This past weekend was the NRG series in Chicago, and when I looked through the metagame summary, there were all the usual suspects. At the top were 30 copies of Rakdos, 18 copies of Greasefang, 17 copies of Lotus Field Combo, and many other deck names we’ve seen hundreds of times in Pioneer.
However, I like to look beyond the most popular decks and see what the lone wolfs of Pioneer brought. After all, this format is far from solved, and there are still tier-one decklists that have yet to be discovered. For this NRG series, most of the metagame summary looked very familiar until I got to the bottom of the list.
Second from the bottom was a deck I didn’t recognize, brought by only one individual in the entire event: Jeskai Ascendancy Combo. I am very familiar with the OG Modern version of this deck, which used Fatestitcher and a slew of cheap spells to generate mana and make all of your creatures huge with Jeskai Ascendancy.
But without Fatestitcher, how is this deck viable in Pioneer? While this deck may not exactly resemble its Modern version, it functions similarly and is tough to interact with once it goes off. Let’s take a look and see if Jeskai Ascendancy Combo has the potential to stand alongside the other powerful combos in the Pioneer format!
How does the combo work?
Fundamentally, Jeskai Ascendancy Combo is very simple. The first step; get out Jeskai Ascendancy. Once this happens, all of your non-creature spells allow you to loot, which helps you find the rest of your combo. Once you have Ascendancy in play, it’s time to create your engine.
In Modern this could be done with Fatestitcher because you could tap a land, use Fatestitcher to untap the land, then cast a one-drop spell to untap Fatestitcher and loot. This engine allowed you to generate almost infinite mana with Fatestitcher while looting through your deck and making your creatures gigantic with Ascendancy.
Since Fatestitcher is not in Pioneer, we need to look at another potential engine to get this combo to work. The cool thing about this deck is that there are multiple ways to solve this problem. The first way we will look at involves Emry, Lurker of the Loch.
While Emry is usually just a value engine, she is also a way to get the combo to go off. All you need is Ascendancy and Emry to be on the battlefield with a zero-cost artifact that sacrifices itself, such as Tormod’s Crypt. Simply sacrifice Tormod’s Crypt, then use Emry to recast Tormod’s Crypt, which allows you to untap Emry with Jeskai Ascendancy as well as give your creatures +1/+1 and loot, and then you just rinse and repeat until your Emry is a 20/20 and you swing for lethal. This can be done as early as turn three!
This can also be done with Mox Amber, and while it does generate almost infinite mana, it is also a little more complicated because Mox Amber cannot sacrifice itself. For this to work, you need two Mox Ambers. This way, you can tap Mox Amber for mana, then cast the second Mox Amber, forcing you to sacrifice a Mox because they are legendary. Now you just repeat the same cycle as you would with Tormod’s Crypt, generating infinite mana by tapping the Mox as well as looting and pumping with Jeskai Ascendancy until you win.
However, Emry is not the only way for this combo to work. Let’s say that your opponent plays The Stone Brain and exiles all of your Emrys; what are you going to do? The answer lies in a common card from Born of the Gods; Retraction Helix.
For this combo, instead of returning an artifact from the graveyard with Emry, you will return the artifact to your hand with Retraction Helix. All you need is a zero-cost artifact, any creature, and Ascendancy on the battlefield, with a Retraction Helix in your hand. Simply cast Helix on your creature and then tap your creature to return the artifact to your hand. Then cast the artifact, untapping your creature with Ascendancy while pumping your team and looting. This allows you to keep doing this repeatedly until your opponent loses.
But wait, what if our opponent is at infinite life, or they have an army of blockers that our creatures can’t get through? No worries, cause this deck runs a backup plan that is beloved by all Magic players (kind of). It’s everyone’s favorite combo piece, Thassa’s Oracle!
Since the combo allows us to loot every time we cast a noncreature spell, we can essentially draw through our entire deck. Eventually, we will run into our one copy of Thassa’s Oracle, which is held onto until our entire library is in the graveyard. Then, simply cast Thassa’s Oracle to win the game. It’s as simple as that!
So there you have it; cast a million spells, loot away a million cards, and swing for a million damage or play Thassa’s Oracle and win the game. While this sounds very simple, the combo requires three to four specific cards before you win the game. Let’s look at how we can put together the combo!
How do we get to the combo?
This deck is full of helper cards that allow us to find all the pieces to our combo to win the game. The first helper card is also a part of the combo, which is Emry. Not only does she allow us to cast an artifact from the graveyard infinite times, but she also mills four cards when she enters the battlefield, allowing us to find our Mox Ambers and Tormod’s Crypts for the combo as well as Mishra’s Research Desk.
Mishra’s Research Desk is another neat card in this deck, as it has multiple functionalities. Of course, it allows you to get through your deck quicker to find your combo, but if you mill it over with Emry or discard it to a Jeskai Ascendancy trigger, you can Unearth it for extra value. If you fail to find all your pieces, you can use Emry to flash it back every single turn, giving you an insane card advantage.
While this deck might have been possible before The Brothers’ War came out, the set was a great addition to this deck. Besides Mishra’s Research Desk, another card that has been making waves in multiple formats is Bitter Reunion, and it is perfect for this deck. Not only does it allow you to rummage through your deck to find your pieces, but you can also sacrifice it to give your creatures haste.
This means that instead of waiting for your Emry to lose its summoning sickness, you can go off on the same turn you play it or give all your creatures haste and swing for lethal on the turn you go off. However, this deck doesn’t run many creatures, so how could we possibly get through for lethal damage? It’s pretty easy for an opponent to leave up a single blocker to put in the way of our gigantic Emry.
To solve this, we can add another piece to our engine: Saheeli, Sublime Artificer from The War of the Spark. With this in play, every time we cast a noncreature spell, we get to make another servo, and then Ascendancy will pump those servos. By the 20th spell, we would have an army of gigantic servos, and with Bitter Reunion, we can give them all haste and swing for lethal!
A third card from The Brothers’ War has found some use in this deck, which is Fallaji Archeologist. Not only is this a cheap creature that can help us find all of the parts to our combo, but it also dumps cards into our graveyard for later use, whether that’s a Mishra’s Research Desk or one of our combo artifacts. You can also use the Archeologist as a Retraction Helix target since it will usually feel awful for your opponent when they have to use their removal spell on a 0/3 vanilla creature.
Dig Through Time is the last awesome card you get to run in this deck. Banned in almost every other format, Dig Through Time has been left alone in Pioneer because it is much harder to fill your graveyard without fetchlands. However, this deck is all about dumping cards into your graveyard, allowing you to find your combo pieces, or you can cast this in the middle of your combo to find your Thassa’s Oracle. Dig Through Time has yet to find a place in Pioneer where it shines, and I believe that Jeskai Ascendancy Combo might be it.
Who should play this deck?
There are a lot of people who would enjoy playing this deck, and they are not all combo players. Jeskai Ascendancy Combo is one of those exciting combos where you don’t just simply win the game; the deck forces you to go through the motions to get to the victory.
For some, this might be very enjoyable. Taking as many game actions as possible, making your creatures gigantic, and drawing your entire library might sound very pleasing to some players. However, some players just want to simply win the game when their combo goes off. For example, if you are a Legacy Show and Tell player, you might want to cast Show and Tell and have your opponent concede when you reveal Emrakul. Quick, easy win.
However, there are also combo players who enjoy things like Lotus Field Combo, where you have to make a bunch of little decisions that all together add up to you winning the game. Neither way of winning is more correct than the other, but some players may be drawn more towards one way than another.
If you were a fan of Jeskai Ascendancy Combo in Modern, I highly recommend you try it in Pioneer. Also, if you are a fan of Jeskai Breach in Modern, this deck uses a similar strategy, so you might find it easy to pick up. Or, if you just enjoy casting a lot of spells, this might be the deck for you!
Final Thoughts
While this deck is sweet, it obviously did not win the NRG series, or you would have already heard about it. That being said, I admire the players who are trying new things in Pioneer because there are still a lot of strategies to discover in the format.
Do I think that Jeskai Ascendancy Combo is a tier-one deck right now? Sadly, no. However, that does not mean it can’t be a tier-one deck; all it takes is some fine-tuning. There are plenty of examples of broken decks where the pieces existed in a format for years before one brave player put them all together and broke the format. Considering this deck can win as early as turn three, I think in the correct environment, this deck can flourish just as much as Lotus Field Combo has.
Not only is the combo hard to interact with, but it is also very recursive, using card selection and graveyard recursion to find the pieces to the combo, even if they have been removed or discarded. With how powerful the Grinding Station Combo has been in modern, I would not be surprised if a version of this list were to place highly in a competitive tournament.
While I believe you should bring a tested tier-one deck to highly competitive tournaments, I think that Magic players need to adopt a more creative mindset. Sure, if you’re playing in the Pro Tour, don’t bring your brand-new brew that you’ve only tested out a few times.
But for your local FNM, try to avoid bringing the top deck of the format; try something new out, bring your brew, and learn something from it. There may be dozens of tier-one decks in Pioneer that have yet to be thought of, and all it takes is a little bit of thought and tinkering to discover them. Who knows, you may be the creator of the next meta deck!
You can also find Edward Halbe's decklist from the Chicago NRG Series here!
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