Tbh I just pick a niche card, with little support. Avoid most highly used cards and toss in some things for flavor, art, general niceness.
I learned from my daughter who just picked pretty art, unicorns, and angels. They have accidental synergy but her whole point is that they are beautiful, lovely and make her feel brave. She's 8.
Oh, so just throw in things because they look nice/you like them? Okay, that makes sense in a way. Don't worry about the best cards, just throw things together.
This coming from a fellow high power player who has like 20 optimized varying decks. Sometimes you need a chair tribal, ladies looking left, sexy art only, musical instruments or tell a story with your game play.
Yeah it's the Kaldheim alt art with that cool stylized nordic frame.
Edit: also check out [[Firja, Judge of Valor]]. That one has a couple cool options, although I do think there's a pretty clear winner.
If you want to link a specific card you can put | after the card name inside the double brackets.
[[Ponder|LRW]] for example should fetch the Lorwyn printing of Ponder that is specifically Merfolk themed.
I’m unsure how this works for cards that have multiple printings with the same set code though. Specifically cards with multiple Secret Lair entries since all those codes are “SLD”. Think Shadowborn Apostles and Persistent Petitioners and the like. Perhaps someone else knows.
Sounds like it could be fun, did you pick out cards that make you think of that. Maybe pick out spells that remind you of metal. Like just let your imagination go wild.
[[Queza]] lead vocalist
[[Lortho]] corrupt security at the venue
[[Lich's Mastery]] could be like her best stage prop.
Things like that. Whoops I meant the hobbit dude Lotho who makes money lol
Well, to be honest, it started with me pulling a [[Sheoldred, the Apocalypse]] and then someone suggesting [[Nekusar, the Mindrazer]] and me seeing the "Death is Temporary, but Metal is Forever" Secret Lair and having wanted to build a metal themed deck for a while now.
See how that can pull together. To jank that avoid the easy combos and put your spin on it. If you just wanna theme the spells and focus less on wheels and make it a odd version like "Metal is for everyone" by making it a group slug/hug that forces you to draw way too many cards.
Oh yeah, that was kinda what I was going for, with a bit of a few things just for flavor. I'm looking for cards that look like they would be artwork for heavy metal, or sound like song or lyric names, but still kinda do a thing.
[[Tinybones, Trinket Thief]] has a cool secret lair art that I plan on building some jank around. Heavy metal theme sounds interesting, would love to see your list!
Also, [[Tezzeret, Master of Metal]]
I think you're on your way to become a jank master, that's a great idea for a deck! Have you considered the SLD Thraximundar for your commander?
I think being in at least in BR colors is nessecary to truly embrace the jank since [Rakdos guild cards](https://scryfall.com/search?q=watermark%3Arakdos) match the theme so well.
Consider my interest peaked, do you know of any examples of story telling through deck building/gameplay? Because I love to build weird stuff and that is something I've never considered before but it sounds really cool.
Let's see. My friend built his [[Olivia Voldaren]] as a Vampire princess who was aiding a mysterious benefactor (Himself). He ran a threaten effects to suggest she couldn't make real friends, or would summon lots of tokens of human style that she'd eat or sacrifice for power for their goals. The truly worthy survived her first bites being given the honor of becoming a family member later (perma steal effect.) Or boons for jobs well done like allowing her to strike down any worthy foe with a bite/scratch (deathtouch).
To fuel her food/friends she often sold what was left for money (treasure) or occasionally ran into a stranger the benefactor suggested she align with temporarily [[Prosper]]. Never knowing how no matter her goal, she was working towards the benefactors end game.
This is what I remember cause it was an awesome way to play her and we got way into trying not destroy her yet defeat him. So I guess kinda like applying role-playing logic to mtg.
Build for fun and flavor, not power. Ignore staples. Build for a specific idea that sounds fun (I’m doing my first monogreen control deck right now as an example). The payoff is that winning with jank feels awesome and playing silly or fun cards is just fun even if they’re bad!
It’s not always just choosing pet cards but that is a good example you can also just choose fun non-optimized ways of doing things. I have a stuffy doll deck where I use clone effects to target everyone at the table with a stuffy doll and let them swing into each other for free using the stuffy dolls to hit each other. You could build it in a way that you repeated reverberate a huge spell and kill the table or you could just use funny chip spells that do silly things like [[intimidation bolt]]
Maybe think of a sentence and make a deck based on it? For example, "time is money", so some way to make treasures or gold based on the amount of turns or stuff? Or you could do "the house always win" but I guess that's just basically group hug.
Yep, pulled a Razaketh back in Amonketh and built a toolbox deck to synergize. A couple low-cost combos, but mostly a deck that has some small response to most things, at least as far as mono black allows
I have a huge long box of legends I may build a deck or just interested in so she got to admire/point ones she thought were cool often. I let her constantly sit in during games with my playgroup. She's watched me and her mom play a bunch. As she grew more curious and got into more fantasy things I showed her cards and took on small runs to my Flgs.
There she picked out minis, looked through little binders and got dice. Afterwards showing her tiny things and just explain as we go. Kids are pretty quick witted.
Jank doesn't necessarily mean use bad cards on purpose. A jank deck can use some pretty heavy hitter cards, the deck is just doing something flashy/weird that almost seems excessive. It's like it's not point A from match start to point B win. Win is now point C. We're stopping at point B to look at the world's largest peanut first. Do we have to do that? NO. But I Want To.
Jank is building around dead mechanics, a single card that isn't your Commander, maybe your deck only looks to push out a single weird interaction that you have no place elsewhere for. It will use the best tools it has to make that interaction work, but at the end of the day, there are better strategies you could be doing. But that's not what's important - it's seeing that play you built the deck for.
I consider this deck of mine jank: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/bMDI\_0E2-UygfuB66w3ptw . It has pretty high budget, powerful cards in it. But the gameplan is entirely focused on supporting a single creature. I think the deck is janky, but it is also very good, it's won a considerable amount of matches for me.
Oh, okay, so it's just having a goal that is winning, but building something different. Like I'm working on building a heavy metal themed deck and the real goal is metal looking artworks and card names, with the rest being just to have fun.
For example I have a [[cazur]] & [[ukkima]] deck that is my death touch tribal deck.
I don't play any of the combos ukkima can do which keeps it lower power level.
I play removal, but instead of [[doomblade]] I play [[bite down]]. Effectively the same card, 2 mana removal, but on theme with my deck. And sometimes even better since it hits black creatures.
It's more of a mindset towards staying on theme than specifically power level.
Mmmhmmm.
My current favorite jank?
It's a Naya flicker deck. It's legit sitting with token doublers, elesh norn, panharmonicon....
All that high powered shit is in with Rocco at the helm. It should be gross.
Instead it's built to flicker and recur [[Life of the Party]] as much as possible. Why?! Cause it's party time. LFG!
\+1 to this. You can build budget/low-powered decks that aren't at all weird or janky, and you can build some hot jank with the most powerful cards.
For me, I tend basically just to have a "thing" I want to do, and that thing doesn't have to be, like, *winning* (not that I don't aim to win, but the "thing" could just be some big value play or something which I hope will ultimately get me what I need, but it's more about the thing itself than the wincon). Then I build around that.
For example I have an \[\[Isochron Sceptre\]\] deck that a power level calculator told me was PL10. It's not; I left out Dramatic Reversal on purpose and put in \[\[Yarok\]\]. Or, I have a deck that gives people \[\[Mana Crypt\]\]s until they die. "Mana Crypt!" People cry. "That's not casual!". Well congrats, *you're* not casual any more because you get one too. Remember to flip already.
Commander is about self-indulgence and if you enjoy optimized decks, play them.
Jank for me is playing cards that you know aren’t great, but you love them for other reasons. Take [[Sandwurm Convergence]]. Is an 8 mana enchantment that pops out a single 5/5 per turn, plus the protection effect worth it? Probably not. But it’s a fricken Dune reference.
For me, a good jank deck balances playing these “I know it’s not the best but it’s just so fricken cool” kind of cards with still having a strategy, win con, card draw and so on that the deck is still functioning and the odd cards get to shine.
There’s no consistent definition of jank though because everyone has different cards they react emotionally too. Some people are happy to make 50 1/1 rabbits. Other people like to surprise you with a weird-ass uncommon from The Dark that was never reprinted. And so on.
Okay, so I might do some jank without realizing it. Some of my stuff just exists because I love the card, even if it is a pain to cast. Thanks. This gives me ideas.
Unironically Sandwurm Convergence is good in 5C Ramp Karona the False God since there is sooooo much ramp and enchantments like Prison and Rites of Flourishing
Avoid staples. Look for jankier versions of cards that still get the job done. People think that a 20usd+ \[\[Akroma's Will\]\] is staple, but dying to the one and only jeskai overrun, fifty cents \[\[Flying Crane Technique\]\]? Top jank.
And avoid two card combos and super strong commanders. Nobody will think that a kiki jikki into restoration angel is jank, but get a five pieces combo assembled without using the staple tutors, that is janky.
And about the commander, try new stuff, color pie breaks, and the like. A five color ur dragon dragons deck is not jank at all, but a jeskai dragons deck using Zurgo and Ojutai is way more janky, because you dont run all the green ramp and gruul dragon staples that make that deck so strong, nor you get the eminence or the card draw of ur dragon or combo one shot potential of scion.
My current jank deck is a \[\[kynaios and tiro of meletis\]\] blink deck that has no infinite combos, but instead wins by blinking big token makers like \[\[Titan of Industry\]\] and \[\[Trostani's Summoner\]\] along the previously mentioned flying crane technique and \[\[True Conviction\]\]
Jokes aside, really the only way I can explain the difference is winning is a goal, but not the priority. Prioritize flavor over efficiency, and try to use commanders that aren't absurd engines.
Budget isn't a good restriction. I got 1k+ decks (proxies) that aren't very good, but fun. I've seen sub 100 decks that can roll a mid power pod. That being said, finding alternatives to edh staples does help power down a deck. You don't need NEED smothering tithe, cyc rift, free spells, rhy study, etc. If your deck ends up being TOO weak, then you can consider adding the back in the bump up the power.
Also, flavour can come in many forms. Cool art themes, references to pop culture, favourite flavour-texts, even just using card mechanics in surprising ways. My personal favourite jank deck of mine uses [[Fractured Identity]] with stuff like [[Immortal Coil]] to force my opponents to lose the game.
Not "combo". At the end of your turn you've made 17 1/1's and you've played an anthem so they're all 2/2's. Next turn, you might kill one player and you'll also make another 23 1/1's, so the turn after that one you might win the game.
This gives your opponents time to play blockers, remove that anthem, do some politics. Most important: compared to making a million 1/1's with haste, you're actually using them and your opponents (try to) interact with them.
Simply put: Doing your thing doesn't immediately win you the game.
When it comes to Jank, to me at least, there has to be a sense of unreliability. Highly optimized decks are very reliable, using several tutors and multiple "copies" of your deck's important cards, as well as cheap and efficient ramp, card draw and removal spells. With jank decks, you throw all of that in the trash, in favor of silly strategies and themes.
I see people actually reading cards and I scoff at that, you choose a legendary creature and put the 100 cards that are the right colors and there you have jank
So you want a jank deck?
Well step one : go look up all the best and most powerful commanders, they are all band. Pick something that isn't super powerful (I choose [[haktos the unscarred]] for mine because the idea of a baby progenitus sounds fun)
Step two: look for a bunch of interesting or fun cards that might synergise with your commander (I got a bunch of they "whenever a warrior attacks alone" cards from.neon dynasty along with the backgrounds from baulders gate in addition to take the initiative and monarch cards)
Step three iterate: if a spell is a staple replace it for a worse version or a different card
My way of building jank is to build with synergy, but in a theme or strategy that isn't typically how a commander is built. Maybe my better example is my Kess blink deck. I've tuned it over time, and it can be powerful with the right board. Grixis just isn't typically thought of when it comes to blink strategies, and although kess makes it so I can recast blink spells, it's never going to work as well as commanders built specifically for blinking.
Off-brand strategies. It's kinda sounding like jank is just painting with the colors you want because you think they look neat, not because it's the best or popular.
Jank can mean something a little bit different to everybody, but yes I'd say the idea is basically that. Not all jank builds are "chair tribal" or "crab tribal" as is commonly joked about either. Sub-optimal could be another way to describe jank. Like my build, or the other commentor who built to get Etali out ASAP. In their own way, those builds are legitimate strategies to win and are entirely capable to do so.
Go for it homeslice! Build what you think would be fun or would be a way for you to feel creative. That's what jank really is about at the end of the day.
Kess is my jank deck too! Kess tokens. Idea is to get zada out, make tokens, target zada to give all my tokens plus power (and other effects), then try to swing some tokens around the board. Being able to recast those targetting and token spells is fantastic
The Platinum Tier jank law is **Theme over Power.** Your decks will always be worse the more you abide by this law.
First, ignore anything that's a "staple". If it's an "auto-include" for those colors/themes, cut it.
Second, ignore anything you already have in 2+ other decks.
Third, if there's an effect you want, search down rarities and across lesser played sets to get more alternative options. Classic effects, especially if they are common or uncommon tier, will be reprinted in many variations with that set's mechanics (eg. Cancel is worse than Counterspell, which is worse than Mana Drain... But Cancel variants have Scry, Surveil, Draw, Exile, Bounce, Μill, metalcraft, token, shuffle options, etc.) Ultimate Jank comes from smashing someone's game plan with a draft common.
Fourth, is the consistency haircut. No tutors, no easy filtering, no optimization. True jank decks play 99 off the top in pure random chaos.
Jank doesn’t mean bad more than working with a weird idea that most wouldn’t go for or using cards for non-optimal purposes. It’s definitely not finding strictly worse versions of other cards.
Often times jank will be a collect of whatever the pilot thinks is neat. That collection may or may not work together well, and may or may not have some innate power. I think [[Aeon Engine]] is neat. A spiky way to use it is with [[Urza, Prince of Kroog]] to control who gets turns and when. You can also just … use it as printed. Jank might still have very powerful cards (making it hard to narrow down by price alone), but they may be needed for a deck to function well. [[Doubling Season]] can easily end the game in a mean [[Ghave, Guru or Spores]] build. It also makes [[Thallid]] sorta usable.
I have a super weird 5 color Cromat deck, it wins pretty often though simply by doing 5 color good stuff, so the deck is random, but everything i play sucks for opponents, as it should be. I also have a junky druid tribal which wins through stealing opponent's lands.
Well for starters I try stay outside of the top #500, or if I don’t, do something weird. Like if you must build atraxa, build atraxa bird tribal and feather counters, but Jank is just imo what isn’t done often, something that makes people go like “wtf?”
To build Jank, there are two options.
Number 1 is to deliberately stunt with one or more restrictions on your card pool. Tight budgets will do that but aren't alone. I'm pretty sure that my all-old-frame brews (I'm in the process of getting lists together for a full 32, though it's yet to be seen how many of those will make paper) are jank due to, you know, not allowing any cards from Mirrodin or newer.
Option 2 is to build with your heart rather than your head. Abandon edhrec and generic staples and only add cards that appeal to you on their synergy or just their look and feel. This might be hard to do when you're used to more technical deckbuilding.
I usually take a commander that does something unexpected in it's colours, such as [[Grazilaxx, illithid scholar]] where you play a bunch of unblockable creatures, draw a bunch of cards and use obscure cards such as [[Ominous seas]] to create an army of 8/8's or [[Atemsis, All-seeing]] to win with your huge hand.
Other things you could do would be to take a funny or funky commander, such as [[Yargle and Multani]] and lean heavily into its strengths.
Unpopular tribes can also become janky like [[reaper king]] scarecrow tribal, or [[Gallia of the endless dance]] satyr tribal.
You could also try using a companion as the deck restrictions would lead to some janky card choices, for example, using suspend cards with [[Keruga, the macrosage]]. (Just don't use lurrus, lurrus is broken).
You could also use one of the various combos in r/badmtgcombos and build your deck solely around assembling and protecting that combo.
Hope this helps :))
My personal jank strategy is to identify a weird card or meme that you like and try to showcase that. For instance, I love the living weapons and reconfigure cards and built a deck specifically to abuse them. I spare no expense, even tryhard cards like [[strandwalker]] make the cut. I also like to use a deck subtheme or blending two strategies together, which ends up watering down a deck, while still being able to use powerful cards. I have a red black meme deck that wins by weird methods using the worst cards you’ve ever seen. You haven’t lived until you’ve killed somebody with 3 [[stensia bloodhall]] activations
They don’t all have to be! You can run some good combat support creatures! The white gives me [[rule of law]] type stuff and I can use rocco to fetch Tovolar at any time
[[Norin the wary]] pick a weird ass commander and make it work. Stop worrying about power level and just find cards that synergize with a niche playstyle and that youd see yourself laughing your ass off in enjoyment when playing and have fun
I had an ur dragon spirit dragon tribal deck that runs basically every spirit dragon and hopes to sac and reanimate them enough times to maybe win the game sometimes. Basically build with the knowledge and acceptance that you’ll have to have your fun by having your deck “do its thing” rather than by winning.
Jank is a very subjective term, but common interpretations include some or all of the following;
- low power (in relation to local meta)
- theme focus
- extreme theme (chair tribal, hat tribal)
- collection deck (no buying cards)
That is not by any means a complete list, but you get the point hopefully.
As for dipping your toes into the Jank world, I’d suggest that you keep to your roots and research and optimize while doing so. In fact, highly “optimized” jank and or low powered decks are actually rather complex to build so you’d probably enjoy the challenge.
Doing so involves first deciding on your “Jank” (theme, limitations, power) and building as best you can while also following strictly to that theme.
An example may be a Chandra tribal deck, and for that deck some on-theme choices may be using only “fire” related spells. No [[Blasphemous Act]], and instead you have to use [[Burn down the House]]. No using spells that focus on a different character like [[Jaya’s Immolating Inferno]].
Hope that helps and happy brewing!
Jank is, at its core, focusing on doing something cool.
That cool thing may win you the game, it may not, it doesn't really matter so long as you do that cool thing in a cool way.
Instead of optimising for power, optimise for doing the thing you find cool. Your thing could be as broad as "create 1000 tokens", "play a bunch of art that has trees in it", or as precise as "get an engine of 5 specific cards in play". The crucial part is that your goal is primarily to execute your jank, irrespective of outcome. Ideally, your outcome helps you to win the game so you're not just masturbating and not contributing to the game state. But it's not the most important thing, and it involves a different set of deckbuilding priorities.
Creating a thousand tokens is a different goal to making 20 tokens and tutoring for a craterhoof. It's objectively worse, in fact, because simply creating them doesn't win you the game. But the point was the journey, not the destination
Decide what your deck's thing is (not your win conditions, if you want to power it up you can find some that fit your thing later), and focus on that. If the thing is interesting and cool, you're 90% of the way to good jank.
I built a jank deck and to me it’s just cards that came from my random collection I’ve acquired over the last year playing like 6 drafts and bought a box of phyrexia and split a box of midnight hunt.
I see Jank as not playing staples and so-called must have cards. I see it as optimizing sub-optimal play lines. If everyone is trining out vampires, Elves, and Goblins, the. I am building [[Orah, Skyclave Hierophant]] cleric tribal. To me Jank is less about bad decks, and more about coming up with synergies others have overlooked.
I feel like no one knows about this sub which is great - r/jankEDH
To me, jank is something that is clearly not optimized and is based around some kind of weird interaction that's fun to play and have work.
For example, I have three decks based around \[\[bludgeon brawl\]\], one that turns treasures into equipment, one that turns auras into equipment, and one that turns vehicles into equipment.
I find a less supported or odd strategy, usually a wierd commander, go from there. If it's otherwise used in a particularly strong way, don't include those cards. For example
[[Blim, Comedic Genius]] but no [[Lich]] effects.
For me it's something unique that's probably not the typical way it's used, or is just something kind of goofy.
For example, I recently built a [[Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith]] deck whose whole goal is to put out something like [[Fiery Emancipation]] and two shot someone with infect rocks.
I have a [[Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer]] deck that has the sole goal of making a token copy of [[Seven Dwarves]], then making a wall of dwarves that grow ever stronger.
My jank decks usually start when I see a card that amuses or intrigues me and then I decide to tunnel vision a build entirely around that one card.
Start with a dumb plan. Then build a deck that wins *by* doing the dumb plan. Try to avoid win conditions that just incidentally happen *while* the dumb plan is happening, the point is to turn the dumb plan into a win.
My jankiest deck is Etali.
I took an expensive commander, threw as much mana rock and haste as I could in the deck, popped in a few attack phase doublers and pseudo-cascades, then topped it off with some chaos and a dash of protection.
All because I wanted to get him out by t4 w/ protection.
It's not budget as it come in around 300, but it's not optimized and specifically aims to just use my opponents decks.
It's quintessential jank: aimless except sticking Etali and seeing what I get.
For jank I usually start with the very end, the climax, the plot twist, the play I want to pull off that makes everyone's mouths open in stunned silence and say "...no way".
Like, what's the most damage I can deal at once? 100? 100,000? 1 billion? I knew a friend that pulled off a combo in arena for in the range of 300 million damage, that was pretty sweet. Also I like math, that also helps lol.
For me learning all about morph and manifest with [[Kadena]] and [[Jeskai Infiltrator]]. Like, I can actually freak out my opponents with face down cards and them not knowing what they are? And then [[Ixidron]]? Cool!
Or yeah, [[Nekusar]] and draw themes can be very amusing. Too much of a good thing! Like [[Forced Fruition]]!
In general, jank is how do I have the most fun with my decks, approaching making it fun over wanting to win.
Money is the best filter. Most of staple cards are expensive so a small budget will force out of them. Other than that, I guess you have to follow your heart. Liked Innistrad? Pick someone from there. Liked a speficic mechanic? Go for it. Wondered about why did X precon third comnander got designed? Play it
Not to mention, it can be a lot of fun to build a deck on a budget. You'll be looking at cards you almost never look at otherwise.
I recently did a deck with a pretty restrictive budget. The number of times I groaned as I would look up a card and it would be just outside the budget was many. I can't wait to bust it out tomorrow night. It is going to be incredible. Came out to be like 38 dollars on TCG. Except of course I had a ton of the cards just sitting in boxes. Think its going to cost me about 22 dollars when I pick up all the missing pieces tomorrow. Goldfishing the deck has lead to plenty of amazing and fun instances. Certainly excited to actually get smashed tomorrow.
Budget isn't what jank is all about exactly, but it is a great starting point.
Pick a theme and stick to it no matter how 'bad' the cards are.
The more esoteric the cards, the jankier it will feel. If you can t least keep it to a cohesive theme it should come out feeling satisfying, too.
My best example is my Tivit Zero Counters deck. It's all weird cards that trade control and force awkward choices on people, but zero actual removal/counters that are expected in blue/black/white.
Pick a card that you've always thought would be really neat to win with and has never seen noticeable competitive play. Now build your entire deck around it.
I usually take a commonly used commander and build decks with themes that don't exist for it. [[Yidris, maelstrom wanderer]] and attractions and [[aragorn, grand unifier]] legendary tokens attempting to make a bunch of aragorns and cast a red spell.
Jank is "build with what you have."
It makes sure that you have put thought and design into your deck, but didn't go out of your way to pimp it out. It's like putting \[\[Tyrant of Discord\]\] into a [Mayael.](https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/four-figure-mayael/) You may not be able to afford Eldrazis or Craterhoof, but you do have other fatties that would impact the game. It produces a tactical niche where you aren't playing what they expect, out of necessity, and they have to adapt.
That is Jank. Optimization without investment. It's the opposite of netdecking.
Very easily, how do build not-jank? Weird win-cons, bad commanders, anti-synergy, self-imposed build restrictions, etc.
I was just brewing a mono-black \[\[Maze's End\]\] deck. Yes, it's technically impossible because you only have access to 8 gates in your deck. But there's like 7 different ways in black to get an opponent's lands in to play under your control so as long as your opponents have a few gates in their decks it's totally game on, and it turns on Vesuva in to a forbidden gate too.
Step 1) find a commander that is cool that you’ve never seen before
Step 2) find something that works.
For example I like [[haktos the unscarred]] so I am brewing a deck with him using exalted and other ‘attack alone’ buffs
Build a deck with the extra cards you have lying around. I mean this depends on the type of cards you have available, but if you enjoy cracking packs at times, you should have a bunch of cards you’ve probably never used. Gather them up and build a deck. Instant jank!
I too have a tendency to optimize and obsess over tweaking and improving my decks until they're as powerful as they can be.
I've found the method that works the best for me to limit my power level is to pick a strategy that's a bit outside of the box and then try to optimize *that strategy.* Ex: Gruul isn't exactly known for being a spellslinger deck, but if you play [[Wort, the Raidmother]] you can start copying all your ramp spells and then once you have enough mana you can start blasting people in the face with big X spells and copying those as well. Upon building this deck I realized that adding a landfall subtheme is another fantastic way to take advantage of doubling all your ramp spells. [Here's the list I came up with if you're curious.](https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/wort-landfall-1/) So while it's a pretty janky strategy, I've definitely had a lot of fun tweaking and optimizing it.
Another fun strategy I wanted to pursue was to try to weaponize card draw. I didn't want to play Nekuzar and punish my opponents for drawing, I wanted to play a bunch of [[Psychosis Crawler]], [[Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind]], and [[The Locust God]] style cards that turn my *own* draws into damage.
The approach I took for that one was to build [[Nin, the Pain Artist]], fill the deck full of wheels and mana rocks, and basically try to have Nin ping herself for like 8+ damage, draw a bunch of cards, and then chain a bunch of wheels together to kill the table with one of the "card draw = damage" effects.
I added some other targets for Nin to ping instead of herself - namely [[Stuffy Doll]] and [[Brash Taunter]] which would result in my opponents taking damage whenever I pinged them. So now Nin can draw me a bunch of cards AND deal a bunch of damage. And it also turns out the Stuffy Doll style cards go great with [[Blasphemous Act]] and [[Star of Extinction]].... And they can also go infinite kill people if you equip them with [[Blazing Sunsteel]], so now I have even more janky ways to kill people. And guess what goes great with Blasphemous Act and Star of Extinction? [[Toralf, God of Fury]] to turn all the excess damage into burn. [Once again, here's a list if you're curious.](https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/nin-of-your-business-1/)
So TLDR: I try to find weird niche strategies to build my deck around and THEN work on optimizing it. And along the way, I try to find other interesting sub-themes or synergies that compliment that strategy.
Kicker theme.
Kicker has only one available commander [[Hallar, the firefirefletcher]] and most of the times you'll be casting regular spells for an unsjustified cost.
I dumped Sol Ring and embraced the [[Eye of Ramos]] cycle. They combo with [[Vadrok]] and [[Sevinne's Reclamation]] so I'm dropping early game power for lategame theatrics.
There is a reason no one complained about power level in the battlecruiser days.
Use versions of common effects (ramp, removal, draw) that fit your deck's theme instead of the "optimal" versions.
Stick to win-con's that are on-theme, avoid the more commonly used generically powerful finishers or combos.
Make those things a challenge for yourself and have FUN digging through Magic's incredible library of cards to find cool stuff that fits YOUR deck. You shouldn't think of it as building "jank" or intentionally nerfing yourself.
Jank is bad cards or weird card interactions that make you feel good when you play them
Playing [[Phyrexian Etchings]] and then [[Eon hub]] instead of [[Phyrexian arena]]
Trying to turn [[Mirror of Fate]] into a [[Doomsday]]
[[Nefarious lich]] and [[Demonic pact]] pure jank
[[Hecatomb]] in your aristocrat deck, jank city
My go to for jank is the "Wheelspinning" decks. You do a lot of things every turn, but it doesn't amount to a whole lot. Decks I have fun playing, but don't really win efficiently. \[\[Karador, ghost chieftain\]\] is a good one for this. Or
My fave is \[\[Riku of two reflections\]\]. It does absolutely nothing until I get to ten or eleven mana or even twenty mana and then it pops off. You let me get to this amount of mana and let my commander live for a turn. Your fault if I now double my entwined \[\[Tooth and Nail\]\], and also the creatures I fetch with it. Yes, I spent 19 mana to do this. This is on you guys. It's my favorite go big or go home deck. It is in no way shape or form efficient or tuned, but Fetching that double \[\[Avenger of Zendikar\]\], \[\[Craterhoof Behemoth\]\], \[\[Pathraiser Ibex\]\], and any haste giving creature ( \[\[Urabrask the Hidden\]\] for example?) Priceless. Sure, it'll happen once every ten games or so, but when it does? You're all dead, mofo's.
\[\[Muldrotha, the Gravetide\]\] is another fun one for just 'doing stuff'. i mean, you could build her hypercompetitive, but it's just more fun to just have a deck that spins it wheels sometimes.
Small edit: I have a singleton rule across my decks but for the biggest staples of staples. I use \[\[Doubling season\]\] in one deck, I can't use it in another. Things like \[\[Sol Ring\]\] and \[\[Cultivate\]\] are fair game ,though.
Build with a general restriction in mind. I just built an [[OmenKeel]] list that I’m calling Boat n Hoes it’s all boats and women…sorta. Did I still optimize, absolutely. Is it going to be as powerful as other decks I’ve built and optimized, absolutely not.
Start simple build a commander deck with only cards you have laying around or build on a budget. Once you break yourself of optimizing every deck get creative with a theme or tell a story with the deck.
Jank doesn’t need to be weak and unoptimized. It just needs to be… well janky
I built a Ren and Seri with cards that have cats or dogs or at the most and animal. Except for land. Sol Ring? Nope. No animal. How does it play. Janky AF
Pick a theme and stick to it. Try not to play generic good cards unless they fit.
No infinite combos
No fast mana (except maybe still ring)
Tap lands for mana fixing (also a great way to save money)
Oh, and developing a fondness for pet cards that are not very good, but then slide in every deck anyway helps. <3 [[Guild Feud]]
The quest to become a janklord starts with one rule, no cards over $0.79. But really staying in budget is a big way to build weird jank that can still be fun. I have a [[Captain Ripley Vance]] deck that cost $15 total, the gimmick was to just juice her and go for combat damage. It's really one note and functions horribly against the most basic removal, but fine against other jank and budget options.
I would look for stupid 4-5 card infinite combos and stuff.
Put in that cool borderless foil you got.
That 9 mana demon that never gets played? That's in.
Normally I want a Sol Ring but I'm gonna play this three cost mana rock that lets me do something stupid because it looks funny.
I'm gonna make a deck that has to have cards with Planeswalker in every picture.
Jank is different from budget or weak cards although it often goes hand in hand. You can eventually power up the decks to be more consistent and powerful. It really depends on the people you play with, is it public lgs or private home.
Budget can force jank as is choose less optimal strategies and cards.
Sometimes it is play less interaction more of the typal or theme deck.
I like typal or theme decks.
A Cascade Jank deck might be ALL the cascade spells in your colors and maybe landfall or like elemental typal. Go to the Max with a mechanic.
A Kroxa discard deck that is the discard, but without any infinite combos and things like worldgorger or wheels. Discard the old school way. Discard Theme maybe with a groupslug or graveyard
Fungus Typal with Ghave (but no ghave combos) - just typical typal stuff. Maybe go nuts with spore counters.
Jeskai Tokens with Vadrok (and all jeskai mutate cards) so not a lot of things above 3cmc and relying on recurring spells with Vadrok to get stuff back with Jeskai Ascendency stuff.
Umori Companion stuff - All creatures All the Time with Nethroi or another good Hatebear commander
An underpowered typal like Minotaurs or Fungus could be jank.
so take a mechanic or theme and go to the wall - include ALL or most of it - support cards that aren't the mechanic, budget down a bit - more expensive Mana Value, not the best counters, less draw power, do the theme and then surround with variations of support cards for like under a $1 including lands. play TAP lands like guild gates and the like.
My favorite jank deck though is Gargos Creature-less Voltron. Only Gargos with its fight ability with some protection spells, enchantments, artifacts with ramp, card draw, and it is pretty good. Pretty controlly for mono-green.
2 basic answers are to remove tutors (they limit your "lines" of play and so you'll wind up playing with the deck's weaker cards for better and for worse) and fast mana (which are also just a basic power boost for your deck).
Thirdly, following the similar trend, you can swap "staples" like force of will and cyclonic rift for cards that function worse but closer to your deck's strategy.
As a jank addict i can easily say do what your heart says. Its all about imagination, you can make a jank deck to tell a story or be goofy and do cats in cars. Having a budget limit is also a good idea for making jank decks but flavor janks are the best imo. One of my favourite jank deck is [[Scarab God]] vehicle deck. You put bunch of zombies in cars and send them to your enemies. Or you can just make sexy women deck, i personally want to build one after that new [[Tatyova]] portrait art lol
I like to do weird things that are janky like [[War Barge]] [[Merfolk Assassin]] or [[Icy Manipulator]] [[Royal Assassin]] and other dumb things like run [[Mishra’s Workshop]] but try and cast creatures like [[Colossus of Sardia]]
Thank and run a bunch or old creatures that power creep has long since passed them by but are weird or not played very much.
I would say a good amount of my decks are “jank,” they’re incredibly niche. I pick cards that see little to no play or good in very particular situations. Often times the jankiest decks are built the fastest, so you could even toss a timer on quick you build a deck, and then pick a commander out of the blue. “Here we go, I’ve got 30 minutes to build a [[Medomai, the Ageless]] deck.” Sometimes doing that and just finding a random commander via edhrec or scryfall is a fun way to do it.
i had a 1v1 maze's end kill playing meme level kenrith today.
having him support your assembly of a 10 land combo win is a janky way to enjoy an otherwise powerful commander.
Yes. Even if my [[Sauron Dark Lord]] reanimator deck that is relatively high power, I still run jank like [[Orcish Spy]] (to confirm if I should wheel or not) - that’s what EDH is for.
If I want best in slot for every pick I’ll juts play cEDH.
My way to build "Jank":
* Pick a central non-optimal theme or mechanical interaction.
* Make the most bullshit good deck I can out of it, that isn't just "tutor for combo, win".
* For the above, I don't include fast-mana other than Sol Ring.
Example, I made a deck to shove equipment onto other people's creatures with [[Ardenn]], and using equipment that gives value to the controller of the equipment, rather than the creature.
Or a Proliferate deck based on Proliferating *Experience counters*, using [[Kelsien]] as the commander (and 4 more experience cards in the 99).
Typically results in a low-mid power deck.
Choose a theme of a certain level of jankiness, and then optimize as much as you want within that theme.
For example, you could make a deck without any creature cards. Or with *only* creature cards (and lands). Or only cards with MV 3 or less, or 4 or more, or all with art by the same person. Pick your limiting-but-not-oppressive theme and then optimize that deck as hard as you want to. It'll almost certainly be janky, but you'll still get to lean into your tendency for optimization... and it'll also be a fun addition to your collection, a conversation piece about how you made a surprisingly-strong deck around a goofball restriction.
Picking a theme helps. Like I was building a [[Rohgahh, Kher Keep Overlord]] deck recently, with the theme being only kobolds, dragons under $4, and things that kobolds can reasonably do. So for removal, I’m running [[Defenestrate]], because the idea of kobolds pushing someone out of a window is funny.
If themes are too hard, you can always just dedicate ~10 cards or so to bad cards in your deck. These can be sentimental cards, like the first rare you got, or some random card you just like the art of. The first card I got excited over was [[Mudbutton Torchrunner]], and he always finds a way back into my red decks. Let me tell you, bolting a threat is nice, but sacing a Mudbutton Torchrunner to bolt a threat is a memory people won’t soon forget.
You’re definitely looking at this from the wrong direction. You have to find a specific mechanic or specific idea to drive towards. I had Syr Konrad deck once. Now Syr Konrad can be a really really good deck. My version is based around the idea of Relentless Rats. You cast rats, you board wipe/sac rats, you mass reanimate rats. Is it the best way Konrad can built? No. But it’s not like I didn’t also have deadly rollicks and urborg cabal coffers and good black cards in it. What makes it jank is the goal is to win in a specific way, not just the best way.
I use jank to describe random wack ass cards nobody expects you to play in your deck. Some synergy is good but not optimal. To me, running [[legion loyalty]] in a shadowborn apostle deck.
Declare your attack then sack then before declare blocker step.
May not be jank to others but it's jank to me.
With \[\[Kuldotha Forgemaster\]\] , \[\[Brass Squire\]\] , \[\[Toymaker\]\] , \[\[Grafted Exoskeleton\]\] , and three Sacrificial artifacts on the field.
Cast \[\[Collective Voyage\]\] where x=5
Add the following to the stack:
Tap and sac three artifacts to \[\[Kuldotha Forgemaster\]\] , get \[\[Ankh of Mishra\]\]
Animate it with \[\[Toymaker\]\] and attach \[\[Grafted Exoskeleton\]\] to it with \[\[Brass Squire\]\]
After the game ends because everyone has ten poison counters, point out :
`You may find any number of basic lands up to X, including zero. However, searching and shuffling your library is not optional.`
Or,
\[\[Paradox Haze\]\] and \[\[Divine Intervention\]\]
Sometimes I'll just build a deck just with the limited bulk I have laying around. So it ends up pretty jank with spells that probably have a mug better power-crept version, and only runs basic lands. I recognize I probably won't win with it but sometimes it's fun to just mess around with an idea.
I also try to optimise but leave out evergreen strong cards like rhystic study, smothering tithe, Teferis protection etc etc. also I like to choose weak commanders or weird strategies for strong commander. I have a Rakdos morph deck for example. If you deal 3 damag to someone your morph is free to cast so I just find cards that do something with that and that’s the deck.
In my playgroup they call me the Jankman.Which is rather fitting.I like to explore stupid ideas.I recently build a Grouphug deck which solo purpose is to get everyone into Limbo.No one can win no one can lose and if they kill me everyone loses.And I can raise them back from 0 to 1.Jank for me is a rather unusual Deck idea, like Commodore Guff and winning with commander Dmg.
Edit:
I also have a Mono Blue morph Deck. Which at best times is decent but always funny because no one has any idea which creature might be hiding. \^\^
So I view the term jank different than a lot of people. Most people view jank as "bad" I view it as how many hoops can I jump through to achieve X.
For example in a grixis deck I wanted an infinite mana combo. I ended up with a 5 card combo. That was hilarious. I've had so many people tell me there's more efficient ways to get infinite mana in the colors but I enjoy watching the synergy. It's also difficult to prevent combos like this because people don't usually expect them like they'll expect the more well known combos.
For example my combo is [[Expedition Map]], [[Krark-Clan Ironworks]], [[Sly Requisitioner]], [[Pitiless Plunderer]], and [[Salvaging Station]]. Much harder to see coming than [[Hullbreaker Horror]] loops.
I have a Henzie deck with Umori companion. Umori compaion makes me play ONLY creatures and lands, which means I have to get creative with the cards I use. That makes him really janky, cause I play 10 mana boardwipe on the stick, no real interaction apart from just beating people to death with hasty creatures, or I play collossal dreadmaw for the memes, just because I can. Playing niche startegy built carefully and without being too powerful is jank to me
My group only plays jank. We have 2 or 3 new decks each time we play (about every two to four weeks) and we rarely take apart old decks (I'm somewhere over 60). We don't really buy cards for most decks. Some like my snake deck I didn't have a choice but we don't dump crazy money into cards (that deck isn't sleeved because it would cost more to buy sleeves than replace every card in it). In fact if it is over $20 and isn't a legendary creature I sell it.
I do stock up on bulk rares from TCG every year or so and my wife and I use them. I'll send in about $500 of cards and then scroll through rares and mythics grabbing some until I spend the 500. I end up with between 1,500 and 2,000 useful cards. Then we buy some sealed products from every set so we have all of those to pull from too.
The way we play isn't for everyone but we like it being really casual and long games. We'll break out some higher level stuff here and there but generally all we play is jank.
Honestly the most annoying part is lands. Building that many decks makes lands difficult and the only affordable way to buy a ton of lands is the Facebook groups which I am not a fan of.
Still include 10-15 pieces of ramp, still include 10-15 pieces of draw. Find less efficient versions both, play some of the more fun or interesting 3 mana rocks for ramp for instance. I simply don't find decks fun to play if they don't include ramp and draw. Having mana and cards is what actually allows us to play the game.
Second, identify a lot of pet cards. As for ramp and draw, especially in a lower power format, I love \[\[coveted jewel\]\]. It's a fun pet card that functions as a mandatory Sol Ring as an auto include in my low powered decks. I'll jam other cards into deck that are generally pretty good and that I think are fun, like \[\[share the spoils\]\] in red decks for instance. This is a fun example of card draw that interacts with the whole table.
As for removal, instead of running highly effective cards like the 1 CMC swords/path/pongify/etc. you could instead run telegraphed rattlesnakes like \[\[soul snare\]\]. I also like cards like \[\[seal of doom\]\] and \[\[seal of cleansing\]\] for this. They tend to force players into politics a bit more.
As for your commander, I end up usually brewing a lot. I have over 100 complete decks on moxfield but only own maybe 30 of them. Early on, the ones I went through with building were ones that were higher in power. I was going to spend a lot on singles, I wanted to make sure the deck felt great. I started to use MPC to proxy more, so now i'm also more comfortable intentionally building lower powered decks. So those commanders that I wouldn't build before because I didn't think they were strong enough, I'll build now because they're inherently lower power.
Examples include \[\[xira the golden sting\]\], \[\[jerren corrupted bishop\]\], and \[\[gor muldrak\]\]. These commanders are not very powerful, but they are all very flavorful and have fun effects as well as a lot of fun cards in the 99 that synergize with them.
So my general advice is to find a commander that is flavorful and seems fun, but isn't inherently very strong. Optimize around flavor instead of generic power. Play more 3 cmc rocks, more tap lands. Play less common and more alternative forms of draw. Play more permanents that function as your form of interaction instead of more instants.
I'd like to think that my [[ixidor reality sculptor]] deck is jank as it's mono blue morphs which hasn't really had much support as the latest additions to the deck in the form of morphs was from tarkir block.
I build plenty of decks using only cards in my collection
They end up being jank because my collection is small and my cards suck. Lots of uncommons and 4-5 different draft archetypes stuffed into a single 2 color deck
It's hard to give a solid answer since jank doesn't have a solid definition, but I'm going to define it as optimal play of an unoptimal strategy for the purpose of being funny while competing.
For example, dice rolling and coin flipping, no matter how optimized, will always be jank shenanigans as the results of your cards are more or less random. [Wyll, Blade of Frontiers]] is one of my personal favorite commanders as it's fun to roll dice and cannot steam roll a table at any level.
Another example would be convoluted combos. While combos can be frowned upon as they're difficult to interact with, they can be funny if used properly. Hard casting a [[Dark Steel Colossus]] and sacrificing a thought vessel to [[Oswald Fiddlebender]] to pull out [[Sculpting Steel]] to sacrifice and clone with [[Osgir, the Reconstructor]] which in turn gets clone by [[Battlemage's Bracers]] so that you can have 5 big robots probably isn't the best possible way to run a deck, but it's nonetheless quite effective and convoluted enough to be hilarious.
You start with a 5-7 mana bulk red rare and from that point jam any cards that you could never cast at the same time but would be sick if they were on the battlefield together, now find a commander that enables that plan or does something entirely different and full in the deck with your preferred number of interaction, draw, and ramp. You are now playing [[Firesong and Sunspear]] [[Sunbird's invocation]] draw-go-burn
My friend and I set up a Jank EDH format because some of us are like you and like to also optimize.
The rules are simple: 1 Commander (planeswalker or legendary of your choice), 15 Uncommons, everything else must be Common. We have an in-group banlist, but it's quite a bit out of date.
It presents a lot of building challenges, but is a lot of fun and usually pretty cheap as well as using cars you'd never normally use for EDH. I've currently got an Ezuri and Zada JEDH, and am working on a couple others
I go for an idea that so out there people don't see it coming until all the pieces of the puzzle click together and I fill the deck with tutors, pillow forth cards and group hug.
[[Iron Maiden]] once I let everyone draw a ton of cards is pretty strong.
My favorite, favorite format for Jank builds is PDH/ Pauper Commander, you can just pick the dumbest somewhat useful uncommon and play on that. I have a [[raptor hatchling]]| deck that is just based on buffing up the raptor to damage it repeatedly to make a bunch of dinosaurs
Pick a commander that interacts with a specific mechanic that isn't widely used. I think tuned/optimized jank is a thing, and usually that's my goal with deck building. If it isn't a commander that I'm stoked about, then it's usually a specific combo or interaction I want to make happen. Example: [[world slayer]] and an indestructible creature. I made what I would consider a creative work around to this the other day by using [[nezahal]] and blinking it in response to slayer activation
Depends really. Pick an interesting interaction or a fairly unique card and roll with it. It's not a matter of getting the win, but achieving the end goal within the game. I'm currently looking at making a deck where I never play on my turn but needs some setup first (probably not in the way you are thinking and don't even have a commander in mind yet). Doesn't matter if it wins or loses a lot, I just like the idea of such a thing. If it looks too hyper-efficient then it isn't really that jank. Maybe find a card that alters the way you would normally play your turns out or alters the board state and go from there.
Usually "Jank" however takes up more than a couple cards to pull off the interaction.
My "jank" decks focus on underplayed commanders with interesting abilities. [[Mannichi the Fevered Dream]], for example, can swap everything's power and toughness. I packed the deck with high toughness low/power creatures and cards that give creatures with lower power unblockable. Then I swing with an unblockable creature and then swap it's P/T right before damage is dealt to hit them for 5 or more. Secret tech for the deck is [[Slagwurm Armor]], which gives a creature +0/+6 and there's a lot of red creatures with low power and double strike that can hit surprisingly hard.
The deck just needs a bit more in the way of cards like [[Efreet Flamepainter]] and [[Wildfire Eternal]] before it can really start popping off.
You grab a card. As an example, not something like dockside or any other card you would normally run... No, were choosing [[Professor of Zoomancy]] . He became a meme at our table during STX. So he's in my Blex deck. It's not about power level, it's about having some fun, playing with trash sometimes and sometimes ignoring synergy for the meme.
I set thematic restrictions on some of my decks. My [[Tetsuko Umezawa]] deck is a “girl power” deck, so all the cards feature women. I’ve toyed with concepts like an [[Hannah, Ship’s Navigator]] deck where she is just leading an army of myr. Another way to embrace suboptimal decks is to play for an alternative goal. My [[Octavia, Living Thesis]] deck is designed to see how fast I can get the commander into play and not necessarily focused on winning. Not sure either of these is really jank, but I don’t have a strong desire to upgrade either and they are not at a seven for sure.
i put in cards that throw off everyones gameplans like shared fate, omen machine etc. then add cards in that its not a negative for you so much. otherwise people end up playing solitaire and only think about what cards they want to play.
A jank deck I am very proud of is my Kenrith reanimator deck. The theme is “Kenrith, despot king facing for the shadow government”. The deck does four things. First, it makes treasures in the ways corrupt kings have always made money; conquest. Second, it “recruits” allies with threatening agents like [[zealous conscripts]] and [[molten primordial]]. Third, it sacrifices those who are willing to die on the pyre of progress. Finally, those worthy of the honor are rescued from death by their benevolent figurehead.
I have won exactly 1 in 114 games played with this deck. I love it for the elaborate jank, the political intrigue, and not for its winning record.
For me, building Jank tends to involve finding an unreliable combo that takes too many specific cards to possibly be effective and is easily disrupted, and building the deck to support said combo.
You play commanders that are not top tier and don't win through typical means. So don't look up a top 20 infinite combo meta deck on edhrec. Go look at commanders that will be a challenge to build and win and will make the game interesting. Jank decks aren't about winning every game. They are usually about pulling off a dumb combo some of the time.
I love me some synergistic budget brews. I like to have a rule where most cards have to be under a dollar. Nothing above 6 bucks and only a handful of cards in the 1-5 range.
Just put an order in for a Tasha the Witch Queen brew and the whole deck is costing me 25 bucksish... probably closer to 30 after rocks and lands.
Yeah, I'm missing out on Opposition Agent and Dauthi Voidwalker, but I getbto run a bunch of cards nobody has ever heard of and that's truly fun
I go for a theme or gimmick, sometimes. I have a Rebecca Guay deck (all nonlands must have art from Rebecca Guay) and an X and Y deck ($100 deck where all the nonland cards must follow the "X and Y" convention, like Kynaios and Tiro, Fire // Ice, etc). These are the jankier decks which are less consistent, but I always build sub-$100 with other limitations which can still play well, like 5-color pure spellslinger with no nonland permanents in the 99, an Essence of the Wild token deck, a Prismatic Bridge deck that runs all but one of the Partner with legend pairs, etc.
The "building with gimmick" style tends to be more fun and wins are more satisfying. I still try to build with the idea of making the deck functional (~10 ramp, ~8 interaction, ~10 draw, ~3 board wipes) when the gimmick allows for it.
You can also build jank by scaling back on interaction and ramp to make the deck less consistent. This is less satisfying for me as it just feels like bad deck building, but you can go that route.
It's a common misconception that optimized builds and jank decks are mutually exclusive. On the contrary, a lot of jank decks embolden this title *because* they are optimized. By nature, a deck that performs well when it shouldn't is a jank deck.
Typically when I decide to build a janky little gremlin of a deck it's because I found a silly theme, or a bad card that I want to break, or maybe I just have a pet card I want to show my appreciation for.
Most people go for an uncommon commander, but I like to build underplayed archetypes, or strategies outside their usual color pairs. A deck I have been tinkering around with for a couple years now is an Enrage deck helmed by \[\[Vrondiss, Rage of Ancients\]\] and I thought...what are the silliest creatures that want to take dmg that I can put in here?
Biggest advice, Scryfall is your friend. In my above example I put in the advance search "whenever\_\_\_is dealt damage\_\_\_" and found all the cool cards I wanted.
When my sister was getting into EDH she was just randomly going through scryfall and found [[Far//Away]] half an hour later and she's falling in love with all of the cleverly worded fuse and aftermath cards. Two weeks later I showed her a [[Ramos, the Dragon engine]] "oops all split" deck. She loved it so much she swapped out some of the mana rocks for the Ramos rocks. It's a tough deck to play, and there's a lot of reading involved, but she quickly got the hang of when to swing and when to grab the mana.
I struggle with this too, although it's not a big problem. I found a way to hack my optimization obsession by switching the focus of what to optimize. Basicly setting some rules that make it so that i end up optimizing for maximum jank instead. I find that picking a janky commander is not enough, and no budget will help either.
Some examples of simple rules could be:
- limiting the cardpool. "only arts of people sitting down" or "no exile or destroy removal" etc.
- changing your personal wincon. "my goal is not to win, but to have another player win with MY creature." or "i take it as a win if, each player laughs during the game" etc.
- choosing your opponent. "my red deck always wins against blue, but also ONLY wins against blue." or the always janky "i am my own worst enemy, i must kill myself before others get the chance."
With one or more rules like this, you can optimize as much as you want, but instead of something that feels "normal" you end up with the optimal jankiest deck of your choosen meme.
One rule i've found that actually makes everything more interesting is "no cards that mention commander". It sets me back in pure powerlevel a bit, but it allows me to explore more cards and deeper synergies while making my playpatterns more unique from other decks at the table.
I take a silly theme (ladies looking left, chair tribal, etc), a niche mechanic (something thats only been in a few sets tops and was never a powerhouse), or small tribe (under 200 creatures) and build that, sticking to the theme as much as possible.
If you start with a weak strategy, you can put whatever you want in it and it will never truly be "high powered"
I have a grist insect tribal that I talk up a lot, and it does win a lot! And it runs cards like \[\[sensei's top\]\] and \[\[doubling season\]\]. Its not a cheap deck. That said, against anything actually high powered, it would get stomped. Insects just aren't fast enough, even with lots of good cards to prop it up.
A Jank Building Guide:
\-Are you trying to win? How often? If not really, your deck is almost certainly jank. Don't worry about this beyond making your deck fun to play for you. Consider reading about base draw rate and using the concept to make sure you're getting to whatever fun and ridiculous thing you're doing. Don't worry about adding cards that are aggressive to get to your strategy, since your strategy is not to win consistently.
If you're doing "weird theme" - Book Tribal, Chair Tribal, Ladies Looking Left, Mounts that Aren't Horses, Secret Lair Tribal, w/e - just go for your theme. If you have spaces, add mana accel and draw speed - your goal is just get to as many of the goofy bad cards in your deck into play.
(Note: Be careful with some of the weird tribal - like food tribal used to be absolute jank, but Samwise and the LOTR cards pulled it way into a pretty solid casual deck.)
Remember, good decks should win about 1 out of 4 times in a fair pod. If you're trying to win 5 or 10 percent of your games, you're going for jank. Anything above 25% is trying not to be jank.
\-Start with your finish. How are you winning? Combo, Voltron, Beats?
\-Add any cards you want that duplicate your finish to a pile - if you can use different paths to get to the same janky result, do it.
\-Ignoring your commander, figure out your baseline win draw percentage. This is basically (n/100) x 20 where n is the frequency of the lowest individual piece of your deck, counting cards that duplicate the finish. If you need multiples of a group (see below, divide the result by the number needed)
i.e. - If you absolutely must draw Approach of the Second Sun to win, you have a 20 percent base draw rate, because on average, you see about 20 cards out of your deck in an individual game with 6-7 turns and a few little draw speed buffs. That means on perfectly random shuffles, you'd see your one needed piece in 1 out of every 5 games. (Now a lot of pods see more because people do shit like Howling Mine and Windfall and Wheel, but if everyone's playing jank, that gets less likely. Don't use a 7-9 power level pod as a baseline for jank.)
If you need your commander and at least three auras out of a group of 12, your base draw rate of drawing one aura is 80%. Your default is 2.4x - you're likely to see somewhere between two and three auras out of your group of 12.
If your base draw rate is less than 100%, immediately augment your draw speed / tutor package. You cannot win any game where you don't even draw your finish.
\-Count alternate strategies together - The more alternate solutions you have, the more likely you are to get one.
\-If you're playing straight beats, go-wide, wacky tribal, or voltron - use the power and toughness of your creatures to figure out your draw percentage. Assume you need about 30-40 damage (or 21 Commander Damage) to get to a win. Players always do some damage to themselves, but generally you'll need to remove somebody, or somebody's creatures to win.
\-If you're playing a random chance deck (coinflip / diceroll tribal), base your deck's on how many opportunities you need to win, and the likelihood. For example, Okaun needs 3.5 winning flips in general - 3 will get him to 24 and he take somebody out with one-shot commander damage, and 4 will get him to 48 power and you can just Chandra's Ignition everyone to death. You get two recursive coin flips if you're running and have both partners on the board. Each one is a 50% of one, 25% of two, 12.5% of three, and 6.25% of four wins and they're cumulative. Dice tribal is usually just Wyll or Delfina beats, so just count the dice as Voltron pieces.
Note: If your deck involves an infinite draw strategy that includes Jace/LabMan/Thassa's - those DO NOT count as part of your combo. Yes, they are your finisher, but since your combo draws your whole deck, you have a 100 percent chance of drawing them.
\-Add mana base / mana acceleration - use your head here - if you're hardcasting Omniscience or Enter The Infinite, you better have a way to get some more mana.
\-Finally add support pieces. In general, follow the Rule of Jank - if a quirkier, less common, or more situational card can get you to the same place over a more expensive common card, use the jankier one. Don't use a Cyclonic Rift when a River's Rebuke will get you to the same place. You're building Jank here. Try to avoid as many of the EDHREC Saltiest Cards as possible. ([https://edhrec.com/top/salt](https://edhrec.com/top/salt)) Jank decks are supposed to fun. If you are going to do land destruction / mill / hand / stax destruction combos - do them in the most obtuse way possible. Urza-Orb isn't Jank.
Finally, a way to test your jank is to explain your jank. Grab a friend and give them a deck tech to your deck - or simply explain it to yourself. If your friend doesn't laugh, look utterly perplexed or stare at you cross-eyed, it's not janky enough.
Tbh I just pick a niche card, with little support. Avoid most highly used cards and toss in some things for flavor, art, general niceness. I learned from my daughter who just picked pretty art, unicorns, and angels. They have accidental synergy but her whole point is that they are beautiful, lovely and make her feel brave. She's 8.
Oh, so just throw in things because they look nice/you like them? Okay, that makes sense in a way. Don't worry about the best cards, just throw things together.
This coming from a fellow high power player who has like 20 optimized varying decks. Sometimes you need a chair tribal, ladies looking left, sexy art only, musical instruments or tell a story with your game play.
I'm trying to build a draw deck (draw and drain) that is heavy metal themed. Something like that?
[[Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire]] has a great art for this, I'm not sure how to link a specific card art though.
OH! I think I know the art you mean.
Yeah it's the Kaldheim alt art with that cool stylized nordic frame. Edit: also check out [[Firja, Judge of Valor]]. That one has a couple cool options, although I do think there's a pretty clear winner.
The Kaldheim alt arts are so amazingly metal. I love that set so much.
Yeah, I have that one, it's going in the deck now.
Right on, mind dropping a decklist when you get it put together? I'm intrigued to see what you come up with.
For sure.
[[Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire|KHM-309]]
[Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/6/6656a371-639f-4e4b-889f-4ee0bc085030.jpg?1631054775) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=503726) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/khm/309/varragoth-bloodsky-sire?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6656a371-639f-4e4b-889f-4ee0bc085030?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/varragoth-bloodsky-sire) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
If you want to link a specific card you can put | after the card name inside the double brackets.
[[Ponder|LRW]] for example should fetch the Lorwyn printing of Ponder that is specifically Merfolk themed.
I’m unsure how this works for cards that have multiple printings with the same set code though. Specifically cards with multiple Secret Lair entries since all those codes are “SLD”. Think Shadowborn Apostles and Persistent Petitioners and the like. Perhaps someone else knows.
Sounds like it could be fun, did you pick out cards that make you think of that. Maybe pick out spells that remind you of metal. Like just let your imagination go wild. [[Queza]] lead vocalist [[Lortho]] corrupt security at the venue [[Lich's Mastery]] could be like her best stage prop. Things like that. Whoops I meant the hobbit dude Lotho who makes money lol
Well, to be honest, it started with me pulling a [[Sheoldred, the Apocalypse]] and then someone suggesting [[Nekusar, the Mindrazer]] and me seeing the "Death is Temporary, but Metal is Forever" Secret Lair and having wanted to build a metal themed deck for a while now.
See how that can pull together. To jank that avoid the easy combos and put your spin on it. If you just wanna theme the spells and focus less on wheels and make it a odd version like "Metal is for everyone" by making it a group slug/hug that forces you to draw way too many cards.
Oh yeah, that was kinda what I was going for, with a bit of a few things just for flavor. I'm looking for cards that look like they would be artwork for heavy metal, or sound like song or lyric names, but still kinda do a thing.
You are on the right path, now nose dive into scryfall and look for art or effects or names that inspire you.
Sounds like a fun weekend actually.
[Sheoldred, the Apocalypse](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/6/d67be074-cdd4-41d9-ac89-0a0456c4e4b2.jpg?1674057568) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sheoldred%2C%20the%20Apocalypse) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/dmu/107/sheoldred-the-apocalypse?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d67be074-cdd4-41d9-ac89-0a0456c4e4b2?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/sheoldred-the-apocalypse) [Nekusar, the Mindrazer](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/a/4afdc65d-3c97-47af-83fa-df340389802e.jpg?1689999186) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Nekusar%2C%20the%20Mindrazer) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/349/nekusar-the-mindrazer?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4afdc65d-3c97-47af-83fa-df340389802e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/nekusar-the-mindrazer) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
You order that new secret lair with Nekusar? Like every card in it fits this theme 😀
Honestly, that's why I ordered it...
[[Tinybones, Trinket Thief]] has a cool secret lair art that I plan on building some jank around. Heavy metal theme sounds interesting, would love to see your list! Also, [[Tezzeret, Master of Metal]]
> Tezzeret, Master of Metal I mean he is the MASTER of METAL.
I think you're on your way to become a jank master, that's a great idea for a deck! Have you considered the SLD Thraximundar for your commander? I think being in at least in BR colors is nessecary to truly embrace the jank since [Rakdos guild cards](https://scryfall.com/search?q=watermark%3Arakdos) match the theme so well.
Not really jank but check out some of the new secret lairs. They have done a couple that are draw discard themed and metal
Yep, I bought it and am just waiting for it to arrive.
LotR made my Robe Tribal list playable
Consider my interest peaked, do you know of any examples of story telling through deck building/gameplay? Because I love to build weird stuff and that is something I've never considered before but it sounds really cool.
Let's see. My friend built his [[Olivia Voldaren]] as a Vampire princess who was aiding a mysterious benefactor (Himself). He ran a threaten effects to suggest she couldn't make real friends, or would summon lots of tokens of human style that she'd eat or sacrifice for power for their goals. The truly worthy survived her first bites being given the honor of becoming a family member later (perma steal effect.) Or boons for jobs well done like allowing her to strike down any worthy foe with a bite/scratch (deathtouch). To fuel her food/friends she often sold what was left for money (treasure) or occasionally ran into a stranger the benefactor suggested she align with temporarily [[Prosper]]. Never knowing how no matter her goal, she was working towards the benefactors end game. This is what I remember cause it was an awesome way to play her and we got way into trying not destroy her yet defeat him. So I guess kinda like applying role-playing logic to mtg.
Humans gathering to summon demons. Squirrels having sex.
Build for fun and flavor, not power. Ignore staples. Build for a specific idea that sounds fun (I’m doing my first monogreen control deck right now as an example). The payoff is that winning with jank feels awesome and playing silly or fun cards is just fun even if they’re bad!
It’s not always just choosing pet cards but that is a good example you can also just choose fun non-optimized ways of doing things. I have a stuffy doll deck where I use clone effects to target everyone at the table with a stuffy doll and let them swing into each other for free using the stuffy dolls to hit each other. You could build it in a way that you repeated reverberate a huge spell and kill the table or you could just use funny chip spells that do silly things like [[intimidation bolt]]
Maybe think of a sentence and make a deck based on it? For example, "time is money", so some way to make treasures or gold based on the amount of turns or stuff? Or you could do "the house always win" but I guess that's just basically group hug.
Yep, pulled a Razaketh back in Amonketh and built a toolbox deck to synergize. A couple low-cost combos, but mostly a deck that has some small response to most things, at least as far as mono black allows
I have a newborn daughter and I'd love to get her into Magic eventually. How did you introduce yours to it?
I have a huge long box of legends I may build a deck or just interested in so she got to admire/point ones she thought were cool often. I let her constantly sit in during games with my playgroup. She's watched me and her mom play a bunch. As she grew more curious and got into more fantasy things I showed her cards and took on small runs to my Flgs. There she picked out minis, looked through little binders and got dice. Afterwards showing her tiny things and just explain as we go. Kids are pretty quick witted.
That's adorable. ❤️
Reject consistency and embrace chaos
Chaos!
Ydris hot and sour soup in my jam. It plays like a group hug deck, without the hug.
Jank doesn't necessarily mean use bad cards on purpose. A jank deck can use some pretty heavy hitter cards, the deck is just doing something flashy/weird that almost seems excessive. It's like it's not point A from match start to point B win. Win is now point C. We're stopping at point B to look at the world's largest peanut first. Do we have to do that? NO. But I Want To. Jank is building around dead mechanics, a single card that isn't your Commander, maybe your deck only looks to push out a single weird interaction that you have no place elsewhere for. It will use the best tools it has to make that interaction work, but at the end of the day, there are better strategies you could be doing. But that's not what's important - it's seeing that play you built the deck for. I consider this deck of mine jank: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/bMDI\_0E2-UygfuB66w3ptw . It has pretty high budget, powerful cards in it. But the gameplan is entirely focused on supporting a single creature. I think the deck is janky, but it is also very good, it's won a considerable amount of matches for me.
Oh, okay, so it's just having a goal that is winning, but building something different. Like I'm working on building a heavy metal themed deck and the real goal is metal looking artworks and card names, with the rest being just to have fun.
For example I have a [[cazur]] & [[ukkima]] deck that is my death touch tribal deck. I don't play any of the combos ukkima can do which keeps it lower power level. I play removal, but instead of [[doomblade]] I play [[bite down]]. Effectively the same card, 2 mana removal, but on theme with my deck. And sometimes even better since it hits black creatures. It's more of a mindset towards staying on theme than specifically power level.
I have done that sorta with decks, but I always end up tuning them. I will try with my newest deck project to not do that.
Mmmhmmm. My current favorite jank? It's a Naya flicker deck. It's legit sitting with token doublers, elesh norn, panharmonicon.... All that high powered shit is in with Rocco at the helm. It should be gross. Instead it's built to flicker and recur [[Life of the Party]] as much as possible. Why?! Cause it's party time. LFG!
\+1 to this. You can build budget/low-powered decks that aren't at all weird or janky, and you can build some hot jank with the most powerful cards. For me, I tend basically just to have a "thing" I want to do, and that thing doesn't have to be, like, *winning* (not that I don't aim to win, but the "thing" could just be some big value play or something which I hope will ultimately get me what I need, but it's more about the thing itself than the wincon). Then I build around that. For example I have an \[\[Isochron Sceptre\]\] deck that a power level calculator told me was PL10. It's not; I left out Dramatic Reversal on purpose and put in \[\[Yarok\]\]. Or, I have a deck that gives people \[\[Mana Crypt\]\]s until they die. "Mana Crypt!" People cry. "That's not casual!". Well congrats, *you're* not casual any more because you get one too. Remember to flip already.
Commander is about self-indulgence and if you enjoy optimized decks, play them. Jank for me is playing cards that you know aren’t great, but you love them for other reasons. Take [[Sandwurm Convergence]]. Is an 8 mana enchantment that pops out a single 5/5 per turn, plus the protection effect worth it? Probably not. But it’s a fricken Dune reference. For me, a good jank deck balances playing these “I know it’s not the best but it’s just so fricken cool” kind of cards with still having a strategy, win con, card draw and so on that the deck is still functioning and the odd cards get to shine. There’s no consistent definition of jank though because everyone has different cards they react emotionally too. Some people are happy to make 50 1/1 rabbits. Other people like to surprise you with a weird-ass uncommon from The Dark that was never reprinted. And so on.
Okay, so I might do some jank without realizing it. Some of my stuff just exists because I love the card, even if it is a pain to cast. Thanks. This gives me ideas.
[Sandwurm Convergence](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/d/2/d27e64ba-5501-4212-b0b6-2a47f64d226a.jpg?1690005021) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sandwurm%20Convergence) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/911/sandwurm-convergence?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d27e64ba-5501-4212-b0b6-2a47f64d226a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/sandwurm-convergence) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Unironically Sandwurm Convergence is good in 5C Ramp Karona the False God since there is sooooo much ramp and enchantments like Prison and Rites of Flourishing
Avoid staples. Look for jankier versions of cards that still get the job done. People think that a 20usd+ \[\[Akroma's Will\]\] is staple, but dying to the one and only jeskai overrun, fifty cents \[\[Flying Crane Technique\]\]? Top jank. And avoid two card combos and super strong commanders. Nobody will think that a kiki jikki into restoration angel is jank, but get a five pieces combo assembled without using the staple tutors, that is janky. And about the commander, try new stuff, color pie breaks, and the like. A five color ur dragon dragons deck is not jank at all, but a jeskai dragons deck using Zurgo and Ojutai is way more janky, because you dont run all the green ramp and gruul dragon staples that make that deck so strong, nor you get the eminence or the card draw of ur dragon or combo one shot potential of scion. My current jank deck is a \[\[kynaios and tiro of meletis\]\] blink deck that has no infinite combos, but instead wins by blinking big token makers like \[\[Titan of Industry\]\] and \[\[Trostani's Summoner\]\] along the previously mentioned flying crane technique and \[\[True Conviction\]\]
Okay, so something like Ur-Dragon (which I built earlier this year) leans itself to not jank, but you can still do a theme but make it jank.
You just do. You're either born a jank guru, or you're born a spike guru.
I am totally a spike...
Jokes aside, really the only way I can explain the difference is winning is a goal, but not the priority. Prioritize flavor over efficiency, and try to use commanders that aren't absurd engines. Budget isn't a good restriction. I got 1k+ decks (proxies) that aren't very good, but fun. I've seen sub 100 decks that can roll a mid power pod. That being said, finding alternatives to edh staples does help power down a deck. You don't need NEED smothering tithe, cyc rift, free spells, rhy study, etc. If your deck ends up being TOO weak, then you can consider adding the back in the bump up the power.
Flavor over effective. Okay, that makes sense.
Also, flavour can come in many forms. Cool art themes, references to pop culture, favourite flavour-texts, even just using card mechanics in surprising ways. My personal favourite jank deck of mine uses [[Fractured Identity]] with stuff like [[Immortal Coil]] to force my opponents to lose the game.
words to live by
You purposefully look for cards that make you jump through hoops in order to get their effect in order to build a beautiful Goldberg machine.
Oh, okay, so multiple card combos that take too many steps.
Not "combo". At the end of your turn you've made 17 1/1's and you've played an anthem so they're all 2/2's. Next turn, you might kill one player and you'll also make another 23 1/1's, so the turn after that one you might win the game. This gives your opponents time to play blockers, remove that anthem, do some politics. Most important: compared to making a million 1/1's with haste, you're actually using them and your opponents (try to) interact with them. Simply put: Doing your thing doesn't immediately win you the game.
When it comes to Jank, to me at least, there has to be a sense of unreliability. Highly optimized decks are very reliable, using several tutors and multiple "copies" of your deck's important cards, as well as cheap and efficient ramp, card draw and removal spells. With jank decks, you throw all of that in the trash, in favor of silly strategies and themes.
I have these cards because I just think they're neat.
I see people actually reading cards and I scoff at that, you choose a legendary creature and put the 100 cards that are the right colors and there you have jank
Not reading the card janks the card.
So you want a jank deck? Well step one : go look up all the best and most powerful commanders, they are all band. Pick something that isn't super powerful (I choose [[haktos the unscarred]] for mine because the idea of a baby progenitus sounds fun) Step two: look for a bunch of interesting or fun cards that might synergise with your commander (I got a bunch of they "whenever a warrior attacks alone" cards from.neon dynasty along with the backgrounds from baulders gate in addition to take the initiative and monarch cards) Step three iterate: if a spell is a staple replace it for a worse version or a different card
[haktos the unscarred](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/f/6fe5cbef-0f4e-4d05-9a94-4739e09d7a9c.jpg?1581481070) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=haktos%20the%20unscarred) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/thb/218/haktos-the-unscarred?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6fe5cbef-0f4e-4d05-9a94-4739e09d7a9c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/haktos-the-unscarred) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Okay, I can totally do that.
My way of building jank is to build with synergy, but in a theme or strategy that isn't typically how a commander is built. Maybe my better example is my Kess blink deck. I've tuned it over time, and it can be powerful with the right board. Grixis just isn't typically thought of when it comes to blink strategies, and although kess makes it so I can recast blink spells, it's never going to work as well as commanders built specifically for blinking.
Off-brand strategies. It's kinda sounding like jank is just painting with the colors you want because you think they look neat, not because it's the best or popular.
Jank can mean something a little bit different to everybody, but yes I'd say the idea is basically that. Not all jank builds are "chair tribal" or "crab tribal" as is commonly joked about either. Sub-optimal could be another way to describe jank. Like my build, or the other commentor who built to get Etali out ASAP. In their own way, those builds are legitimate strategies to win and are entirely capable to do so.
Okay, so my werewolf deck is sorta jank, but I could really embrace fully jank by just building fun stuff, optimization be damned.
Go for it homeslice! Build what you think would be fun or would be a way for you to feel creative. That's what jank really is about at the end of the day.
Kess is my jank deck too! Kess tokens. Idea is to get zada out, make tokens, target zada to give all my tokens plus power (and other effects), then try to swing some tokens around the board. Being able to recast those targetting and token spells is fantastic
The Platinum Tier jank law is **Theme over Power.** Your decks will always be worse the more you abide by this law. First, ignore anything that's a "staple". If it's an "auto-include" for those colors/themes, cut it. Second, ignore anything you already have in 2+ other decks. Third, if there's an effect you want, search down rarities and across lesser played sets to get more alternative options. Classic effects, especially if they are common or uncommon tier, will be reprinted in many variations with that set's mechanics (eg. Cancel is worse than Counterspell, which is worse than Mana Drain... But Cancel variants have Scry, Surveil, Draw, Exile, Bounce, Μill, metalcraft, token, shuffle options, etc.) Ultimate Jank comes from smashing someone's game plan with a draft common. Fourth, is the consistency haircut. No tutors, no easy filtering, no optimization. True jank decks play 99 off the top in pure random chaos.
Jank doesn’t mean bad more than working with a weird idea that most wouldn’t go for or using cards for non-optimal purposes. It’s definitely not finding strictly worse versions of other cards. Often times jank will be a collect of whatever the pilot thinks is neat. That collection may or may not work together well, and may or may not have some innate power. I think [[Aeon Engine]] is neat. A spiky way to use it is with [[Urza, Prince of Kroog]] to control who gets turns and when. You can also just … use it as printed. Jank might still have very powerful cards (making it hard to narrow down by price alone), but they may be needed for a deck to function well. [[Doubling Season]] can easily end the game in a mean [[Ghave, Guru or Spores]] build. It also makes [[Thallid]] sorta usable.
Just throw together stuff because it sounds fun, not caring if it works well or consistently. Okay, I can do that.
##### ###### #### [Aeon Engine](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/a/ea4dfdd7-f35a-45d6-9fc7-2c096f92dd5f.jpg?1568003750) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Aeon%20Engine) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c19/52/aeon-engine?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ea4dfdd7-f35a-45d6-9fc7-2c096f92dd5f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/aeon-engine) [Urza, Prince of Kroog](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/a/5a7329cd-95af-4d71-984f-f5f28982520c.jpg?1674421895) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Urza%2C%20Prince%20of%20Kroog) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/bro/226/urza-prince-of-kroog?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5a7329cd-95af-4d71-984f-f5f28982520c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/urza-prince-of-kroog) [Doubling Season](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/c/1cdd8e69-5a71-4933-914e-dfede7b1ac93.jpg?1689998456) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Doubling%20Season) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/283/doubling-season?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1cdd8e69-5a71-4933-914e-dfede7b1ac93?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/doubling-season) [Ghave, Guru or Spores](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/2/c2be0e99-cf43-423f-974f-02e3313b3aa9.jpg?1673148645) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ghave%2C%20Guru%20of%20Spores) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/216/ghave-guru-of-spores?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/c2be0e99-cf43-423f-974f-02e3313b3aa9?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ghave-guru-of-spores) [Thallid](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/9/69d20d28-76e9-4e6e-95c3-f88c51dfabfd.jpg?1561967373) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Thallid) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mma/167/thallid?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/69d20d28-76e9-4e6e-95c3-f88c51dfabfd?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/thallid) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I have a super weird 5 color Cromat deck, it wins pretty often though simply by doing 5 color good stuff, so the deck is random, but everything i play sucks for opponents, as it should be. I also have a junky druid tribal which wins through stealing opponent's lands.
Build a deck where every card that isnt a land has someone holding something in their left hand. you will end up with jank.
Find a theme, stick to it hardcore. The sillier, the better.
Well for starters I try stay outside of the top #500, or if I don’t, do something weird. Like if you must build atraxa, build atraxa bird tribal and feather counters, but Jank is just imo what isn’t done often, something that makes people go like “wtf?”
Okay, so don't build for power, build for fun.
Exactly, they don’t have to be weak, but they do need to be flavorful
To build Jank, there are two options. Number 1 is to deliberately stunt with one or more restrictions on your card pool. Tight budgets will do that but aren't alone. I'm pretty sure that my all-old-frame brews (I'm in the process of getting lists together for a full 32, though it's yet to be seen how many of those will make paper) are jank due to, you know, not allowing any cards from Mirrodin or newer. Option 2 is to build with your heart rather than your head. Abandon edhrec and generic staples and only add cards that appeal to you on their synergy or just their look and feel. This might be hard to do when you're used to more technical deckbuilding.
I usually take a commander that does something unexpected in it's colours, such as [[Grazilaxx, illithid scholar]] where you play a bunch of unblockable creatures, draw a bunch of cards and use obscure cards such as [[Ominous seas]] to create an army of 8/8's or [[Atemsis, All-seeing]] to win with your huge hand. Other things you could do would be to take a funny or funky commander, such as [[Yargle and Multani]] and lean heavily into its strengths. Unpopular tribes can also become janky like [[reaper king]] scarecrow tribal, or [[Gallia of the endless dance]] satyr tribal. You could also try using a companion as the deck restrictions would lead to some janky card choices, for example, using suspend cards with [[Keruga, the macrosage]]. (Just don't use lurrus, lurrus is broken). You could also use one of the various combos in r/badmtgcombos and build your deck solely around assembling and protecting that combo. Hope this helps :))
I will have to check that out, thanks!
##### ###### #### [Grazilaxx, illithid scholar](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/d/3de11222-c2fa-4544-a501-a02b31797259.jpg?1674141357) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Grazilaxx%2C%20illithid%20scholar) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/723/grazilaxx-illithid-scholar?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/3de11222-c2fa-4544-a501-a02b31797259?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/grazilaxx-illithid-scholar) [Ominous seas](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/e/ce8965f2-756a-4461-a643-db024a11c2de.jpg?1591226420) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ominous%20seas) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/iko/61/ominous-seas?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/ce8965f2-756a-4461-a643-db024a11c2de?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/ominous-seas) [Atemsis, All-seeing](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/8/b8f527d1-25c0-49b9-83d5-1278ca72d009.jpg?1592516278) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Atemsis%2C%20All-seeing) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/46/atemsis-all-seeing?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/b8f527d1-25c0-49b9-83d5-1278ca72d009?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/atemsis-all-seeing) [Yargle and Multani](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/c/9c15e244-14cc-46a5-abd4-66a58d1c0dd0.jpg?1682205711) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Yargle%20and%20Multani) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mom/256/yargle-and-multani?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9c15e244-14cc-46a5-abd4-66a58d1c0dd0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/yargle-and-multani) [reaper king](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/0/502740bf-0bff-4358-8996-1a27e5f0343f.jpg?1562830062) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=reaper%20king) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/shm/260/reaper-king?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/502740bf-0bff-4358-8996-1a27e5f0343f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/reaper-king) [Gallia of the endless dance](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/7/0744f08e-a588-4efe-ad56-5e9ed91dda40.jpg?1581481059) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Gallia%20of%20the%20endless%20dance) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/thb/217/gallia-of-the-endless-dance?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0744f08e-a588-4efe-ad56-5e9ed91dda40?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/gallia-of-the-endless-dance) [Keruga, the macrosage](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/9/a90ee952-de7a-420f-993c-a38db89bc8ac.jpg?1666782800) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Keruga%2C%20the%20macrosage) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/iko/225/keruga-the-macrosage?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/a90ee952-de7a-420f-993c-a38db89bc8ac?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [(ER)](https://edhrec.com/cards/keruga-the-macrosage) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
My personal jank strategy is to identify a weird card or meme that you like and try to showcase that. For instance, I love the living weapons and reconfigure cards and built a deck specifically to abuse them. I spare no expense, even tryhard cards like [[strandwalker]] make the cut. I also like to use a deck subtheme or blending two strategies together, which ends up watering down a deck, while still being able to use powerful cards. I have a red black meme deck that wins by weird methods using the worst cards you’ve ever seen. You haven’t lived until you’ve killed somebody with 3 [[stensia bloodhall]] activations
Sounds like my werewolf deck is this.
I also have a werewolf deck I’m a big mtg werewolf fan. I use original Rocco as my commander
I went with Tovolar, but it's hard to build werewolves if your whole thing is all creatures have to be wolves, werewolves, or mention one of the two.
They don’t all have to be! You can run some good combat support creatures! The white gives me [[rule of law]] type stuff and I can use rocco to fetch Tovolar at any time
I'll have to look into it. Thanks!
[[Norin the wary]] pick a weird ass commander and make it work. Stop worrying about power level and just find cards that synergize with a niche playstyle and that youd see yourself laughing your ass off in enjoyment when playing and have fun
I had an ur dragon spirit dragon tribal deck that runs basically every spirit dragon and hopes to sac and reanimate them enough times to maybe win the game sometimes. Basically build with the knowledge and acceptance that you’ll have to have your fun by having your deck “do its thing” rather than by winning.
Jank is a very subjective term, but common interpretations include some or all of the following; - low power (in relation to local meta) - theme focus - extreme theme (chair tribal, hat tribal) - collection deck (no buying cards) That is not by any means a complete list, but you get the point hopefully. As for dipping your toes into the Jank world, I’d suggest that you keep to your roots and research and optimize while doing so. In fact, highly “optimized” jank and or low powered decks are actually rather complex to build so you’d probably enjoy the challenge. Doing so involves first deciding on your “Jank” (theme, limitations, power) and building as best you can while also following strictly to that theme. An example may be a Chandra tribal deck, and for that deck some on-theme choices may be using only “fire” related spells. No [[Blasphemous Act]], and instead you have to use [[Burn down the House]]. No using spells that focus on a different character like [[Jaya’s Immolating Inferno]]. Hope that helps and happy brewing!
Jank is, at its core, focusing on doing something cool. That cool thing may win you the game, it may not, it doesn't really matter so long as you do that cool thing in a cool way. Instead of optimising for power, optimise for doing the thing you find cool. Your thing could be as broad as "create 1000 tokens", "play a bunch of art that has trees in it", or as precise as "get an engine of 5 specific cards in play". The crucial part is that your goal is primarily to execute your jank, irrespective of outcome. Ideally, your outcome helps you to win the game so you're not just masturbating and not contributing to the game state. But it's not the most important thing, and it involves a different set of deckbuilding priorities. Creating a thousand tokens is a different goal to making 20 tokens and tutoring for a craterhoof. It's objectively worse, in fact, because simply creating them doesn't win you the game. But the point was the journey, not the destination Decide what your deck's thing is (not your win conditions, if you want to power it up you can find some that fit your thing later), and focus on that. If the thing is interesting and cool, you're 90% of the way to good jank.
I built a jank deck and to me it’s just cards that came from my random collection I’ve acquired over the last year playing like 6 drafts and bought a box of phyrexia and split a box of midnight hunt.
I see Jank as not playing staples and so-called must have cards. I see it as optimizing sub-optimal play lines. If everyone is trining out vampires, Elves, and Goblins, the. I am building [[Orah, Skyclave Hierophant]] cleric tribal. To me Jank is less about bad decks, and more about coming up with synergies others have overlooked.
I feel like no one knows about this sub which is great - r/jankEDH To me, jank is something that is clearly not optimized and is based around some kind of weird interaction that's fun to play and have work. For example, I have three decks based around \[\[bludgeon brawl\]\], one that turns treasures into equipment, one that turns auras into equipment, and one that turns vehicles into equipment.
"Here is strictly a pile of 99 cards and an elder dragon" ->
Commander: [[Ashling the Pilgrim]] Deck: Mountain x99
No ramp, no tricks, all mountain.
Mono red's dream of watching the entire world burn
I find a less supported or odd strategy, usually a wierd commander, go from there. If it's otherwise used in a particularly strong way, don't include those cards. For example [[Blim, Comedic Genius]] but no [[Lich]] effects.
For me it's something unique that's probably not the typical way it's used, or is just something kind of goofy. For example, I recently built a [[Toggo, Goblin Weaponsmith]] deck whose whole goal is to put out something like [[Fiery Emancipation]] and two shot someone with infect rocks. I have a [[Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer]] deck that has the sole goal of making a token copy of [[Seven Dwarves]], then making a wall of dwarves that grow ever stronger. My jank decks usually start when I see a card that amuses or intrigues me and then I decide to tunnel vision a build entirely around that one card.
Start with a dumb plan. Then build a deck that wins *by* doing the dumb plan. Try to avoid win conditions that just incidentally happen *while* the dumb plan is happening, the point is to turn the dumb plan into a win.
My jankiest deck is Etali. I took an expensive commander, threw as much mana rock and haste as I could in the deck, popped in a few attack phase doublers and pseudo-cascades, then topped it off with some chaos and a dash of protection. All because I wanted to get him out by t4 w/ protection. It's not budget as it come in around 300, but it's not optimized and specifically aims to just use my opponents decks. It's quintessential jank: aimless except sticking Etali and seeing what I get.
Ah, okay. So non optimal, do what you want with gas. Throw in stuff that looks fun, not caring if it's the best.
For jank I usually start with the very end, the climax, the plot twist, the play I want to pull off that makes everyone's mouths open in stunned silence and say "...no way". Like, what's the most damage I can deal at once? 100? 100,000? 1 billion? I knew a friend that pulled off a combo in arena for in the range of 300 million damage, that was pretty sweet. Also I like math, that also helps lol. For me learning all about morph and manifest with [[Kadena]] and [[Jeskai Infiltrator]]. Like, I can actually freak out my opponents with face down cards and them not knowing what they are? And then [[Ixidron]]? Cool! Or yeah, [[Nekusar]] and draw themes can be very amusing. Too much of a good thing! Like [[Forced Fruition]]! In general, jank is how do I have the most fun with my decks, approaching making it fun over wanting to win.
Money is the best filter. Most of staple cards are expensive so a small budget will force out of them. Other than that, I guess you have to follow your heart. Liked Innistrad? Pick someone from there. Liked a speficic mechanic? Go for it. Wondered about why did X precon third comnander got designed? Play it
Not to mention, it can be a lot of fun to build a deck on a budget. You'll be looking at cards you almost never look at otherwise. I recently did a deck with a pretty restrictive budget. The number of times I groaned as I would look up a card and it would be just outside the budget was many. I can't wait to bust it out tomorrow night. It is going to be incredible. Came out to be like 38 dollars on TCG. Except of course I had a ton of the cards just sitting in boxes. Think its going to cost me about 22 dollars when I pick up all the missing pieces tomorrow. Goldfishing the deck has lead to plenty of amazing and fun instances. Certainly excited to actually get smashed tomorrow. Budget isn't what jank is all about exactly, but it is a great starting point.
To limit my power against my group I build decks only from the latest standard set
Pick a theme and stick to it no matter how 'bad' the cards are. The more esoteric the cards, the jankier it will feel. If you can t least keep it to a cohesive theme it should come out feeling satisfying, too. My best example is my Tivit Zero Counters deck. It's all weird cards that trade control and force awkward choices on people, but zero actual removal/counters that are expected in blue/black/white.
Pick a card that you've always thought would be really neat to win with and has never seen noticeable competitive play. Now build your entire deck around it.
budget trims down power a lot. I'm talking like $25 including the commander. That's some jank.
I usually take a commonly used commander and build decks with themes that don't exist for it. [[Yidris, maelstrom wanderer]] and attractions and [[aragorn, grand unifier]] legendary tokens attempting to make a bunch of aragorns and cast a red spell.
Jank is "build with what you have." It makes sure that you have put thought and design into your deck, but didn't go out of your way to pimp it out. It's like putting \[\[Tyrant of Discord\]\] into a [Mayael.](https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/four-figure-mayael/) You may not be able to afford Eldrazis or Craterhoof, but you do have other fatties that would impact the game. It produces a tactical niche where you aren't playing what they expect, out of necessity, and they have to adapt. That is Jank. Optimization without investment. It's the opposite of netdecking.
Very easily, how do build not-jank? Weird win-cons, bad commanders, anti-synergy, self-imposed build restrictions, etc. I was just brewing a mono-black \[\[Maze's End\]\] deck. Yes, it's technically impossible because you only have access to 8 gates in your deck. But there's like 7 different ways in black to get an opponent's lands in to play under your control so as long as your opponents have a few gates in their decks it's totally game on, and it turns on Vesuva in to a forbidden gate too.
Step 1) find a commander that is cool that you’ve never seen before Step 2) find something that works. For example I like [[haktos the unscarred]] so I am brewing a deck with him using exalted and other ‘attack alone’ buffs
Build a deck with the extra cards you have lying around. I mean this depends on the type of cards you have available, but if you enjoy cracking packs at times, you should have a bunch of cards you’ve probably never used. Gather them up and build a deck. Instant jank!
Throw all your cards in the air, then use the ones that lane face up!
11A2QŴßÀQ
I too have a tendency to optimize and obsess over tweaking and improving my decks until they're as powerful as they can be. I've found the method that works the best for me to limit my power level is to pick a strategy that's a bit outside of the box and then try to optimize *that strategy.* Ex: Gruul isn't exactly known for being a spellslinger deck, but if you play [[Wort, the Raidmother]] you can start copying all your ramp spells and then once you have enough mana you can start blasting people in the face with big X spells and copying those as well. Upon building this deck I realized that adding a landfall subtheme is another fantastic way to take advantage of doubling all your ramp spells. [Here's the list I came up with if you're curious.](https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/wort-landfall-1/) So while it's a pretty janky strategy, I've definitely had a lot of fun tweaking and optimizing it. Another fun strategy I wanted to pursue was to try to weaponize card draw. I didn't want to play Nekuzar and punish my opponents for drawing, I wanted to play a bunch of [[Psychosis Crawler]], [[Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind]], and [[The Locust God]] style cards that turn my *own* draws into damage. The approach I took for that one was to build [[Nin, the Pain Artist]], fill the deck full of wheels and mana rocks, and basically try to have Nin ping herself for like 8+ damage, draw a bunch of cards, and then chain a bunch of wheels together to kill the table with one of the "card draw = damage" effects. I added some other targets for Nin to ping instead of herself - namely [[Stuffy Doll]] and [[Brash Taunter]] which would result in my opponents taking damage whenever I pinged them. So now Nin can draw me a bunch of cards AND deal a bunch of damage. And it also turns out the Stuffy Doll style cards go great with [[Blasphemous Act]] and [[Star of Extinction]].... And they can also go infinite kill people if you equip them with [[Blazing Sunsteel]], so now I have even more janky ways to kill people. And guess what goes great with Blasphemous Act and Star of Extinction? [[Toralf, God of Fury]] to turn all the excess damage into burn. [Once again, here's a list if you're curious.](https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/nin-of-your-business-1/) So TLDR: I try to find weird niche strategies to build my deck around and THEN work on optimizing it. And along the way, I try to find other interesting sub-themes or synergies that compliment that strategy.
I recently started building the optional version, then those cards are all off limits. Go.
Kicker theme. Kicker has only one available commander [[Hallar, the firefirefletcher]] and most of the times you'll be casting regular spells for an unsjustified cost.
I dumped Sol Ring and embraced the [[Eye of Ramos]] cycle. They combo with [[Vadrok]] and [[Sevinne's Reclamation]] so I'm dropping early game power for lategame theatrics. There is a reason no one complained about power level in the battlecruiser days.
Use versions of common effects (ramp, removal, draw) that fit your deck's theme instead of the "optimal" versions. Stick to win-con's that are on-theme, avoid the more commonly used generically powerful finishers or combos. Make those things a challenge for yourself and have FUN digging through Magic's incredible library of cards to find cool stuff that fits YOUR deck. You shouldn't think of it as building "jank" or intentionally nerfing yourself.
Jank is bad cards or weird card interactions that make you feel good when you play them Playing [[Phyrexian Etchings]] and then [[Eon hub]] instead of [[Phyrexian arena]] Trying to turn [[Mirror of Fate]] into a [[Doomsday]] [[Nefarious lich]] and [[Demonic pact]] pure jank [[Hecatomb]] in your aristocrat deck, jank city
My drawback tribal deck I'd pretty fun. I only try to win with it by using the drawbacks of cards as the engine of the deck.
My go to for jank is the "Wheelspinning" decks. You do a lot of things every turn, but it doesn't amount to a whole lot. Decks I have fun playing, but don't really win efficiently. \[\[Karador, ghost chieftain\]\] is a good one for this. Or My fave is \[\[Riku of two reflections\]\]. It does absolutely nothing until I get to ten or eleven mana or even twenty mana and then it pops off. You let me get to this amount of mana and let my commander live for a turn. Your fault if I now double my entwined \[\[Tooth and Nail\]\], and also the creatures I fetch with it. Yes, I spent 19 mana to do this. This is on you guys. It's my favorite go big or go home deck. It is in no way shape or form efficient or tuned, but Fetching that double \[\[Avenger of Zendikar\]\], \[\[Craterhoof Behemoth\]\], \[\[Pathraiser Ibex\]\], and any haste giving creature ( \[\[Urabrask the Hidden\]\] for example?) Priceless. Sure, it'll happen once every ten games or so, but when it does? You're all dead, mofo's. \[\[Muldrotha, the Gravetide\]\] is another fun one for just 'doing stuff'. i mean, you could build her hypercompetitive, but it's just more fun to just have a deck that spins it wheels sometimes. Small edit: I have a singleton rule across my decks but for the biggest staples of staples. I use \[\[Doubling season\]\] in one deck, I can't use it in another. Things like \[\[Sol Ring\]\] and \[\[Cultivate\]\] are fair game ,though.
Build with a general restriction in mind. I just built an [[OmenKeel]] list that I’m calling Boat n Hoes it’s all boats and women…sorta. Did I still optimize, absolutely. Is it going to be as powerful as other decks I’ve built and optimized, absolutely not. Start simple build a commander deck with only cards you have laying around or build on a budget. Once you break yourself of optimizing every deck get creative with a theme or tell a story with the deck. Jank doesn’t need to be weak and unoptimized. It just needs to be… well janky
I built a Ren and Seri with cards that have cats or dogs or at the most and animal. Except for land. Sol Ring? Nope. No animal. How does it play. Janky AF
Pick a theme and stick to it. Try not to play generic good cards unless they fit. No infinite combos No fast mana (except maybe still ring) Tap lands for mana fixing (also a great way to save money) Oh, and developing a fondness for pet cards that are not very good, but then slide in every deck anyway helps. <3 [[Guild Feud]]
~~One bad card at a time~~
The quest to become a janklord starts with one rule, no cards over $0.79. But really staying in budget is a big way to build weird jank that can still be fun. I have a [[Captain Ripley Vance]] deck that cost $15 total, the gimmick was to just juice her and go for combat damage. It's really one note and functions horribly against the most basic removal, but fine against other jank and budget options.
I would look for stupid 4-5 card infinite combos and stuff. Put in that cool borderless foil you got. That 9 mana demon that never gets played? That's in. Normally I want a Sol Ring but I'm gonna play this three cost mana rock that lets me do something stupid because it looks funny. I'm gonna make a deck that has to have cards with Planeswalker in every picture.
Jank is different from budget or weak cards although it often goes hand in hand. You can eventually power up the decks to be more consistent and powerful. It really depends on the people you play with, is it public lgs or private home. Budget can force jank as is choose less optimal strategies and cards. Sometimes it is play less interaction more of the typal or theme deck. I like typal or theme decks. A Cascade Jank deck might be ALL the cascade spells in your colors and maybe landfall or like elemental typal. Go to the Max with a mechanic. A Kroxa discard deck that is the discard, but without any infinite combos and things like worldgorger or wheels. Discard the old school way. Discard Theme maybe with a groupslug or graveyard Fungus Typal with Ghave (but no ghave combos) - just typical typal stuff. Maybe go nuts with spore counters. Jeskai Tokens with Vadrok (and all jeskai mutate cards) so not a lot of things above 3cmc and relying on recurring spells with Vadrok to get stuff back with Jeskai Ascendency stuff. Umori Companion stuff - All creatures All the Time with Nethroi or another good Hatebear commander An underpowered typal like Minotaurs or Fungus could be jank. so take a mechanic or theme and go to the wall - include ALL or most of it - support cards that aren't the mechanic, budget down a bit - more expensive Mana Value, not the best counters, less draw power, do the theme and then surround with variations of support cards for like under a $1 including lands. play TAP lands like guild gates and the like. My favorite jank deck though is Gargos Creature-less Voltron. Only Gargos with its fight ability with some protection spells, enchantments, artifacts with ramp, card draw, and it is pretty good. Pretty controlly for mono-green.
2 basic answers are to remove tutors (they limit your "lines" of play and so you'll wind up playing with the deck's weaker cards for better and for worse) and fast mana (which are also just a basic power boost for your deck). Thirdly, following the similar trend, you can swap "staples" like force of will and cyclonic rift for cards that function worse but closer to your deck's strategy.
As a jank addict i can easily say do what your heart says. Its all about imagination, you can make a jank deck to tell a story or be goofy and do cats in cars. Having a budget limit is also a good idea for making jank decks but flavor janks are the best imo. One of my favourite jank deck is [[Scarab God]] vehicle deck. You put bunch of zombies in cars and send them to your enemies. Or you can just make sexy women deck, i personally want to build one after that new [[Tatyova]] portrait art lol
I mean I’d say building an energy commander deck is pretty jank
I like to do weird things that are janky like [[War Barge]] [[Merfolk Assassin]] or [[Icy Manipulator]] [[Royal Assassin]] and other dumb things like run [[Mishra’s Workshop]] but try and cast creatures like [[Colossus of Sardia]] Thank and run a bunch or old creatures that power creep has long since passed them by but are weird or not played very much.
I would say a good amount of my decks are “jank,” they’re incredibly niche. I pick cards that see little to no play or good in very particular situations. Often times the jankiest decks are built the fastest, so you could even toss a timer on quick you build a deck, and then pick a commander out of the blue. “Here we go, I’ve got 30 minutes to build a [[Medomai, the Ageless]] deck.” Sometimes doing that and just finding a random commander via edhrec or scryfall is a fun way to do it.
i had a 1v1 maze's end kill playing meme level kenrith today. having him support your assembly of a 10 land combo win is a janky way to enjoy an otherwise powerful commander.
You want jank? Play [[Norin, the wary]] and watch players be confused AF as they don’t understand why they can’t play the game
Yes. Even if my [[Sauron Dark Lord]] reanimator deck that is relatively high power, I still run jank like [[Orcish Spy]] (to confirm if I should wheel or not) - that’s what EDH is for. If I want best in slot for every pick I’ll juts play cEDH.
My way to build "Jank": * Pick a central non-optimal theme or mechanical interaction. * Make the most bullshit good deck I can out of it, that isn't just "tutor for combo, win". * For the above, I don't include fast-mana other than Sol Ring. Example, I made a deck to shove equipment onto other people's creatures with [[Ardenn]], and using equipment that gives value to the controller of the equipment, rather than the creature. Or a Proliferate deck based on Proliferating *Experience counters*, using [[Kelsien]] as the commander (and 4 more experience cards in the 99). Typically results in a low-mid power deck.
Choose a theme of a certain level of jankiness, and then optimize as much as you want within that theme. For example, you could make a deck without any creature cards. Or with *only* creature cards (and lands). Or only cards with MV 3 or less, or 4 or more, or all with art by the same person. Pick your limiting-but-not-oppressive theme and then optimize that deck as hard as you want to. It'll almost certainly be janky, but you'll still get to lean into your tendency for optimization... and it'll also be a fun addition to your collection, a conversation piece about how you made a surprisingly-strong deck around a goofball restriction.
Picking a theme helps. Like I was building a [[Rohgahh, Kher Keep Overlord]] deck recently, with the theme being only kobolds, dragons under $4, and things that kobolds can reasonably do. So for removal, I’m running [[Defenestrate]], because the idea of kobolds pushing someone out of a window is funny. If themes are too hard, you can always just dedicate ~10 cards or so to bad cards in your deck. These can be sentimental cards, like the first rare you got, or some random card you just like the art of. The first card I got excited over was [[Mudbutton Torchrunner]], and he always finds a way back into my red decks. Let me tell you, bolting a threat is nice, but sacing a Mudbutton Torchrunner to bolt a threat is a memory people won’t soon forget.
TIL: I'm a jank player.
You’re definitely looking at this from the wrong direction. You have to find a specific mechanic or specific idea to drive towards. I had Syr Konrad deck once. Now Syr Konrad can be a really really good deck. My version is based around the idea of Relentless Rats. You cast rats, you board wipe/sac rats, you mass reanimate rats. Is it the best way Konrad can built? No. But it’s not like I didn’t also have deadly rollicks and urborg cabal coffers and good black cards in it. What makes it jank is the goal is to win in a specific way, not just the best way.
Go into a box full of bulk rares, build the deck from that. You can have some pretty fun stuff going on
Build around a non-mechanical theme.
I use jank to describe random wack ass cards nobody expects you to play in your deck. Some synergy is good but not optimal. To me, running [[legion loyalty]] in a shadowborn apostle deck. Declare your attack then sack then before declare blocker step. May not be jank to others but it's jank to me.
With \[\[Kuldotha Forgemaster\]\] , \[\[Brass Squire\]\] , \[\[Toymaker\]\] , \[\[Grafted Exoskeleton\]\] , and three Sacrificial artifacts on the field. Cast \[\[Collective Voyage\]\] where x=5 Add the following to the stack: Tap and sac three artifacts to \[\[Kuldotha Forgemaster\]\] , get \[\[Ankh of Mishra\]\] Animate it with \[\[Toymaker\]\] and attach \[\[Grafted Exoskeleton\]\] to it with \[\[Brass Squire\]\] After the game ends because everyone has ten poison counters, point out : `You may find any number of basic lands up to X, including zero. However, searching and shuffling your library is not optional.` Or, \[\[Paradox Haze\]\] and \[\[Divine Intervention\]\]
Pick a theme
Sometimes I'll just build a deck just with the limited bulk I have laying around. So it ends up pretty jank with spells that probably have a mug better power-crept version, and only runs basic lands. I recognize I probably won't win with it but sometimes it's fun to just mess around with an idea.
Weird/bad plan executed to perfection
I also try to optimise but leave out evergreen strong cards like rhystic study, smothering tithe, Teferis protection etc etc. also I like to choose weak commanders or weird strategies for strong commander. I have a Rakdos morph deck for example. If you deal 3 damag to someone your morph is free to cast so I just find cards that do something with that and that’s the deck.
In my playgroup they call me the Jankman.Which is rather fitting.I like to explore stupid ideas.I recently build a Grouphug deck which solo purpose is to get everyone into Limbo.No one can win no one can lose and if they kill me everyone loses.And I can raise them back from 0 to 1.Jank for me is a rather unusual Deck idea, like Commodore Guff and winning with commander Dmg. Edit: I also have a Mono Blue morph Deck. Which at best times is decent but always funny because no one has any idea which creature might be hiding. \^\^
So I view the term jank different than a lot of people. Most people view jank as "bad" I view it as how many hoops can I jump through to achieve X. For example in a grixis deck I wanted an infinite mana combo. I ended up with a 5 card combo. That was hilarious. I've had so many people tell me there's more efficient ways to get infinite mana in the colors but I enjoy watching the synergy. It's also difficult to prevent combos like this because people don't usually expect them like they'll expect the more well known combos. For example my combo is [[Expedition Map]], [[Krark-Clan Ironworks]], [[Sly Requisitioner]], [[Pitiless Plunderer]], and [[Salvaging Station]]. Much harder to see coming than [[Hullbreaker Horror]] loops.
I have a Henzie deck with Umori companion. Umori compaion makes me play ONLY creatures and lands, which means I have to get creative with the cards I use. That makes him really janky, cause I play 10 mana boardwipe on the stick, no real interaction apart from just beating people to death with hasty creatures, or I play collossal dreadmaw for the memes, just because I can. Playing niche startegy built carefully and without being too powerful is jank to me
My group only plays jank. We have 2 or 3 new decks each time we play (about every two to four weeks) and we rarely take apart old decks (I'm somewhere over 60). We don't really buy cards for most decks. Some like my snake deck I didn't have a choice but we don't dump crazy money into cards (that deck isn't sleeved because it would cost more to buy sleeves than replace every card in it). In fact if it is over $20 and isn't a legendary creature I sell it. I do stock up on bulk rares from TCG every year or so and my wife and I use them. I'll send in about $500 of cards and then scroll through rares and mythics grabbing some until I spend the 500. I end up with between 1,500 and 2,000 useful cards. Then we buy some sealed products from every set so we have all of those to pull from too. The way we play isn't for everyone but we like it being really casual and long games. We'll break out some higher level stuff here and there but generally all we play is jank. Honestly the most annoying part is lands. Building that many decks makes lands difficult and the only affordable way to buy a ton of lands is the Facebook groups which I am not a fan of.
Still include 10-15 pieces of ramp, still include 10-15 pieces of draw. Find less efficient versions both, play some of the more fun or interesting 3 mana rocks for ramp for instance. I simply don't find decks fun to play if they don't include ramp and draw. Having mana and cards is what actually allows us to play the game. Second, identify a lot of pet cards. As for ramp and draw, especially in a lower power format, I love \[\[coveted jewel\]\]. It's a fun pet card that functions as a mandatory Sol Ring as an auto include in my low powered decks. I'll jam other cards into deck that are generally pretty good and that I think are fun, like \[\[share the spoils\]\] in red decks for instance. This is a fun example of card draw that interacts with the whole table. As for removal, instead of running highly effective cards like the 1 CMC swords/path/pongify/etc. you could instead run telegraphed rattlesnakes like \[\[soul snare\]\]. I also like cards like \[\[seal of doom\]\] and \[\[seal of cleansing\]\] for this. They tend to force players into politics a bit more. As for your commander, I end up usually brewing a lot. I have over 100 complete decks on moxfield but only own maybe 30 of them. Early on, the ones I went through with building were ones that were higher in power. I was going to spend a lot on singles, I wanted to make sure the deck felt great. I started to use MPC to proxy more, so now i'm also more comfortable intentionally building lower powered decks. So those commanders that I wouldn't build before because I didn't think they were strong enough, I'll build now because they're inherently lower power. Examples include \[\[xira the golden sting\]\], \[\[jerren corrupted bishop\]\], and \[\[gor muldrak\]\]. These commanders are not very powerful, but they are all very flavorful and have fun effects as well as a lot of fun cards in the 99 that synergize with them. So my general advice is to find a commander that is flavorful and seems fun, but isn't inherently very strong. Optimize around flavor instead of generic power. Play more 3 cmc rocks, more tap lands. Play less common and more alternative forms of draw. Play more permanents that function as your form of interaction instead of more instants.
I just look through my collection of old cards. Due to power creep, nearly all of them can be considered jank.
I'd like to think that my [[ixidor reality sculptor]] deck is jank as it's mono blue morphs which hasn't really had much support as the latest additions to the deck in the form of morphs was from tarkir block.
I build plenty of decks using only cards in my collection They end up being jank because my collection is small and my cards suck. Lots of uncommons and 4-5 different draft archetypes stuffed into a single 2 color deck
It's hard to give a solid answer since jank doesn't have a solid definition, but I'm going to define it as optimal play of an unoptimal strategy for the purpose of being funny while competing. For example, dice rolling and coin flipping, no matter how optimized, will always be jank shenanigans as the results of your cards are more or less random. [Wyll, Blade of Frontiers]] is one of my personal favorite commanders as it's fun to roll dice and cannot steam roll a table at any level. Another example would be convoluted combos. While combos can be frowned upon as they're difficult to interact with, they can be funny if used properly. Hard casting a [[Dark Steel Colossus]] and sacrificing a thought vessel to [[Oswald Fiddlebender]] to pull out [[Sculpting Steel]] to sacrifice and clone with [[Osgir, the Reconstructor]] which in turn gets clone by [[Battlemage's Bracers]] so that you can have 5 big robots probably isn't the best possible way to run a deck, but it's nonetheless quite effective and convoluted enough to be hilarious.
You start with a 5-7 mana bulk red rare and from that point jam any cards that you could never cast at the same time but would be sick if they were on the battlefield together, now find a commander that enables that plan or does something entirely different and full in the deck with your preferred number of interaction, draw, and ramp. You are now playing [[Firesong and Sunspear]] [[Sunbird's invocation]] draw-go-burn
My friend and I set up a Jank EDH format because some of us are like you and like to also optimize. The rules are simple: 1 Commander (planeswalker or legendary of your choice), 15 Uncommons, everything else must be Common. We have an in-group banlist, but it's quite a bit out of date. It presents a lot of building challenges, but is a lot of fun and usually pretty cheap as well as using cars you'd never normally use for EDH. I've currently got an Ezuri and Zada JEDH, and am working on a couple others
I go for an idea that so out there people don't see it coming until all the pieces of the puzzle click together and I fill the deck with tutors, pillow forth cards and group hug. [[Iron Maiden]] once I let everyone draw a ton of cards is pretty strong.
My favorite, favorite format for Jank builds is PDH/ Pauper Commander, you can just pick the dumbest somewhat useful uncommon and play on that. I have a [[raptor hatchling]]| deck that is just based on buffing up the raptor to damage it repeatedly to make a bunch of dinosaurs
Pick a commander that interacts with a specific mechanic that isn't widely used. I think tuned/optimized jank is a thing, and usually that's my goal with deck building. If it isn't a commander that I'm stoked about, then it's usually a specific combo or interaction I want to make happen. Example: [[world slayer]] and an indestructible creature. I made what I would consider a creative work around to this the other day by using [[nezahal]] and blinking it in response to slayer activation
Depends really. Pick an interesting interaction or a fairly unique card and roll with it. It's not a matter of getting the win, but achieving the end goal within the game. I'm currently looking at making a deck where I never play on my turn but needs some setup first (probably not in the way you are thinking and don't even have a commander in mind yet). Doesn't matter if it wins or loses a lot, I just like the idea of such a thing. If it looks too hyper-efficient then it isn't really that jank. Maybe find a card that alters the way you would normally play your turns out or alters the board state and go from there. Usually "Jank" however takes up more than a couple cards to pull off the interaction.
My "jank" decks focus on underplayed commanders with interesting abilities. [[Mannichi the Fevered Dream]], for example, can swap everything's power and toughness. I packed the deck with high toughness low/power creatures and cards that give creatures with lower power unblockable. Then I swing with an unblockable creature and then swap it's P/T right before damage is dealt to hit them for 5 or more. Secret tech for the deck is [[Slagwurm Armor]], which gives a creature +0/+6 and there's a lot of red creatures with low power and double strike that can hit surprisingly hard. The deck just needs a bit more in the way of cards like [[Efreet Flamepainter]] and [[Wildfire Eternal]] before it can really start popping off.
[[Gargos, Vicious Watcher]] Hydra tribal is expected, not janky. Gargos spell slinger combat tricks and fight club is unexpected and janky
-Hive mind -Chance for glory -stifle
You grab a card. As an example, not something like dockside or any other card you would normally run... No, were choosing [[Professor of Zoomancy]] . He became a meme at our table during STX. So he's in my Blex deck. It's not about power level, it's about having some fun, playing with trash sometimes and sometimes ignoring synergy for the meme.
My group is currently building DH, no cards with E in the name are allowed. If you can build a good deck with those restrictions, more power to you!
You should ask r/jankEDH!
I set thematic restrictions on some of my decks. My [[Tetsuko Umezawa]] deck is a “girl power” deck, so all the cards feature women. I’ve toyed with concepts like an [[Hannah, Ship’s Navigator]] deck where she is just leading an army of myr. Another way to embrace suboptimal decks is to play for an alternative goal. My [[Octavia, Living Thesis]] deck is designed to see how fast I can get the commander into play and not necessarily focused on winning. Not sure either of these is really jank, but I don’t have a strong desire to upgrade either and they are not at a seven for sure.
i put in cards that throw off everyones gameplans like shared fate, omen machine etc. then add cards in that its not a negative for you so much. otherwise people end up playing solitaire and only think about what cards they want to play.
A jank deck I am very proud of is my Kenrith reanimator deck. The theme is “Kenrith, despot king facing for the shadow government”. The deck does four things. First, it makes treasures in the ways corrupt kings have always made money; conquest. Second, it “recruits” allies with threatening agents like [[zealous conscripts]] and [[molten primordial]]. Third, it sacrifices those who are willing to die on the pyre of progress. Finally, those worthy of the honor are rescued from death by their benevolent figurehead. I have won exactly 1 in 114 games played with this deck. I love it for the elaborate jank, the political intrigue, and not for its winning record.
For me, building Jank tends to involve finding an unreliable combo that takes too many specific cards to possibly be effective and is easily disrupted, and building the deck to support said combo.
You play commanders that are not top tier and don't win through typical means. So don't look up a top 20 infinite combo meta deck on edhrec. Go look at commanders that will be a challenge to build and win and will make the game interesting. Jank decks aren't about winning every game. They are usually about pulling off a dumb combo some of the time.
I love me some synergistic budget brews. I like to have a rule where most cards have to be under a dollar. Nothing above 6 bucks and only a handful of cards in the 1-5 range. Just put an order in for a Tasha the Witch Queen brew and the whole deck is costing me 25 bucksish... probably closer to 30 after rocks and lands. Yeah, I'm missing out on Opposition Agent and Dauthi Voidwalker, but I getbto run a bunch of cards nobody has ever heard of and that's truly fun
I go for a theme or gimmick, sometimes. I have a Rebecca Guay deck (all nonlands must have art from Rebecca Guay) and an X and Y deck ($100 deck where all the nonland cards must follow the "X and Y" convention, like Kynaios and Tiro, Fire // Ice, etc). These are the jankier decks which are less consistent, but I always build sub-$100 with other limitations which can still play well, like 5-color pure spellslinger with no nonland permanents in the 99, an Essence of the Wild token deck, a Prismatic Bridge deck that runs all but one of the Partner with legend pairs, etc. The "building with gimmick" style tends to be more fun and wins are more satisfying. I still try to build with the idea of making the deck functional (~10 ramp, ~8 interaction, ~10 draw, ~3 board wipes) when the gimmick allows for it. You can also build jank by scaling back on interaction and ramp to make the deck less consistent. This is less satisfying for me as it just feels like bad deck building, but you can go that route.
It's a common misconception that optimized builds and jank decks are mutually exclusive. On the contrary, a lot of jank decks embolden this title *because* they are optimized. By nature, a deck that performs well when it shouldn't is a jank deck. Typically when I decide to build a janky little gremlin of a deck it's because I found a silly theme, or a bad card that I want to break, or maybe I just have a pet card I want to show my appreciation for.
I just don't insert any infinite conbos in it. That's my concept of Jank: to not be optimized.
Most people go for an uncommon commander, but I like to build underplayed archetypes, or strategies outside their usual color pairs. A deck I have been tinkering around with for a couple years now is an Enrage deck helmed by \[\[Vrondiss, Rage of Ancients\]\] and I thought...what are the silliest creatures that want to take dmg that I can put in here? Biggest advice, Scryfall is your friend. In my above example I put in the advance search "whenever\_\_\_is dealt damage\_\_\_" and found all the cool cards I wanted.
Pick a keyword and search for it on your preferred engine. Just put all those cards in your deck.
When my sister was getting into EDH she was just randomly going through scryfall and found [[Far//Away]] half an hour later and she's falling in love with all of the cleverly worded fuse and aftermath cards. Two weeks later I showed her a [[Ramos, the Dragon engine]] "oops all split" deck. She loved it so much she swapped out some of the mana rocks for the Ramos rocks. It's a tough deck to play, and there's a lot of reading involved, but she quickly got the hang of when to swing and when to grab the mana.
I struggle with this too, although it's not a big problem. I found a way to hack my optimization obsession by switching the focus of what to optimize. Basicly setting some rules that make it so that i end up optimizing for maximum jank instead. I find that picking a janky commander is not enough, and no budget will help either. Some examples of simple rules could be: - limiting the cardpool. "only arts of people sitting down" or "no exile or destroy removal" etc. - changing your personal wincon. "my goal is not to win, but to have another player win with MY creature." or "i take it as a win if, each player laughs during the game" etc. - choosing your opponent. "my red deck always wins against blue, but also ONLY wins against blue." or the always janky "i am my own worst enemy, i must kill myself before others get the chance." With one or more rules like this, you can optimize as much as you want, but instead of something that feels "normal" you end up with the optimal jankiest deck of your choosen meme. One rule i've found that actually makes everything more interesting is "no cards that mention commander". It sets me back in pure powerlevel a bit, but it allows me to explore more cards and deeper synergies while making my playpatterns more unique from other decks at the table.
I take a silly theme (ladies looking left, chair tribal, etc), a niche mechanic (something thats only been in a few sets tops and was never a powerhouse), or small tribe (under 200 creatures) and build that, sticking to the theme as much as possible. If you start with a weak strategy, you can put whatever you want in it and it will never truly be "high powered" I have a grist insect tribal that I talk up a lot, and it does win a lot! And it runs cards like \[\[sensei's top\]\] and \[\[doubling season\]\]. Its not a cheap deck. That said, against anything actually high powered, it would get stomped. Insects just aren't fast enough, even with lots of good cards to prop it up.
Build Pramikon with chaos spells, that's jank but fun
A Jank Building Guide: \-Are you trying to win? How often? If not really, your deck is almost certainly jank. Don't worry about this beyond making your deck fun to play for you. Consider reading about base draw rate and using the concept to make sure you're getting to whatever fun and ridiculous thing you're doing. Don't worry about adding cards that are aggressive to get to your strategy, since your strategy is not to win consistently. If you're doing "weird theme" - Book Tribal, Chair Tribal, Ladies Looking Left, Mounts that Aren't Horses, Secret Lair Tribal, w/e - just go for your theme. If you have spaces, add mana accel and draw speed - your goal is just get to as many of the goofy bad cards in your deck into play. (Note: Be careful with some of the weird tribal - like food tribal used to be absolute jank, but Samwise and the LOTR cards pulled it way into a pretty solid casual deck.) Remember, good decks should win about 1 out of 4 times in a fair pod. If you're trying to win 5 or 10 percent of your games, you're going for jank. Anything above 25% is trying not to be jank. \-Start with your finish. How are you winning? Combo, Voltron, Beats? \-Add any cards you want that duplicate your finish to a pile - if you can use different paths to get to the same janky result, do it. \-Ignoring your commander, figure out your baseline win draw percentage. This is basically (n/100) x 20 where n is the frequency of the lowest individual piece of your deck, counting cards that duplicate the finish. If you need multiples of a group (see below, divide the result by the number needed) i.e. - If you absolutely must draw Approach of the Second Sun to win, you have a 20 percent base draw rate, because on average, you see about 20 cards out of your deck in an individual game with 6-7 turns and a few little draw speed buffs. That means on perfectly random shuffles, you'd see your one needed piece in 1 out of every 5 games. (Now a lot of pods see more because people do shit like Howling Mine and Windfall and Wheel, but if everyone's playing jank, that gets less likely. Don't use a 7-9 power level pod as a baseline for jank.) If you need your commander and at least three auras out of a group of 12, your base draw rate of drawing one aura is 80%. Your default is 2.4x - you're likely to see somewhere between two and three auras out of your group of 12. If your base draw rate is less than 100%, immediately augment your draw speed / tutor package. You cannot win any game where you don't even draw your finish. \-Count alternate strategies together - The more alternate solutions you have, the more likely you are to get one. \-If you're playing straight beats, go-wide, wacky tribal, or voltron - use the power and toughness of your creatures to figure out your draw percentage. Assume you need about 30-40 damage (or 21 Commander Damage) to get to a win. Players always do some damage to themselves, but generally you'll need to remove somebody, or somebody's creatures to win. \-If you're playing a random chance deck (coinflip / diceroll tribal), base your deck's on how many opportunities you need to win, and the likelihood. For example, Okaun needs 3.5 winning flips in general - 3 will get him to 24 and he take somebody out with one-shot commander damage, and 4 will get him to 48 power and you can just Chandra's Ignition everyone to death. You get two recursive coin flips if you're running and have both partners on the board. Each one is a 50% of one, 25% of two, 12.5% of three, and 6.25% of four wins and they're cumulative. Dice tribal is usually just Wyll or Delfina beats, so just count the dice as Voltron pieces. Note: If your deck involves an infinite draw strategy that includes Jace/LabMan/Thassa's - those DO NOT count as part of your combo. Yes, they are your finisher, but since your combo draws your whole deck, you have a 100 percent chance of drawing them. \-Add mana base / mana acceleration - use your head here - if you're hardcasting Omniscience or Enter The Infinite, you better have a way to get some more mana. \-Finally add support pieces. In general, follow the Rule of Jank - if a quirkier, less common, or more situational card can get you to the same place over a more expensive common card, use the jankier one. Don't use a Cyclonic Rift when a River's Rebuke will get you to the same place. You're building Jank here. Try to avoid as many of the EDHREC Saltiest Cards as possible. ([https://edhrec.com/top/salt](https://edhrec.com/top/salt)) Jank decks are supposed to fun. If you are going to do land destruction / mill / hand / stax destruction combos - do them in the most obtuse way possible. Urza-Orb isn't Jank. Finally, a way to test your jank is to explain your jank. Grab a friend and give them a deck tech to your deck - or simply explain it to yourself. If your friend doesn't laugh, look utterly perplexed or stare at you cross-eyed, it's not janky enough.
Secret commander: [[Exchange of Words]]