Jund Sacrifice Sideboard Guide: What to Bring In and Cut

Our Jund Sacrifice sideboard guide comes down to three rules: bring in artifact and enchantment removal against Mono-Green Landfall, Azorius Control, Jeskai Artifacts and Orzhov Lifegain, Duress against anything with counterspells or planeswalkers, and Fire Magic against decks of one-toughness creatures. That's how the list that won Magic Spotlight: Fracture in Hartford on October 25 is built. Below is each of its 15 cards, what the other 41 Jund players at the event brought instead, and our in/out plan for the seven decks you'll meet most.

Should you register this 75?

Play it if you expect a room full of 4c Control: Jund went 16-8 against it in Hartford's Swiss rounds, its best record against any of the seven decks below. Against Mono-Green Landfall, the most played deck there, it was a coin flip at Hartford (30-29) and ahead on mtgpile's Magic Online win matrix (69-51).

Think twice if your event looks like Magic Online: Jund lost more than it won against Dimir Midrange, Orzhov Lifegain and Azorius Control in Hartford, and it's behind against Dimir and Orzhov on mtgpile's Magic Online win matrix too.

Keep the one-ofs. Seven of the fifteen sideboard slots are single copies, and three of those (Guerrilla Gorilla, Leatherhead and Vengeful Tracker) are creatures Lively Dirge can put straight onto the battlefield (more on that below).

Von Stange's Jund Sacrifice decklist

Alexander von Stange went 12-2-1 in fifteen rounds of Swiss, starting 11-0 and losing only to Ronan Casey's Mono-Green Landfall in round 12 and Connor Ott's Jeskai Artifacts in round 13. In the top 8 he beat Max Medeiros's Dimir Midrange, Yineng Xu's Jund in the semifinals, and Ott in the final. Star City Games' report credits the list to testing with Team Worldly Counsel. Our Jund Standard deck guide explains the main deck card by card; this guide is about the 15.

Main deck, 60 cards

Sideboard, 15 cards

What each sideboard card is for

fdn-606fdn-606Shop on TCGplayer Duress takes a noncreature, nonland card. Against Dimir that's Kaito or a counterspell; against Azorius Control it's Day of Judgment, a counter or The Theorist. It was in 41 of the 42 Jund sideboards at Hartford, and so was tdm-94tdm-94Shop on TCGplayer Strategic Betrayal, which makes the opponent exile a creature they choose and their entire graveyard. It's at its best against a single big threat and against graveyard decks.

Fire Magic costs one red mana to deal 1 damage to every creature, or three mana for 2. One damage kills Dream Beavers, Spyglass Siren and Floodpits Drowner from Dimir, plus Llanowar Elves and an early Mossborn Hydra from Mono-Green. Two kills Orzhov's Enlightened Confidant, Starscape Cleric and a fresh Amalia Benavides Aguirre, and since Fire Magic doesn't target, Amalia's ward never comes up. It hits your own creatures too: Greedy Freebooter dies (and leaves a Treasure), but Gene Pollinator and Biotech Specialist survive the one-mana mode.

msh-169msh-169Shop on TCGplayer Guerrilla Gorilla, Heritage Reclamation and fdn-661fdn-661Shop on TCGplayer Maelstrom Pulse are the answers to permanents that shut the deck off. Torpor Orb stops The Sackville-Bagginses and Biotech Specialist from doing anything on entry. eoe-27eoe-27Shop on TCGplayer Pinnacle Starcage exiles every artifact and creature with mana value 2 or less, which is most of Jund's board including its Treasures and Clues, until the Starcage leaves. Destroy it and the cards come back, but the Treasures, Clues and other tokens are gone for good: Scryfall's ruling says an exiled token "will cease to exist and won't return to the battlefield." Maelstrom Pulse also destroys every other permanent with the same name, so it clears all of Jeskai's Construct tokens in one go.

Leatherhead, Swamp Stalker is a 5/4 trampler that enters with a hexproof counter, and when she deals combat damage she can trade a counter for one of the opponent's artifacts or enchantments. sos-214sos-214Shop on TCGplayer Professor Dellian Fel gains 3 life, draws, or destroys a creature. otj-106otj-106Shop on TCGplayer Shoot the Sheriff kills any creature that isn't an outlaw. Vengeful Tracker deals 2 damage whenever an opponent sacrifices an artifact, and Jeskai Artifacts sacrifices them on purpose: Cryogen Relic, Repurposing Bay and Castle Doom all ask for it.

The Lively Dirge trick

Lively Dirge's first mode puts any card from your library into your graveyard, and the second returns creature cards with total mana value 4 or less to the battlefield. Pay both (five mana) and the one-of Guerrilla Gorilla comes straight onto the battlefield, ready to eat a Torpor Orb. Zabulb, who posted a Champions Cup Store Qualifier win with Jund on r/Spikes on October 24, called Gorilla and Giant Cindermaw "searchable answers via dirge" when asked what he'd change.

The numbers back it. We shuffled the post-board 60 (one Gorilla in, four Lively Dirge) 100,000 times: you have the Gorilla itself in hand by turn 4 on the play only 16.7 percent of the time, but the Gorilla or a Dirge 61.3 percent. On the draw that rises to 65.4.

What the other Jund players brought

Forty-two players registered Jund Sacrifice at Hartford and eleven made day two. Duress and Strategic Betrayal were close to universal, Professor Dellian Fel and Guerrilla Gorilla were in most lists, and the biggest card von Stange skipped was The Ooze, in half of them.

Image: BaseMTG chart from all 42 Jund Sacrifice decklists on melee.gg, Magic Spotlight: Fracture, Hartford, October 24-25, 2026.

Fire Magic is the most interesting choice in von Stange's list: only 13 of the 42 Jund players had it. He also skipped fdn-624fdn-624Shop on TCGplayer Giant Cindermaw (players can't gain life), which sixteen lists ran for Orzhov.

Matchups and sideboard plans

The records below are Jund's Swiss matches at Hartford (draws left out) and its row on mtgpile's Magic Online win matrix since Reality Fracture, the mtgpile row read October 26. The in/out plans are ours, built from von Stange's 75 and the card text. He hasn't published his own.

Image: BaseMTG chart from melee.gg's round-by-round results, Magic Spotlight: Fracture, Hartford, named decks with 10 or more matches against Jund.

Mono-Green Landfall. The most played deck at Hartford, and an even matchup there: 30-29. The Saga is the slowest card you own, and Sapling Nursery's 3/4 Treefolk have reach, so swap it for cheap removal and the two artifact and enchantment answers. Keep Pursuit and every sacrifice piece. Ninety of Mono-Green's 97 lists had Torpor Orb in the sideboard (Casey ran three), so in a game where they have it, hold The Sackville-Bagginses until the Orb is gone. Our Mono-Green Landfall guide shows their side of it, and the Mono-Green Landfall sideboard guide has their in/out plan against you.

Dimir Midrange. Dimir's one-drops are 1/1 fliers and Floodpits Drowner has one toughness, so Fire Magic is a two-for-one or better. Duress takes Kaito or a counter. Keep Torch the Tower: on your turn Kaito is only a planeswalker, and Torch deals 2 to one. Our how to beat Dimir Midrange guide covers the Kaito timing.

Orzhov Lifegain. Two damage from Fire Magic kills most of their creatures, and Case of the Uneaten Feast and Lunar Convocation are enchantments Gorilla and Heritage Reclamation can hit. Keep all the removal; the Saga is the card to cut, because every turn it spends making Treasures is a turn their lifegain triggers keep coming. What Orzhov brings in against you is in our Orzhov Lifegain sideboard guide.

Azorius Control. Day of Judgment and Seam Rip are the problems (four of each in Patrick Wu's list, the best Azorius Control finish at Hartford, 27th), and there's almost nothing to kill. Cut the creature removal, bring in every Duress and the permanent removal, and add Leatherhead as a threat that dodges targeted removal. The Reddit regular AnilDG summed up why this matchup is bad in October: "Azorius Control farms Jund, with counters and maindeck Starcage" (comment).

Jeskai Artifacts. This is the deck von Stange beat in the final and lost to in round 13. Perilous Snare and Solitary Cell exile your best permanent until they leave, so artifact removal gets the card back. Vengeful Tracker punishes every Cryogen Relic, Repurposing Bay and Castle Doom activation.

Izzet Spellementals and 4c Control. Duress for the counterspells and the big instants like Jeskai Revelation, and cut the narrow removal. Against 4c, Professor Dellian Fel and Leatherhead give you threats that don't die to the same answer as everything else.

What players are saying

Zabulb's report from his Store Qualifier win, posted October 24, shows how much the sideboard moves week to week: after winning he'd have added Giant Cindermaw and Guerrilla Gorilla to the sideboard, and two Torch the Tower to the main deck "since it deals with enduring curiosity and can hit planeswalkers" (comment). Von Stange's main deck has three Torch.

Our take

Copy the 15. The creature one-ofs are Dirge targets, not indecision, and the artifact and enchantment removal is what keeps Torpor Orb, Pinnacle Starcage and Perilous Snare from deciding games on their own. If your local meta has more Orzhov than Hartford did, swap Shoot the Sheriff for Giant Cindermaw. And don't sideboard out the engine: in every plan above, The Sackville-Bagginses, Biotech Specialist and Lively Dirge stay.

How we checked

On October 26, 2026 we read all 777 decklists of Magic Spotlight: Fracture on melee.gg, labelled them with the same archetype rules as our deck guides, and counted the sideboards of the 42 Jund Sacrifice lists. Match records come from melee.gg's results for all fifteen Swiss rounds, every match counted (draws and byes left out). Melee's round results leave the decklist blank for about a fifth of the players, so for those we took the player's deck from the final standings; a player with no list anywhere would count as "Unknown", and none of Jund's opponents was. As a check, Jund's 194 match wins in the rounds equal the 194 in the final standings. The mtgpile numbers are its Standard win matrix, "Since FRA", banned-card decks excluded, read October 26. The Dirge numbers come from 100,000 shuffled decks per line, no mulligans. Card text is from Scryfall. We did not play matches for this guide, and we didn't run Forge games for sideboarded decks.

References

• Von Stange, Jund Sacrifice, Wins Magic Spotlight: Fracture (Star City Games, October 25, 2026)
• Alexander von Stange's decklist (melee.gg)
• Magic Spotlight: Fracture, Hartford standings and decklists (melee.gg)
• Standard win matrix (mtgpile; choose "Since FRA" and exclude banned cards)
• Ronan Casey's Mono-Green Landfall (melee.gg)
• Connor Ott's Jeskai Artifacts (melee.gg)
• Fire Magic text (Scryfall)
• Lively Dirge text (Scryfall)
• Pinnacle Starcage text (Scryfall)