on it equal to the amount of mana spent to cast it.

Due to how this is worded, even if Gyrus is removed and cast again, the payment of Commander Tax provides additional counters.

Once in play, when Gyrus attacks, it can exile a creature from your graveyard, creating a tapped and attacking copy of that creature, with the copy being exiled at the end of the turn. While these tokens are temporary, they can provide great offensive value for minimal mana inventment and can provide access to strong “enter the battlefield” triggers.

21

Sek’Kuar, Deathkeeper

Turn Your Sacrifices Into Legions

A highly underrated aristocrats commander, Sek’kuar, Deathkeeper can provide additional value to the deaths of your creatures. A 4/3 Orc Shaman for five mana, Deathkeeper says that whenever another nontoken creature under your control dies, you create a 3/1 Graveborn token.

In conjunction with cards you would associate with an Aristocrats deck, Sek’Kuar can provide a great deal of value from already useful cards. When paired with easily recurring creatures and sacrifice outlets, this can quickly provide you with a sizable army.

20

Vazi, Keen Negotiator

Treasure Your Cards

Coming from New Capenna is a fascinating Treasure token-based Commander that has some interesting implications for how you strategize. Vazi, Keen Negotiator is a Human Advisor creature that taps to give an opponent a number of Treasure tokens equal to the number of Treasures you’ve made this turn.

Then, if an opponent casts a spell or uses an ability and paid for that effect with mana from a Treasure, Vazi lets you put a +1/+1 counter on a creature of your choice and you get to draw a card. Vazi is halfway between a group hug and group slug deck, helping your opponents cast spells, but ideally, being built so you can punish your opponent at the same time.

19

Shattergang Brothers

Goblin Brothers Doing What They Do Best

Shattergang Brothers is a flexible sacrifice-based commander that can repeatedly cause your opponents to sacrifice various types of permanents. A 3/3 Goblin Artificer for four mana, Shattergang Brothers can be used to pay three mana to sacrifice an artifact, enchantment, or creature.

Once this is done, each opponent must sacrifice the same type of permanent. This can allow you to take advantage of potent graveyard synergies while inconveniencing opponents, preventing their permanents from sticking on the battlefield.

18

Winter, Misanthropic Guide

Group Hug At Its Finest

A lot of group hug cards are typically enchantments or artifacts, but with Winter, Misanthropic Guide, you get a very strong draw effect for the whole table right in the Command Zone. Winter lets all players draw two cards at the start of your upkeep, which is a huge boost to your hand, as well as for your opponents.

Winther also has a delirium effect that triggers once you have four or more card types in your graveyard. Once you get there, the group slug portion comes in, as all your opponents have a reduced maximum hand size by the number of card types you have in the graveyard. So even though everyone is drawing three cards a turn, you can cut their maximum hand size down to nothing with a diverse graveyard.

17

Thantis, The Warweaver

Combat Tricks Are Your Speciality

An underrated Jund commander, Thantis, the Warweaver is capable of manipulating combat in your favor. A 5/5 spider with vigilance and reach for six mana, Thantis forces each creature to attack each combat if able.

While this ensures that each player is regularly attacking, whenever a creature attacks you or a Planeswalker you control, a +1/+1 counter is put on Thantis, allowing it to become a major threat if you continue to be targeted by opponents.

16

Korvold, Gleeful Glutton

Consume Them All

The return of an incredibly oppressive card from the original Throne of Eldraine expansion, Korvold, Gleeful Glutton brings a whole new type of advantage to Commander. While this beefy Dragon initially costs eight mana to cast, it does get cheaper for each card type among permanents you’ve sacrificed this turn, reliably costing two or three mana less when you go to cast it.

Then, once Korvold deals damage to an opponent, you get to add a +1/+1 counter on it and draw a card for each permanent type in your graveyard. Cards that have multiple permanent types work wonders in this style deck, as well as cards that let you sacrifice them for free for extra effects.

15

Disa The Restless

Ack, Hans, Run!

An amazingly fun card to play, Disa the Restless is a unique token-based commander that lets you make tokens of one of Magic’s most iconic creatures, the Tarmogoyf. She only makes the token when she deals combat damage to a player, so you’ll want a lot of evasion to get her through.

Tarmogoyf is a creature that gains more power with the more card types in all graveyards, scaling all the way up to a 9/10.

Disa then lets you take Lhurgofy cards that are sent to the graveyard and returns it to the battlefield so long as it didn’t originally come from there. So discarding or milling Lhurgoyf creatures gives you a free one, which might be a bit niche, especially since there aren’t many creatures in this unique kindred type, but has potential to make big plays.

14

Soul Of Windgrace

He May Be Gone But His Spirit Remains

This commander provides a boatload of utility while also ramping your mana if you happen to have land cards in your graveyard. Thanks to fetchlands, this is a rather easy requirement to fulfill. This ramp effect works quite well alongside Soul’s activated abilities which allow you to discard land in exchange for an effect.

Whether you are in need of card advantage, life gain, or simply want to protect Soul of Windgrace from removal, all you need is a single land in hand and a small amount of mana. Accessing fast mana is one of the easiest ways to pull ahead of multiple opponents as it affords you the ability to play multiple high-cost spells in a single turn.

Thanks to this as well as the utility that Soul offers, it has quickly become one of the most popular Jund commanders despite only having been printed in Dominaria United.

13

Maarika, Brutal Gladiator

Flex Those Muscles In Your Opponent’s Faces

Commanders that hit hard and don’t stop hitting can be some of the most fun interactions you can have in the game. Maarika, Brutal Gladiator is just one of those cards. Boasting a huge 7/4 stat line, Maarika also comes with indestructibility so long as it’s your turn.

Anytime Maarika deals any type of damage to a creature, and that damage exceeds their toughness stat, Maarika forces them to sacrifice a noncreature, nonland permanent. Keep smacking away and you’ll quickly reduce your opponent’s board to just lands.

Pump Out Those Tokens

Despite featuring two popular creature types, Slimefoot and Squee is truly a Saproling commander. This relatively new creature printed in March of the Machine commander finally gave Saproling fanatics a capable commander that provides them access to three colors.

While most saproling cards are in green and black, the added utility that red provides is a welcome addition to the deck which allows Saproling players the same tools that other Jund decks are afforded. Additionally, Slimefoot and Squee’s ability to churn out Saproling tokens synergizes incredibly well with Jund’s sacrifice theme and allows pilots to take better advantage of lord effects (+1/+1) for which single creature type decks are known.

11

Indoraptor, The Perfect Hybrid

The Perfect Hunter Bred From Science

Part of the Jurassic Park Universes Beyond collection, Indoraptor, the Perfect Hybrid is a Dinosaur that rewards you for dealing tons of damage before you play it, turning it into a massive predator on the battlefield. The Indoraptor has bloodthirst for X, so it’ll enter the battlefield with X +1/+1 counters on it equal to the amount of damage your opponents have taken.

It also has enrage, so anytime it takes damage, the Indoraptor picks an opponent at random, forcing them to either take damage equal to its power or sacrifice a nontoken creature. The neat thing with Indoraptor is that it’s not a cast trigger, just an enter the battlefield one, so if you reanimate the Indoraptor or return it to your hand to cast again, you can up the counters on it if there’s a turn you deal no damage.

Every Creature Put To Good Use

Reasonably costed at three mana, Henzie “Toolbox” Torre is a Jund Commander that makes use of the blitz mechanic in order to reduce the costs of one’s larger creatures. Blitz is a mechanic that provides creatures with an alternate cost. If the blitz casting cost is paid, the creature enters the battlefield with haste and is sacrificed at the beginning of the end step.

When this happens, you draw a card. Henzie states that all creatures you would cast with a mana value of four or greater have blitz.

While the blitz cost of such creatures is normally equal to their mana cost, Henzie reduces all Blitz costs by the number of times you have cast your commander from the Command Zone.

Not only does this reduce the blitz costs that Henzie itself provides to creatures that wouldn’t have the ability otherwise, but it can reduce the cost of already cheap Blitz creatures, allowing them to be accessed for near zero amounts of mana.

9

The Beamtown Bullies

Turn The Worst Creatures In Magic Into Your Allies

The Beamtown Bullies are a very distinct commander option, allowing you to make use of your graveyard in a manner unlike any other commander option around. A 4/4 with vigilance and haste for four mana, the Beamtown Bullies may be tapped to target an opponent. That player gains control of a creature from your graveyard and that creature immediately gains haste and becomes goaded. This can effectively force an opponent to attack other players with your strongest creatures, all whilst subverting high mana costs.

Though creatures that are “gifted” to opponents this way are exiled at the end of the turn, if your Beamtown Bullies deck puts a creature like Blightsteel Collossus or Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre into your graveyard, one turn is all that’s really needed to wreak serious havoc.

8

Yurlok Of Scorch Thrash

Scorch Earth Is Back

In the early days of Magic, Mana Burn was a mechanic that stated that at the end of a turn, a player would lose life equal to the amount of unspent mana that remained in their mana pool. While this mechanic is no longer part of the game, Yurlok of Scorch Thrash provides an ability that brings this mechanic of yesteryear back to the Commander format.

A 4/4 with vigilance for four mana, not only does Yurlok effectively cause players to take damage through mana burn, it can be tapped to put three mana in each player’s mana pool, potentially dealing damage to players incapable of spending it on spells or abilities.

7

Ognis, The Dragon’s Lash

A New Meaning To Fast Mana

Straightforward yet incredibly effective, Ognis, the Dragon’s Lash is a commander that allows your most aggressive creatures to double as mana ramp. A 3/3 with haste for four mana, whenever a creature with haste under your control attacks, you create a tapped treasure token.

While the tapped nature of these tokens means that they can’t be utilized the turn in which they’re created, Ognis will quickly ramp out sizable game-ending threats by simply attacking with a large number of creatures with haste.

Through utilizing many creatures with haste, an Ognis deck can quickly create a noteworthy number of treasures, allowing it to synergize with mana intensive win conditions and artifact synergies alike. This means that Ognis fills a unique niche as a commander for those looking to build a haste creature deck, all with built-in mana ramp and mana fixing through easy access to treasures.

6

Ziatora, The Incinerator

Turn Your Minions Into Value

The leader of Streets of New Capenna’s Riveteers faction, Ziatora, the Incinerator is an impressive option for an aristocrats commander, capable of converting your creatures into direct damage and mana ramp. A 6/6 Demon Dragon with flying for six mana, Ziatora allows you to sacrifice a creature under your control at the beginning of your end step.

Not only can you then deal an amount of damage equal to the sacrificed creature’s power to any target, but you also create three treasure tokens, providing significant mana ramp. While this ability can only be accessed once per turn rotation due to triggering during your end step, this is an excellent ability that synergizes in great fashion with traditional aristocrats strategies whilst providing a flexible blend of resources and direct damage.

5

Kresh The Bloodbraided

Damage For Damage’s Sake

Like Sek’kuar, Kresh the Bloodbraided is a creature that greatly benefits from other creatures under its owner’s control dying. For five mana, this 3/3 Human Warrior states that whenever another creature dies, it gets an amount of +1/+1 counters equal to that creature’s power.

While Sek’kuar’s ability only triggers when creatures under its owner’s control die, Kresh’s ability triggers whenever any other creature dies, allowing Kresh to become an enormous threat incredibly quickly. This allows Kresh to work quite well with a variety of strategies, such as aristocrats or one featuring heavy amounts of removal.

4

Karrthus, Tyrant Of Jund

Rule With An Iron Fist

Karrthus is more of a countercommander than a true commander in his own right, but the enter the battlefield effect he provides is capable of ending games on the spot against one of commander’s most popular deck archetypes: Dragons. On top of allowing what essentially amounts to a free win against opposing Dragon players, Karrthus can snag creatures from other decks with a suprising amount of frequency.

After all, Dragons are one of Magic’s most printed creature types and consist of some of Magic’s most powerful cards. As a result, many decks run a couple copies of Dragons without even trying to do so. Stealing even one Dragon from an opponent’s side of the battlefield is a huge swing in the direction of victory, especially considering you get to untap and attack with them on the spot.