I've been running a Junk deck for a little while now,...

I've been running a Junk deck for a little while now, but before I get into the decklist, I'd like to go into a little background on the deck, why I chose to run it, and what I've learned from testing.

I started playing around with the idea about 2, maybe 2 and a half months ago. I had just built a counterless control deck for 1.5 for what is quite possibly the screwiest amalgamation of good and bad decks one could find. So I was looking for an all purpose deck for T1 to serve the same function. The problem is, I used a mostly burn based deck in 1.5, which works well, as there's very little combo in the field, but it has very few ways to deal with enchantments and artifacts game 1. Post board, in addition to the 3 maindeck Vindicates, there are also 3 Aura Blasts and 3 Seal of Cleansings, but I wanted something that would compete a little better in T1 where creatures are not always the preferred method for kill.

I knew that I wanted to make white and black part of the deck, for Edict and Plow, and because black has the best graveyard hate and white the best artifact/enchantment hate, making the deck as resiliant to combo as a deck without counterspells can be while still maintaining decent creature removal. From there, I had to choose between red, blue or green for the third color. Blue would give the deck a draw engine, but it really didn't offer much else. Start adding counterspells, and I'm left with something Keeper-esque, and that just wouldn't be competitive, and the draw alone doesn't make up for the lack of answers in blue. I could have gone something similar to GaT in that direction, but I was mostly looking for a way to beat GaT, rather than build it.

I thought about red, because I recognized from the year and a half that I played Sligh and also from my 1.5 deck that burn is an incredibly efficient win condition. It's a kill now, not 3 turns from now when I've swung with my phid 3 times. The ability to topdeck wins like that was very appealing, but it left the deck with the same few answers to artifacts and enchantments that the 1.5 deck did, just a couple of Vindicates. It's hard to find space for maindeck Disenchant effects, because they are dead often enough to make them questionable slot fillers for the main.

So I ended up with green. In the end, Pernicious Deed was just more powerful of an option than draw or burn. Top it off with the fact that green has a plethora of efficiently costed creatures, and it was just too good to pass up. I built a proto-type, and started playing around with it. It was actually fairly easy to design, as I had both the old extended Junk decks to work with, and a Suicide Oath deck my friend Chris had built to pull ideas from. The end result was a deck with at least half a dozen ways to kill any type of permanent, chock full of removal, with efficient creatures as a kill.

Over the past couple months, the design has changed to the following.

Hand Destruction(8)
4xDuress
4xGerrard's Verdict

Removal(13)
4xPernicious Deed
3xVindicate
3xSwords to Plowshares
2xDiabolic Edict
1xChainer's Edict

Creatures(9)
3xRiver Boa
3xRanger en-Vec
3xBlastoderm

Misc.(7)
2xHaunting Echoes
2xTithe
1xDemonic Tutor
1xBalance
1xRegrowth

Mana(22)
4xBayou
4xSavannah
3xWindswept Heath
2xScrubland
2xTreetop Village
1xStrip Mine
2xWasteland
1xBlack Lotus
1xSol Ring
1xMox Emerald
1xMox Jet
1xMox Pearl

SB(currently under construction)*
4xSeal of Cleansing
3xChoke
2xSoul Echo
2xCarpet of Flowers
2xAegis of Honor
2xSilver Knight

*The sideboard was just kind of thrown together before a tournament one day, so I'd have 15 cards, it's not really a finalized listing.

Originally, the deck was running 2 Masticores, 1 of these was cut for a third Windswept Heath, the other was cut for a third Blastoderm. It was also running Yawgmoth's Will and Mindtwist, which were cut for the pair of Haunting Echoes.

Now I know this seems like a very strange change, so I'll explain it. I don't have the mana to use either Yawg. Will or Mindtwist effectively. With no rituals, and only half the compliment of moxen, Will is only effective if I'm playing it off the Lotus, otherwise, it usually nets me 2-3 cards. The same goes for Mindtwist, I very rarely could twist effectively, that is to say, twist for their entire hand and still have mana left to play something else that turn. The biggest problem I was having was with opposing Yawgmoth's Wills. It was difficult, nearly impossible in fact, to win if my opponent got to Will. Often, they'd have nothing in hand, but if they peeled Will, it would spell game over for me, as they quickly refilled their hand with Ancestral, Fact, or AK 3-4. I was leery of adding main deck graveyard hate, because something like Tormod's Crypt is completely dead against Sligh, which is a bad enough matchup for the deck as it is. I settled on Haunting Echoes because it's not truly dead against anyone. Against control, a resolved Echoes will often take away all of their counterspells, allowing me to simply plow over them, and against Sligh, pulling out even half of their burn goes a long way towards ensuring my eventual victory.

In the 1.5 forum, there was a thread on Junk for a little while, and the general consensus was that Funk is better. I've looked at this decks matchups, and decided I'd rather be running Junk. Verdict is my MVP game 1 against Sligh, and it's not bad against other decks. Granted, Hymn to Tourach's random discard is usually more devastating than 2 cards of your opponents choice, but the life gain can be an absolute game saver sometimes. Gaining 6 life against Sligh or Tog is nothing to sneeze at. Vindicate gives me flexible targeted removal, at sorcery speed, granted, but the sheer flexibility of it in a deck like this makes it invaluable. Swords is of course incredibly valuable, and probably the worst hit that Junk takes in switching over to Funk.

It would leave me with a more stable mana base, and it would be faster with the addition of Rituals, but it would lose quite a bit of the flexibility and answers that it currently has, and I think that it would be much like TnT, only weaker.

I'm not so much interested in suggestions as to cards as I am in thoughts about the deck in the current metagame, pitfalls associated with counterless control, and benefits to running this style of deck.