The 13 Jankiest Commanders in Magic Ranked

Plargg, Dean of Chaos | Illustration by Bryan Sola

What counts as “janky” in MTG? Looking at the origins of the word in African American slang, most dictionary etymologies guess it’s a version of “junky” from the ‘80s, but an interesting deeper dive suggests it might have started as a version of “jinky” in the 1970s, which seems to refer to things that wobble around, like playground equipment.

We don’t have good enough textual traces for a word that emerges out of oral culture to find some kind of truth, but I think these origins point to the two different ways the gaming community, and especially MTG, use the term today.

With that idea in mind, let’s explore the jankiest commanders you can sleeve up in EDH!

What Are Jank Commanders?

Atemsis, All-Seeing | Illustration by Ryan Pancoast

A janky deck is one that’s probably bad but that has a chance for occasional awesomeness. It wibbles and wobbles in games from terrible to maybe crazy genius? This kind of deck has always been popular in Magic, but as the years go by and more cards are printed, more and more unexpected interactions are discovered, which can lead to these fragile strategies. Commander, as a casual format which highlights deck creativity and uses a huge card pool may be the ultimate jank destination!

The biggest question as we try to rank the best, jankiest commanders, is maybe the extent of the wibbly wobbly arc? Ten years ago, this conversation would have suggested a cards like Norin the Wary as a janky commander, likely because there weren’t enough cards this productively interacted with Norin’s ability to make a reliable deck. But now, with Purphoros, God of the Forge, Impact Tremors, Rose Room Treasurer, etc., there are enough synergies that this is a reasonably reliable deck.

At the same time, we don’t just want a commander that’s straight up bad, like Veldrane of Sengir or one of the many terrible original Legends legends like Jedit Ojanen. There just are no synergies to wibble wobble, so it’s just a deck that either powers through despite the commander or is just bad, maybe just for laughs. There are also synergistic commanders that just can’t really get there. Think of signpost draft uncommons that highlight a Magic set‘s mechanic, like Ash, Party Crasher from Wilds of Eldraine.

Given all of that, let’s approach this by trying to figure out the range between wild success and huge failure. That obviously depends on how possible it is to reduce the RNG in a deck, either from having a reliable critical mass of synergistic effects or the ability to add enough card draw, selection, and/or tutoring to optimize the deck beyond the janky wobbles. There’s a hefty portion of subjectivity here. That said, these are decks that speak to my soul as a Magic player, so trust me!

#13. Bill the Pony

Normally I’d say Bill the Pony is just an underwhelming draft uncommon that links toughness matters and Food tokens in a pretty underwhelming way. If you want to play Food, you’re likely better off adding two more colors with the Food and Fellowship precon commanders. If you want toughness matters, you can pick your color combinations but likely will end up with Arcades, the Strategist. The deck swings from cards like Slaughter the Strong to Apothecary White, and you might find a piece of synergy if you squint really hard.

Bill is here standing in for a pile of other fun or funny or cute cards that are just bad but feel janky because the idea of winning with the painfully cute Bill the Pony is just so awesome that we feel the small delta from always doomed to usually doomed as a giant wide, hopeful swath of pony madness.

Stay golden, but let’s move on.

#12. Atemsis, All-Seeing

I almost don’t want to include this card, since Atemsis, All-Seeing is such a puzzle on a platter for Commander players. But the deck is nonsense. Fill it with card draw, cards that cheat out other cards, and mass bounce spells like Consuming Tide. Oh, and enough counterspells to keep Atemsis on the battlefield. And enough stuff to ensure it gets to attack and do damage. And Reliquary Tower.

#11. Verazol, the Split Current

I love this deck. It’s always sleeved up and ready to lose!

Why would you play Verazol, the Split Current as your kicker matters commander instead of old (un)reliable Hallar, the Firefletcher? Well, to play blue! You can hope to find Roost of Drakes even without an enchantment tutor in the colors and your deck pops off like a mix of a decent Limited deck and Talrand, Sky Summoner!

Toss in a few Hardened Scales kind of effects to buff a Simic () team of counters creatures as well as Verazol itself, which copies more things the more counters it has.

The reason this is janky instead of just sad is the trick of how commander tax works. Verazol is the only creature in Magic with that evocative text, “enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it for each mana spent to cast it.” Commander tax is mana spent to cast it.

Are the wheels spinning yet?

As you just use the commander tax as a source of counters we wonder:

I mean, it gets pretty big at the end. But the fun is that it feels good not to “waste” commander tax resources.

#10. Myra the Magnificent

Myra the Magnificent is arguably the strongest commander on the list, and its deck full of spells that trigger attractions is actually quite functional. The reason Myra joins us here in jank land is that Izzet literally has 25 better spellslinger commanders than it, and none of them are reliant on an Un-set mechanic that fizzles entirely once the first overloaded Vandalblast hits the table to destroy all your attractions!

#9. Lord of Tresserhorn

Lord of Tresserhorn has always seemed like such a tempting card for being so bad! It’s the janky dream across time and formats that has long haunted Magic boomers. In Commander, the downside of giving away cards can be turned to political advantage, and if you use this card to run a Grixis () zombies pile to match the Lord’s errata to zombie, the creature sac can be bonus, as well.

Red doesn’t give you much you want in the way of a zombie deck, though, so the Tresserhorn deck grabs just enough zombies to make a go of it. Perhaps authentically, perhaps as a ruse, depending on the deck composition. Then it rolls a secret stash of red cards designed to allow you to win with commander damage, like Embercleave, Kediss, Emberclaw Familiar, and a bunch of cards that give double strike.

The joke of the deck is that the Lord with double strike is a lethal one-shot as long as something like a Lord of the Accursed is out.

#8. Gor Muldrak, Amphinologist

A deck built upon the text “You and permanents you control have protection from Salamanders” is on point jank. Gor Muldrak, Amphinologist wants to dish out salamanders while keeping yourself safe from the emergent War with the Newts. Along the way, you trade creatures around the table as well as turning everything you can into a newt with cards like Unnatural Selection, Amoeboid Changeling, Imagecrafter, and others. And then you really want to find Peer Pressure while explaining “all your newt are belong to us”, grabbing the salamander menace and munching the table. The memes this deck conjures alone should be enough to reveal its janky nature!

#7. Sergeant John Benton

My well-known love for this deck is, I suspect (I hope?!?), why powers that be at Draftsim gave me this assignment. Selesnya () Voltron, let’s go! Sergeant John Benton seems like a group hug experience, drawing everyone cards until you find your Alms Collector. But in secret, you’re just driving for cards like Wild Defiance, Indomitable Might, Inner Calm, Outer Strength, and a pile of other pump spells and auras. On the Trail and Summer Bloom let you convert your cards to victory faster than your opponents, at least so you hope, and then you pack all the protection spells you can cram into the 99.

It all makes sense, and I’ve won with this deck, but once you start giving out more than a dozen cards to your opponents, the fragility of your plan becomes pretty apparent.

#6. Callaphe, Beloved of the Sea

Another janky voltron deck is Callaphe, Beloved of the Sea. You drop things with blue pips to control the board and protect your commander while preparing for a Rogue's Passage and all the blue effects that sneak your creature in, like Aqueous Form. This is usually an auras deck with a hefty dose of offensive auras which handle creatures while also upping your devotion, like Frogify and Witness Protection.

I actually think this deck is super strong in a 1v1 space, but getting there with a stack of protection auras seems really tough, primarily because you’re often the easiest target to attack for quite a long time.

#5. Horobi, Death’s Wail

Horobi, Death's Wail is hilarious. The deck asks you to just include a bunch of abilities that target in a mono-black space and tap opposing creatures to death! A lot of nonsense turns into machine guns, like Retribution of the Ancients activated for 0, Squee's Toy, Distorting Lens, Helm of Chatzuk, and most hilariously of all, the on-theme Bloodthirsty Blade.

There’s enough black wincons in a deck that’s killing creatures to make this almost not janky, but then, in closing, you can ponder how you can kill things with your lands, like Oasis, Tower of the Magistrate, and Shizo, Death's Storehouse!

#4. Jalira, Master Polymorphist

This is a deck that makes you feel big brained. “Wait, so if I drop Jalira, Master Polymorphist, it’ll totally live to untap because no one knows my nefarious plan. Then I can sacrifice a token or one of the mostly legendary creatures in my deck, and I can do a cascade style search for the only hits, like Scourge of Fleets, Hullbreaker Horror, or some giant Eldrazi or artifact bomb!”

Look, I can’t judge this idea too harshly, as I do something similar in my Talrand, Sky Summoner deck where I Polymorph a drake that gets the only creature in my 99, but this feels like Dr. Evil slowly explaining his plan.

#3. Errant, Street Artist

Errant, Street Artist copies your copies. It can also copy copies or your copies if you want the meme. Why would you do this? Well, there are plenty of other things that copy spells, like Swarm Intelligence, Echo Mage, and loads more. Magecraft cards like Archmage Emeritus trigger off copied spells. To what end? Well, what do blue decks without reasonable wincons do?

Mill, baby, mill!

Cut Your Losses, once copied enough, is the end of the evening. As are Eternal Dominion, Mnemonic Deluge, and maybe ever blue spell that costs 8 or more.

You knew we’d get to mill sometime, didn’t you?

#2. Plargg, Dean of Chaos

It’s rare that someone thinks of a janky deck using a card I own that I haven't thought of, at least a bit. What can I say? I have a particular set of skills.

But Mutalist on reddit has a Plargg, Dean of Chaos deck they call the Boros () Boogeyman that seems perfect here. If you make sure all your cards that cost 3 or less are legendary, when you activate Plargg, the only two targets are two cards you have chosen for the combo: Shifting Shadow and Shielded by Faith.

If you can avoid dying with such a high curve and can fetch both cards, every turn you get to flip a creature off your deck and make it hasty and indestructible. Pile in enough stuff like Emrakul, the Promised End for the offense and Sun Titan things for recurrence, and get a slow but steady engine that just loses on the spot to Farewell. Good thing no one’s heard of that card!

#1. Tetzimoc, Primal Death

There are only three cards that can get Tetzimoc, Primal Death out of the command zone: Campfire, Netherborn Altar, and Command Beacon. You either play a black midrange style deck to wait for those so you can get Tetzimoc in hand to do the reveal trick to do a board wipe, you know more midrangey things, or you toss in a bunch of tutors to make a more expensive way to do midrange from the command zone!

Then you make sure you have enough Raise Dead effects to do it all again!

This is the 21st century version of putting a Lure on a Craw Giant.

Best Jank Commander Payoffs

Well, these are fun! More specifically:

Good Random

A janky deck is, by definition, a deck with not only more variance in its outcomes, but wider swings on that spectrum. You’ll be first out or the winner in many cases, not lingering around and tryharding your way to second place. There are Commander nights when that’s music to my ears. I want my deck to work, or just let me sit back, chill, talk with people, and stop thinking for a while. I always have a janky deck with me to see if I win the topdeck lottery that night. Most nights I’ll play something sweaty instead, but the more stressful my life gets, the more I find myself grabbing something goofy.

The Story

This is an underdog story, an against-all-odds tale of the lowly jank deck finding its improbable victory against the blonde, flat-topped Russian boxer looking to destroy, the small, hairy-footed hobbit dragging that Ring across the steaming fields of Gorgoroth, or Richard Montañez convincing the brass at Frito-Lay to invest in Hot Cheetos. The victory is sweeter with a deck like this, so if you’re getting a little bored of the same old interactions, this is where you can find the drama again, and maybe even a little role-play, as you hold fast against the tide.

Commanding Conclusion

Errant, Street Artist | Illustration by Justine Cruz

It’s hard to thread the needle between just plain bad like Hakim, Loreweaver that, like, won a game once and secretly pretty good like Mr. Orfeo, the Boulder. Hopefully I hit the mark with this list of jank.

But if I didn’t, let me know in the comments below or on Discord, especially if you have a cracked build of one of these thirteen that elevates it out of the jank pile or a suggestion for a new member of the list!

Stay janky, my friends.