Jeskai Ascendancy

[gkraigher]

it's all good, i wanted to make sure i understood the interaction.  Hermit druid is a creative idea. 

[xouman]

Is Zur the Enchanter playable? It could slow the combo, but makes it more reliable.

Still, it seems a "bad combo" for vintage. Interesting and probably very enjoyable, but looks less competitive.

[tito del monte]

For anyone interested in seeing the deck in action, I thought Sam Pardee's video today on CFB was decent. Obviously, this is the Modern version (which I think we can safely assume won't exist for much longer), but it does illustrate how the deck works pretty well. The raw power level is decent - and Treasure Cruise really shines in the deck. The tension I guess for us would be whether it is better than the Yawg's Will as MaximumCDawg pointed out.
http://www.channelfireball.com/videos/channel-smdster-modern-jeskai-ascendancy-combo/

Also not sure a Vintage version would bother with Glittering Wishes, although they clearly provide some nice outs/kills in Modern. I like the addition of Green Sun's Zenith instead of more (bad) mana dorks. Seems like a good use for all that mana. Maybe Natural Order might finally work in this deck, too. I'll leave brewers better than me to answer that!

Anyway, cool card - we can at least be happy about that. And a cool deck, albeit in Modern. Let's see where this goes...

[gkraigher]

This card is the enabler.  Cast it, and you go infinite with a mox.  Enough to draw your deck and win with 1 tendrils of agony and 1 mox jet.  You do not have to keep drawing with ascendancy, it is a may.  so once the combo is assembled, you recast mox over and over generating infinite and adding infinite storm counters.  

Here is the deck I would construct, notice how it is mana sources, counterspells, and tutors only.


4 force of will
4 mental misstep
4 pact of negation

2 hurkyl's recall
4 retraction helix

5 mox
1 black lotus
1 ancestral recall
1 brainstorm
1 ponder

0 time walk ---> card does nothing

1 merchant scroll
1 demonic tutor
1 vampiric tutor
1 mystical tutor
2 enlightened tutor

4 jeskai ascendancy
1 tendril of agony

4 noble heirarch
4 birds of paradise


4 gemstone mine
4 city of brass
4 mana confluence
2 tarnished citadel

[Protoaddict]

The legacy version runs a glittering wish package, don't you feel like that may have some merit here if this deck is going to take off or do you think standard tutors alone get you there? Glittering wish can also get Gutteral response and mana morpohse out of the board which all have some utility.

The thing I hate about this deck is that you NEED 1 mana dork in play to last a turn or it does not work and your pacts do not help you out if they bolt it on their turn or misstep it. None of those formats have Mental misstep to contend with.

The legacy/modern builds of this list run crimson wisps to haste them as a cantrip and sylvan caryatid which is substantially harder to remove. those may have some merit in some numbers in this list.

[TheWhiteDragon]

Abrupt decay FTW.

I've been facing Jeskai in Modern a ton....and have yet to lose 2/3.  They'll sometimes snag 1 game of 3 on me, but never yet 2 of 3.  In my RW list, it's a burn deck...so good luck going off with no creature (that said, the proposed list above needs 4 sylvan caryatid - you NEED a mana dork and 8 is slim....plus decay, dismember, fire, bolt, plow are all common in the format).  My BGw list....infact every BG+ list I run has 4 decay, so good luck keeping ascendancy going.  Just wait for them to try to play a spell and then kill ascendancy.  Misdirection doesn't help much in a Leg/Vin list either because what will they target?  Their birds??  An early cast thoughtseize is crippling too, even with the dig.  They have multiple ascendancy/wish?  grab the birds...multiple dorks?  Grab the jeskai.  Gives you an extra 3 turns at least on the clock, and that should be GG.  I've had no problems with this deck and running bad cards like ascendancy, helix, etc make it awful outside of comboing. How good is this helix version vs....any sphere or chalice?

[TheWhiteDragon]

it's all good, i wanted to make sure i understood the interaction.  Hermit druid is a creative idea. 

A while back, I had a hermit druid deck that boarded into golden gun (or lab man) oath and still had extra sb cards (needed to board 9 slots I believe).  The deck was beast and danced around hate (g3 was a coin flip of who guessed the right strategy).  Eventually, seeing oath was strongest over most matches, I made the hermit the sb.  I think that deck better than this as BOTH jeskai and hermit take a hit from critter hate.  Hermit/Oath have almost nothing where the hate overlaps (chalice @2/grafdiggers cage are all I can think of).  Those decks both ran main CoV/claim anyway (and would now run 4x decay in both spots), so cage/chalice is a non-issue.

I think that list is somewhere on TMD, but I can't find it.  I like transformational boards, but I think a different transformation is better for Jeskai so darkblast and friends doesn't ruin every plan in one shot.

[Norm4eva]

The problem with Jeskai Ascendency as a deck is that it depends on too many cards. It's the consummate Voltron combo deck; most of the time you have to have:

• Jeskai Ascendency in play
• a mana generating creature like BoP or Hierarch or some such
• some combination of Sensei's Divining Top(s) or Retraction Helix + a cheap-as-free artifact, or some way of assuring a recursive spell can be cast to prevent fizzling

A four-color combo deck isn't unheard of and is far easier to assemble in this format than many others, sure -- but there are a ton of moving parts here. At least the reasonable Storm finishers are here, but it sort of begs the question after a while, as to why the deck is preferable to other Storm decks.

Plus it opens itself up to interaction from every angle. Abrupt Decay wrecks most aspects of the combo. StP/Lightning Bolt/PtE/any removal spell that hits a mana dork can bork the whole shebang. Even the combo engine isn't 'real' card drawing; you're Looting your way through your deck, so if you try to go off early you're gonna have just a few cards in hand and if you have to Force something or whatever, it's gonna suck to recover.

None of this means I don't like the card or the concept; I just really think that going almost-5-color is a mistake and relying on dudes to be in play next to a 3cmc 3-color enchantment makes for a tough row to hoe.

[Protoaddict]

When it comes to combo decks like this I always have to ask a few questions

Is the deck pure combo or can it win on its own
Do the combo pieces have any other applications
how vulnerable is it to common removal

If you compare this list to some other combos in the format it falls apart. Elves and salvagers can all win without any extra support just by turning sideways with a lot of dudes. Both lists can also win without assembling a combo (of which use less pieces in most cases) and are fewer colors. Most do not have cards that are totally dead without help except timevault. Salvagers is resilient to removal because it can just go aggro and gain massive CA, and is basically immune to Abrupt decay.

I still am not seeing a compelling reason to play this. There are plenty of combo lists out there right now that see no play that use cards that are better on their own and can win without going full combo.

[ben_berry]

If your using mox + helix can't you drop green and go with a red haste 1 drop? It wouldn't let you mana ramp with creatures but drawing into more copies during the loop would be good and you can drop the entire combo into play on 1 turn.

[zeus-online]

.

[MaximumCDawg]

If your using mox + helix can't you drop green and go with a red haste 1 drop? It wouldn't let you mana ramp with creatures but drawing into more copies during the loop would be good and you can drop the entire combo into play on 1 turn.

Interesting.  Going that route also means you can use Evil Sissors as a way to beef up your aggro plan at the same time.  Since Banishing Knack and Banishing Knack 2.0 are not useless on their own - suboptimal, maybe, but not useless - maybe this idea is better.

Aggro Plan (13)
------------
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Evil Sissors
1 Esperzoa

Combo Plan (2)
------------
2 Jeskai Ascendancy

Artifact Acceleration (8)
-----------
8 Moxen + Ring + Lotus + Crypt

Artifact Disruption (5)
-----------
3 Tangle Wire
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Phyrexian Revoker

Disruption (12)
------------
4 Force of Will
3 Mental Misstep
2 Flusterstorm
1 Banishing Knack
1 Retraction Helix

Search / Draw (6)
------------
2 Enlightened Tutor
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll

Lands (14)
-------------
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Arid Mesa
4 Volcanic Island
1 Tundra
1 Plateau
1 Island
1 Mountain

The concept here is to merge the aggro/artifact plan with a combo finish if the opportunity presents itself.  Aggro plan curves out with an early Guide or Spear to start getting in for 2 early.  Second turn follow up with Sissors on a mox or whatever so you're hitting for 7, and that's half their life total.  They need to find a solution to your aggro plan immediately or lose very quickly to it.

By midgame, you have many ways to find an Ascendency if you happen across a Helix effect / scroll / tutor.  As has been pointed out in this thread, any creature + zero cc artifact + helix + ascendancy = arbitrary card dig and arbitrarily large creature.  Well, not totally arbitrary; limited by cards in your library.

[vaughnbros]

If your using mox + helix can't you drop green and go with a red haste 1 drop? It wouldn't let you mana ramp with creatures but drawing into more copies during the loop would be good and you can drop the entire combo into play on 1 turn.

Interesting.  Going that route also means you can use Evil Sissors as a way to beef up your aggro plan at the same time.  Since Banishing Knack and Banishing Knack 2.0 are not useless on their own - suboptimal, maybe, but not useless - maybe this idea is better.

If the idea is to go infinite with banishing knack + jeskai asendancy, I don't see why you have to play terrible creatures, like goblin guide, swiftspear, and evil scissors.  You could just as easily play actual good creatures, like stoneforge, vendilion clique, true-name nemesis, ect.  In fact true-name becomes an infinite/infinite unblockable, hexproof when you assemble the combo with him out, thats GG.

[ben_berry]

Except the game will be over before you cast any of those three drop if you have combo instead of disruption.

[vaughnbros]

Except the game will be over before you cast any of those three drop if you have combo instead of disruption.

Who said anything about playing pure combo cards over disruption?  I'm saying that there are much better options than these cards:
4 Goblin Guide
4 Monastery Swiftspear
4 Evil Scissors
1 Esperzoa
1 Phyrexian Revoker
3 Tangle Wire
2 Enlightened Tutor

[Norm4eva]

Maybe just be a Timmy and load up on Kiln Fiends. vOv

You be like
    T1: Volcanic, Mox Something, Kiln Fiend
    T2: Fetch->Volcanic, Swiftspear, Mox Mox 1-mana Blue draw spell into 3 Bolt variants, cast all deez at target face (11 damage), attack for 7 (Swiftspear) and 13 (Fiend).
    T3: There is no turn 3, go get a hamburger

There's no Jeskai Ascendency in the above godpile, but WHAT IF THERE WAS OMG

[vaughnbros]

Maybe just be a Timmy and load up on Kiln Fiends. vOv

You be like
    T1: Volcanic, Mox Something, Kiln Fiend
    T2: Fetch->Volcanic, Swiftspear, Mox Mox 1-mana Blue draw spell into 3 Bolt variants, cast all deez at target face (11 damage), attack for 7 (Swiftspear) and 13 (Fiend).
    T3: There is no turn 3, go get a hamburger

There's no Jeskai Ascendency in the above godpile, but WHAT IF THERE WAS OMG

Too slow.
Turn 1:
Play black lotus,
Play mox ruby/sapphire/opal/lotus petal,
Play/fetch volc/island,
Play mox pearl/opal/lotus petal,
Cast jeskai ascendency,
Cast Raging Goblin,
Cast Banishing helix/retraction helix on raging goblin,
Bounce and replay a mox infinite times,
Swing for infinite.

[zeus-online]

.

[vaughnbros]

Bounce and replay a mox infinite times,
Swing for infinite.

This will be quite a long game.

18 times is probably sufficient on magic online.

[MaximumCDawg]

I guess it depends on which way you want to go.  The hasty dork plan means you can draw into your combo and go off on the same turn, while still giving you a very swarm-like aggro plan.  Haste makes a huge deal.  I mean, Guide/Swiftspear/Sissors is no slouch in the speed department.  Consider:

T1: Land, Swiftspear, Mox, Swing 2.
T2: Land. Sissors, swing 7. (9 dmg)

We're already threatening to put the game away on turn 3 with a pretty decent draw.  It's not magical Christmas land, since so many of the pieces are redundant.  Heck, you could add Tinker to make another, better version of Sissors in the same scenario.  Your opponent has to race or board into creature control elements to stop this, but those same things do not do much good if you have Ascendancy down and then drop your hasty goblin to go off.  

The other thing these guys have over "good creatures" like the Kor lady or fish nemesis is they're dirt cheap to cast.  They won't require you to gum up your development to cast them.  You just cast and forget.  True, this makes you more vulnerable to Mental Misstep, so maybe that's a thing, but with 8 1-drops in your deck your opponent takes a big risk if he ignores some of them and exhausts a lot of permission if he or she does not.  Comparatively, you'd rather pull a counterspell for R than for 1W or 1UU.

I dunno, anything relying on such an expensive enchantment is not, in my mind, really competitive.  But it's interesting.

[Protoaddict]

If burn does not work in this format I fail to see how playing swiftspear into sizzors will either. Burn is actually faster in most cases.

[Norm4eva]

Maybe just be a Timmy and load up on Kiln Fiends. vOv

You be like
    T1: Volcanic, Mox Something, Kiln Fiend
    T2: Fetch->Volcanic, Swiftspear, Mox Mox 1-mana Blue draw spell into 3 Bolt variants, cast all deez at target face (11 damage), attack for 7 (Swiftspear) and 13 (Fiend).
    T3: There is no turn 3, go get a hamburger

There's no Jeskai Ascendency in the above godpile, but WHAT IF THERE WAS OMG

Too slow.
Turn 1:
Play black lotus,
Play mox ruby/sapphire/opal/lotus petal,
Play/fetch volc/island,
Play mox pearl/opal/lotus petal,
Cast jeskai ascendency,
Cast Raging Goblin,
Cast Banishing helix/retraction helix on raging goblin,
Bounce and replay a mox infinite times,
Swing for infinite.

I see what you did there.

I do think however that a plan which can leverage against Burn's uber redundancy while giving it the possibility of a swifter win is worth a look-see, though that's a totally different deck at this point, right -- hell, it may as well be a tangent into "so why aren't we just playing Delver again?" but at least Delver is arguably more tempo-oriented than a straight Burn/Sligh approach.

I'd love to see Jeskai Ascendency matter a damn, it is a neat card when you get right down to it - personally I'd love to see some wild concoction that casts like [card]Fiery Temper[/card] and/or [card]Volcanic Eruption[/card] while cycling through the deck and then punching like a goddamn beast with huge onboard guys. But as a combo deck I think Jetski has the same problem as the silliness I posted before; it's secretly a different deck, it just has a bunch of weird cards in it. My "lol Kiln Fiend" example is probably just Burn, after cutting the shake out; I think a Jeskai Ascendency list either ends up leaning more on its dudes (which gets into Fish/Sligh/Burn territory) or the combo finish (which goes more and more towards Storm combo, IMO).

Wait until the deck gets banned in Modern because they don't have cards on a par with Wasteland or Counterspell to remind the deck that it has no business existing -- the price will plummet and it will be another has-been rare to experiment with to heart's content. Otherwise, though, I feel like the concept doesn't lend itself to being that much more potent than, like... Eggs.dec.

[ben_berry]

My though is you start aggro, they're forced to deal with it, resulting in everyone in top-deck mode on turn 3. Then you can drop the ascendancy and filter into better quality cards / combo.

[gkraigher]

leave it to the pros to uncover fatestitcher.  does this change anything with this deck moving forward?

 it adds more blue cards and allows you to avoid playing green. 

[Hrishi]

This might the lack of sleep talking, but how exactly does this deck win? The 20/20 fatestitcher? Apologies if this sounds dumb.

[Chubby Rain]

This might the lack of sleep talking, but how exactly does this deck win? The 20/20 fatestitcher? Apologies if this sounds dumb.

Yeah, or the Pyromancer tokens.

leave it to the pros to uncover fatestitcher.  does this change anything with this deck moving forward?

 it adds more blue cards and allows you to avoid playing green. 

It's huge for the deck, I think. A more stable mana base is great against shops, the creature is immune to counterspells and has haste, and can be played from the graveyard generating pseudo-card advantage using Jeskai Ascendancy as a card selection machine.

A good starting point is Rich Shay's legacy list that he posted on his facebook page recently:

4 Young Pyromancer
4 Jeskai Ascendancy
4 Fatestitcher
4 Treasure Cruise
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Spell Pierce
4 Force of Will
2 Pyroblast
3 Swords to Plowshares
2 Lightning Bolt
4 Flooded Strand
2 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Tundra
2 Volcanic Island
1 Island
1 Plains
3 Faerie Conclave

Untuned Sideboard:
3 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
3 Kor Firewalker
2 Wear/Tear
1 Flusterstorm
1 Electrickery
1 Council's Judgment
2 Meddling Mage

[TheWhiteDragon]

I think something lost with the fatestitcher version is that mana dorks help you ramp.  Also, no glittering wish strategy.  Trade offs.

[The Atog Lord]

I think something lost with the fatestitcher version is that mana dorks

Yes, exactly. That's what's so great about it. Birds of Paradise isn't a card that we've been wanting to play in Vintage since the mid-90s. The only good mana dork is Deathrite Shaman, who isn't even viable for perpetuating the deck. Cutting mana dorks is a huge upside.

Also, Fatestitcher has Haste when you reanimate him, unlike Birds. He's also Blue so he can be pitched. He's also in the Jeskai colors, meaning that you can have a much more stable four-color manabase.

[brianpk80]

I think something lost with the fatestitcher version is that mana dorks

Yes, exactly. That's what's so great about it. Birds of Paradise isn't a card that we've been wanting to play in Vintage since the mid-90s. The only good mana dork is Deathrite Shaman, who isn't even viable for perpetuating the deck. Cutting mana dorks is a huge upside.

I agree with respect to the Ascendancy deck.  The only caveat is that the statement in italics is psychologically injurious to the many Noble Hierarchs who not only believe they are as good as their Deathrite cousins, but even superior.    

[diopter]

Do not Orcish Lumberjacks count?