“What are you playing?”
“It’s Dandân, but it’s Jund.”
“Hell yeah.”
Over the course of three days at Magic Con: Chicago, I experienced this kind of exchange several times. On the table was JundJund, my Dandân variant for midrange lovers.
Dandân, originally known as “Forgetful Fish”, is a shared deck format featuring two players battling with the namesake fish from Arabian Nights. It’s a tense, cerebral game of blue spells darting around. JundJund is a boxing match, a grind through creature combat and graveyard digging.
The namesake of JundJund comes from the color shard of black, red, and green. Gone are cards like Memory Lapse and Accumulated Knowledge, in are cards like Lightning Bolt and Dark Confidant.
To help guide this primer, we’ll have it loosely structured as an FAQ. This is based off common questions and feedback made by players over months of testing. You can find the full decklist here.
This primer will be paired with a companion article, which takes a deeper dive into the card choices for JundJund. If you’re interested in building and tinkering with JundJund yourself, you won’t want to miss it.
JundJund came from a frustration over the rising cost of Dandân staples, and a way to carry through the long winters of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Two players, one deck, and a midrange mirror to grind through.
The Tarmogoyf rises from the snow and comes roaring through the pines. This is JundJund.
Tarmogoyf by Ryan Barger
How does it work?
JundJund features an 80-card deck, shared by two players, with a shared graveyard. Players take turns drawing from the top, playing a 1v1 game of Magic with 20 life each. While most 1v1 Magic formats use 60-card decks, this one adds 20 additional cards to reduce the likelihood of either player running out. Players get one free mulligan, and any additional mulligans are resolved in the London style.
What are your rules for deckbuilding?
Like Dandân, nearly every card is a 2-of except basic lands. This allows both players to have access to the cards which guide the experience. The one nonland break to this is four copies of Misinformation. JundJund is an ever-evolving process, so I constantly tinker with new tools to dial in the best experience for players.
Dandân uses ten copies of one creature, why does JundJund use so many different creatures?
This decision is one of the defining characteristics of JundJund. When setting out to build this, I scoured tons of cards to see if I could replicate the Dandân experience of uniformed threats. I reached the conclusion that it’s creature variance which gives JundJund its own flavor. Whereas Dandân games can often be decided on the stack, JundJund games are meant to be decided on the battlefield.
What does JundJund play like?
Like any midrange mirror, JundJund is a grind. Players swap removal spells, disrupt each other’s hands, attack, block, and pull from the graveyard. Bigger swings come from cards like Bloodbraid Elf, Kolaghan’s Command, and Huntmaster of the Fells.
It’s common for the graveyard to swell in size by the end of the game, reaching the end of a playmat. Graveyard order doesn’t matter, so feel free to rearrange it so your flashback spells and graveyard-based creature effects are visible to both players.
Are there any weird rules interactions I should know about?
Here are some quirks to note before you play. You don’t need to start marking cards with Sharpie, but the intent is to err on the side of the simpler ruling that results in a fun environment for both players.
Pulse of Murasa: Since there are two owners to each card, you pick which owner it goes back to. This means a few things. In practice, most players use this card to grab the best creature back for them to cast later. But, you can also use Pulse of Murasa to blank an Unearth cast by your opponent, sending the creature back up to their hand instead of out to the battlefield.
Mosswood Dreadknight: The Adventure zone is not shared in JundJund. So, you can’t cast someone’s Mosswood Dreadknight if they cast Dread Whispers the turn before. If Mosswood Dreadknight dies, only the player who controlled it will get to cast it as an adventure off the triggered ability.
Stormfist Crusader: When resolving the upkeep draw trigger, the active player will draw their card first.
Dogged Detective: Both players have the ability to get this back from the graveyard. In the event of both sides drawing a second card, Dogged Detective goes back to whoever’s trigger is on the top of the stack. Also, if a player discards a Dogged Detective to Seasoned Pyromancer’s enter trigger, Dogged Detective will see the cards being drawn and be returned to their opponent’s hand.
Bloodbraid Elf by Raymond Swanland
Parting Thoughts
JundJund is fun, but you shouldn’t take it too seriously. This is the place for crashing creatures into each other, and casting Misinformation to set up the perfect Bloodbraid Elf. Due to the variety of creatures on board, paired with a large graveyard, JundJund draws onlookers like a chess match in the park. Throw your hands in the air, holler when they have the answer, attack without calculating the blocker math; this is what JundJund is all about.
Shared deck experiences are a bridge between Magic players. Two players of different formats can sit down for a midrange mirror out of one box. For years, we used Dandân for this. But now, we have it for Jund.
Travis Norman (he/him) is a writer and photographer from the wooded foothills of New York, currently living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He’ll try any Magic format, but he has a special love for Cube, Premodern, and Canadian Highlander. He has loved Magic since 1999, but champions having a healthy mental and financial relationship with the game. When not playing games, he enjoys cycling, tea, and dog parks. You can follow his exploits on Bluesky and Instagram.