Introduction / Defining Jank

"Jank". We've heard that word a lot, either to describe a deck being intentionally or unintentionally odd. Intentionally brewing jank decks can be very fun and many youtubers have made a name for themselves by reacting to user-submitted replays of jank decks. Due to that the demand for knowing how to build jank is higher than ever - and I'm here to teach you how.

First things first, we should make a distinction between an off-meta deck and a jank deck. An off-meta deck is simply any deck that isn't viable; a jank deck is any deck that is, for our purposes, is intentionally made to be funny and/or exciting. A deck like Cyber Dragon is off-meta but isn't janky, for example.

Making the Jank Work

There are many ways to make comedy, even more so in a card game. It's very well-known that comedy often stems from the unexpected but card games have to pull a secondary element to the joke: Functionality.

An opening hand of 5 copies of Hungry Burger is worth a chuckle but by no means earns the title of "Jank". In order to really reach highs a jank deck needs to have functionality - IE, it can't just be a funny concept but also work as a game piece, capable of at least putting a fight. A hand of 5 hungry burgers isn't very funny but a Dark Magician deck that uses Hungry Burger to fuse into Dark Cavalry is. 

Brewing jank doesn't just look into a funny concept, but also a funny and playable execution.

Points of Opportunity

But how do you find funny but playable new decks? In order to find them you must know your Points of Opportunity. They are where the magic tends to happens.

Dark Cavalry requires any Warrior monster - that's a point of opportunity since you can use this to mix any warrior card into your Dark Magician deck.

As a second example let's take a look at Tri-Brigade Fraktall; its discard effect allows you to send any level 3 or lower Beast, Beast-Warrior or Winged Beast from your Deck to the GY. Normally you'd only be sending Tri-Brigades like Kitt or Nervall - but it doesn't have to be. This is a point of opportunity: Fraktall is, technically, generic - meaning you can send unexpected cards off him and start the jankoff. 

It's points of opportunity like these where you can mix two seemingly unrelated archetypes; many decks have cards that, rather than supporting the archetype itself instead support a type or attribute. These cards make for perfect points of opening for you to slot your tech cards and pivot from an archetype's combo to another.

Optimizing the Search

But how do you find these points of opportunity? The first thing to do is choose an archetype you'd like to start off - the fewer restrictions like archetype or type locks in it, the better. For example, let's start with Dark Worlds - very little locks on that deck.

Then, it's always great to take a scout search - put in EDOPro or Dueling Book's search bar "DARK", with the commas. That way you search for every card that supports DARK attributed monsters. This allows you to find points of entry that you can connect with.

Then, continue doing scout searches - search for "fiend" and "then discard 1 card", in order to find more cards that play nice with Dark Worlds. These scout searches help find new cards that can work with your deck.

Finally, remember to always pay attention to the card text! Read all your cards very carefully, and read them twice or even thrice. Sometimes the perfect point of entry could be under our nose the entire time!

Conclusion

And that's that. Keeping in mind the points of opportunity, the functionality of the deck and always reading the card text carefully are the key ingredients to a good, funny and exciting jank deck. There are virtually infinite decks possible in Yu-Gi-Oh, and with these tips and tricks you too can tap into the primordial soup and bring your own concoctions into life. 

And with that, good luck on your quest to jank perfection my friends, and see you next time with whatever juicy juicy jank you've came up with.