Pretty juicy secret huh? Welcome back to Fun & Jank Episode 10 with your favorite MTG snitch, me! Plum! I have a super fun brew this week that was born out of my continued efforts to brew a Fevered Visions deck (to no avail….yet). I’ve been hard at work testing all sorts of new ideas with the release of Foundations and it’s been a blast. I’ve been most excited about trying to find a shell for Scrawling Crawler, which we talked about briefly in last weeks article. In brewing sometimes you’ll be focusing on one idea and get sidetracked by a neat interaction or synergy you found, which ends up spawning a whole new deck. Which is exactly what happened here.
For this one, let’s take a look at the list in it’s entirety before we hop into the card choices.
Ooh I’m just giddy when I look at this deck. It looks so sweet on paper, and doesn’t do too bad in practice either. Like I mentioned above, I’ve been messing with UR Fevered Visions list with the following at its core:
Howling Mine is a shoe-in for every Fevered Visions list I came across while researching the deck. Scrawling Crawler is basically the best redundancy for the 3 mana enchantment that we could’ve asked for from Foundations. It’s colorless, so its easy to cast in any variation of the deck, provides extra card draw, and punishes that card draw all in one.
Now although Fevered Visions decks want your opponent to draw cards, it doesn’t actually punish the card draw itself, it only cares about cards in hand. The rough draft I posted in last weeks article used cards like Into the Flood Maw and Unsubstantiate to bounce our opponent’s things and keep them at 4 or more cards in hand. But honestly, that hasn’t been working out well so far. Historic has some very strong and cheap threats that can take over games by themselves, and in testing, there’s been plenty of games where my “removal” couldn’t keep up with their threats. Other times Visions was just too slow as a win condition and my opponent was able to gain traction and recover in the mid to late game. So that’s when I started looking towards a more proactive approach to the deck to see if we could speed it up and not even have to worry about what the opponent was doing.
Let’s be real, the secret I told you at the beginning is something that’s been known for quite some time. Although we’re talking about the Historic Format, the idea of Fevered Visions is rooted in the old Owling Mine decks of Modern’s past (shout out to Jeff Hoogland for playing the deck on camera in an owl costume), featuring Ebony Owl Netsuke. Those decks often played Runeflare Trap and Molten Psyche as additional damage to speed up the clock presented by Netsuke. Unfortunately, we don’t have the cheaper, two-mana Netsuke, nor Runeflare Trap as compliments to Fevered Visions. Meaning the lists I’ve been testing have been slow to get up and running. The games where I had either Needlehead and Crawler out to take advantage of all the extra cards my opponent was getting felt very powerful though.
So I thought maybe we should try a “combo” oriented build. Instead of trying to stall and keep our opponent busy while Visions widdled them down, let’s focus on using wheel effects (cards that make the player discard and draw their whole hand) in combination with our card-draw punishers. Molten Psyche was already in my back pocket waiting for its time to shine, and I had previously worked on a Rakdos variation with Bowmasters featuring Collective Defiance. The Escalation ability on Defiance always felt strong and provided additional utility.
So we combined our wheels with our previous core and that’s when I realized we already had the remnants of an artifact subtheme with Howling Mine and Crawler. Although we were using Molten Psyche for the wheel effect, it seemed feasible for us to turn on Metalcraft pretty easily and get the extra burn too.
I thought the best way to turn on Metalcraft was in a passive manner, using Silverbluff Bridge and Darksteel Citadel. They were easy to slot into the mana base and didn’t take up additional spots in the deck. However, the decision to play these ended up shaping the rest of the list. Citadel does not help us cast colored spells, and if we played red-intensive mana costs like Razorkin Needlehead and both of our wheel effects, anything beyond 2 colors would probably have mana problems. So I decided to stay mono red. At this point we just needed to find cards to support our plan. So going back to the idea of “packages” from Episode 6, MH3 gave us a powerful energy package that also happens to be red. Pretty easy to throw into the deck.
Galvanic Discharge is solid removal that can scale throughout the game with our other energy generators.
Amped Raptor is an aggressive 2 drop that provides great value. Feels awesome to snag a Howling Mine or Needlehead with it on turn 2.
Unstable Amulet is an additional artifact for Metalcraft and provides 1-sided card advantage which helps give us an edge since Mine and Crawler are symmetrical card draw.
Aether Hub is basically free energy to help power up the cards above.
We carved out the rest of the list by throwing in some additional removal that can provide extra value if needed. Roaring Furnace had felt great in all the Fevered Visions lists I tested, and we could unlock Steaming Sauna off of Aether Hub and Silverbluff Bridge if needed. Burst Lightning has been another simple but effective card from Foundations that can go face and scales for additional burn in the late game.
Shatterskull Smashing was another low opportunity cost to supplement our removal suite and an easy include.
Gameplay
The deck is pretty straight forward.
The first goal is to find and land a punisher effect, Scrawling Crawler or Razorkin Needlehead. This will start chipping away at our opponent’s life total when paired with Howling Mine and whatever card draw spells they might happen to be playing. This can sometimes be the path to victory on its own. Keeping the board clear with our removal while swinging in with our creatures makes damage add up pretty quickly.
The real wombo-combo is when we pair a card draw punisher with Molten Psyche or Collective Defiance. In the picture above we just so happened to have Needlehead and Crawler out while our opponent had 5 in cards in hand.
That meant the following:
1.) Molten Psyche wheels their with Metalcraft active, they’re dealt 5 damage and draw 5 cards. 2.) Razorkin pings for 5 for the 5 additional draws. 3.) Crawler drains for 5 for the 5 additional draws.
For those who can’t do math, that’s 15 damage off of one Molten Psyche with the board state pictured above. Not mentioned the 2 they took off of the Crawler upkeep trigger on my turn, and the additional 2 life they’ll lose if they were to survive the turn and take their draw normal draw for turn when I pass back. These combo turns are so satisfying as you watch all your triggers added to he stack
Sick. As. Frick.
The deck is still in its infancy so the sideboard isn’t anything special at the moment. We hit the basics like graveyard hate, artifact hate, and something to clear the board, but I’m definitely still working on it. More testing is needed but I’ve been surprised at how the deck has been performing. I don’t think we’ll be winning any tournaments, but I think the deck is strong and more importantly, fun to play. I highly suggest you take it for a spin!
Closing Thoughts
This deck is a perfect example of how brewing in Magic: The Gathering is as much about creativity and exploration as it is about execution. It started as a Fevered Visions brew but evolved into something more proactive and explosive, all thanks to recognizing hidden synergies and opportunities in cards like Molten Psyche and Scrawling Crawler.
It’s easy to overlook obscure cards or strategies when building decks, but sometimes it’s those lesser-known pieces that unlock an entirely new angle of attack or amplify a deck’s overall synergy. Understanding the potential of these “hidden gems” can make a good deck even stronger—and often, a lot more fun to play. Whether it’s utilizing Metalcraft to maximize burn or blending known themes and packages seamlessly into a list, this deck embodies the idea that MTG is a game where creative problem-solving can lead to some of the most satisfying wins.
If nothing else, this brew shows that even the quirkiest, most niche cards have a place when you take the time to experiment and explore new ideas. And in the end, isn’t that what Fun & Jank is all about? Keep brewing, keep experimenting, and most importantly, keep having fun.
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!
Happy Brewing!
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Plum is the creator of the Jank Tank.
He started playing at the ripe old age of 12 and immediately fell in love with the infinite possibilities that deck building could lead to.
He truly understands that jank is a mindset, and spends most of his free time brewing and concocting new and exciting deck lists to help inspire and promote creativity within the MTG community.
