Cruisin’ for a Brewsin’: Fun & Jank Episode 71

Today we have a good ‘ol fashioned Fun & Jank article! I have some decks that are fun, and I have some that are jank, and we’re going to talk about them.

Most of the lists you’ll see today we talked about in Episode 69 (nice.). As you know, we spend most of our time on stream trying to put square pegs in round holes. I usually like to leave the real testing to the professionals. While the grinders are busy spending forty hours a week perfecting the math on Food Chain lines or debating the optimal numbers in a Mardu Goyfs list, I like to sit in a corner and throw ideas at a wall until I find one that sticks! Of course I like to play competitive decks and do well on the ladder, but I want to enjoy my time while I do it.

So let’s take a look at a few of the lists we tried out in Historic over the last few weeks and talk about ’em.

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Boomer Tokens

If you’ve been following the stream, you know I have a soft spot for the classics. I always enjoyed the “fair” Magic of yesteryear and this was my attempt to revive that in 2026. If you played Modern in 2014 – 2018, you may remember BW Tokens. Featuring cards like Bitterblossom, Lingering Souls, and Thoughtseize. Just one of many viable strategies back then that got left behind during a time of FIRE design theory and Modern Horizons sets.

Well we just so happen to have most of its pieces in Historic! But to make it work today, we had to give it a few upgrades. I swapped out the old Tidehollow Scullers for Juggernaut Peddler, which is just a meaner way to disrupt a hand. We also traded the traditional Gideon, Ally of Zendikar for Elspeth, Storm Slayer. Elspeth is an absolute house here; she doubles your token production and her +1 ability gives the whole team a pump so we can actually close out a game.

This also happened to be the most successful list we tried featuring The Last Ronin’s Technique, which was my original draw to a tokens build in the first place. It’s basically our modern-day Spectral Procession, but at instant speed. Turning 1 token into 3 can be a massive tempo swing, but even just putting 3 bodies on the board at instant speed is pretty good.

So how did we do?

Much better than I thought! We went 4-1 in the matches we played on stream.

We absolutely bullied the Azorius Control and Hammer Time players. When your opponent is trying to resolve one big spell or suit up one big creature, a hand full of discard and a board full of tokens can out-pace their one-for-ones. Sorin, Solemn Visitor was the MVP in the grindy matchups, keeping our life total high enough to ignore the life loss from our own Bitterblossoms.

However, we did end up losing to an Assault Formation deck (which is janky and I loved it). It turns out that a fleet of 1/1 flyers doesn’t do much when the opponent has reached-blockers with 7+ toughness.

But overall this deck felt great and I even played it some more off stream in my free time. If you miss the days of Lingering Souls being a playable card in the format, give this a spin. It’s grindy, it’s frustrating for the opponent, and it feels great to win with 2016 tech in 2026.

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Improvised Arsenal Thopters

Although its not as old as the tokens strategy we just talked about, I did brush off another old deck from 2023: Historic Boros Thopters.

I was excited to give this another shot because of Improvised Arsenal. But with the last Banned and Restricted announcement behind us, it feels like Retrofitter Foundry has some room to breathe again.

The core goal here is simple: flood the board with cheap artifacts and then turn them into massive, evasive threats. Michiko’s Reign of Truth was the main power boost in these decks, along side All that Glitters, but Arsenal provides a similar boost while also providing an extra mana sink in the late game. This kind of strategy also didn’t have the Artifact Lands back then, which are another great addition.

We took this through a Best-of-Three gauntlet to another 4-1 record on stream. We actually had a lot of fun games with this deck as it can both grind and explode in speed when needed. We managed to out-grind a Grixis Chorus control deck by simply having more threats than they had answers for. Retrofitter Foundry was the MVP there, letting us play around their sweepers and targeted removal. Against Mono-Green Ramp and Titan Shift, we were able to race them by equipping an Arsenal to a flyer and swinging for lethal on turn four or five.

Our lone loss came against a Persist/Titan Shift hybrid. We just couldn’t quite keep up with the sheer density of their combo angles and they outpaced us rather quickly.

Overall the deck is surprisingly resilient. Esper Sentinel and Ingenious Smith provide enough card draw and selection to keep the engine humming and I enjoyed the duality of Galvanic Blast giving us both interaction and reach. With a better sideboard, I think you could take this to the ladder and put up some decent results.

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Gruul Rampage of the Clans

Guys this was my favorite one to play out of the bunch. Its basically the exact kind of idea I want to showcase in these articles. It’s a one trick pony full of cards your opponent has to stop and read every time we cast one. Perfect!

The namesake of the deck is Rampage of the Clans, a four-mana instant that destroys all artifacts and enchantments on the board, giving their controllers a 3/3 Centaur for each one lost. Our goal is to flood our own side of the board with “trash” artifacts and enchantments so that we can cast Rampage at the end of our opponent’s turn and swing for 20+ damage out of nowhere.

To get there, we use a suite of high-synergy token generators:

–Party Dude: A one-mana enchantment that gives everyone a food token and lets us draw cards whenever an opponent cracks an artifact.

–Golden Opportunity: A forgotten three-mana saga that gives us a Gilded Goose and eventually lets us swap artifacts for Golden Eggs (which draw us cards).

–Academy Manufactor: Whenever we make a food, clue, or treasure, we get one of each, allowing us to reach that “critical mass” of permanents incredibly fast.

–Wish Good Luck: A two-mana sorcery that generates a food, a treasure, and a 3/2 vehicle. Incredible with Manufactor.

We definitely made our opponents scratch their heads with this one. Sometimes, you don’t even need the Rampage. In one match, Legion Extruder did all the heavy lifting, turning our excess artifacts into 3/3 Golems and just beating the opponent down the old-fashioned way.

The main thing you start to notice when playing this list is just how many incidental artifacts and enchantments are actually played in the format. I had plenty of games where I blew up the board and my opponent happened to make just as many Centaurs as I did, leading to a stalled board state as we both took time to rebuild. Academy Manufactor is a major player for this shell and can make or break your games.

Super cool list, but easily hated on unfortunately.

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Cool but Rude Necrodominance

Usually, people use Necrodominance to find a bunch of cheap removal and March of Wretched Sorrow to stay alive, but we can actually win the game on the spot with a little-known red splash for Cool But Rude from TMNT.

We’re really only here for Level 2: Whenever you discard a card, it deals 2 damage to each opponent. The synergy is disgusting. Necrodominance lets you pay any amount of life to draw that many cards at your end step, but it also caps your hand size at five. So, if you draw fifteen cards, you have to discard ten of them immediately. With a Level 2 Cool but Rude on the field, those ten discarded cards represent 20 points of direct damage.

I didn’t change much of the original shell you’ll normally see on the ladder. The deck felt like a powerhouse when it functioned as a standard Mono-Black Midrange shell. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and March of Wretched Sorrow are the main players here, providing the life gain necessary to fuel the Necrodominance draws without accidentally killing ourselves.

Funnily enough we lost a mirror match to another Necrodominance player who simply had a faster start with their discard spells. We also got absolutely dumpstered by a Five-Color Elementals deck. It turns out that when your opponent is main-decking enchantment removal you end up being reaaaaally sad.

The combo itself is rather easy to pull off, and Level 3 acting as a tutor for Necro felt great. While the all-in version with four copies of Cool but Rude might have been a bit clunky, I can see dropping down to two copies, allowing the deck to play a very strong “Fair Magic” game with Dauthi Voidwalker and Graveyard Trespasser while still having that “KO in the back pocket. It also opens up some decent sideboard options for us.

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Lutri Hardened Scales

You might ask, “Plum, why are we playing a singleton companion in a deck that desperately needs four copies of Hardened Scales?”

Cause we can! duh.

Lutri, the Spellchaser acts as our eighth card in hand, and while we lose the consistency of a traditional Scales build, we gain access to an absolute toolbox of weird synergies. To make up for only having one copy of the namesake card, we’re running every “Scales-adjacent” effect we can find: Hardened Bonds, Loading Zone, The Ozolith, and Ozolith, the Shattered Spire.

The deck is a wild mix of classic affinity pieces like Arcbound Ravager and Steel Overseer alongside the Basking Broodscale combo. We also have some fun inclusions like Reluctant Role Model, which ended up doing some real work in our matches.

But keep your wildcards, and play this deck vicariously through me. I spent my rares and mythics so you don’t have to. We ended up going 1-4 on stream, which if we’re being honest, is exactly what I expected. Our lone victory came against a Dimir Psychic Frog player who simply couldn’t handle a Rust Harvester growing out of control. We had a lot of fun lines to figure out during our matches because of all the synergies within the list. We even managed to find an infinite mana/token loop with Animation Module and Basking Broodscale in our final match against an Angels player, though clicking through a billion triggers to actually win is a one-way ticket to carpal tunnel syndrome.

However, the lack of consistency was our undoing. We got run over by Boros Heroic and Izzet Lessons because we just couldn’t find our interaction or our main pieces fast enough. Playing 60 unique cards means you’re often at the mercy of the top of your deck.

This deck is 100% grade-A jank. It’s inconsistent, it’s frustrating, but it’s fun!

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Closing Thoughts

It’s been a wild ride since the latest round of Historic bannings. We’ve brewed, we’ve been brewed on, and we’ve run the gamut from top to bottom it seems. I’ve had a blast throwing every wacky idea that pops into my head at the ladder.

I will say, though, I’m having a bit of a tough time finding “The One” this season. A brew that is both fun enough to keep me smiling and consistent enough to make me want to actually push for Mythic. A lot of people play to Mythic for the thrill of competition, but I don’t enjoy climbing to Mythic just to “get it.” Everything we’ve played today has been decent (and trust me, there were plenty of 0-5 failures left on the cutting room floor), but nothing has held my attention long enough to iterate on it for weeks at a time like previous seasons.

That said, the health of the format feels great. The fact that so many of these off-the-wall ideas are at least putting up numbers and stealing games from the meta-tyrants is a testament to how open things are right now. As we head toward Strixhaven, I’m looking forward to another potential shake-up. With another round of Mystical Archives coming to the format, who knows what kind of high-level nonsense we’ll be able to enable next?

That’s it for me!

Thanks for reading!

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

If you want to help me brew, come hang out with me on stream where we test, refine, and have a ton of fun together.

Happy Brewin’!