Ascendancy Combo

[T-101]

The earliest non-basic hate you see is on T3 with a Blood Moon or Fulminator Mage. You can run Ghost Quarter but that doesn't really do a lot. Modern's lack of non-basic hate can be a problem, but this deck can easily solve it with the numerous mana dorks it is playing.

I play Modern weekly and I haven;t seen this deck yet. I am hoping no one at the LGS makes it....

Moon and Mage are the most common non-basic hate you'll see before turn 4. Turn 4+, you get to Tectonic Edge... but that card might as well be a blank in this match up. Ghost Quarter does show up, and might slow 'em down by a turn (the list I've seen runs a couple Forests, no Jesaki mana basics).

You see the occasional Spreading Seas in Merfolk, sometimes a random 1-of Molten Rain from Zoo, but there's that would wreck this deck in the way that Port and Waste would.

- - - - -

I'm going to be turning to the dark side, and building this deck, primarily for 2 reasons.

1) Learn what hate works best against this deck. One of the best ways beat your enemy is to understand your enemy, and playing the deck is the best way to do that.

2) Help show the world how bad the world is when this deck exists. Maybe get some results, and get more people on the 'Ban JA Bandwagon'.

I wish I didn't have to shell out $50ish for a set of Wishes (get it?), but since I don't really need anything these days (other than upgrading random cards to foil status), I could start trading for them.

[cab0747]

Ah, I did forget spreading seas. Thanks!

I was going for the non-basic hate that would actually come into consideration to play against this deck. As you said, Tech Edge does almost nothing unless the JA deck is drawing into absolute garbage. Even then, 3 lands is more than enough for it to start working.

Anyway, I think that land hate is not the way to attack this deck. Removal for their mana dorks and enchantment hate to hit JA itself seem like the best options.

[Tylert]

best hate = Counter-magic on jetski ascendancy (if the opponent doesn't play noxious revival) / Chalice of the void at 1 / Rule of law = enchant or the guy in theros block that does the same thing or cannonist (probably better than the eidolon or the enchant because it costs two only)

[Lord Seth]

They've been pretty good for quite a while. It seems to be about 1 card every 2 years if I recall correctly (Deathrite in Modern, before that was Mental Misstep, and before that Jace).

Of course, there were some Modern bans of cards that were printed years ago, and the decision came down to ban them years after, once Modern has been developed, but I can't really fault them for printing cards that became too powerful for a format that didn't exist when the cards were printed.

- - - - -

Anywho, I suspect the problem here was that Jesaki Ascendancy was just not tested along side creatures that tap for mana. Maybe it didn't occur to anybody. Look at the other Ascendancy cards; they are flavorful, fun enchantments that just sort of gas-up the theme of their clan.

Sultai gets a self-mill effect for delve and shenanigans.
Mardu makes tokens, while encouraging attacking, which is what Mardu is all about.
Abzan buffs it's guys, with +1/+1 counters, and has an "outlast" feel to it (you still have a board post-wrath).
Temur gets something that works well with big guys.
Jeskai gets something that helps the Spells + Guys plan.

The dev teams are pretty small, and I could see 10 people over looking how a UWR card goes crazy when you combine it with green mana dorks + awful cantrips.

Once cards hit the internet, you get millions of people pondering a card's potential, instead of ten, over worked developers who are thinking about hundreds of other cards all day.

Well, another important thing to remember is that 99% or more of their testing goes towards Standard and Limited. Modern is just way too big to try to do much testing for. They certainly consider the larger formats when printing cards (I remember reading about some BG card they left out of Theros because they were afraid it would make the BGx decks even more powerful than they already were at the time), but it really isn't feasible to do much actual testing, especially when there's already so much to do for the smaller format.

[Jgardn14]

Last night I had the "pleasure" of playing against this deck in the first round of our stores Thursday Modern event. The guy playing it took a second turn that lasted 30 min and still could not get there, says Huh.... and passes turn. I play land number two and some other card and pass turn back. The judge called time in his 3rd turn!

If this is any indication of how this deck will perform in modern for the next few months, modern is going to really stink for a while.

Joe

[T-101]

What a wretched match that must have been, I feel sorry for ya bud :(

For the most part, I would not expect the deck to take that long to kill. There is a learning curve to the deck, but it a 30 minute turn is absurd. This deck is not that hard to play. I would not let that fly next time.

Sometimes I have my reservations about calling a Judge for time at casual REL, but you have to let yourself do it. If an opponent is taking way too long, not only is he causing you to wait, but every single other player in the room, and the store owner, and the store staff. It is against the rules, and its cheating. You might hurt one guys' feelings, but you have to call it.

There's this guy at a shop I go to and he always plays Enchantress or Alluren or whatever other deck he thinks he can show off how smart he is by playing some unusual combo that the uninitiated don't even know exists. The thing is, he's an idiot, and goes to time just about every round unless you can rattle off 2 wins in the 12 minutes he allows to be yours. He gets pissed when you call a judge on him for time, "This is a VERY complicated deck, I need to think," and rolls his eyes or mutters something about how simple your deck is. Simple truth is he's cheating, either intentionally or not, it doesn't matter. You gotta call it.

[(nameless one)]

Last night I had the "pleasure" of playing against this deck in the first round of our stores Thursday Modern event. The guy playing it took a second turn that lasted 30 min and still could not get there, says Huh.... and passes turn. I play land number two and some other card and pass turn back. The judge called time in his 3rd turn!

If this is any indication of how this deck will perform in modern for the next few months, modern is going to really stink for a while.

Joe

This is why we can't have nice things.

Back to the deck, how are B/G and U/W/R midrange/control decks doing against this deck? I feel like the format has answers to this deck, people just don't like to change their lists.

[cherub_daemon]

Back to the deck, how are B/G and U/W/R midrange/control decks doing against this deck? I feel like the format has answers to this deck, people just don't like to change their lists.

On the same line of thinking, Burn is darn near a hate deck already. Dork removal and Eidolon of the Great Revel and (frequently) Moon effects and Molten Rain coming out of the board? Yes please. And it's not like Burn is rare.

[Valtrix]

Experience with the deck is absolutely necessary. Additionally, you need to come up with a nice system to mechanically manage all of the triggers and such. I'm sure you can establish a shortcut to say that when you'd cast a spell you'll tap your guy for mana, then resolve the Jeskai trigger to untap and get +1/+1 and do the other effect. Then this should only change if your opponent has a response. Not having to manually tap/untap your guy helps a lot. Just make sure to keep track of spells cast. YOu might want to do a graveyard line to indicate spells cast this turn. This can be awkward because of treasure cruise though. One way you can do this is to turn them sideways in your "storm" pile that you're creating. Decks like this take a lot of mechanical work to play efficiently, but it's a necessary thing to do to play a deck like this.

[TheDeadMan]

I wont lie but given the nature of this deck and the format in general shouldent this deck kept under wraps by U/r and U/r/x tempo decks? Most I have seen are running and average of 9 - 12 counters and 8-10 discard with the black splash, which would just beg the question why ban anything vs allowing the format to adjust more.

[Lord Seth]

The deck had a grand total of 0 slots in the Top 16 of the last Modern Premier IQ. It's possible things might change--it took people a while to realize how crazy Deathrite Shaman was--but so far it doesn't seem to be the absurd force some thought it was.