Not all Junk is Trash

So I just mentioned the other day how Pyromancer Ascension feels like a great meta call right now, but after some serious testing against Caw-Blade (all types), Valakut, and GW Beatdown, I'm not sure if I feel that way any more. The worst card in the deck is by far Call to Mind, so if you want to push this deck some more, I would suggest cutting the Call to Minds, and maybe the 3rd Jace Beleran for more burn like Galvanic Blast.

But that's what I'm going to talk about today. No, instead I want to bring up a deck that is very removal heavy, but from a very different approach. I present to you Junk:

3x Lotus Cobra
3x Birds of Paradise
3x Skinrender
1x Vampire Hexmage
1x Acidic Slime
1x Massacre Wurm
1x Grave Titan
3x Phyrexian Rager
3x Fauna Shaman
3x Squadren Hawk

2x Gideon Jura
1x Mimic Vat
4x Inquisition of Kozelik
3x Disfigure
3x Doom Blade

4x Verdant Catacombs
4x March Flats
4x Razorverge Thicket
4x Swamp
4x Forest
2x Plains
3x Sunpetal Grove

Sideboard:
1x Acidic Slime
2x Acid Web Spider
2x Baneslayer Angel
3x Tumble Magnet
3x Black Sun's Zenith
4x Vampire Hexmage

This has a lot going on, and it is a very rough list, but it is one that I feel has a lot of potential. This deck uses all of its creatures to gain incremental advantages over the opponent to close out the game. Lotus Cobra and Birds accelerate out you deck to start dropping turn 3 Acidic Slimes, and turn 4 Titan/Massacre Wurm. Obviously cards like Disfigure, Doom Blade, and Inquisition of Kozelik go a long way to messing your opponent up, and killing their guys with the Wurm on board is just gravy.

I chose Doom Blade over Go for the Throat because the only deck that really runs black creatures right now is Vampires. Everything in Vampires already dies to disfigure, and the deck auto-loses to Massacre Wurm, so I'm not worried about it at all. Also, I only know 3 people that play vampires. 2 of them are still very new to magic and that's their only deck. Doom Blade can kill artifact creatures, which is quite relevant as Tezzeret decks are something that people are always trying to build. HINT: don't let your opponent untap with Kuldotha Forgemaster.

A card you may not have seen before in any 75 is Acid Web Spider. It fills the same role as Acidic Slime by blowing up Sword of Feast and Famine (although it's overall use is narrower), but it has advantages against the field by being bigger. For example, it can stop Boros cold as long as they don't have Plated Geopede. They have to have Lynx and 2 fetchlands to beat it, or some really stupid double Hero draw (Disfigure).

Yes, there is Fauna Shaman in this deck, but no Vengevines?!?! I originally had 4 Vengevines in the list, then texted Mark to see if I could borrow his, but he traded out 2, so he only had 2, so I cut down to 3 Veggies (I have 1). I then realized that I'm not a very aggressive beatdown deck, so Vengevine is in an awkward position. It doesn't fit into the overall game plan, and it's not even that easy to recur with creatures costing up the whole curve from 1-6. So I made the budget smart decision to cut them entirely. So what's with Fauna? Many of the creatures in this deck can get me out of a jam, so I use Fauna (pitching Hawk) to grab what I really need, whether it's an anti-sword card (Acidic Slime), an anti-creature card (Skinrender), an anti-planeswalker card (Hexmage), a sweeper (Wurm), or an overwhelming finisher (Titan).

Side on Wurm: did you ever notice that Massacre Wurm is what the Auriok are fighting on the SOM Booster Box?

Like I said, I haven't quite been feeling Ascension right now, so I think I'm going to pack some kind of Junk deck for FNM without any testing at all! Sounds like a solid plan...

Until next time, stay classy!