"Her palm flared like the eye of the waking dragon. Then all was calm."
A Storm Deck in Standard?
Jeskai Ascendancy seems like one of the best storm enablers we've seen in a while- maybe not as good as Past in Flames, Pyromancer Ascension, or Ad Nauseum in eternal formats with access to rituals, but its ability to single-handedly draw spells while generating mana to cast them puts it above those past enablers as far as Standard is concerned.
Technically, we don't have any cards with Storm in Standard, but Jeskai Ascendancy is essentially Haze of Rage, boosting your team for every noncreature spell you cast that turn, ensuring you have nothing but lethal attackers (and that is by far the worst of it's three abilities!). With the amount of mana the engine generates, running a surefire win condition such as Crater's Claws is also an option. After going through some janky Temur decks with Retraction Helix and Astral Cornucopia, I've settled on a mostly Jeskai brew that usually casts Jeskai Ascendancy on turn 4 or 5 and wins the game if it resolves, an all-in, one-card combo deck. Playing the deck feels like (slower) Legacy Storm: you spend your mana sculpting your hand until you draw your business spell and win. It's one of many possible shells for Jeskai Ascendancy, and anything and everything about the deck could change, but the power is definitely there:
Why not play the infinite Artifact Combo?
There's some great testing going on currently with a Jeskai Ascendancy deck that casts Retraction Helix on a creature to bounce and replay a 0-cost artifact, generating infinite looting and infinite power for all your creatures. The advantage of the Storm deck is that it is a one-card combo: you play Jeskai Ascendancy and win within a turn, provided you have a creature to untap with it. The Artifact combo can land Ascendancy, but without Retraction Helix, a creature to cast it on, and a 0-cost artifact to bounce, it won't do anything. That said, the Artifact deck will always win when it gets its combo, and it has enough flex slots to run a few Ensoul Artifacts to buy time, so it's definitely a shell worth trying. For more on the Artifact combo, see this thread: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/standard-type-2/standard-deck-creation/571886-jeskai-helix-standard-combo
Card Choices and Explanations
Jeskai Ascendancy is a one-card combo that resets your mana dorks every time you cast a spell while drawing you into more action. The deck's greatest weakness is not drawing Jeskai Ascendancy, or getting it countered or removed, but usually you can win the turn you resolve it, so your opponent has a small window to interact.
Retraction Helix is something I'm still not sure about, but once your combo gets going it can draw your entire deck by repeatedly bouncing Dragon Mantle, and then generate infinite mana and infinite power for your creatures by bouncing Jeskai Ascendancy, using random spells in your deck to generate untap triggers so you can untap their board to alpha strike with infinitely powerful mana dorks. You don't need it to win the game, which is why I'm unsure, but it's good plan to have in mind when you're starting to storm off with Ascendancy, so that once you get going you can find this, demonstrate a loop, and allow your poor opponent to scoop. It can also either save your life by Unsummoning a lethal threat, or save your Ascendancy or mana dork from removal, making it fairly decent at each stage of the game.
For a long time this section was very simple: the three good two-mana dorks in Standard, four copies of each. Then came the brilliant tech of Twinflame (thanks to the insanely creative Ashk'rya!). It's a mana dork with haste for the purposes of the combo, since you only really need mana dorks on the combo turn, but it's also a noncreature spell, making it a great draw with Jeskai Ascendancy on the table instead of a dead one. To top it all off, it also makes sure you win the game post-combo by making hasty copies of all your mana dorks to overwhelm any blockers. We don't want too many, because drawing 2 of these and no real mana dork is terrible, but two seems to be right: the first one you can use as a mana dork on the combo turn, and the second one you can cast for a lot of mana to send an army of lethal threats at your opponent.
Defiant Strike and Dragon Mantle are the 1-mana cantrips we have, so we'll take them. Divination isn't flashy but it's good. I originally wasn't sure what the optimal number of Dig Though Time/Treasure Cruise was, but drawing one mid-combo always wins the game, and with Taigam's Scheming fixing draws and fueling Delve they can dig for Ascendancy quite cheaply, so I've settled on four. Also, while there is still testing being done on the subject the consensus seems to be that Dig Through Time is the better spell, and I for one have found it to be invaluable pre and post Ascendancy, so I happily run the full four.
-We need 13 untapped green sources to consistently cast a dork on turn two, and 13 blue sources in case that dork is Kiora's Follower.
-We need 21 sources that can tap for either Red, White, or Blue, and 11 sources that can tap for each, to consistently cast Jeskai Ascendancy on turn four or five.
-We need to be able to cast Jeskai Ascendancy even when our dork is unable to tap for white.
We have 4 untapped green in Mana Confluence, and 4 more in Yavimaya Coast. So, we need four green fetchlands, and a Forest. This means that we must run at least 22 lands, since we need 21 U or W or R sources, and we're already running 1 Forest. We have 8 WR mana sources in Mana Confluence and Mystic Monastery, and 12 U sources in those 8 plus Yavimaya Coast, so we've used up 17 sources so far, and we need at least 3 W, 3 R, and 1 U (remember that the fetchlands can fix for another color, which I'll account for in a moment). If w run WG fetchlands, we also need a Plains to fetch with it. We have 2 "extra" white sources, and 4 lands to fix for U and R. If we run 4 Shivan Reef, we have exactly the G needed, 1 more R than needed, 2 more W than needed, and 3 more U than needed. This is all good, but it hurts us when our only green/white source is a single Windswept Heath, and we want to cast a mana dork that is unable to tap for white.
We could also run RG fetchlands, in which case we need to fix for U and W, which would require the UW fetchlands. We then need to run two more basics to accomodate them, so we end up with exactly the G needed, 1 more R than needed, exactly the W needed, and 2 more U than needed. We still have the required mana sources and we get to run two more fetchlands, which synergize with Delve. In addition, green and white aren't on the same fetchland, which is a lot better in games when you draw Rattleclaw Mystic, Jeskai Ascendancy, and a fetchland as your only green source.
For these reasons, I currently prefer the six fetchland manabase, but here is the other one for reference:
Both of these manabases give you above a 90% chance of being able to cast your mana dork on turn 2 and Jeskai Ascendancy on turn 4, taking mulligans into account, which is consistent enough for a competitive deck. The four fetchland manabase is slightly more consistent in terms of mana, but the six fetchland manabase allows you to fetch for a Forest without wasting a white mana source in case your only dork is Rattleclaw Mystic, and the extra fetches are synergistic with Delve. I believe they are both viable options, and testing is required for both to determine the pros and cons in practice.
Circle of Flame against the hyper-aggro decks sure to flood the early metagame, Cryptic Command Crippling Chill against aggro decks going tall rather than wide, Swan Song against decks that want to counter Jeskai Ascendancy, Gods Willing against decks that want to kill our dorks, and Restock as a bullet against Thoughtseize.
Commune with the Gods: This spell can't grab any draw spells, and it might loot your win condition, but it digs 5 cards deep for Jeskai Ascendancy and mana dorks while actually putting it into your hand, unlike Taigam's Scheming, and like Scheming it goes great with Delve. Since this doesn't let you keep cards on top of your library, it hasn't tested as well as Scheming except in Aura builds (see below).
Chosen by Heliod/Nylea's Presence/Karametra's Favor: One interesting route to take this deck is to run a lot of Aura cantrips, which turn Commune with the Gods into a great tutor. They also go infinite with Retraction Helix if your combo is up, so there's a variant of the deck that cuts Defiant Strike, Taigam's Scheming and a couple mana dorks and Delve spells for the 2 mana cantrip auras, Commune with the Gods and 1 or 2 Retraction Helix. Ultimately I couldn't get this shell to work, because 1 mana cantrips are just too important to consistency to cut out, but there could definitely be a great direction to take this.
Oracle's Insight: The litmus test for draw spells in this deck is "How often will I wish this was Divination?" Oracle's Insight makes the deck even worse against removal, but if you untap with Oracle's Insight it was basically Divination, with the added upside of making sure your combo is always lethal. This looked okay on paper, but it proved to be way too mana intensive compared to something like Jace's Ingenuity, which in turn is way too mana intensive compared to a Delve spell like Dig Through Time.
Act on Impulse: The red Divination is assuredly better when you have the combo and you're playing everything you draw, but worse when you're playing Divination on turn 3 to draw gas, and I'd rather have the help when I don't have the combo than when I landed Ascendancy and I'm probably going to win that turn anyway. After testing this out, it really hurts to not be able to loot away the dead cards you draw with this, so it's no Divination.
Crater's Claws: The original. When I posted this thread Crater's Claws was in the maindeck as the obvious way to get your opponent dead provided you had lots of mana sitting around. Twinflame is my current win condition of choice due to its ability to double as a mana dork, thereby not having to run a dedicated win condition that does nothing when you can't win with it. But if you're looking to test with a dedicated win condition, this or Burning Anger are your bread and butter.
Burning Anger: You can't cast it desperately as a Shock or Lightning Strike like Crater's Claws, but it wins the game much more handily, requiring only that you chain enough spells to get to five mana, at which point your creatures are big enough to kill provided they untap once or twice, which Jeskai Ascendancy is more than happy to do. I haven't been too interested in testing whether this or Crater's Claws is better, since they both suffer from being dedicated win conditions, but if I had to guess I'd say this is, because it lets you fizzle out halfway through your deck and still win if you've got enough mana floating to cast this.
Surrak Dragonclaw/Anax and Cymede/Nylea, God of the Hunt: These 3 creatures all do the same thing, grant your team trample so you can attack through blockers. If I ran one, it would take the place of Crater's Claws as the deck's surefire win condition. Surrak dies to removal but can't be countered, and if your opponent has removal they are using it on your mana dorks, at the beginning of the combo. Assuming you have one of the 8 heroic trigger spells, Anax and Cymede don't care if they die, but they can be countered, unlike Surrak. Nylea can also be countered, but she can use your excess mana to pump up your dorks to make sure you get in the last few points if needed. Ultimately, none of them are in the maindeck because they are all creature spells. Fireball to the face works just as well as any of these, but in those cases where you're stuck with your win-con in hand but you desperately need one more Ascendancy trigger to be able to go off, Crater's Claws kills a blocker and lets you go off and attack for the win, and the creature wincons just cry. But if you have an idea that doesn't work with Crater's Claws for some reason, remember that there are many different options to finish the game post-combo.
Aura Build
There have been promising results coming out of a variant than runs cantrip Auras, allowing access to Commune with the Gods and Kruphix's Insight, which become very powerful when they search for most of the spells in the deck. In exchange for added search power, the deck sacrifices its cheapest spells to run mediocre cantrips, so it's not clear which shell is faster, but the Aura build is powerful enough to merit testing. Here is a sample decklist:
While this deck doesn't have quite the speed of Legacy Storm, it does have much of the difficulty. Whether you can combo off this turn or whether it's better to wait, what order you sequence your spells, whether you choose to loot, how you stack your deck with Taigam's Scheming, how you plan to cast your Delve spells, what you choose to discard when looting, when to keep lands in hand to loot away, what you fetch for, what mana you generate, and playing around the interaction you suspect your opponent has is the difference between winning and losing with this deck. I've lost countless goldfishes because I made a careless error ten spells ago, and I highly recommend anyone interested in this deck goldfish it extensively until they can regularly win the turn either the turn they resolve Ascendancy or the turn after (when you're goldfishing it's tempting to slam Ascendancy on turn 3 and cruise to a turn 5 combo, but against real opponents with interaction it's usually better to play dig or mana dorks on turn 3, and win on turn 5 without giving them time to blink, so I like the practice of never letting Ascendancy hang around for longer than a turn, and winning the turn you cast Ascendancy if possible). Remember to track your storm count, since you often fizzle out after casting 20 spells, which still equates to a win if you have Twinflame to make a small army, or Surrak to trample over, or Crater's Claws to deal the last few damage or clear away a blocker, or Dragon Mantle to pump out your guys to lethal (which requires tracking how much red floating mana you're producing!). This is by far the most difficult Standard deck I've ever played, so please make sure you practice with a stock list if you're interested in getting into the deck. Happy testing!
This deck has a hard time playing around too much interaction, and despite the fact that the entire deck is either mana or drawing, sometimes you don't win quite fast enough, so I wouldn't take it as is to the Pro Tour. Regardless of whether this shell is right, a 3-mana card that wins the game whenever it resolves seems very breakable. Thoughts?
Hey, just a thought, but Genesis Hydra can bring an ascendancy into play. Worth testing? otherwise, I like. I feel like there are some things out there to strengthen the concept too. Have you looked at Kiora's Follower instead of Satyr?
Genesis Hydra is interesting, but even aside from the GG cost, which would likely require a reworking of the mana, it doesn't do anything when you're comboing, and it's only good when you cast it for 5 or more mana, and you have Ascendancy in your top few cards. It honestly seems better to just run another Delve spell or even Jace's Ingenuity: I can dig deeper and generate card advantage for less mana than Hydra, and at that point I have enough mana to just cast the Ascendancy.
Kiora's Follower is probably strictly better than Satyr in this deck. I'll edit it into the OP, thanks!
What about Chasm Skulker? Dilute your card draw too much? Pretty synergistic with it, just wish it tapped to do something to take advantage of the untapping
The trouble with something like Chasm Skulker that gets huge with the combo is that the combo already makes everything huge. All your mana dorks are lethal threats, although in most games it doesn't matter, since you can just Crater's Claws them. The deck doesn't need help winning once it combos off, you can draw though your entire deck and generate an arbitrary amount of mana if you start with Ascendancy and a mana dork. If it had a tap ability to help kick off the combo, or some way to help dig through the deck, it would be good, but as a fatty with no haste or evasion it isn't what the deck wants. On that note, I've played around with including Sigiled Starfish in the deck, but it felt winmore: if I was scrying a bunch of times to fix my draws mid-combo, that meant I was chaining enough noncreature spells to win anyway, and when I was digging or starting off the combo I always wished it was just Divination.
Howl is usually a 3 mana copy of some other spell in your hand, which probably costs less than 3 anyway. When you trigger Raid it gets powerful, but it's very mana intensive unless you have Ascendancy, and again, if you're casting two noncreature spells (Howl and whatever you're copying) and you have a mana dork and Ascendancy, you probably win, so getting 3 spells for the price of two in that situation (and the copies sadly don't trigger Ascendancy) isn't worth all the times it'll be a 3 mana Defiant Strike. Howl could probably be good in some Jeskai Ascendancy deck (maybe a more controlling build featuring Narset that follows up card draw and board wipes with a huge turn that puts the game away), but in this particular shell it seems too conditional.
Twinflame is a really interesting idea I hadn't thought of. What's better, a two-mana dork that helps you combo on a later turn, or a two-mana dork that dies on the end step, but has haste and triggers Ascendancy, making it a great draw mid-combo instead of a dead one? I don't know, and it definitely merits testing. The biggest downside on paper is that it's a blank card when you don't have Ascendancy, which might make it win-more, but having a hasty mana dork in your deck makes it much harder to lose after resolving Ascendancy, so I'm not sure.
Yeah with twinflame inwas reminded of twinflame combo with archeomancer and axebane guardian. The ability to tap a hasty mana dork was great. Howl, i understand. Unless you copy twinflame...lol
You know what though? What about the card that seems made for this, Ajax and Cyanide? Every spell then pimps +2, AND trample?? Seems like the alternate wincon you need when you cant "ManaDorkBall"
Anax and Cymede definitely works as a wincon, letting my dorks trample over. I feel like I'd rather run a win-con that dies to counterspells than one that dies to both counterspells and removal. At one point I had Surrak in the deck as an uncounterable spell that lets your dorks trample for lethal, but I didn't like how many cards could blow you out. That said, if they didn't hit your mana dorks with removal they probably don't have it at all. The main thing that made me cut Surrak was that Sylvan Caryatid + Crater's Claws wins regardless of removal, but Surrak both dies to removal and can't win the game if your dork has Defender, and Anax and Cymede seems like Surrak that can be countered. Also, the combo rarely goes "halfway", because Ascendancy lets you loot away lands and dorks and all your other cards draw cards, so you usually end the game with over a hundred mana if you bother to cast all your spells, so I'm not really worried about not having the mana for Crater's Claws. Also, this is more of a fringe case, but if you desperately need another Ascendancy trigger you can cast Crater's Claws on a blocker and trigger Ascendancy, allowing you to win off dork attacks. I'm not positive about wincons, but I think since it's just a one-of and in 95% of games it's irrelevant which one you pick, it's not a big deal which you choose.
Crippling Chill is a 4-of in the sideboard, and it's really great, but it needs a relevant target to shine, so I don't have it maindecked over Divination (which is probably its competition). Against aggro decks or Temur decks that ramp into a massive fatty, it's really good at buying time, so it's a star in the sideboard and I could definitely imagine running a few in the main.
Hmm, Icy Blast is really similar to Crippling Chill, except it doesn't cantrip, which is crucial for noncreature spells in this deck. Also, this deck can't go Ferocious unless you're in the middle of comboing, in which case the Ferocious ability doesn't matter anyway. I might run it as the wincon, since it taps your opponent's team, but there are way too many Sylvan Caryatids running around for that. So, Icy Blast usually taps their entire team, but only for one turn, and Crippling Chill only hits one creature, but freezes it, and also draws you a card. If I'm stalling while I dig I'd prefer the card draw, if I'm starting off the combo I'd prefer a cantrip to a spell that doesn't help the combo, and if I'm deep into the combo it doesn't matter which one I draw, because I already won.
It's a fun deck to goldfish. It wins around turn 4-5 when you have the Ascendancy, and you have enough draw so that it doesn't take forever to find it.
Yeah, it's amazing when you have Ascendancy, and when you don't you can either find Ascendancy in your top 5 and draw it next turn, or make sure you draw land if you need it, or make sure you draw a Delve spell and send the other 4 to the graveyard. Most of the spells in this deck have to be cantrips to be good, but Taigam's Scheming is powerful enough to play even though it puts you down a card.
Different style deck with Chief Engineer? Could be good used in conjunction with Astral Cornicopia and Meteorite.
You could also use Battlefield Thurmatage in a deck running a lot of targeting instances and sorceries. If you try to build heroic around it, Akroan Crusader would be good.
I'm also thinking a one-of Life's Legacy would be good in decks running green.
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Nice, I like the Artifact version idea, playing artifacts for (sorta) free to draw.. hmm
life's legacy is nice, i agree. I just dont like killing my mana dorks. In my solitaire sesions, i rarely get more than two of em out. In other new, Oracle's Insight is pretty swave. yeah its 4 mana, but its filter/draw is so great. Ended up dropping it for Villianous Walth though. with phenax, VW might be able to mil the last bit of their cards. then you can cast them, triggering Ascendancy booya
Just looked up Act on Impulse, and I think it is better than Divination mayhaps
[edit] My first solitaire (i know, i know) played Act on Impulse and WOOOWEE! it increase your hand by 3 for the turn.
Here is my Current list. Thinking about delve again now. Phenax is pretty lolz
Temur Acendancy is to give haste. It's either that or hammer of Purphoros, because this deck needs to be able to drop the extra mana dorks and tap them for mana, to increase the engine. this deck is admittedly five color, but... it's fun
I'm glad you liked those ideas. I've been tryin to build a successful Blistercoil weird combo list, and Jeskai Ascendancy makes it more posssible. A lot of the cards that worked well in that list work wells org this idea.
Woah, lots of really cool ideas! I'm gonna have to test with a lot of these, but my initial thoughts:
Oracle's Insight: Hmm, it doesn't match up well against removal, but if you opponent can't punish you for it, it's a super Underworld Connections that makes sure Jeskai Ascendancy is lethal. Probably not a 4-of but it might be a one or two-of. The marker for draw spells in this deck is "How often will I wish this was just Divination?", and I think this one might pass.
Commune with the Gods: Ooh, this could also pass the Divination test. With the current decklist this has a 90% chance of hitting something, and it digs for Ascendancy while fueling Delve. I'll have to test this in the version that runs Surrak as the win-con, since I don't want to be forced to mill Crater's Claws.
Act on Impulse: Hmm, I think this suffers from being better than Divination once you combo off, but worse before you get there. In order to take advantage of that third card, you have to have the mana to play this and every exiled card, which probably won't happen unless you have the combo, in which case Divination would've been great too. I'll test it, but I'm skeptical.
Chief Engineer/Artifact Combo: This is actually where the deck started, as a combo deck featuring Ascendancy, Retraction Helix, and Astral Cornucopia. But it eventually turned into the current list, because I realized I could turn the 3-card combo into a one-card combo, making the deck a lot faster. If you naturally draw all 3 combo pieces in the artifact plan, you'll win the game, but if you don't you're stuck with a deck that does nothing for a long, long time, and you don't have much to stop the opponent from smashing you if you're just passing the turn, and you don't even have cantrips to aggressively dig for the pieces, since you don't have room. It's a totally different shell though, so there could easily be some way to break it. I do like the Ensouls and Shrapnel Blasts to buy time.
Dakra Mystic: I haven't tested this card because it eats your mana instead of generating it mid-combo, and unlike your other card draw it doesn't trigger Ascendancy and doesn't do anything the turn you cast it, but it does do a pretty good job of digging for Ascendancy, so I'll test it out to see how often it's good and how often it's dead.
Life's Legacy: We care too much about our mana dorks to cash them in for a discounted Divination. If we don't have them, our combo doesn't work.
Battlefield Thaumaturge: All of our targeting spells already cost 1 mana
Phenax: This is a really funny win-con He destroys your opponent all right, but he's sadly no better than other creature-based win-cons like Surrak or Anax: if you have big enough butts to destroy their deck, you have big enough teeth to destroy their life total with trample. And the fifth color is very painful on our mana, so he doesn't seem worth it.
Villainous Wealth: Again, the fifth color is really painful, and this seems like a less reliable mana sink than Crater's Claws to the face for lethal, since you can't be sure it will win the game once you play it unless you actually mill them out in which case Crater's Claws would be overkill.
Temur Ascendancy: I had this in the deck at one point, actually! I didn't like the double-red in Hammer, and we don't really care about making a golem, so this won out. Also, it makes Surrak cantrip, so if he's your wincon this is more reasonable. The problem with this card was the problem with most of the cards I've cut: they're only good when Jeskai Ascendancy is resolved, and before that, they don't do anything. If you like the effect you should actually probably try Twinflame, as you suggested before: it's a lot like this, but it actually gives you a hasty mana dork or two, which will be more than enough to win with, and this card makes you find and hardcast your dorks (and you don't get a mana refund because they're creature spells!)
Jeskai Ascendancy is a super-powerful card, and there are probably many shells it's good in. For the storm shell, I'm going to test out Oracle's Insight, Commune with the Gods, Act on Impulse, and Dakra Mystic. There are also cool ideas for the artifact combo, so if people want to test the goldfishes we could try to optimize that shell too.
A note on piloting (I'll probably edit this part into the OP since it's pretty important): While this deck doesn't have quite the speed of Legacy Storm, it does have much of the difficulty. Whether you can combo off this turn or whether it's better to wait, what order you sequence your spells, whether you choose to loot, how you stack your deck with Taigam's Scheming, how you plan to cast your Delve spells, what you choose to discard when looting, when to keep lands in hand to loot away, what you fetch for, what mana you generate, and playing around the interaction you suspect your opponent has is the difference between winning and losing with this deck. I've lost countless goldfishes because I made a careless error ten spells ago, and I highly recommend anyone interested in this deck to goldfish it extensively until they can regularly win the turn either the turn they resolve Ascendancy or the turn after (when you're goldfishing it's tempting to slam Ascendancy on turn 3 and cruise to a turn 5 combo, but against real opponents with interaction it's usually better to play dig or mana dorks on turn 3, and win on turn 5 without giving them time to blink, so I like the practice of never letting Ascendancy hang around for longer than a turn). Remember to track your storm count, since you often fizzle out after casting 20 spells, which still equates to a win if you have Surrak to trample over, or Crater's Claws to deal the last few damage or clear away a blocker, or Dragon Mantle to pump out your guys to lethal (which requires tracking how much red floating mana you're producing!). This is by far the most difficult Standard deck I've ever played, so please make sure you practice with a stock list if you're interested in getting into the deck. Happy testing!
I trigger the first Ascendancy, can I now draw a card and discard my land, then choose whether or not to draw from the second Ascendancy trigger, depending on what I drew?
Yes you can choose to loot or not each time, you fully handle one Ascendancy triggered ability before moving on to the next one. And yes you can tap dorks in response (this is what makes it possible to combo with only one creature).
Also, looking at a single ascendancy, you'll notice the first and second abilities function independently of each other. You may loot before you untap, or vice-versa, and players can respond to either ability.
Yes, yes it does. The reason the combo is so often lethal is because once a first one gets going you tend to break even while digging to the second one, and from there you start actually producing mana as you run through to the third one, which just lets you draw everything and cast fireball for 100. You have to decide whether to loot when the ability resolves, which is the best case scenario. You get to stack the triggers however you want, so loot first until you decide to stop looting, and then untap your guys to make mana, taking into account what you just looted. It works the best way it could for us.
I'm glad you like it, the goldfishes are really insanely consistent once you get the hang of the deck.
I'm glad you like it, the goldfishes are really insanely consistent once you get the hang of the deck.
I was seriously stunned when I found this deck.. worked at all. And yes, consistently.
That said, when not goldfishing, I tended to die to the mantis rider/rabblemaster build of Jeskai before I got going. Eventually I made a hybrid of this and the helix version, featuring simply the helix and the briber's purse. Maindecking aggro answers like that are going a long way for me.
I'm also considering moving 2 swan song to the main..
Probably total jank lol, but i just wanted to share my jank thoughts. Having free artifacts and paying X = 0 for them triggers Ascendancy for free while ramping for Whatever kill spell is preferred. They dont cantrip at all, and maybe a mix of free artifacts and cantrips is what is needed, but so far it's working on turn 4. Briber's Purse is decent for the deck in utility, and cornucopia is ok too. Tormod's crypt should work if Delve becomes a major thing. Just a fun thought
A Storm Deck in Standard?
Jeskai Ascendancy seems like one of the best storm enablers we've seen in a while- maybe not as good as Past in Flames, Pyromancer Ascension, or Ad Nauseum in eternal formats with access to rituals, but its ability to single-handedly draw spells while generating mana to cast them puts it above those past enablers as far as Standard is concerned.
Technically, we don't have any cards with Storm in Standard, but Jeskai Ascendancy is essentially Haze of Rage, boosting your team for every noncreature spell you cast that turn, ensuring you have nothing but lethal attackers (and that is by far the worst of it's three abilities!). With the amount of mana the engine generates, running a surefire win condition such as Crater's Claws is also an option. After going through some janky Temur decks with Retraction Helix and Astral Cornucopia, I've settled on a mostly Jeskai brew that usually casts Jeskai Ascendancy on turn 4 or 5 and wins the game if it resolves, an all-in, one-card combo deck. Playing the deck feels like (slower) Legacy Storm: you spend your mana sculpting your hand until you draw your business spell and win. It's one of many possible shells for Jeskai Ascendancy, and anything and everything about the deck could change, but the power is definitely there:
Jeskai Ascendancy Storm
4 Jeskai Ascendancy
2 Retraction Helix
Mana Dorks
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Kiora's Follower
2 Rattleclaw Mystic
2 Twinflame
Draw/Filter Spells
4 Divination
4 Defiant Strike
4 Dragon Mantle
4 Taigam's Scheming
4 Dig Through Time
4 Mana Confluence
4 Mystic Monastery
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Flooded Strand
1 Mountain
1 Forest
1 Plains
1 Island
1 Restock
2 Gods Willing
4 Crippling Chill
4 Circle of Flame
4 Swan Song
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/17-09-14-jeskai-ascendancy-storm/
Why not play the infinite Artifact Combo?
There's some great testing going on currently with a Jeskai Ascendancy deck that casts Retraction Helix on a creature to bounce and replay a 0-cost artifact, generating infinite looting and infinite power for all your creatures. The advantage of the Storm deck is that it is a one-card combo: you play Jeskai Ascendancy and win within a turn, provided you have a creature to untap with it. The Artifact combo can land Ascendancy, but without Retraction Helix, a creature to cast it on, and a 0-cost artifact to bounce, it won't do anything. That said, the Artifact deck will always win when it gets its combo, and it has enough flex slots to run a few Ensoul Artifacts to buy time, so it's definitely a shell worth trying. For more on the Artifact combo, see this thread: http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/standard-type-2/standard-deck-creation/571886-jeskai-helix-standard-combo
Card Choices and Explanations
Jeskai Ascendancy is a one-card combo that resets your mana dorks every time you cast a spell while drawing you into more action. The deck's greatest weakness is not drawing Jeskai Ascendancy, or getting it countered or removed, but usually you can win the turn you resolve it, so your opponent has a small window to interact.
Retraction Helix is something I'm still not sure about, but once your combo gets going it can draw your entire deck by repeatedly bouncing Dragon Mantle, and then generate infinite mana and infinite power for your creatures by bouncing Jeskai Ascendancy, using random spells in your deck to generate untap triggers so you can untap their board to alpha strike with infinitely powerful mana dorks. You don't need it to win the game, which is why I'm unsure, but it's good plan to have in mind when you're starting to storm off with Ascendancy, so that once you get going you can find this, demonstrate a loop, and allow your poor opponent to scoop. It can also either save your life by Unsummoning a lethal threat, or save your Ascendancy or mana dork from removal, making it fairly decent at each stage of the game.
For a long time this section was very simple: the three good two-mana dorks in Standard, four copies of each. Then came the brilliant tech of Twinflame (thanks to the insanely creative Ashk'rya!). It's a mana dork with haste for the purposes of the combo, since you only really need mana dorks on the combo turn, but it's also a noncreature spell, making it a great draw with Jeskai Ascendancy on the table instead of a dead one. To top it all off, it also makes sure you win the game post-combo by making hasty copies of all your mana dorks to overwhelm any blockers. We don't want too many, because drawing 2 of these and no real mana dork is terrible, but two seems to be right: the first one you can use as a mana dork on the combo turn, and the second one you can cast for a lot of mana to send an army of lethal threats at your opponent.
-We need 13 untapped green sources to consistently cast a dork on turn two, and 13 blue sources in case that dork is Kiora's Follower.
-We need 21 sources that can tap for either Red, White, or Blue, and 11 sources that can tap for each, to consistently cast Jeskai Ascendancy on turn four or five.
-We need to be able to cast Jeskai Ascendancy even when our dork is unable to tap for white.
We have 4 untapped green in Mana Confluence, and 4 more in Yavimaya Coast. So, we need four green fetchlands, and a Forest. This means that we must run at least 22 lands, since we need 21 U or W or R sources, and we're already running 1 Forest. We have 8 WR mana sources in Mana Confluence and Mystic Monastery, and 12 U sources in those 8 plus Yavimaya Coast, so we've used up 17 sources so far, and we need at least 3 W, 3 R, and 1 U (remember that the fetchlands can fix for another color, which I'll account for in a moment). If w run WG fetchlands, we also need a Plains to fetch with it. We have 2 "extra" white sources, and 4 lands to fix for U and R. If we run 4 Shivan Reef, we have exactly the G needed, 1 more R than needed, 2 more W than needed, and 3 more U than needed. This is all good, but it hurts us when our only green/white source is a single Windswept Heath, and we want to cast a mana dork that is unable to tap for white.
We could also run RG fetchlands, in which case we need to fix for U and W, which would require the UW fetchlands. We then need to run two more basics to accomodate them, so we end up with exactly the G needed, 1 more R than needed, exactly the W needed, and 2 more U than needed. We still have the required mana sources and we get to run two more fetchlands, which synergize with Delve. In addition, green and white aren't on the same fetchland, which is a lot better in games when you draw Rattleclaw Mystic, Jeskai Ascendancy, and a fetchland as your only green source.
For these reasons, I currently prefer the six fetchland manabase, but here is the other one for reference:
4 Mystic Monastery
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Shivan Reef
4 Windswept Heath
1 Forest
1 Plains
Both of these manabases give you above a 90% chance of being able to cast your mana dork on turn 2 and Jeskai Ascendancy on turn 4, taking mulligans into account, which is consistent enough for a competitive deck. The four fetchland manabase is slightly more consistent in terms of mana, but the six fetchland manabase allows you to fetch for a Forest without wasting a white mana source in case your only dork is Rattleclaw Mystic, and the extra fetches are synergistic with Delve. I believe they are both viable options, and testing is required for both to determine the pros and cons in practice.
Cryptic CommandCrippling Chill against aggro decks going tall rather than wide, Swan Song against decks that want to counter Jeskai Ascendancy, Gods Willing against decks that want to kill our dorks, and Restock as a bullet against Thoughtseize.Commune with the Gods: This spell can't grab any draw spells, and it might loot your win condition, but it digs 5 cards deep for Jeskai Ascendancy and mana dorks while actually putting it into your hand, unlike Taigam's Scheming, and like Scheming it goes great with Delve. Since this doesn't let you keep cards on top of your library, it hasn't tested as well as Scheming except in Aura builds (see below).
Chosen by Heliod/Nylea's Presence/Karametra's Favor: One interesting route to take this deck is to run a lot of Aura cantrips, which turn Commune with the Gods into a great tutor. They also go infinite with Retraction Helix if your combo is up, so there's a variant of the deck that cuts Defiant Strike, Taigam's Scheming and a couple mana dorks and Delve spells for the 2 mana cantrip auras, Commune with the Gods and 1 or 2 Retraction Helix. Ultimately I couldn't get this shell to work, because 1 mana cantrips are just too important to consistency to cut out, but there could definitely be a great direction to take this.
Oracle's Insight: The litmus test for draw spells in this deck is "How often will I wish this was Divination?" Oracle's Insight makes the deck even worse against removal, but if you untap with Oracle's Insight it was basically Divination, with the added upside of making sure your combo is always lethal. This looked okay on paper, but it proved to be way too mana intensive compared to something like Jace's Ingenuity, which in turn is way too mana intensive compared to a Delve spell like Dig Through Time.
Act on Impulse: The red Divination is assuredly better when you have the combo and you're playing everything you draw, but worse when you're playing Divination on turn 3 to draw gas, and I'd rather have the help when I don't have the combo than when I landed Ascendancy and I'm probably going to win that turn anyway. After testing this out, it really hurts to not be able to loot away the dead cards you draw with this, so it's no Divination.
Crater's Claws: The original. When I posted this thread Crater's Claws was in the maindeck as the obvious way to get your opponent dead provided you had lots of mana sitting around. Twinflame is my current win condition of choice due to its ability to double as a mana dork, thereby not having to run a dedicated win condition that does nothing when you can't win with it. But if you're looking to test with a dedicated win condition, this or Burning Anger are your bread and butter.
Burning Anger: You can't cast it desperately as a Shock or Lightning Strike like Crater's Claws, but it wins the game much more handily, requiring only that you chain enough spells to get to five mana, at which point your creatures are big enough to kill provided they untap once or twice, which Jeskai Ascendancy is more than happy to do. I haven't been too interested in testing whether this or Crater's Claws is better, since they both suffer from being dedicated win conditions, but if I had to guess I'd say this is, because it lets you fizzle out halfway through your deck and still win if you've got enough mana floating to cast this.
Surrak Dragonclaw/Anax and Cymede/Nylea, God of the Hunt: These 3 creatures all do the same thing, grant your team trample so you can attack through blockers. If I ran one, it would take the place of Crater's Claws as the deck's surefire win condition. Surrak dies to removal but can't be countered, and if your opponent has removal they are using it on your mana dorks, at the beginning of the combo. Assuming you have one of the 8 heroic trigger spells, Anax and Cymede don't care if they die, but they can be countered, unlike Surrak. Nylea can also be countered, but she can use your excess mana to pump up your dorks to make sure you get in the last few points if needed. Ultimately, none of them are in the maindeck because they are all creature spells. Fireball to the face works just as well as any of these, but in those cases where you're stuck with your win-con in hand but you desperately need one more Ascendancy trigger to be able to go off, Crater's Claws kills a blocker and lets you go off and attack for the win, and the creature wincons just cry. But if you have an idea that doesn't work with Crater's Claws for some reason, remember that there are many different options to finish the game post-combo.
Aura Build
There have been promising results coming out of a variant than runs cantrip Auras, allowing access to Commune with the Gods and Kruphix's Insight, which become very powerful when they search for most of the spells in the deck. In exchange for added search power, the deck sacrifices its cheapest spells to run mediocre cantrips, so it's not clear which shell is faster, but the Aura build is powerful enough to merit testing. Here is a sample decklist:
4 Jeskai Ascendancy
1 Retraction Helix
Mana Dorks
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Kiora's Follower
2 Rattleclaw Mystic
2 Twinflame
Draw/Filter Spells
4 Commune with the Gods
2 Kruphix's Insight
4 Dragon Mantle
4 Stratus Walk
4 Nylea's Presence
3 Dig Through Time
4 Mana Confluence
4 Mystic Monastery
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Flooded Strand
1 Mountain
1 Forest
1 Plains
1 Island
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/jeskai-ascendancy-storm-aura-variant/
Piloting the Deck
This deck has a hard time playing around too much interaction, and despite the fact that the entire deck is either mana or drawing, sometimes you don't win quite fast enough, so I wouldn't take it as is to the Pro Tour. Regardless of whether this shell is right, a 3-mana card that wins the game whenever it resolves seems very breakable. Thoughts?
Kiora's Follower is probably strictly better than Satyr in this deck. I'll edit it into the OP, thanks!
What about Chasm Skulker? Dilute your card draw too much? Pretty synergistic with it, just wish it tapped to do something to take advantage of the untapping
Speaking of which, what about cards like Roar of the Horde and Twinflame?
Twinflame is a really interesting idea I hadn't thought of. What's better, a two-mana dork that helps you combo on a later turn, or a two-mana dork that dies on the end step, but has haste and triggers Ascendancy, making it a great draw mid-combo instead of a dead one? I don't know, and it definitely merits testing. The biggest downside on paper is that it's a blank card when you don't have Ascendancy, which might make it win-more, but having a hasty mana dork in your deck makes it much harder to lose after resolving Ascendancy, so I'm not sure.
You know what though? What about the card that seems made for this, Ajax and Cyanide? Every spell then pimps +2, AND trample?? Seems like the alternate wincon you need when you cant "ManaDorkBall"
Crippling Chill is a 4-of in the sideboard, and it's really great, but it needs a relevant target to shine, so I don't have it maindecked over Divination (which is probably its competition). Against aggro decks or Temur decks that ramp into a massive fatty, it's really good at buying time, so it's a star in the sideboard and I could definitely imagine running a few in the main.
It's a fun deck to goldfish. It wins around turn 4-5 when you have the Ascendancy, and you have enough draw so that it doesn't take forever to find it.
Different style deck with Chief Engineer? Could be good used in conjunction with Astral Cornicopia and Meteorite.
You could also use Battlefield Thurmatage in a deck running a lot of targeting instances and sorceries. If you try to build heroic around it, Akroan Crusader would be good.
I'm also thinking a one-of Life's Legacy would be good in decks running green.
About Mindslaver rulings:
life's legacy is nice, i agree. I just dont like killing my mana dorks. In my solitaire sesions, i rarely get more than two of em out. In other new, Oracle's Insight is pretty swave. yeah its 4 mana, but its filter/draw is so great. Ended up dropping it for Villianous Walth though. with phenax, VW might be able to mil the last bit of their cards. then you can cast them, triggering Ascendancy booya
Just looked up Act on Impulse, and I think it is better than Divination mayhaps
[edit] My first solitaire (i know, i know) played Act on Impulse and WOOOWEE! it increase your hand by 3 for the turn.
Here is my Current list. Thinking about delve again now. Phenax is pretty lolz
4x Kiora's Follower
1x Phenax, God of Deception
4x Rattleclaw Mystic
4x Sylvan Caryatid
Sorcery (9)
4x Act on Impulse
4x Taigam's Scheming
1x Villainous Wealth
4x Dragon Mantle
4x Jeskai Ascendancy
2x Temur Ascendancy
Instant (4)
4x Defiant Strike
Land (24)
1x Forest
4x Mana Confluence
2x Mountain
4x Mystic Monastery
2x Plains
3x Temple of Epiphany
3x Windswept Heath
3x Wooded Foothills
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Swamp
Temur Acendancy is to give haste. It's either that or hammer of Purphoros, because this deck needs to be able to drop the extra mana dorks and tap them for mana, to increase the engine. this deck is admittedly five color, but... it's fun
How about this for a start?
4x Chief Engineer
3x Retraction Helix
4x Ornithropter
4x Springleaf Drum
4x Astral Cornucopia
4x Dakra Mystic
4x shrapnel blast
4x Ensoul Artifact
4x Act on Impulse
About Mindslaver rulings:
Oracle's Insight: Hmm, it doesn't match up well against removal, but if you opponent can't punish you for it, it's a super Underworld Connections that makes sure Jeskai Ascendancy is lethal. Probably not a 4-of but it might be a one or two-of. The marker for draw spells in this deck is "How often will I wish this was just Divination?", and I think this one might pass.
Commune with the Gods: Ooh, this could also pass the Divination test. With the current decklist this has a 90% chance of hitting something, and it digs for Ascendancy while fueling Delve. I'll have to test this in the version that runs Surrak as the win-con, since I don't want to be forced to mill Crater's Claws.
Act on Impulse: Hmm, I think this suffers from being better than Divination once you combo off, but worse before you get there. In order to take advantage of that third card, you have to have the mana to play this and every exiled card, which probably won't happen unless you have the combo, in which case Divination would've been great too. I'll test it, but I'm skeptical.
Chief Engineer/Artifact Combo: This is actually where the deck started, as a combo deck featuring Ascendancy, Retraction Helix, and Astral Cornucopia. But it eventually turned into the current list, because I realized I could turn the 3-card combo into a one-card combo, making the deck a lot faster. If you naturally draw all 3 combo pieces in the artifact plan, you'll win the game, but if you don't you're stuck with a deck that does nothing for a long, long time, and you don't have much to stop the opponent from smashing you if you're just passing the turn, and you don't even have cantrips to aggressively dig for the pieces, since you don't have room. It's a totally different shell though, so there could easily be some way to break it. I do like the Ensouls and Shrapnel Blasts to buy time.
Dakra Mystic: I haven't tested this card because it eats your mana instead of generating it mid-combo, and unlike your other card draw it doesn't trigger Ascendancy and doesn't do anything the turn you cast it, but it does do a pretty good job of digging for Ascendancy, so I'll test it out to see how often it's good and how often it's dead.
Life's Legacy: We care too much about our mana dorks to cash them in for a discounted Divination. If we don't have them, our combo doesn't work.
Battlefield Thaumaturge: All of our targeting spells already cost 1 mana
Phenax: This is a really funny win-con He destroys your opponent all right, but he's sadly no better than other creature-based win-cons like Surrak or Anax: if you have big enough butts to destroy their deck, you have big enough teeth to destroy their life total with trample. And the fifth color is very painful on our mana, so he doesn't seem worth it.
Villainous Wealth: Again, the fifth color is really painful, and this seems like a less reliable mana sink than Crater's Claws to the face for lethal, since you can't be sure it will win the game once you play it unless you actually mill them out in which case Crater's Claws would be overkill.
Temur Ascendancy: I had this in the deck at one point, actually! I didn't like the double-red in Hammer, and we don't really care about making a golem, so this won out. Also, it makes Surrak cantrip, so if he's your wincon this is more reasonable. The problem with this card was the problem with most of the cards I've cut: they're only good when Jeskai Ascendancy is resolved, and before that, they don't do anything. If you like the effect you should actually probably try Twinflame, as you suggested before: it's a lot like this, but it actually gives you a hasty mana dork or two, which will be more than enough to win with, and this card makes you find and hardcast your dorks (and you don't get a mana refund because they're creature spells!)
Jeskai Ascendancy is a super-powerful card, and there are probably many shells it's good in. For the storm shell, I'm going to test out Oracle's Insight, Commune with the Gods, Act on Impulse, and Dakra Mystic. There are also cool ideas for the artifact combo, so if people want to test the goldfishes we could try to optimize that shell too.
A note on piloting (I'll probably edit this part into the OP since it's pretty important): While this deck doesn't have quite the speed of Legacy Storm, it does have much of the difficulty. Whether you can combo off this turn or whether it's better to wait, what order you sequence your spells, whether you choose to loot, how you stack your deck with Taigam's Scheming, how you plan to cast your Delve spells, what you choose to discard when looting, when to keep lands in hand to loot away, what you fetch for, what mana you generate, and playing around the interaction you suspect your opponent has is the difference between winning and losing with this deck. I've lost countless goldfishes because I made a careless error ten spells ago, and I highly recommend anyone interested in this deck to goldfish it extensively until they can regularly win the turn either the turn they resolve Ascendancy or the turn after (when you're goldfishing it's tempting to slam Ascendancy on turn 3 and cruise to a turn 5 combo, but against real opponents with interaction it's usually better to play dig or mana dorks on turn 3, and win on turn 5 without giving them time to blink, so I like the practice of never letting Ascendancy hang around for longer than a turn). Remember to track your storm count, since you often fizzle out after casting 20 spells, which still equates to a win if you have Surrak to trample over, or Crater's Claws to deal the last few damage or clear away a blocker, or Dragon Mantle to pump out your guys to lethal (which requires tracking how much red floating mana you're producing!). This is by far the most difficult Standard deck I've ever played, so please make sure you practice with a stock list if you're interested in getting into the deck. Happy testing!
Yes you can choose to loot or not each time, you fully handle one
Ascendancytriggered ability before moving on to the next one. And yes you can tap dorks in response (this is what makes it possible to combo with only one creature).Also, looking at a single ascendancy, you'll notice the first and second abilities function independently of each other. You may loot before you untap, or vice-versa, and players can respond to either ability.
I'm glad you like it, the goldfishes are really insanely consistent once you get the hang of the deck.
I was seriously stunned when I found this deck.. worked at all. And yes, consistently.
That said, when not goldfishing, I tended to die to the mantis rider/rabblemaster build of Jeskai before I got going. Eventually I made a hybrid of this and the helix version, featuring simply the helix and the briber's purse. Maindecking aggro answers like that are going a long way for me.
I'm also considering moving 2 swan song to the main..
4x Kiora's Follower
4x Rattleclaw Mystic
4x Sylvan Caryatid
1x Clever Impersonator
Artifact (9)
4x Astral Cornucopia
2x Tormod's Crypt
3x Briber's Purse
Sorcery (10)
1x Twinflame
3x Act on Impulse
1x Villainous Wealth
4x Taigam's Scheming
1x Crater's Claws
4x Jeskai Ascendancy
2x Dragon Mantle
Lands (21)
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Forest
2x Mountain
4x Mystic Monastery
2x Plains
1x Swamp
3x Temple of Epiphany
3x Windswept Heath
3x Wooded Foothills
1x Mana Confluence
Probably total jank lol, but i just wanted to share my jank thoughts. Having free artifacts and paying X = 0 for them triggers Ascendancy for free while ramping for Whatever kill spell is preferred. They dont cantrip at all, and maybe a mix of free artifacts and cantrips is what is needed, but so far it's working on turn 4. Briber's Purse is decent for the deck in utility, and cornucopia is ok too. Tormod's crypt should work if Delve becomes a major thing. Just a fun thought