The Current Metagame: Junk vs Canadian Threshold

[damionblackgear]

I don't know how many other Rock/Junk/NameXhere are on right now so I'll keep fielding question/comments from "our" perspective for a while (if another one of us jumps in I'll let them take the swings). I'm not arguing the Storm/Belcher matches though. Someone else can do that. I know it's not the best, every deck has weaknesses.

The only problem I have with Rock is the problem I have with a lot of the non-blue decks: Once your opponent deals with your opening hand plus the 2-3 relevant impactful cards you drew over the first handful of turns, how can you find threats faster than the blue deck can find answers with all its filtering effects?

This is why I feel we haven't consistently seen Junk/Rock/Eva green at the tables beyond the lack of people playing the deck. In order to go the disruptive 'tempo' strategy, you potentially make your topdecks terrible. RUG at least can brainstorm them away or pitch them to Force. Or hell, maybe that turn 6 daze will be useful anyway, much more so than similarly late thoughtseize.

The same way they plan on getting the ability to keep gas inbound, with cards that get/find other cards. Bob in play for a turn is a cantrip, for 2 is advantage (I know he's fragile) and Top/Library are able to filter/draw cards as need be. They provide something most current blue decks son't have access to, continuous filter/draw capability.

Even early discard is good when you're able to turn your next spell into a hymn (forcing them to use force of will) or even forcing a brainstorm to protect "vital" components of your opponent's hand. Liliana also beats a lot of the scenario's presented as they want cards in hand and we're more comfortable playing off the top.

It's true that a late Thoughtseize isn't exactly the best thing in the world to see late game but, if it's late game and you topdeck daze, you're probably in the same mood yourself. Both have about the same chance of being useful, "we" at least have tools which allow us to deal with it proactively (Top and Library) and reactively (Liliana).

I think that the issue with the top tables is more play consistency based than anything. It's almost impossible to play a perfect game (as there is always another route and no way to fully judge it without doing it). The archetype rewards you based on multiple things and one of those is play skill. So, choosing a more correct line of play counts. As a tournament goes later, the opportunity to choose those worse lines increases.

Example: I lost a game to Maverick this weekend because I decided to Zenith for BoP this weekend instead of Arbor + Waste (had 2 in hand) or Ulvenwald Tracker. I could have reset my opponent's board and had 3 lands + Liliana on the field and a Mystic in hand. Instead, I lost the game from one choice that I never recovered. (If you're wondering, game 1 I mulled to 4 and game 2 wasn't close)

The "trick" is to figure out how to adjust your worse line into a better one. In my above scenario, I didn't figure it out before the game was out of hand and I lost because of it.

So, how to make it work? More practice for the people playing? More testers to help refine the lists? Sure, that's how any deck gets better. More people playing means more opinions being given and the better the deck works overall.

All of that being said, it's not as though we're dead in the water here. There are multiple descent to great finished from the deck even with it's limited numbers. Considering so much of the deck is blue, our chances increase drastically as we trend towards preying on "non-combo" based decks (I use quotes because the show and tell combo decks, aren't as bad as the others).

[lavafrogg]

I feel that this argument is flawed from the very beginning. The "suicide/dead guy/eva" lists have been tier three for a while now. The mana curve of the average legacy deck is just too low. maverick has noble, rug has ways to protect the one land it needs and miracles runs basics and counters. Going after someones lands all out is a good way to just lose games when you are just drawing the wrong cards in the wrong situations.

In a format where the early game is turn zero-1, the mid game is turns 2-4 and the late game is anything after that keeping someone off of 1-2 mana is extremely difficult. All most players have to do is untap, play a land and play a scavenging ooze/SFM/goyf/delver that you can not answer because your hand is full of mana disruption and discard.

RUG is the best deck because its disruption package is relevant from turn 0 and it can get a nut draw and just win games at a fairly consistent rate. Some draws, no deck can keep up with RUG.

Without blue filtering, Rock/Junk players have been experimenting with tops, libraries, zeniths, mystics and planeswalkers to ensure we have options no matter what deck we are playing. The problem is that not enough people are willing to test a BGW deck when the decks players cannot even decide what awesome cards it should be playing.

We know we should be playing discard but can't agree on what cards to play, removal cannot be decided on after swords to plowshares(decay might fix that), mox vs no mox, zenith vs SFM, goyf vs SFM, what sweeper is the best(EE vs Deed), planeswalkers at all?, until these questions are answered we will never know what deck we should even be playing past personal preferences.

p.s. I would compare the current junk lists to Esperblade and not to RUG. RUG is a monster.

[catmint]

The list you posted Hanni is bad for several reasons and cannot be compared to RUG at all.

You have a very expensive curve and you just basically play 1 spell per turn until you might play 2 spells per turn. you have no way to gain Tempo advantage like RUG which does it by operatione on 1-2 lands while disrupting the opponents mana development and playing free counterspells. Discard has its advantages versus combo (& control without SD.top) but it is a negative tempo play (you trade and spend mana and the opponent does not), whereas free/cheap counterspells are a positive tempo play since the opponent has to usually invest more mana than you do to answer.

Also I don't see any card advantage. Except for Hymn to Tourach you trade 1:1 and you draw a bunch of very bad topdecks/situational cards like discard and sinkhole with no way to card filter. Compare that to the inherent card advantage of RUG filtering a lot to only draw gas and putting all lands/bad spells back because they can operate on 2-3 lands.

I think the reason why 11 discard spells and 4 Sinkhole are not good card choices has been pointed out.

But I don't think I read somewhere that you just so dead to UWx conrol decks. They play more removal than you threats 6-7 swords effects + 4 snapcaster mage or less of those but 4 Terminus. You can't beat SD.top and even without they just draw their spells to handle your threats.

Decks winning with creatures today have certain tools that you have not:
-RUG: shroud, tons of cheap/free counterspells, burn/vortex
-maverick: mother, teeg, tons of creatures beating
-goblins: come into play effects with card advantage, vial, cavern, tons of threats
-merfolk: islandwalk, fast goldfish, counterspells

If you want to be successful with the Junk colors I think it is basically Maverick splashing black or Nic Fit. Both are very grindy decks in nature and beat RUG.
Both of these decks have a much better RUG matchups than your list. Altough you have the right "tools" to win against RUG, your Strategy is a lot weaker to Stifle, Daze, Waste compared to Nic Fit or Maverick.

[lavafrogg]

You could essentially call this thread: why do people not play non blue decks?

Sarcasm aside, bwg has awesome internal synergy and stupid powerful cards and is really just one to two cards out of being super competitive and in the spotlight. Black has not received its share of broken cards and is due for something overpowered.

Grisly salvage might be that card, allowing abuse of the graveyard and a way to filter through your library. Abrupt decay could also be the card that pushes junk to super competitive, I'm on the train that deathrite shaman is the card to break the deck but that is for another thread.

Once junk can do something better than another deck it will take off in popularity and placements.

[lordofthepit]

Why do you consider Junk good against Miracles?

Sensei's Divining Top is one of the best cards you can have against discard. To add insult to injury, whatever discard you have left goes from bad to dead when Counterbalance eventually hits.

Junk will try to trade 1-for-1, perhaps getting ahead with a Hymn or Confidant, but that seems terrible against a deck that can out-attrition you with Snapcaster and Terminus, eventually pulling ahead with Jace.

Certainly, any deck can be tuned to improve a particular matchup, but what is the strategic advantage Junk has against Miracles? Discard for your removal + early Confidant is a start, but is there anything else?

[BlackStarDeceiver]

Extripate/Surgical combined with early discards is pretty good, the redsplash might as well be worth it for Slaughter Games, i think Sdematt played around with it when Blade was big to get a hold on Ancient Grudge.

Decay is stupidly strong from testing when you can make the mana work reliably. Maybe Red Rock aka Jund might be a possible route to take with Shaman and Diamon Moxes. But thats just a big "maybe" ;)

[Final Fortune]

There's nothing inherently wrong with G/w/b mid-range aggro other than calling it a tempo deck, because it's definitely not a tempo deck, but it's a viable metagame deck regardless of whether or not people recognize it en masse or not. Eva Green or Deadguy Ale are definitely not the roads to go down tho', but there are a lot of PT Junk style decks that have game vs. most of the field and can take advantage of anti U specific SB hate like Choke etc.

I think the main problem with Junk based decks is that they have to risk losing to the strategies that RUG doesn't risk losing to, which are bacially the Storm, Dredge and Reanimator match ups where you get rolled too quickly without Force of Will.

RUG isn't that good of a deck, it's just that the archetypes that punish it aren't really popular in the metagame right now and the worst it has to deal with is Miracles and Esperblade in terms of strategies that challenge it for supremecy. I personally think playing that deck in this metagame is suicide frankly, because Miracles and Esper have the advantage and it isn't particularly good at dealing with Show&Tell, which is the last combo deck standing at the moment.

[xfxf]

You could essentially call this thread: why do people not play non blue decks?

Actually a thread about this would be more to the point imo. I don't ever play non-blue decks even though I get the itch from time to time, I just can't bring myself to take one for a couple of months as my primary deck. The first casual deck I brewed in Tempest block was blue (with 4 Brainstorms) because I figured that color was obviously the best color and it had the best spells. Since then every deck I played with was (or contained) blue, contained counterspells and card filter and I just don't have the incentinve to give up all that luxury.

[damionblackgear]

I think the main problem with Junk based decks is that they have to risk losing to the strategies that RUG doesn't risk losing to, which are bacially the Storm, Dredge and Reanimator match ups where you get rolled too quickly without Force of Will.

I can agree that the Storm match is bad. The other two are no where near as bad as they look on paper. Some of us HAVE NOT lost to Reanimator in the real world and Dredge players are typically more terrified to see us, than we are of them. The deck is more than capable to fight in 3 zones, Board (I mean battlefield), Hand, and Graveyard.

[Arianrhod]

This looks interesting, so I'll hop in and provide the Nic Fit perspective.

First off: if you Rock guys think you have it rough with multiple card choices, take a look at the Nic Fit thread sometime :P . We can't even agree on colors. We've had to put our specific versions in our signatures and refer to each other in bold to get each others' attention due to the rapid, protean discourse in our thread. Not saying it's a bad thing, but if you want to try to reduce confusion in your thread, there are ways of doing it.

Now, as per the topic....

What Hanni is advocating here is nothing more or less than a meta deck. I hesitate to call Rock a meta deck in the same way, because the very concept behind Rock is that it's solid vs basically everything, with few good or bad matchups across the board. Rock is -always- around, and whether it's actually good or not, people will play it. I do think that over time, Rock has evolved to be too aggro (too Junk), and Nic Fit is now the "heir" to the Rock throne with the concept of a non-blue control deck in mind. However, that's irrelevant.

The problem that I have with a deck like the OP's over a traditional Rock or Junk style deck is that its disruption never works out. Discard is fine, but it has the age-old problem wherein you lose to a topdeck. Additionally, once you declare a discard spell, such as a Thoughtseize, you have no choice but to take something. This seems blatantly obvious, but think about it. A counterspell can be held for something you actually care about. A discard spell can't. The best you can do is hold your discard spell until they've drawn a few cards that you don't have information on (from your first discard spell), and hope that they've drawn something relevant.

Also, you have 10 wincons, none of which are 1-drops that become flying wild nacatls on t2, or 3/3s with shroud. It's no secret that Goyf dies to literally everything anymore. KotR and Tombstalker are a bit better in the threat department, but it's not like the format doesn't have commonly played answers to them (Perish, Submerge, Terminus, etc).

Obviously there are games where all the nuts and bolts come together and it works fine. You get just the right amount of discard, LD, and threat to close the game out quickly and efficiently in true tempo style. But for every game where that happens, there'll likely be at least two more where you don't draw a threat before they dig out, or you draw all dudes and no disruption, or whatever. The strength of these kinds of Eva Green-esque decks is that they slaughter certain decks, which is why I call it a meta-deck. In the right meta, I have nothing but respect for them. I'm not convinced, however, that we are in the right meta for them.

Now that the OP has been address, let's go a little further afield.

I think that what Hanni wants to get at, as others have noted before me, is that it's possible for a non-blue control/tempo deck to be a serious contender in the meta. And I think that, same as it's ever been, the way to go about this is split between Control (Nic Fit) and Aggro (Junk). Nic Fit plays better (bigger/stronger) creatures than any other fair deck in the entire format. It can be built to have a positive matchup vs damn near anything, even Belcher, although each version has its own problems. Unlike most legacy decks, which function on 2 fields at a time (in play, on stack, in hand, in graveyard, in deck), Nic Fit functions on 4, with blue versions capable of functioning on all five. By contrast, Junk is much more effective at actually closing games, and it's a hell of a lot easier to play (although not "easy"). Junk strikes quick and hard with disruption into efficient dudes.

Nic Fit is power, Junk is efficiency.

I believe that this dichotomy is what Hanni is looking for. Either option is an effective way to attack the meta, but both are also solid decks that are good beyond this specific meta. Both have intrinsically favorable matchups against RUG -- Junk mirrors its efficiency, but can attack their manabase and has a slightly bigger threat (KotR vs Goyf); while Nic Fit ignores their tempo, sweeps the board, and drops huge bombs (Baneslayer/Grave Titan vs Goyf).

There's no denying the power of the blue decks, but I think that if you dismiss the nonblue decks just because they don't play Brainstorm, you're missing out. Honestly, I tend to view Brainstorm as a crutch anymore. Yeah, it's a really strong card, but mostly all it does is it allows less skilled players to try to keep up with their betters. Obviously when you get a truly skilled player + Brainstorm, that's a bit harder; but my experience is that a lot of mediocre players tend to gravitate towards blue decks because it covers their weaknesses as a player. Unfortunately, for as much as blue decks tend to attract mediocre players, Rock and Nic Fit tend to attract worse =(

In my opinion, a -good- Rock or Nic Fit player can easily keep up with blue decks. It all comes down to skill and deck design. Unfortunately, -good- Rock and Nic Fit players are rare. It takes time, determination, and a certain desire to achieve things the hard way, rather than copping out and playing Brainstorm. I think it's a lot more rewarding once you get there, though. I used to play blue decks almost exclusively a few years back (hell, I played Dreadstill. You're not going to find a much bluer deck than that). The feeling I get when I'm battling with Nic Fit is so far above and beyond anything I got playing with blue, that I only play blue decks locally for a change of pace anymore.

I'm going to stop rambling. Anyone in the Nic Fit thread is used to me doing this, lol. I'll shut up for now and try to refocus on the subject at hand and whatever comments people make.

[Zirath]

I don't have much to add to this discussion since most of the relevant information about Junk has been said. Maverick was so successful at beating RUG because of the high threat density. Goblins has the same advantage. Moving into a 10 threat Junk list does not solve the problem inherent with RUG, especially with 0 acceleration. In general, Black is currently sitting as the weakest color with it's strongest card as Cabal Therapy. The successful black decks abuse Therapy. As far as Price of Progress decks not being present, that's only partially true. They will show up as soon as the format gets too fair.

Also, I have this to share:

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/dec...5&iddeck=66308

I understand it's not really the tempo deck that is in mind, but as far as pushing the envelope with Junk, this might be a direction to take.

[sdematt]

I can also field questions, I'll be on here forever :P

Maybe the 10 threat Junk list isn't where it's at, maybe it's other lists, but let's consider the archetype as a whole.

I'll pick on LordofthePit since we've met in person:

Why do you consider Junk good against Miracles?

It's fine, but I wouldn't say it's out best matchup. However, definitely not the worst.

Sensei's Divining Top is one of the best cards you can have against discard. To add insult to injury, whatever discard you have left goes from bad to dead when Counterbalance eventually hits.

True, Top is great, that's why I'm running it as well. Plus, I'm running uncounterable cards to blow up your counterbalance. Hooray for me! I'm also running 8 slots of card draw and manipulation, just like you are.

Junk will try to trade 1-for-1, perhaps getting ahead with a Hymn or Confidant, but that seems terrible against a deck that can out-attrition you with Snapcaster and Terminus, eventually pulling ahead with Jace.

That is the inherent weakness of the deck, unfortunately. You are just 1-for-1'ing them, but, what is Miracles doing? Counterbalance is good for sure, but I'm making sure not to play out all my creatures to have you Terminus them away. That's just not happening. Miracles is one of the best late game decks in the format at the moment, aside from Stax/Lands/Enchantress/Loam, so that's why we have to try to pound you in the early game.

Certainly, any deck can be tuned to improve a particular matchup, but what is the strategic advantage Junk has against Miracles? Discard for your removal + early Confidant is a start, but is there anything else?

Like I said in my long post on the first page, you can build a Junk list that fuck Miracle's shit up, but you're probs going to lose to everything else. The trick is making something that has a shot against everything.

Play disruption backed with card draw and threats, and play answers to your things. Sure I can't counter Jace, but I can sure as hell attack him/blow him up/etc.

For everyone's interest or whatever, here's what I'm playing right now:

4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Marsh Flats
1 Windswept Heath
1 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Plains
3 Wasteland
1 karakas
1 Maze of Ith
3 Bayou
2 Scrubland
1 Savannah

4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Dark Confidant
3 Tarmogoyf
1 Qasali Pridemage
2 Scavenging Ooze
1 Ulvenwald Tracker

3 Thoughtseize
3 Inquisition of Kozilek

4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Maelstrom Pulse

2 Sylvan Library
2 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Garruk Relentless
3 Green Sun's Zenith

--BOARD--

3 Hymn to Tourach
2 Timely Reinforcements
2 Pernicious Deed
1 Virtue's Ruin
3 Surgical Extraction
1 Gaddock Teeg
2 Choke
1 Life from the Loam


-Matt

[Aggro_zombies]

Topdecks beat discard, but we have superior board control, so it should be good.

It's much easier to just counter something good than to pinpoint something for discard and understand the fundamentals of the deck you're playing against, and what answers you have or don't have and when you will have those answers. That takes a ton more skill in some ways that just Force of Willing a card that's good against you. This isn't to say choosing what to counter is a mindless job on assembly line, they're just different intricacies that I think more people are comfortable with in one way (blue) than the other (discard).

-Matt

Part of the attraction of counterspells over discard is that one random counter does more than one random discard spell. For starters, you force the opponent to commit resources with counters, usually more than you have to commit to counter the spell. Counters are also better against topdecks, as has been stated, but I want to add that this means counters are also better topdecks late in the game than discard spells are since your opponent will be more likely to have the resources to immediately play or protect his best draws. Finally, counters are good with and against the best card advantage spells in the format - Brainstorm and Ponder - while discard is neatly trumped by decks that can work off the top of their libraries.

So yeah, that's part of the reason why RUG's counterspell suite is more attractive than Junk's discard. Junk also has the problem of being one of those decks that seems really good on paper yet never quite lives up to that in tournaments.

[Koby]

Aggro_Zombies hit the nail on the head. Even when counters cost (but in reality for Fow and Daze), you are trading 2 mana and 1 (2) cards to nullify your opponents card + mana + time. In every situation, counterspell will be superior to every reactive answer possible due to their flexibility. Swords to Plowshares might be a close runner up due to the efficiency it can answer creature threats, but that's limited to a sub-set of cards.

@Hanni - of course I'm being sarcastic. You made a similar call in the Aggro Loam thread some moons ago. There, it made little sense because Aggro Loam isn't limited by it's threat density, rather by it's mana ramping.

A deck like Rock/Junk, the choke point is the options to maintain control of the game. Discard is efficient for short-term tempo, but loses it quickly to a topdeck. The deck runs perpetual card advantage engines (Bob, Library) and card selection (Library, Top).

The point remains, Why not run Brainstorm? The deck does not lack shuffle effects. The deck runs sometimes situational cards that could be cycled away. The worst case is that the mana base is skewed, but the deck already runs numerous fetchlands. If mana consistency is a big factor, there are ways to adapt the deck to reduce or minimize that impact. Noble Hierarch and BoP can help to ramp/fix much like Maverick. You would lose the sweepers, however.

Does Junk/Rock want to be playing a Trump, Board-control, or Tempo strategy? Each will dictate how the deck will be built.

[Richard Cheese]

A lot of Junk builds are still heavy on disruption and light on threats, which I just don't think is a feasible Aggro strategy anymore. RUG gets away with it because they combine shroud and free counters to keep their threats around. Maverick has mom and GSZ to keep the threatmobile rolling, and plays almost nothing but creatures.

Then you have junk trying to shoehorn every strategy into one "pile of good cards" with 3 Diamonds, 2 SFM + 1 Batterskull, 2 GSZ, Deed, Hymn, Pulse/Vindicate, Liliana, Loam, SDT. It's just all over the place.

Personally I think Junk (and probably all green-based aggro decks) need to take inspiration from Maverick if they want to succeed in a meta with StP, Snapcaster, Jace, and Terminus. Run 4x GSZ, protect your dudes, interact with combo via hatebears. Off the top of my head, maybe something like this:


4 Thoughtseize
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Abrupt Decay

1 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Plains
4 Marsh Flats
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Bayou
2 Scrubland
1 Savannah
1 Karakas
1 Maze of Ith
4 Wasteland

4 Mother of Runes
4 Green Sun's Zenith
1 Gaddock Teeg
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Dark Confidant
1 Dryad Arbor
2 Qasali Pridemage
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Tarmogoyf
4 Knight of the Reliquary
2 Scavenging Ooze


Is it objectively better than Maverick? No idea, but I think emulating a deck that is currently successful is probably better than just hoping the planets will align and make an old list magically viable again.

[HammerAndSickled]

I think the reason Blue is dominant is for security purposes. It's very safe to play a blue deck with Brainstorm and FoW, knowing that if some douchebag comes to the table with Belcher you have a shot. There are unfair combo decks out there and Brainstorm/FoW are really the only way to fight it. Sure, if you're on the play you can Thoughtseize them and take their combo piece, but some decks are capable of going off with flexibility in combo pieces, others can hide their most important cards with a Brainstorm, and still others can just topdeck the card you just Seized.

[Zirath]

A deck like Rock/Junk, the choke point is the options to maintain control of the game. Discard is efficient for short-term tempo, but loses it quickly to a topdeck. The deck runs perpetual card advantage engines (Bob, Library) and card selection (Library, Top).

The point remains, Why not run Brainstorm? The deck does not lack shuffle effects. The deck runs sometimes situational cards that could be cycled away. The worst case is that the mana base is skewed, but the deck already runs numerous fetchlands. If mana consistency is a big factor, there are ways to adapt the deck to reduce or minimize that impact. Noble Hierarch and BoP can help to ramp/fix much like Maverick. You would lose the sweepers, however.

I guess I should state here that Dark Confidant, Library and Top are all inherently slow cards. By playing them, you commit card advantage to the board but you are not necessarily gaining board advantage, which delays you a turn, causing a tempo loss. Brainstorm does not have that limitation. It can be cast in a way to gain advantage immediately, allowing you to minimize the tempo lost from spending your mana on a cantrip. I think this is a big factor of the cards in question which allows for Brainstorm's strong position.

[ahg113]

I think the reason Blue is dominant is for security purposes. It's very safe to play a blue deck with Brainstorm and FoW, knowing that if some douchebag comes to the table with Belcher you have a shot. There are unfair combo decks out there and Brainstorm/FoW are really the only way to fight it. Sure, if you're on the play you can Thoughtseize them and take their combo piece, but some decks are capable of going off with flexibility in combo pieces, others can hide their most important cards with a Brainstorm, and still others can just topdeck the card you just Seized.

Now why is the guy with Belcher a douchebag, but the guy sitting across the table saying- "Nope, you can't play magic cause this free card says so," not a twat? Or was your lack of saying U player (or possibly W with Mana Tithe) wasn't a twat not an omission that U player could be a twat?

[damionblackgear]

Why not run Brainstorm?

There isn't much room in the lists as you start incorporating and manipulating. Adding 1-4 Brainstorms as your only blue card in a deck seems to be more of a strain on the deck's already exhausted manabase. It's the Fear was the 4-color (no red) deck and it was down out by the decks of old. those decks were less efficient than they are now.

Does Junk/Rock want to be playing a Trump, Board-control, or Tempo strategy? Each will dictate how the deck will be built.

The best way (I've found) for the deck to be built is as all of them. Getting it closer and closer to a fluid consistency (basically able to consistently change between the rolls). There is no way to do this 100%. So, we're stuck getting as close to each and preforming as we're allowed. That's also where the pilot's own skill comes into play. If you can't run as a certain aspect, you're stuck working in a sub-optimal version.

A lot of Junk builds are still heavy on disruption and light on threats, which I just don't think is a feasible Aggro strategy anymore.

I agree with you entirely. It's a poor aggro strategy. Good thing it's not an aggro deck.

Then you have junk trying to shoehorn every strategy into one "pile of good cards" with 3 Diamonds, 2 SFM + 1 Batterskull, 2 GSZ, Deed, Hymn, Pulse/Vindicate, Liliana, Loam, SDT. It's just all over the place.

I'm seeing a start but you're still missing key components. The deck isn't just jamming things in and saying, "Look at me, I've got cool weapons. You should play me." The deck, and the different packages available to it, are chosen by the pilot and manipulate match-up percentages. example: A pure GSZ package has a worse game vs Elves as it lacks access to 4 virtual copies of Jitte (stoneforge).

Jamming in cards just because they're strong in other decks is poor deck design regardless of colors. By that right, every green deck should be jamming 4 Natural Order with Progenitus, Empyrial Archangel, and Thrun because they've worked well in other decks at some point.

Personally I think Junk (and probably all green-based aggro decks) need to take inspiration from Maverick if they want to succeed in a meta with StP, Snapcaster, Jace, and Terminus. Run 4x GSZ, protect your dudes, interact with combo via hatebears.

I think that's most definitely a mistake. You're asking the Junk players to change to a different deck all together. More to the point, it's a deck that has a negative win overall percentage against similar Junk builds. I've got nothing against Maverick. I just say it's in a similar situation with less of an ability to maintain against the same things (Library and Zenith does not equal Library, Zenith, Bob, and Top).

I understand Mom is annoying but most decks have adapted at this point and new players are learning how to adapt to her or have adapted decks that don't care about her.

...I think emulating a deck that is currently successful is probably better than just hoping the planets will align and make an old list magically viable again.

There must not be too many planets in that system you're checking against. The Junk decks have 2 on camera wins (that I know of within the last 6 months) with top 16 placements across multiple not so heavily covered events. By no means are we not doing it correctly.

Arianrhod gave another example earlier.

Unfortunately, for as much as blue decks tend to attract mediocre players, Rock and Nic Fit tend to attract worse =(

It's not exactly that people are worse. They have to re-train their thought process to not rely on being reactive. Preemptive is traditionally easier than reactive (easier to stop buildings from burning if you stop the first from every starting) but that's very rarely the case in Magic.

Because of that, we're stuck having to re-teach people to adapt to things that are happening and respond to possibilities before they exist. Most skilled Junk/Nic Fit players can tell you their opponents hand based on their plays on speculative information that's surprisingly accurate.

Another issue is the "I've gotta keep my Forces no matter what" crowd. It's hard to get people who are familiar with the different archetypes when no one is willing to let go and take a step forward. It's very rare that you find a "Blue Mage" who's willing to let go of the Forces and try something else. So, we're also stuck dealing with newer players who are then punished for being "new" to the format.

Even after all of that, Junk isn't getting 10+ people representing the archetype at any particular tournament and at most, it's probably getting <5 at most. So, for it to have a win at all should be saying something. Let alone 2.

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On Belcher - It's a bad matchup. Everyone's got at least a couple. No, the Belching player's not a douche unless they're not willing to have fun with (not at their expense) their opponent while doing it. At least have the decency to treat them as a person because, by playing Belcher, you're implying that you just want to get away from them asap.

[Claymore]

It's important to note that the discard is not only early disruption, but can also be means of clearing the path for late game finishers...something that Junk doesn't quite do as far as I can tell, where Scape Fit for example can at least clear out counters to kill with Scapeshift. Trying to use a proactive class of cards in a reactive style all game won't quite get the job done until they print a playable, instant-speed Duress.