Friday 20:57 (2 Google)

Toughie.

So the last professional Magic event was won by Jeskai control, a deck I very much wanted to play. It was a large player shortly after Guilds of Ravnica was released, and I built it, but it had fallen out of favor with the new tools in Allegiances, and the deck was supplanted by Esper Control, or its sister Esper Hero. With War of the Spark, some people looked back to Jeskai, and built a planeswalker-heavy deck. Sarkhan, Saheeli, T3feri, T5feri, Narset, and more. But I like to counter spells. I want Absorb. I got lucky early in War of the Spark, and opened several copies of Teferi. I actually spent almost $40 and a lot of store credit to get the last cards I needed, and I felt like Thanos acquiring the last Infinity Stones. This deck seemed like just what I wanted - tight control with a combo finish (Ral, Storm Conduit and 2x Expansion/Explosion. It seems like that's unlikely to happen, but it does. If not, copying Banefire, or just burning them out with other spells and Ral's static ability, going ultimate with Teferi usually prompts concession). You know what other deck played like that? Zevatog, possibly my favorite deck ever.

I've played the deck in a few events since. I can't win. Or at least, I'm not winning enough. And I'm losing to completely unlikely situations, or I'm losing to my own mistakes, and losing to the very people I cannot stand losing to, at least one of whom made the same mistake multiple times. I know the deck can win. It has horrible game against mono-blue, but nobody plays that anymore, right? No, some guy won't give it up. My Gruul deck owns the fuck out of that, but can't really hang with the rest of the metagame anymore. There are new Gruul decks, and maybe I should just find one of those, but I really worked hard to make Jeskai, and I want it to do well. I don't know how to sideboard correctly, although I at least mostly know what I want in

I should play the deck more on Arena, but man it is a pain in the ass to play there. There is no way to make this any good in best of 1, since the sideboard is transformational based on match-up, so you have to play bo3, and matches take forever. Plus, I'm not entirely sure how to execute the combo correctly with full control active. They say you should never make a pet deck, but this isn't a pet deck. The meta has shifted a little but, but this is still well-positioned against most of the field. Maybe I just need Niv-Mizzet main. I board it in every single match, and it really is curtains a lot of the time.