It’s been a minute since we’ve done an Honorable Mentions article, but as you all know, I’m always brewing something new—and not all of it ends up as a shiny, top-tier winner. That’s what makes this series so fun: diving into those quirky, off-the-wall ideas that didn’t quite make it, but might just spark something brilliant for someone else.
So here we are again, taking a look at a deck that didn’t exactly light the world on fire, but hey—sometimes the bad ones are just as important as the good. Maybe you’ll see something in it that I missed, or maybe you’ll laugh at how terribly wrong it went on stream (spoiler: there were some tough losses). But regardless, Honorable Mentions is about celebrating creativity, learning from our mistakes, and keeping the spirit of brewing alive.
This deck came from another similar list I saw on Twitter, featuring a few different colors to pull off the same game plan. Spider Cheerios is a rather straight forward glass-cannon combo deck, and revolves around 3 pieces in order to win.
With the addition of Marketback Walker from Aetherdrift, we now have twenty X-cost creatures on Arena, which can be seen in the list above. Twenty also happens to be the amount of life loss we need to deal to our opponent in order to kill them!
How serendipitous!
The real engine of this deck is Spinner of Souls. Once this cool little arachnid is on the field we can start casting those aforementioned creatures for X=0. They’ll enter and immediately die to trigger Spinner, which then puts another X-cost creature into our hand (because the entire deck is full of them). If you’re smelling what I’m stepping on, that means with a Spinner out we can get all twenty X-cost creatures from our deck or hand into play in the same turn. That means we get twenty enters-the-battlefield triggers, and twenty death triggers. Since we’re in Golgari colors, we use The Meathook Massacre or Funeral Room to ping our opponent to death.
The main problem with this combo is that if we play 4 Spinner of Souls to maximize the chance of comboing as soon as possible, it also makes it easier to fizzle out. We don’t want a Spinner trigger to reveal another Spinner from our library. We strictly want to only hit our X-cost creatures once we get going.
“But wait! Mr. Plum, sir!”
*pushes up glasses*
“You’re still playing 2 Spinners! Won’t you still fizzle??!?!”
Good question……no. We will almost always have an additional X-cost creature in hand. If we happen to spin into another Spinner (pun intended), we can get the chain going again by casting one from our hand. Since we need 3 cards to combo (Spinner, Pinger, and an X-cost Creature), the rest of deck is filled with tutors.
Scheming Symmetry, Assemble the Team and Wishclaw Talisman are the best and cheapest tutors we can use in this list to find the combo every game. The problem is that two of those cards also let our opponent find answers. But we just close our eyes and whisper “no whammy, no whammy, no whammy” to ourselves and it usually works out.
Gameplay
Here’s some gameplay from stream the other day, but I’d really like to talk about why this deck is a glass-cannon. I mentioned this deck’s main weakness was fizzling because we hit another Spinner. That was easily solved by only play 2 and upping the number of tutors we have. However, in no particular order, there’s a lot of other reasons the combo doesn’t work.
The combo falls apart very easily. Honestly the only thing it really has going for it is the fact that nobody has any idea of what you’re trying to do. The element of surprise will win you most of your games.
Closing Thoughts
This deck is fragile. It has one goal, and it relies heavily on that combo. If it’s interrupted or fizzes out, we’re in trouble. Plus, our opponent can ruin everything with literally any piece of interaction imaginable. But honestly? That’s what makes it fun. The deck isn’t perfect, but there’s a thrill in seeing it work—and a unique satisfaction when the combo goes off successfully. So, while it’s definitely a wild ride, it’s all about celebrating the creativity of brewing something completely out of the box.
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!
Premium
Enjoy our content? Wish to support our work? Join our Premium community, get access to exclusive content, remove all advertisements, and more!
No ads: Browse the entire website ad-free, both display and video.
Exclusive Content: Instant access to all exclusive articles only for Premium members, at your fingertips.
Support: All your contributions get directly reinvested into the website to increase your viewing experience!
Discord: Join our Discord server, claim your Premium role and gain access to exclusive channels where you can learn in real time!
Special offer: For a limited time, use coupon code L95WR9JOWV to get 50% off the Annual plan!
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.
