Hi all, I apologize I had to work, and couldn't get back immediately. To start, the dictionary defines janky as "of extremely poor or unreliable quality". While that can certainly apply, I know a lot of Standard players have used the term to mean more along the lines of suboptimal. Cards for whimsy, extremely vorthos cards that have no purpose other than being theme related, cards in there for "does this bring me joy", all of these can fit. I know Dunadain doesn't consider his stuff as jank because it's very intentional. So, it means what most anyone defines for themselves. That was part of the thread's idea here.
Some examples of janky I've had: an entire 60 card deck that only featured cards drawn by Quinton Hoover back about Ice Age block...terrible, but I loved it. I currently have a blue 61 card deck that is pure aggro (not Faeries or Merfolk, either), going quite against normal competitive blue archetypes because I hate competitive blue archetypes. There are many suboptimal choices being made, but still some really strong cards included are
Delver of Secrets // Insectile Aberration,
Sleep, and
Boomerang among others. Some older, but still quite effective cards are
Psionic Blast and
Serendib Efreet, while a two-card synergy is
Cloud of Faeries and
Illusory Angel or
Ninja of the Deep Hours. Nothing about the deck allows it to be more than a 1v1, which many would consider very janky, yet it effectively powers through a lot of duel games. This deck for me illustrates what I was getting at by holding places in the list until I figured out better stuff. The list has settled out now for a bit to see how this version goes. The next iteration could well take out the Efreets, as there are very effective aggro flyers to replace it...I just love the card.
A Commander example is my
Hazezon Tamar - Defenders of Dune deck posted here about a week ago. It has one card,
Desert Nomads, a thoroughly janky card that is in there only because it has desertwalk and the art...seriously. It's a vorthos card for pure theme, but is in all metrics probably a pure dead slot and also the least likely card to ever be removed at the same time. For what it's worth,
Desert is also in there.