Junji, the Midnight Sky just speaks to my heart. I love a Mono-Black Commander; I love death triggers; I love cards that make me work for it. Junji has all those things. Let's take a look.

It's probably worth noting several things about this card, so let's start at the top. We have a mana value of five, but to be precise, which is important in case we decide we care about Devotion to Black. Power and Toughness are 5/5, so we know we're getting a good power-to-mana ratio. The text box, though, is where things get exciting. We've got ourselves a Dragon Spirit with Flying and Menace, so it's doubly difficult to block. Additionally, when it dies, we can either force our opponents to nerf their own hands and lose two life, or we can pay two life and return a creature from our Graveyard to the Battlefield.

Rather than build a decklist with this awesome creature, I thought it'd be more fun to look at several different ways we can use this Dragon to further our gameplan.

First of all, Junji would probably be an excellent choice for a Mono-Black Control deck as the Commander. You get a decently-sized, evasive Commander who can serve as a win-condition once the board is locked out, plus if you have to Wrath the board away with her on it, you'll gain some value from the loss, whether it's returning a solid creature or just forcing the discard and hitting your opponents for two.

Junji almost certainly wants a slot in a deck which cares about creatures jumping in and out of the Graveyard; my Meren of Clan of Nel Toth deck springs to mind, because I'm constantly sacrificing creatures then returning them to the Battlefield. A creature which my opponents simultaneously don't want alive or dead is a great creature for that deck. However, any deck which aims to put cards in the bin and bring them back again could benefit from Junji's particular flair.

And of course, Junji belongs in any Dragon tribal deck. Even though she won't be able to return a Dragon from the 'yard, that first ability is no joke and will make people wonder if they want to use resources to kill her.

But let's move on to the fun stuff. Let's look at some combos!

The first thing I wanted to do with Junji when I saw her was bounce her in and out of the Graveyard, over and over. Idea number one? Karmic Guide.

Junji and Karmic Guide Combo | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Creatures (4)
• 1 Drogskol Cavalry
• 1 Junji, the Midnight Sky
• 1 Karmic Guide
• 1 Viscera Seer

• Enchantments (4)
• 1 Ajani's Welcome
• 1 Angelic Chorus
• 1 Bastion of Remembrance
• 1 Fanatical Devotion

• Artifacts (1)
• 1 Altar of Dementia

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The idea here is to go infinite with Karmic Guide and Junji. With a free sacrifice outlet on the Battlefield, we can sacrifice Junji, then sacrifice Karmic Guide and return Junji to the Battlefield. Now we can sacrifice Junji and return Karmic Guide... which returns Junji to the Battlefield. We can do this until we run out of life. There are lots of sacrifice outlets in Black which don't cost anything; most of them are stapled to a creature, like Viscera Seer, but don't shy away from other ones, like the old-school Fanatical Devotion in White. There are also of plenty Artifact-based ones, like Altar of Dementia; in fact, with this infinite loop, you can use Altar of Dementia to simply mill out all your opponents so they die on their next Draw steps.

Of course, running out of life is a serious issue here, because we'll be losing two life per round of resurrections, so doing something about that is probably worth it. You could go big and run a Platinum Angel, but that's awfully fragile. Something like Ajani's Welcome will mitigate the life loss; we have two creatures entering the Battlefield per go-round, so we'll gain two life, offsetting the life loss from Junji. Angelic Chorus is more expensive but will gain us seven per round, so with the two we lose we'll gain five each time the two creatures pop back onto the Battlefield. By the time our opponents are dead, we should have life in the stratosphere. It also happens both these creatures are Spirits, so Drogskol Cavalry also works, netting us two per go-round.

Finally, we probably want to figure out how to kill our opponents with this trick. The aforementioned Altar of Dementia will do it, of course, but so will a number of pieces from a traditional Aristocrats deck, like Bastion of Remembrance or Blood Artist. Anything which causes an opponent (or all our opponents) to lose life when a creature either dies or enters the Battlefield will work.

There are a number of Orzhov commanders, of course, but for this shell I think I'd want to run Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim. She's cheap, a nice rattlesnake with the Deathtouch, and has a built-in sacrifice outlet. Karmic Guide and Junji both sit nicely in this deck, as do Aristocrats-style pieces, so you could build the combo as a pocket combo or aim to achieve it with tutors and such.

Our second combo comes from the Dimir. It requires fewer pieces and kills our opponents all by itself.

Junji and Bloodsucker Combo | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Creatures (3)
• 1 Clever Impersonator
• 1 Junji, the Midnight Sky
• 1 Kheru Bloodsucker

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For this to work, we need Junji and Kheru Bloodsucker on the Battlefield. We play out Clever Impersonator and have it copy Junji. The Legendary rule will apply and force us to kill one of them, so we'll kill Clever Impersonator. Because it's a Junji, it'll get its death trigger, so we'll choose the second one. Meanwhile, we had a creature with Toughness four or greater die, so our opponents will all lose two life and we'll gain two life. We'll lose that two life immediately to the Junji trigger, of course, but we'll target a non-Dragon creature in our Graveyard, which happens to be... Clever Impersonator. It'll return to the 'field, and once again we copy Junji, repeating the process. This should kill our opponents pretty quickly, but we can do it as much as we need to until they're all dead.

There are plenty of cards which work in place of Clever Impersonator; Clone is the classic, but Mirror Image and Sakashima's Student and a bunch of others will work. Just don't use Sakashima of a Thousand Faces, because that will negate the Legend Rule and the combo won't work!

Again, there are plenty of options for a Commander here, but the idea I like is putting this combo in an Etrata, the Silencer deck. Etrata looks terrifying, and we can use that to our advantage. Because we can put Etrata into the Command Zone instead of our Library, we have an excuse to run ramp to repeatedly cast her. We can use tutors and say we're finding ways to give her Haste or protection or whatever, but actually we're finding our pieces. People will be terribly distracted by Etrata and her looming "you lose the game" text so they won't see an infinite damage combo coming.

Finally, I'd like to look at a shell of cards which could go in a Mono-Black deck with Junji at the helm.

Mono-Black Junji Shell | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Junji, the Midnight Sky

• Creatures (12)
• 1 Chittering Witch
• 1 Diregraf Horde
• 1 Dread Drone
• 1 Grave Titan
• 1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1 Marsh Flitter
• 1 Myr Battlesphere
• 1 Precursor Golem
• 1 Sengir Autocrat
• 1 Skeletal Vampire
• 1 Sling-Gang Lieutenant
• 1 Underworld Hermit

• Instants (1)
• 1 Shred Memory

• Sorceries (1)
• 1 Dimir Machinations

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 Blight Mound

• Artifacts (2)
• 1 Ashnod's Altar
• 1 Nim Deathmantle

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The idea here is to use Junji's first ability to kill our opponents, rather than the second. What we need is a way to get her back from the 'yard once she goes there, and fortunately, Mono-Black delivers with a classic Graveyard-Recursion combo: Nim Deathmantle and Ashnod's Altar. (If you don't know how this works, here's the idea: have some way of getting more than one creature when a creature enters the Battlefield - think a creature which makes a token when it enters the Battlefield or dies. We sacrifice them both to Ashnod's Altar, making . We then use that to pay for Nim Deathmantle's triggered ability and return the creature to the Battlefield. Rinse and repeat. By the way, this combo goes infinite with Geralf's Messenger all by itself, because it comes back on its own once!)

The problem is Junji is only good for from Ashnod's Altar, so what we need is a way to get more mana from the Altar. This is where Marsh Flitter comes in. With Ashnod's Altar, Nim Deathmantle, and Junji on the 'field, we play out Marsh Flitter. We can sacrifice the Faerie, the two Goblins, and Junji to the Altar for . Use to return the Flitter (getting two more Goblins), then use the remaining to return Junji. Along the way, we use Junji's first ability to hit our opponents for two. We do this till they're all dead.

There are several creatures which make two or more tokens when they enter; grandpappy Myr Battlesphere makes four (!), so we'll also make infinite Myr in this process with that. Chittering Witch will work as long as we have at least two opponents, Diregraf Horde will let us nerf our opponents' Graveyards, Sengir Autocrat will leave us with an army of Serfs... you get the point.

We're in Black, so tutors abound, and it's likely we'll need them, especially if the goal is to get to the combo as quickly as possible. On the other hand, you could run weird tutors like Dimir Machinations and Shred Memory for the specific tools we need (Ashnod's Altar and Nim Deathmantle), and let the rest of it be a pocket combo. To do so, you'd need to build a deck around the combo which is resilient and capable so it can survive the game until it assembles the combo. The nice thing is, you can abuse Junji in lots of ways, and they don't all have to be infinite. She'd make a great leader of a Reanimator shell, so you could cheat in much bigger creatures with her or whatever. She's also a perfectly viable win-condition all on her own, so a Voltron build with light creature-control could be neat as well; imagine her strapped with an Argentum Armor!

Finally, there's one more trick with the Altar and the 'mantle. With Gray Merchant of Asphodel, we can once again go infinite with her second ability. Gary's ability will negate the life loss caused by Junji without any other Devotion to Black and only one opponent, and we can sacrifice Gary and Junji to the Altar for , which gives us enough to return Junji, while Junji herself returns Gary. Everyone else dies.

I hope this look gives you some ideas of how you might want to use Junji, the Midnight Sky. What deck are you going to put her in? What would you like to do with her? Is she too salty?

Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading.