I tested this tonight, It's the 11th place SCG list, but with 2 Acolytes instead of 2 Boon Satyr. I had some really easy games against Jeskai Token, the only card I wanted more of was Hornet Queen. I will probably go up to 2 in the main.
This deck is immensely fun to play, and powerful. It's best to play it as a sweet ramp deck, but have the combo option available against decks that gain a lot of life, or that have inevitability.
I think your best matchups are other green decks, Jeskai Tokens/Aggro, and midrange decks with low amounts of removal, like Reanimator.
This is mostly a Genesis Hyrda value ramp deck with a sweet combo in it. Not to mention that Temur Sabertooth is actually a reasonable card by itself, and Hyrdaing into Ascendancy still lets you draw a card. I think it's awesome and I'm going to play it at the GPT this Saturday.
Life / Death is probably good enough to play in the main TBH, My next build will be playing a few to see how it goes. Funnily enough, I think that both modes have their uses.
I am going to play this deck in modern in a Modern+Legacy event next month, and if testing goes well I will try playing this in legacy too. There are a lot of fair decks in my local metagame, so I may even be maindecking a few spell pierce. One of my draft builds had a Thoughtseize + Cabal Therapy suite and many more mana dorks so I could combo without fear, but it kept on running out of gas.
Leyline of Santity is another card that I've been neglecting to try, but seems good in here, and is easily castable too.
The new Khans of Tarkir card Jeskai Ascendancy has been the strongest new addition to the modern metagame in quite some time, possibly rivalling the Return to Ravnica allstar Deathrite Shaman. Many players believe that it will be banned (possibly emergency banned) very shortly. I think that WotC will let it live for a while, but then ban it if it dominates many tournaments. The main problem is that the new combo deck can go off on turn 2, and has pretty consistant turn 3 or 4 wins, and WotC has said many times that earlier that turn 4 is too fast for Modern. The deck is very resilient to disruption, and doesn’t even need to have a win condition in the main deck due to the Wish package.
The other main reason to play this deck is Treasure Cruise, a card that is seeing play in many different kinds of legacy and modern decks (I also think it may be also eventually banned). Treasure Cruise is a much better card than some people currently give it credit for, as they may see it as costing 1 mana and 7 cards in your graveyard, and any other cost is too much. paying 4 mana or less to draw 3 cards is excellent value, and that only costs you 4 graveyard cards, a very reasonable expected amount in a deck full of cantrips like Ponder, Brainstorm, and Gitaxian Probe.
I think that Jeskai Ascendancy could be a well performing deck in legacy too. The most expensive cards are 4 dual lands, and 4 Force of Will. This deck isn’t meant to be a budget deck, but if you really wanted, you could play no Forces, and another draw spell instead (such as Preordain), or another counterspell (like Spell Pierce) and play Ravnica shock lands instead of dual lands.
I was watching a stream of Nathan Holiday playing this deck in Modern on MTGO, and he won on turn 4 through a Thoughtseize and 3 removal spells for his mana dorks. This deck is very reliable, very rarely fizzles, and is currently flying under the radar in legacy. Making a budget version of the deck might just be a way of breaking into legacy. You can play a combo deck without shelling out hundreds of dollars for key cards, and still have fun.
Step 2 - Get a Jeskai Ascendancy into play (you can wish for it with Glittering Wish too)
Step 3 - Draw your whole deck using the extra mana from the untap from Jeskai Ascendancy and the loot ability from the enchantment as well. every time you cast a mana neutral spell like Land Grant, Manamorphose, or Gitaxian Probe, you gain a mana and see 2 more cards.
Step 4 - Either attack for the win, or use another Glittering Wish to get Flesh/Blood from your sideboard and burn your opponent out with your now massive mana dork.
I can’t stress how good Land Grant is in this deck, it does everything you want to be doing.
I’ve kept the Glittering Wish package from the modern deck, and added what I think is a card people have overlooked for this deck, Hydroform.
Obviously you never want to be in the position to have to search for Hydroform, but sometimes you’ll be flooded on lands and have no creatures in play. Against decks with wraths (like miracles) and decks with Perish in their sideboard, this card can let you win with no creatures in play immediately.
I kept the Scarscale Ritual in the sideboard as a legacy from the Modern deck, however I like the card regardless, it gives you a strong way of not fizzling if you draw excess copies of Glittering Wish.
Some of the other cards I considered for the deck:
Engineered Explosives - The only removal spell I’d ever maindeck here, it might be useful against hatebear style decks, but I don’t think is needed. It can also loot for 0 mana.
Preordain - Brainstorm and Ponder are just better, and there is no need for it. A budget version might play it.
Spell Pierce - Possibly play over Force of Will in a budget version of the deck.
Dig Through Time - Treasure Cruise is better, even though Dig digs deeper, looting all the time is pretty good if your Cruise doesn’t hit straight away.
Cerulean Wisps - Is OK, but the other free spells had a lot more versatility.
Animate Land - Very good against control decks that think you can’t win through their wraths/Lilianas. Also loots with the Ascendancy. I'm not sure that it's needed right now, as Birds and Caryatid are better most of the time.
There could also be different considerations to the sideboard, mainly for wish targets. Fracturing Gust could be good if your metagame is Affinity or Enchantress heavy. Obviously if you aren’t expecting much dredge or Reanimator, you can shave off copies of Tormod’s Crypt. You don’t want to play Relic of Progenitus because your own graveyard is a precious resource for delving with Treasure Cruise.
I’m a big fan of playing combo decks in legacy and Modern, and one of the benefits of playing this deck is that leading off with Tropical Island into Noble Hierarch looks like any number of fair decks. Playing Force of Will is a necessity, as your combo is a little slower than others (such as Storm or Elves), but far more consistent as a turn 2 or 3 win, requiring only one of 11 cards in your deck (mana dorks), and another one of 7 cards (Glittering Wish or Jeskai Ascendancy). Once you start comboing off, if you see your opponent’s hand with Gitaxian Probe, and see they have nothing to do, just discard your Forces with the Ascendancy looting ability. I love the fact that your cantrips do the hard work towards actually winning the game in this deck.
On a final note, I think that WotC probably won’t ban Treasure Cruise in Legacy, as some people have hinted at. Treasure Cruise is very very similar to the card Ancestral Visions, but has the opposite problems. Visions is a terrible topdeck lategame, while Cruise is obviously great, conversely, Visions is great on turn 1, and Cruise is terrible. because of this duality, Cruise might be banned in Modern, as it is a little better in most cases than Visions (which is banned).
Khans of Tarkir has left an indelible mark on the landscapes of Modern and Legacy with the cards: Treasure Cruise, Monastery Swiftspear, Jeskai Ascendancy, and the Fetchlands. I can’t wait to play in the new exciting world of powerful Magic with these cards.
I got contents insurance a few months ago, and my whole collection is covered under my contract. ($4000 cube, Standard UW, Modern stuff, multiple folders, many shocks and fetches).
However, this was pretty simple to do because nothing in my collection in over $500. I'm not worried that much about crime in my area, but if I travel anywhere in NZ I'm covered for theft, and non intentional damage etc. Insurance is just a handy thing to have. If I need to replace all of my possessions because of a fire or whatever, I'm going to be alright. I mostly got it for my laptop and phone though, not Magic. But realistically, having my Magic under cover makes a lot of sense.
Drafting is obviously quite difficult. Probably harder than constructed in a tournament sense because you have to metagame the limited section (yes), and then also draft well and accordingly.
I'm personally a constructed player, but I do enjoy limited a lot. I wish I was better at draft and limited in general.
My positive results in Magic have all been in Constructed (mostly Modern).
Oh and "Netdecking" isn't that bad. It still requires a lot of practice and skill to get good with a deck and perform well in a tournament setting, not to mention tuning it to the local metagame.
TL;DR: Magic at a competitive and professional level is hard, players that do well, tend to have practised a lot, and have a lot of skill.
Variance is a thing you know, and your sample size is very very small.
If you had opened >1000 booster (probably need a lot more for a reasonable sample size) and the ratios were the same, then maybe you'd be on to something.
Played in a random standard at my LGS last weekend, I got beaten by my GF in the semis. She, and another girl that plays are very good players, but they get very little flak. I think this is because they are very active in the local casual playgroup, and my GF even goes so far as to organise EDH events about every second week.
I'm glad that there's more representation of the fairer sex, but I understand why they get turned off from Magic (especially when they reach PTQ skill levels). The kind of dickiness and macho must-win attitude turns most people off at that stage. I think its just that most guys have put up with it for so long that they are used to it.
The main thing is, with Storm and Cascade et al, they say:
"When you cast this spell"
And are not part of the spell's effect text. Which means it is a triggered ability, and goes on the stack before the rest of the spell resolves. This is why the spell you cascade into resolves before the one with cascade.
The maindeck is pretty normal, if you haven't tried Last breath in straight UW yet, try it, its very very good (Master of Waves, Nightveil Specter, everything in Monored, Pack Rat (sometimes), most of the rest of Monoblue).
The decks I beat were:
GW tokens
-a bad deck, terrible RW aggro, he got the bye first round.
Monoblue
Monoblack
And I IDed with a friend.
In the Top8, I played:
Monoblack again, win
Tom Ross's 17 land Monored deck, played by my GF. She beat me due to me mulling a lot in game 3, and drawing quite badly, also she had burn for days and I couldn't stop it.
The GW tokens deck won in the end. It had a really good Monored matchup.
In the practice games I played with my GF at home, I won about 70% of the time.
The only change I would make is to take out the Pithing Needle from the sideboard. I'm not sure what to bring in though.
Medomai might look a little weird, but I put him in for the Esper and Monoblack Matchup. He's a huge beating, and they usually take out their Doom Blades. The idea is that if they don't deal with him on the turn you cast him, you probably win. He can block forever against nightveil, and letting him soak up a Hero's Downfall that would otherwise be aimed at and Elspeth or a Jace is usually pretty good.
You don't need quicken against this deck, you will always want to play Verdict whenever you get it, so you might as well just have more removal and good counters.
Quicken is an interesting card, against some decks (such as Monoblack and token decks), it is one of your best cards, as being able to instant speed wrath is a complete blowout.
I probably could have won the whole thing, but the 17 land monored deck is a huge beating and had really swingy draws against you. Sometimes you just have infinite Last Breaths, and you win easily, and sometimes you get burnt out for 12 (as is what happened to me).
A lot of magic lingo comes from other games, such as poker: "being on tilt", "I had like 7 outs".
Tech tends to mean Technology, in the sense that someone finds a card that solves a problem in the format. Its usually a card or strategy that others overlooked at first, or though wasn't good enough.
A good example of tech is during the Cawblade format, some people were still playing monored, and occasionally, you'd play a mirror. In the monored mirror, a really good card to bring in was Wurmcoil Engine, which was oft overlooked because it cost too much. The high cost of the card was offset by the way a monored mirror plays out, you burn all of each others' guys until someone has a threat stick around for long enough to win the game. Games took usually about 12 or so turns because of the amount of removal involved. Wurmcoil was perfect for the matchup because it was very hard to kill, gained a bunch of life, and won the game quickly.
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Frontier Bivouac
6 Forest
1 Mountain
3 Temur Ascendancy
Creatures
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Voyaging Satyr
4 Courser of Cruphix
4 Genesis Hydra
2 Sylvan Caryatid
2 Polukranos, World Eater
1 Hornet Queen
2 Arbor Colossus
4 Temur Sabertooth
2 Karametra's Acolyte
4 Eidolon of Blossoms
1 Nylea, God of the Hunt
I tested this tonight, It's the 11th place SCG list, but with 2 Acolytes instead of 2 Boon Satyr. I had some really easy games against Jeskai Token, the only card I wanted more of was Hornet Queen. I will probably go up to 2 in the main.
This deck is immensely fun to play, and powerful. It's best to play it as a sweet ramp deck, but have the combo option available against decks that gain a lot of life, or that have inevitability.
I think your best matchups are other green decks, Jeskai Tokens/Aggro, and midrange decks with low amounts of removal, like Reanimator.
4 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Frontier Bivouac
6 Forest
1 Mountain
3 Temur Ascendancy
Creatures
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Voyaging Satyr
4 Courser of Cruphix
4 Genesis Hydra
2 Sylvan Caryatid
2 Polukranos, World Eater
1 Hornet Queen
2 Arbor Colossus
4 Temur Sabertooth
2 Karametra's Acolyte
4 Eidolon of Blossoms
1 Nylea, God of the Hunt
This is mostly a Genesis Hyrda value ramp deck with a sweet combo in it. Not to mention that Temur Sabertooth is actually a reasonable card by itself, and Hyrdaing into Ascendancy still lets you draw a card. I think it's awesome and I'm going to play it at the GPT this Saturday.
I for one am excited for Cube as a format.
I am going to play this deck in modern in a Modern+Legacy event next month, and if testing goes well I will try playing this in legacy too. There are a lot of fair decks in my local metagame, so I may even be maindecking a few spell pierce. One of my draft builds had a Thoughtseize + Cabal Therapy suite and many more mana dorks so I could combo without fear, but it kept on running out of gas.
Leyline of Santity is another card that I've been neglecting to try, but seems good in here, and is easily castable too.
The new Khans of Tarkir card Jeskai Ascendancy has been the strongest new addition to the modern metagame in quite some time, possibly rivalling the Return to Ravnica allstar Deathrite Shaman. Many players believe that it will be banned (possibly emergency banned) very shortly. I think that WotC will let it live for a while, but then ban it if it dominates many tournaments. The main problem is that the new combo deck can go off on turn 2, and has pretty consistant turn 3 or 4 wins, and WotC has said many times that earlier that turn 4 is too fast for Modern. The deck is very resilient to disruption, and doesn’t even need to have a win condition in the main deck due to the Wish package.
The other main reason to play this deck is Treasure Cruise, a card that is seeing play in many different kinds of legacy and modern decks (I also think it may be also eventually banned). Treasure Cruise is a much better card than some people currently give it credit for, as they may see it as costing 1 mana and 7 cards in your graveyard, and any other cost is too much. paying 4 mana or less to draw 3 cards is excellent value, and that only costs you 4 graveyard cards, a very reasonable expected amount in a deck full of cantrips like Ponder, Brainstorm, and Gitaxian Probe.
I think that Jeskai Ascendancy could be a well performing deck in legacy too. The most expensive cards are 4 dual lands, and 4 Force of Will. This deck isn’t meant to be a budget deck, but if you really wanted, you could play no Forces, and another draw spell instead (such as Preordain), or another counterspell (like Spell Pierce) and play Ravnica shock lands instead of dual lands.
I was watching a stream of Nathan Holiday playing this deck in Modern on MTGO, and he won on turn 4 through a Thoughtseize and 3 removal spells for his mana dorks. This deck is very reliable, very rarely fizzles, and is currently flying under the radar in legacy. Making a budget version of the deck might just be a way of breaking into legacy. You can play a combo deck without shelling out hundreds of dollars for key cards, and still have fun.
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Savannah
3 Tropical Island
1 Taiga
1 City of Brass
2 Mana Confluence
Creatures: 9
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Noble Hierarch
3 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Manamorphose
4 Force of Will
4 Lotus Petal
3 Jeskai Ascendancy
4 Land Grant
4 Treasure Cruise
4 Ponder
4 Brainstorm
4 Glittering Wish
2 Tormod's Crypt
3 Swan Song
1 Simic Charm
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Wheel of Sun and Moon
1 Hydroform
1 Jeskai Ascendancy
1 Firespout
1 Sundering Growth
1 Vindicate
1 Flesh/Blood
1 Scarscale Ritual
A quick rundown on how this deck works:
Step 1 - Play a mana dork
Step 2 - Get a Jeskai Ascendancy into play (you can wish for it with Glittering Wish too)
Step 3 - Draw your whole deck using the extra mana from the untap from Jeskai Ascendancy and the loot ability from the enchantment as well. every time you cast a mana neutral spell like Land Grant, Manamorphose, or Gitaxian Probe, you gain a mana and see 2 more cards.
Step 4 - Either attack for the win, or use another Glittering Wish to get Flesh/Blood from your sideboard and burn your opponent out with your now massive mana dork.
I can’t stress how good Land Grant is in this deck, it does everything you want to be doing.
I’ve kept the Glittering Wish package from the modern deck, and added what I think is a card people have overlooked for this deck, Hydroform.
Obviously you never want to be in the position to have to search for Hydroform, but sometimes you’ll be flooded on lands and have no creatures in play. Against decks with wraths (like miracles) and decks with Perish in their sideboard, this card can let you win with no creatures in play immediately.
I kept the Scarscale Ritual in the sideboard as a legacy from the Modern deck, however I like the card regardless, it gives you a strong way of not fizzling if you draw excess copies of Glittering Wish.
Some of the other cards I considered for the deck:
Engineered Explosives - The only removal spell I’d ever maindeck here, it might be useful against hatebear style decks, but I don’t think is needed. It can also loot for 0 mana.
Preordain - Brainstorm and Ponder are just better, and there is no need for it. A budget version might play it.
Spell Pierce - Possibly play over Force of Will in a budget version of the deck.
Dig Through Time - Treasure Cruise is better, even though Dig digs deeper, looting all the time is pretty good if your Cruise doesn’t hit straight away.
Cerulean Wisps - Is OK, but the other free spells had a lot more versatility.
Animate Land - Very good against control decks that think you can’t win through their wraths/Lilianas. Also loots with the Ascendancy. I'm not sure that it's needed right now, as Birds and Caryatid are better most of the time.
There could also be different considerations to the sideboard, mainly for wish targets. Fracturing Gust could be good if your metagame is Affinity or Enchantress heavy. Obviously if you aren’t expecting much dredge or Reanimator, you can shave off copies of Tormod’s Crypt. You don’t want to play Relic of Progenitus because your own graveyard is a precious resource for delving with Treasure Cruise.
I’m a big fan of playing combo decks in legacy and Modern, and one of the benefits of playing this deck is that leading off with Tropical Island into Noble Hierarch looks like any number of fair decks. Playing Force of Will is a necessity, as your combo is a little slower than others (such as Storm or Elves), but far more consistent as a turn 2 or 3 win, requiring only one of 11 cards in your deck (mana dorks), and another one of 7 cards (Glittering Wish or Jeskai Ascendancy). Once you start comboing off, if you see your opponent’s hand with Gitaxian Probe, and see they have nothing to do, just discard your Forces with the Ascendancy looting ability. I love the fact that your cantrips do the hard work towards actually winning the game in this deck.
On a final note, I think that WotC probably won’t ban Treasure Cruise in Legacy, as some people have hinted at. Treasure Cruise is very very similar to the card Ancestral Visions, but has the opposite problems. Visions is a terrible topdeck lategame, while Cruise is obviously great, conversely, Visions is great on turn 1, and Cruise is terrible. because of this duality, Cruise might be banned in Modern, as it is a little better in most cases than Visions (which is banned).
Khans of Tarkir has left an indelible mark on the landscapes of Modern and Legacy with the cards: Treasure Cruise, Monastery Swiftspear, Jeskai Ascendancy, and the Fetchlands. I can’t wait to play in the new exciting world of powerful Magic with these cards.
However, this was pretty simple to do because nothing in my collection in over $500. I'm not worried that much about crime in my area, but if I travel anywhere in NZ I'm covered for theft, and non intentional damage etc. Insurance is just a handy thing to have. If I need to replace all of my possessions because of a fire or whatever, I'm going to be alright. I mostly got it for my laptop and phone though, not Magic. But realistically, having my Magic under cover makes a lot of sense.
I'm personally a constructed player, but I do enjoy limited a lot. I wish I was better at draft and limited in general.
My positive results in Magic have all been in Constructed (mostly Modern).
Oh and "Netdecking" isn't that bad. It still requires a lot of practice and skill to get good with a deck and perform well in a tournament setting, not to mention tuning it to the local metagame.
TL;DR: Magic at a competitive and professional level is hard, players that do well, tend to have practised a lot, and have a lot of skill.
never played it in anything else.
If you had opened >1000 booster (probably need a lot more for a reasonable sample size) and the ratios were the same, then maybe you'd be on to something.
or maybe
Worship
I'm glad that there's more representation of the fairer sex, but I understand why they get turned off from Magic (especially when they reach PTQ skill levels). The kind of dickiness and macho must-win attitude turns most people off at that stage. I think its just that most guys have put up with it for so long that they are used to it.
"When you cast this spell"
And are not part of the spell's effect text. Which means it is a triggered ability, and goes on the stack before the rest of the spell resolves. This is why the spell you cascade into resolves before the one with cascade.
3 Jace, Architect of Thought
2 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
2 Aetherling
Draw
2 Quicken
3 Sphinx's Revelation
2 Divination
Removal
4 Supreme Verdict
4 Detention Sphere
3 Azorius Charm
3 Last Breath
2 Dissolve
2 Syncopate
1 Essence Scatter
Lands
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Azorius Guildgate
2 Mutavault
9 Island
8 Plains
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
2 Jace, Memory Adept
1 Medomai, the Ageless
2 Ratchet Bomb
1 Negate
2 Celstial Flare
2 Glare of Heresy
1 Pithing Needle
3 Gainsay
The maindeck is pretty normal, if you haven't tried Last breath in straight UW yet, try it, its very very good (Master of Waves, Nightveil Specter, everything in Monored, Pack Rat (sometimes), most of the rest of Monoblue).
The decks I beat were:
GW tokens
-a bad deck, terrible RW aggro, he got the bye first round.
Monoblue
Monoblack
And I IDed with a friend.
In the Top8, I played:
Monoblack again, win
Tom Ross's 17 land Monored deck, played by my GF. She beat me due to me mulling a lot in game 3, and drawing quite badly, also she had burn for days and I couldn't stop it.
The GW tokens deck won in the end. It had a really good Monored matchup.
In the practice games I played with my GF at home, I won about 70% of the time.
The only change I would make is to take out the Pithing Needle from the sideboard. I'm not sure what to bring in though.
My sideboarding plan against Monoblack was:
-2 Divination
-3 Azorius Charm
+2 Jace, Memory Adept
+1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
+1 Medomai, the Ageless
+1 Pithing Needle
I planned to max out my win cons, as well as keeping in the Last Breaths for early Pack Rat / Nightveil Specter plays. Pithing Needle names things that are in play, because it is better to wait and get value. It can effectively name: Mutavault, Swamp (for Underworld Connections), Pack Rat, as well as Erebos, God of the Dead if they have it in their list.
Medomai might look a little weird, but I put him in for the Esper and Monoblack Matchup. He's a huge beating, and they usually take out their Doom Blades. The idea is that if they don't deal with him on the turn you cast him, you probably win. He can block forever against nightveil, and letting him soak up a Hero's Downfall that would otherwise be aimed at and Elspeth or a Jace is usually pretty good.
My Monoblue sideboarding was:
-2 Divination
-2 Quicken
-1 Dissolve
+2 Ratchet Bomb
+3 Gainsay
You don't need quicken against this deck, you will always want to play Verdict whenever you get it, so you might as well just have more removal and good counters.
Quicken is an interesting card, against some decks (such as Monoblack and token decks), it is one of your best cards, as being able to instant speed wrath is a complete blowout.
I probably could have won the whole thing, but the 17 land monored deck is a huge beating and had really swingy draws against you. Sometimes you just have infinite Last Breaths, and you win easily, and sometimes you get burnt out for 12 (as is what happened to me).
Tech tends to mean Technology, in the sense that someone finds a card that solves a problem in the format. Its usually a card or strategy that others overlooked at first, or though wasn't good enough.
A good example of tech is during the Cawblade format, some people were still playing monored, and occasionally, you'd play a mirror. In the monored mirror, a really good card to bring in was Wurmcoil Engine, which was oft overlooked because it cost too much. The high cost of the card was offset by the way a monored mirror plays out, you burn all of each others' guys until someone has a threat stick around for long enough to win the game. Games took usually about 12 or so turns because of the amount of removal involved. Wurmcoil was perfect for the matchup because it was very hard to kill, gained a bunch of life, and won the game quickly.