A Swing and a Miss: Fun & Jank Episode 38

Welcome back to this week’s Episode of Fun & Jank! I’m your host Plum, and this week I’m going to show off three decks that didn’t do well. We’re taking a look at three Historic decks that had a ton of promise during brewing—but didn’t quite make the cut when it came time to test. Whether it was inconsistency, speed, or just not lining up well with the meta, each list ran into some real problems. Still, that’s part of the process. You don’t find the hits without digging through a few misses, and sometimes even the failures teach you something useful.

Even though these brews didn’t hold up under pressure, each one had a fun and relatively strong concept at its core—something genuinely exciting that felt worth exploring. Whether it was a sweet combo line or just a fun play pattern, there’s a chance some of these ideas can resurface down the road with the right support.

I’m not going to go too in-depth with card choices and strategy, but lets take a look at 3 lists we tried on stream last week and talk about they ended up being hot piles of garbage.

Deck #1: Skredless Red

This is a mono-red midrange deck that builds off a version we’ve played on stream before, but this time, we I wanted to lean harder into the energy angle. Instead of Mind Stone, we swapped in to help fuel our Amped Raptors and Discharges.

Red has some rather efficient and scalable removal in both Ribald Shanty and Discharge to help us get to the mid to late game so we can land a Chandra, Koth (which was surprisingly strong), or just a big ‘ol dragon. For this version I also wanted to test Kozilek's Command as another powerful and versatile tool for the shell.

Gameplay

Unfortunately, Historic has leveled up. Boros Energy, turn three Saint Elenda, early Eldrazi, and graveyard combo kills are everywhere. This list just couldn’t keep up. Despite the fun of jamming energy cards and playing with Koth again, the deck got stomped match after match on stream. There’s definitely potential in the mono-red energy shell, but this ain’t it chief.

Even “fair” matchups felt rough—every time we tried to stabilize, our opponent just did something Historic-level that was a turn or two faster. The deck has good bones (and I still love the idea of Koth in an energy shell), but this particular mix of cards got absolutely steamrolled. Common cards like Psychic Frog are just tough to remove in Mono-Red (despite us playing Koz Command too), and even a fringe deck like Merfolk has cards like Vodalian Hexcatcher that can counter our interaction.

Deck #2: Doc Possibility Storm

God, I wanted this deck to work so bad. It just looks so freakin’ sweet on paper. If you’re not familiar with this combo (which has shown up in Pioneer before), let me give you a quick explanation.

Starting Requirement: Possibility Storm on the field
1.) Cast a sorcery (adventure spell), which Possibility Storm will turn into the only other sorcery in the deck, Enter the Infinite.
2.) Once you draw your whole deck, put back Borborygmos Enraged.
3.) Cast Stonecoil Serpent for X = 0, which causes Possibility Storm to pull Borborygmos out onto the field.
4.) Since we have our entire deck in our hand, we can discard as many lands as needed with Borborygmos, dealing 3 damage each time to kill the opponent.

Now normally, these decks stick to just two colors, and use an Adventure package along side Lucky Clover as a plan-b. My idea, since we had been playing with Doc Aurlock on the previous stream, was to use him to make that plan-b more efficient.

Gameplay

Doc is rather cute with Adventure spells, as after you cast the spell, the creature half gets reduced by two mana. Meaning we can make our alternate plan more efficient. In practice however, Doc was a total letdown. He rarely sped up the combo in any meaningful way, and often just sat there doing nothing while we were trying to set up or recover.

Most games, we would have rather had literally any card that advanced the combo or interacted with the opponent. His synergy is more “cute” than “critical,” and in a format as fast and punishing as Historic, that just doesn’t cut it. To make matters worse, it became obvious that we were missing Lucky Clover—the adventure enabler. Clover’s raw card advantage and doubling potential would have given us real staying power, while Aurlock felt like a low-impact value engine that asked for too much and gave back too little.

The splash into more colors did give us access to more adventure variants and a slightly more customizable sideboard, but honestly? The advantage felt negligible. We got to cast some cool cards, but it didn’t translate into consistent wins.

This version of Storm looked incredibly sweet on paper, and I wanted it to work soooooo bad, but it just didn’t deliver. A good reminder that even cool new cards can’t always rescue an inconsistent engine.

Deck #3: Living Twister Monument

This last deck was a little out there but also one I’ve wanted to mess with for awhile.
(note the deck is not displaying 2x Argoth, Sanctum of Nature)

I wouldn’t call Living Twister a pet-card, but more an object of intrigue of mine. Twister provides a steady source of damage (and removal) if you have the lands to abuse it, and Monument is a great engine to match it with. So I took some inspiration from a mono-green monument list I saw in Modern and converted to a Historic deck.

The namesake cards overperformed every time we assembled them on the field. Monument turned Twister into a nightmare: suddenly, each discarded land became 1R: deal 5 to the opponent (2 from Twister, 3 from Monument). It was a legit clock, and it felt great every time it worked.

We even got to explore a couple cute synergies. Titania, Voice of Gaea joined the brew and ended up being cooler than expected — we melded her a few times, which wasn’t something we were planning on doing going in. And Groundskeeper gave us a grindy little loop where we could pay 4 mana to ping for 2 with Twister over and over, without wasting a land.

Gameplay

The problem was the rest of the shell. Without Monument, the deck didn’t really do a whole lot. We weren’t aggressive enough to pressure opponents, and we didn’t have the interaction to survive long games. It was either Monument or bust, and while Monument slapped, that’s a fragile position to be in.

Still, this was probably the most fun list we played that stream. The lines were interesting, and even when we lost, we were at least doing something Jank.

Closing Thoughts

Guys I think by now we know that I’m no AspiringSpike. He’s basically the go-to guy if you want cutting-edge brews that can actually win. He’s the rare mix of high-level grinder, thoughtful deckbuilder, and consistent content machine.

I play a lot of Historic, and I brew a lot of decks, and although one of my goals is to innovate and brew the next big thing, I’m nowhere near that level. But guess what? That’s okay! The main goal of these articles and The Jank Tank in general is to explore new ideas and share the creativity with my fellow brewers. This week’s testing reminded me how important it is to chase ideas even when they don’t work out. All three of these lists had something genuinely cool at their core, but sometimes cool isn’t enough to survive on the ladder.

Still, I’d call it a success. We tried stuff. We learned what worked (Monument!), what didn’t (Doc Aurlock…), and what might be worth revisiting later with a new set or metagame shift. It’s all part of the process.

Thanks for reading.

As always feel free to comment and leave any questions you have below! Make sure to come back next week for even more Fun & Jank!

If you want to see these decks in action, come hang out with me on stream where we test, refine, and have a ton of fun together!

Happy Brewing!