Jund Wildfire

Introduction

Jund Wildfire is a black-red-green artifact deck built around a trick no other deck in Pauper gets to play: it points Cleansing Wildfire, a land-destruction spell, at its own indestructible Drossforge Bridge - the bridge survives, a basic land arrives, and a card gets drawn. A two-mana spell that ramps you, fixes your colors, and costs no cards is the deck in a single image. Everything else follows the same rule: cheap artifacts that replace themselves on the way in or the way out, so every trade the opponent makes leaves you a card ahead.

That patience shapes the matchup spread. The deck is at its best against slow, interactive opponents, where every answered threat has already paid for itself: favored against Blue Terror - at 10.5%, a large slice of the field - and against Dimir Faeries and Dimir Terror, and slightly favored against Monster Tron. Grixis Affinity and Elves sit close to even. The hard seats are speed and bigger value engines: unfavored against Mono Red Madness, alone 8.6% of the metagame, and against the dedicated value decks Jeskai Ephemerate and Golgari Gardens.

Games with this deck have a distinctive arc: the extra cards pile up quietly until the opponent finds that every threat they answered has already been replaced. If you enjoy winning long games on card advantage rather than speed, it is hard to do better in Pauper - a steady 5.6% of the field agrees.

General Strategy

Jund Wildfire wins by exchanging cards at a profit until the opponent has nothing left, then attacking through the wreckage. It is not a fast deck and does not want to be one: left alone it kills somewhere around turn eight, and that is fine, because almost every card in the list either replaces itself or trades for something on the way out. Your job as the pilot is to keep the engine fed - hit every land drop, keep artifacts arriving, convert them into cards - while spending as little as possible to contain what the opponent is doing. You are not racing. You are outlasting.

The engine has two halves. The first is the land package: Drossforge Bridge and Slagwoods Bridge are indestructible, so Cleansing Wildfire aimed at one of them destroys nothing - you still search up a basic land, which arrives tapped, and draw a card. That makes the spell a two-mana ramp effect that fixes your colors and costs no cards. The second half is the artifact loop: Ichor Wellspring draws a card when it enters and another when it dies, and Nihil Spellbomb replaces itself on death as long as black mana is open, so every sacrifice outlet in the deck - Fanatical Offering, Eviscerator's Insight, Makeshift Munitions, Krark-Clan Shaman - gets an extra card stapled on whenever it eats one of them. String those together and the deck simply draws more than the opponent, turn after turn.

An uncontested start shows the plan working. Turn 1, Drossforge Bridge enters tapped. Turn 2, play a Swamp and cast Cleansing Wildfire at that same bridge: the bridge survives, a basic comes in tapped, and you draw. Turn 3, Slagwoods Bridge plus Ichor Wellspring, drawing again. Turn 4, Writhing Chrysalis arrives with two 0/1 Eldrazi Spawn tokens in tow. Turn 5, sacrifices the for a three-card turn plus a Map token, and starts attacking. Five turns in you have four lands in play, drawn several extra cards, and built a board that improves every time something dies.

The Cards

Cleansing Wildfire

The deck's signature card and the reason the mana base looks the way it does. Pointed at one of your own bridges, it is a two-mana play that puts a basic onto the battlefield, fixes whichever color your hand is missing, and draws a card - all without actually losing the land, since the bridges cannot be destroyed. Cast it early and often; it is how a three-color deck full of tapped lands still hits its drops on time. The targeting rule is simple: your own land, not theirs.

Drossforge Bridge

The black-red half of the eight indestructible bridges Cleansing Wildfire wants to hit. Its artifact type works overtime: it counts toward Refurbished Familiar's affinity, and in a pinch it can be sacrificed to Krark-Clan Shaman or Makeshift Munitions like any other artifact. The real cost is on the front end: it enters tapped, which is where most of the deck's slow starts come from, so plan your first two turns around it.

Slagwoods Bridge

The red-green bridge and your most reliable green source: it is what lets a turn-4 Writhing Chrysalis happen on schedule. Everything said about Drossforge Bridge applies here too - indestructible Cleansing Wildfire target, affinity count, emergency sacrifice fodder - so which bridge you play first is purely a question of which colors the hand needs.

Ichor Wellspring

Role Assignment

Two facts fix our role in nearly every matchup: the clock is slow - an uncontested kill lands around turn eight - and our inevitability is real, because the engine out-draws almost any fair deck given time. So the question in each pairing is whether the opponent can kill us before the card advantage takes over. When they can, we play defense. When they cannot, we are in no hurry.

Vs. Aggro. We are the control, with no room for debate: any dedicated aggro deck's clock beats ours, so the early turns go to interaction and bodies, not value. This is the one context where Writhing Chrysalis's Spawn are blockers first and fodder second, where Cast Down gets spent on curve rather than saved, and where Krark-Clan Shaman plus a couple of spare artifacts is the play you build toward - a stacked sweep that clears a wide board of small attackers, and it is symmetric: each activation hits every creature without flying, so the 0/1 Spawn you were blocking with and the 1/1 Shaman itself die alongside their team. The life total is a resource on this axis but not a deep one, since the maindeck has almost no dedicated lifegain: stabilize the board before the damage adds up, and once it is contained, the grind wins on its own.

Vs. Midrange. The grind is home turf, so we default to the control role: our two-for-ones are denser than almost anyone's, which means every one-for-one exchange - creature for creature, removal for threat - moves the game toward a state where we have cards and they do not. Trade cheerfully, keep Cast Down for the one creature that genuinely threatens us, and let the sac-draw spells rebuild after every exchange. The role flips only when their engine out-draws ours or their artifact hate strips the loop; then we become the beatdown and push damage while the engine limps. Be honest about which axis the game is actually on - resources or pressure - and play to it.

Vs. Control. We are the beatdown, but a patient one. Nearly every threat we present has already paid for itself, which blunts their answers: Writhing Chrysalis leaves two Spawn behind even when the spell is countered, Refurbished Familiar takes a card from their hand the moment it lands, and the bodies a sweeper catches had already paid us on the way in. So attack with volume, not haste: one threat at a time, rebuilt immediately, never enough on board for a sweeper to break even. Inevitability is contested in these games, and the engine wins that contest as long as the land drops and the artifact count keep climbing. The play that shows the role: casting into open mana without a second thought.

Play Patterns

These rules are ordered by how often getting them wrong costs a game.

Point Cleansing Wildfire at your own Drossforge Bridge or Slagwoods Bridge, not at the opponent's lands. The bridge is indestructible, so nothing dies: you search up a basic, which enters tapped, keep the bridge, and draw a card - two mana for a free land with no card spent, exactly the turn-2 line the walkthrough in General Strategy is built on. Aimed across the table it becomes a bad trade: you still replace the card, but the two mana only swaps one of their lands for a basic of their choice, fixing their mana instead of ramping you. Their lands are not the point. Yours are.
When a sacrifice cost needs a body, feed it Ichor Wellspring or Nihil Spellbomb before anything inert. Both draw on the way out (Nihil Spellbomb only if black mana is open), so every Fanatical Offering, Eviscerator's Insight, or Makeshift Munitions activation that eats one carries a bonus card with it. Sacrificing a Map token or a spare bridge while an Ichor Wellspring sits in play throws that draw away. When an outlet needs fodder, reach for the one that pays you back.
Land Gixian Infiltrator before you unload the sac-draw spells. Every other permanent you sacrifice after it arrives adds a +1/+1 counter; the same spells cast first grow nothing. The validated line makes the payoff concrete: Gixian Infiltrator on turn 2 - the deck's only turn-2 threat - Ichor Wellspring on turn 3, then a turn-4 Fanatical Offering eating the artifact for the usual three cards and a Map token while Gixian Infiltrator attacks as a 3/2 instead of a 2/1. Same cards, reversed order, and the counter never happens.

Black Sacrifice

Carrion Feeder - emblematic card for this matchup — Read the Black Sacrifice primer →

Matchup - Favored

We are the control deck in this matchup, and they are the aggressor. Do not let the shared sacrifice theme tempt you into a race. Their clock is roughly twice as fast as ours, so Carrion Feeder and the one-drop swarm apply real pressure before our engine and blockers come online. What flips the game is inevitability: nearly every creature they play has one toughness, our two-for-ones outclass their small bodies card-for-card, and their disruption is thin. Survive the early rush and the grind is ours.

The race is simple to read. They need to turn a fast Carrion Feeder or Bloodthrone Vampire start into a Rite of Consumption finish before we sweep the board and clear their outlets. Krark-Clan Shaman is the linchpin: sacrificing an artifact deals one damage to every nonflying creature, and one damage erases a board where almost everything has one toughness. The sweep kills our own ground creatures too, but Writhing Chrysalis at 2/3 and the flying Refurbished Familiar walk away while their team is gone.

Do not durdle. Ramping and cantripping with Cleansing Wildfire early does nothing to the board while their clock builds, so answer their threats on curve, hold the ground with your blockers, and keep your life total high enough that a surprise Rite of Consumption cannot steal the game. Once you stabilize, your card advantage takes over.

Key Threats

Carrion Feeder is their free sacrifice outlet and primary snowball threat, turning death-trigger one-drops into a growing attacker for no mana. As long as it is online, our spot removal is weak: point Cast Down at any other creature and they sacrifice that target to Carrion Feeder in response, banking the death trigger and fizzling our answer. So do not fire removal at a lesser creature while Carrion Feeder sits there growing into a lethal attacker; it is the piece to kill or sweep first. It cannot block, but it still matters when we are the ones acting: the free sacrifice outlet fires at instant speed on any turn, which is exactly how it blanks our removal. Bloodthrone Vampire is another free outlet that pumps itself for each creature it eats, giving them a second growing body to point at their finisher.

Mortician Beetle punishes our own engine if we are careless. It grows a +1/+1 counter whenever any player sacrifices a creature, us included, so every Eldrazi Spawn we feed to Fanatical Offering, Eviscerator's Insight, or Makeshift Munitions hands them a free counter. While it is on the board, sacrifice artifacts instead: Ichor Wellspring, Nihil Spellbomb, and the like never trigger it. Kill or sweep the Beetle and our outlets go back to firing freely.

Rite of Consumption is their reach, the way they close past a stabilized board. They sacrifice a grown Carrion Feeder or Bloodthrone Vampire to deal its power straight to our face with matching lifegain, dodging every blocker we have set up. Do not drift to a low life total or tap out while they have a grown creature. The burst only deals the sacrificed creature's power, so it turns lethal once we have drifted low, and then it erases the race in a single card.

Sideboard Plan

In:

2 Breath Weapon
2 Weather the Storm

Out:

2 Cleansing Wildfire
2 Nihil Spellbomb

Breath Weapon comes in as a second unconditional sweeper against their all-one-toughness board. Unlike Krark-Clan Shaman it also kills their flying Insect tokens and deals two, enough to clear a one-drop that has been grown a counter.

Weather the Storm attacks their two closing angles at once: the small-creature clock and the life swing from Rite of Consumption. A bare cast gains three, more once spells have been cast this turn, and that buys the turns our sweepers need. Two copies only, so we do not flood on reactive cards that never affect the board.

Cleansing Wildfire comes out because it is too slow here. Ramp and a cantrip do nothing to the board while their clock runs away. We keep two for three-color fixing and long-game card advantage, and trim the other two for interaction.

Nihil Spellbomb is mostly low-impact against their light graveyard use. We keep one as insurance against Unearth and Supernatural Stamina recursion and as artifact fodder, and cut the other two for cards that matter more against their clock.

Sideboarding moves this matchup meaningfully in our favor: we swap dead ramp and low-impact graveyard hate for a second sweeper and lifegain that attack their exact plan, while their board offers only generic edicts and removal against our midrange.

Post-board Strategy

Post-board, the plan is almost entirely about clearing their go-wide board and outlasting it. Breath Weapon joins Krark-Clan Shaman as a second board wipe, and it reaches the flying Insect tokens the Shaman cannot touch while dealing two, enough to clear a one-drop grown a counter. It is symmetric, though, and only Writhing Chrysalis survives it on our side, so hold it as a reset when our own board is thin rather than firing it into our creatures.

Weather the Storm comes in to blunt their clock and, more importantly, to answer Rite of Consumption: hold it up and the life swing that would steal the game evaporates. Keep feeding artifacts rather than creatures into our outlets so we do not grow Mortician Beetle, and sweep only after they have committed the board instead of trading one-for-one into their sacrifice value.

Expect more removal after board, so do not lean the whole plan on a single creature. Tragic Slip becomes a kill the instant any creature has died, which their own deck guarantees, and it will pick off Writhing Chrysalis or a grown threat at instant speed. Accursed Marauder adds an edict on a body to force us off a lone threat, though we choose the creature we lose, and it has to be a nontoken one, so our Eldrazi Spawn cannot soak it up. Snuff Out is nonblack-only, so it cannot touch Refurbished Familiar or Gixian Infiltrator and mostly ends up pointed at Writhing Chrysalis. Let the engine keep refilling so their answers trade down into expendable bodies while our card advantage takes over.