Jank or Dank? 61-Card No-Sideboard Knights (Standard)

A couple of months ago, Wizards started publishing decklists from Magic Arena. To qualify for publication, a deck needs to win at least six matches in a row at platinum rank or better. This sounds simple on its face, but every time lists are published, some incredibly janky lists end up being published. This has led to speculation that there's a bug in the system that allows decks that didn't actually win six matches in a row to be published or, for the most tin-foil-hatted crowd, the idea that Wizards just publishes whatever it wants to make the metagame look more diverse than it really is. 

However, another possibility exists: maybe the decks really did get six wins in a row due to some combination of luck and perhaps being more competitive than they look on paper. Well, the idea of Jank or Dank? is to play the jankiest of these decks through six matches for science and see if there is any possibility that the deck actually got six wins in a row. Basically, is the deck jank or dank?

First up, we have a mind-blowingly janky-looking deck: a zero-mythic, three-rare, 61-card Orzhov Knights list with no sideboard, even though, according to Wizards, it got six wins in a row in traditional (i.e. best-of-three) Standard. 

Is it actually possible that this deck won six matches in a row at platinum rank or better in best-of-three? A better question might be if the deck can actually win a single match! Apart from not having any sideboard, which is a huge, huge handicap in best-of-threes, the deck has an extremely budget mana base (all basics along with two Scoured Barrens and four Tournament Grounds), and the numbers of a lot of the creatures in the deck are strange, at best. Why two Wintermoor Commanders and Resolute Riders? Could we really not find a way to cut something to get down to 60 cards? There are so many questions! Well, let's jump into our matches and figure out if 61-Card No-Sideboard Knights is jank or dank.