The Garbage Bin

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jkarnes

13 September 2012

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Premise


I have been and will always be a player who enjoys putting blue cards into decks and playing islands. There's something naturally intimidating about sitting across from a player with untapped blue mana and a smile and it feels good to be that guy. Golgari and Junk though have always appealed to me as a player recently because of the flavor that they each brings to the table.

Golgari is about maximizing your resources even after they have been depleted. If your creature died back in original Ravnica and you wanted it, what did you do? You dredged it back... in Return to Ravnica, if a creature dies you can bolster another living creature through the scavenge mechanic. To me, this type of maximization or optimization is the ultimate goal of every magic deck: To never have an under utilized or un-untilized card.

Junk (for those who don't know) is usually a utility deck running WBG with weird numbers for cards. It's tricky to play because of its inconsistency in games. You may not win every game, but you're likely to win every match if the metagame is ripe enough for it. Junk usually needs diversity to do well because it tools its mainboard to evenly match every deck at least somewhat and then has silver bullets in the sideboard. What we are building below is NOT a traditional JUNK deck.

We are going to make a prototype deck with what we've seen so far from RTR and the ISD / M13 cycle. It's going to be WBG and it's going to be a strategy that everyone has been talking about being highly viable once Ratchet Bomb rotates... we're going to build Junk Tokens.

Why Junk Tokens


I've been getting flack from a couple angles about going WBG when the Selsnya Guild (the token queens) is coming back. Arguments include that Black just doesn't have enough to add to the pool, that Black hasn't the synergy in the creatures to do anything, and that Black just underperforms in the flying token realm.

We're playing black for a couple of cards: Blood Artist, Lingering Souls, and Grisly Salvage. The original version of this deck also played Falkenrath Aristocrat and Sorin, Lord of Innistrad but in testing this proved to be a simply worse idea than anticipated. Multiple "Vampire" effects (Like Blood Artist) get increasingly nastier with the Tokens archetype, which is why this card makes it into the sideboard... but Sorin 2 does not.

Due to the rotation of Ratchet Bomb, Whipflare, and Slagstorm, the "easy outs" to tokens will be gone which give us a great deal of flexibility in how to build our strategy. The Junk Shell that I'm presenting you with today can also go into WBG reanimation (another deck I will examine later).

The Shell


We're going to play as many nonbasics as possible because when it comes to land, this gives us diversity. I'm not going to play the Guildgates because they enter play tapped and we don't want an agro deck to be running behind.

Lands: 25

4 Overgrown Tomb 4 Woodland Cemetery 4 Isolated Chappel 3 Swamp 8 Plains 2 Forest

This gives us 10 green symbols, 15 black symbols, and 12 White symbols. We always want access to black mana because we never want to discard or sift through Lingering Souls and be unable to flash it back.

Filtering Cards: 4

4 Grisly Salvage

This card is actually just insane. No one is giving it the credit it deserves. We're going to hit at least some level of insanity and it will almost always replace itself.

Flashback Spells: 8

4 Lingering Souls 4 Unburial Rites

These are cards we can cast from the GY and will never be disappointed in seeing through the Salvage effect. In essence, hitting one of these with a Grisly Salvage only gives us more options for the mid or late game. We are now up to 37 cards: the remaining 23 will determine what kind of deck you're playing. We're going to go with a Tokens Strategy here.

Creatures: 12

4 Thrabeen Doomsayer 4 Blood Artist 4 Bloodline Keeper  Flip

We want to try and have a decent number of creatures because of the Grisly Salvage. 8 of these 12 make tokens and 4 of the 12 make board wipes detrimental for the opponent. Unburial Rites will typically hit a Bloodline Keeper and make our opponent's day somewhat miserable. We have 11 slots remaining.

Instants (that aren't Grisly Salvage): 5

3 Abrupt Decay 2 Murder

Abrupt hits Oblivion Ring, that annoying New Oblivion Ring, and early creatures that give us headaches like Dryad Militant. Murder takes out specific threats and can be increased from the sideboard if we find ourselves in trouble against creatures like Olivia Voldaren. We have 6 Slots left.

Enchantments: 6

3 Rancor 3 Intangible Virtue

Rancor going on Tokens is silly. Tokens will generally get thrown under the bus or get blocked out and Rancor is a great way of making sure that they get through little by little. Intangible Virtue makes our tokens even stronger. We slot these at 3 because we don't want to have a lot of non-creature cards without flashback.

Thoughts on This Deck


I have begun testing this version of the deck and will finalize a sideboard for it by the end of the week. I will let you know how it works and hope sincerely to see this archetype really shine. I know it feels like we're playing a lot of junky cards with no overarching strategy; however, throw this list together and you'll quickly be surprised at how well it performs.

Not bad. I'm not a fan of Thraben Doomsayer . Although more color intensive, Wayfaring Temple seems like it could be good. Especially with a Rancor ,

But if you don't think that works, I would still consider things that aren't the doomsayer. He always feels slow.

September 13, 2012 1:55 p.m.

Jarrod_0067 says... #2

Agreed. And 4 Unburial Rites with no big targets?

September 13, 2012 3:16 p.m.

jkarnes says... #3

This is a protoype version of the deck. I grabbed what cards seemed synergistic and threw them together to see how they would function. So far the Doomsayer is under-performing as BigGuns says, I feel like he would be better served by either Wayfaring Temple or Korozda Guildmage as a method of forcing through damage.

Unburial Rites exists mainly to make Grisly Salvage more likely to activate more options rather than simply giving us card selection ability. As I test, I find that having no big threat does indeed hurt the effectiveness of this card. I've been looking at a couple of choices including but not limited to Griselbrand .

I don't know if this original idea is well supported in a Tokens archetype. I think trying to force Grisly Salvage into this Archetype is unwise... but I'm unconvinced the strategy is a dud quite yet.

September 13, 2012 4:44 p.m.

Paladin852 says... #4

Yeah, the Unburials feel shaky. I'd add one or two big, bomby creatures to interact favorably with them and give you a board after an opponent resolves card:Curse of Death's Hold.

Alternatively, remove the Unburial Rites and add more token-making things. Precinct Captain seems halfway decent, and some of the M13 cards like Odric and Geist-Honored Monk interact favorably with token strategies.

September 13, 2012 4:49 p.m.

cosmo0 says... #5

Personnaly, I would add a few card:Jarad's Orders, 1 or 2 Griselbrand , keep the tokens for tempo, remove the Rancor and Intangible Virtue , and add an Abrupt Decay or an Oblivion Ring . A few Liliana of the Veil wouldn't be amiss either.

September 13, 2012 5:42 p.m.

zandl says... #6

Your land-base is "meh".

4x Overgrown Tomb , 4x Temple Garden , 4x Isolated Chapel , 4x Sunpetal Grove , 4x Woodland Cemetery , 1x Swamp , 1x Plains , 1x Forest , 2x Vault of the Archangel .

That ought to suit you better.

September 13, 2012 7:20 p.m.

You're not too far off with the Grisly Salvage . I like how it's a pseudo Forbidden Alchemy for Golgari.

But it may just work better in a Frites deck.

September 13, 2012 9:26 p.m.

Demarge says... #8

why is this an article and not a deck on the site?

September 13, 2012 10:02 p.m.

Jokernaught says... #9

Why not Killing Wave ? We are talking junk here. The combined effect with Blood Artist and mass tokens should be a handy finisher. Even if you only cast X as 2-3, with the life gain from Artist and the life loss from Killing Wave forces your opponent into tight corners.

September 14, 2012 11:50 p.m.

VorpalAuroch says... #10

I think Spider Spwning or Scavenge things would be better than Unburial Rites

September 16, 2012 4:31 p.m.

warper says... #11

Spider Spawning won't have enough creatures in the graveyard to be very effective.

I like the Precinct Captain and the Wayfaring Temple

Returning a fatty like Griselbrand would work if you want to keep the Rights in the deck but otherwise their don't seem to be any good targets. 8 of your targets just pump out more creatures, but it takes them a whole turn before they start.

September 18, 2012 11:02 a.m.

the5ervant says... #12

Why not add Parallel Lives ?

September 18, 2012 9:52 p.m.

IronHead says... #13

You know I was thinking of going junk tokens post rotation and because I'm not a very good deck brewer I think I may proxy and playtest this version as a starting point.

September 20, 2012 12:05 p.m.

gheridarigaaz says... #14

http://www.mtgdecks.net/decks/view/38731

A junk deck in top 4... as for me I have a golgari rock deck in development... still rough and doesn't have as much range as an all-round deck. The meta just isnt fully defined just yet... deck:the-rock-that-hands-the-boat so it has full sets of cards i'd expect to be very useful in standard now

October 16, 2012 10:24 a.m.

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