You were the Chosen One, Nahiri, the Harbinger! It was said that you would destroy the aggro decks and bring balance to The Metagame!
You were supposed to herald in a new age of Modern where control decks reigned supreme! An age of Jeskai!
Where are the Jeskai decks? Why is the Jeskai failing?
There’s not a single Jeskai list to be seen in from the most recent Modern Grand Prix Top 8’s in Charlotte and Los Angeles or the last Open in Atlanta.
But I’ve still got high hopes. Possibly even high apple pie in the Jeskai hopes. Jeskai decks have had some success in a tournament setting including Gerry Thompsons MOCS list, Peter Ingram’s winning Indianapolis Open list, and most recently, Francis Cellona’s 9th place finish at Grand Prix Los Angeles.
Creatures (5)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (25)
Spells (25)
Now that’s a fine-looking list.
Tamiyo, the Moon Sage is a spicy addition you don’t see that often. Her +1 outshines Ajani Vengeant’s since it can tap an untapped permanent and her -2 can be amazing against creature decks, especially ones like G/W Tokens. She even kind of combos with Nahiri, the Harbinger, allowing you to tap Cranial Plating or Ensnaring Bridge with Tamiyo and then exile it with Nahiri. Tamiyo is still a tough sell considering she’s five mana, but she’s very powerful.
Serum Visions continues to be appearing in more and more Jeskai lists. One reason it’s seeing more play now than before is that it’s great with Nahiri, the Harbinger. Once you have Nahiri out you can cast Serum Visions, scry, and then loot with Nahiri to draw into a card you left on top immediately.
Lowering the numbers on Electrolyze, Remand, and Mana Leak to replace them with Serum Visions seems to be the trend, which makes sense as the former cards are weak in plenty of matchups whereas Serum Visions is decent across the board and it lowers your curve, important when you’re adding expensive Nahiri’s to the deck.
The Problem(s) With Jeskai In Modern
So why are Jeskai decks currently struggling to put up results?
The biggest issue is one that has always plagued control decks in Modern: being reactive is difficult in the face of the massive diversity of the Modern format.
This trend has only continued to get more and more pronounced as the Modern format has aged. It’s not hard to list off thirty-plus different (and legitimately playable) Modern decks.
So why is this a bad thing for a control deck?
Let’s take some aggro decks: Burn, Affinity, Hexproof, Merfolk, Zoo, and Infect. All are aggressive decks, often winning by attacking with creatures, but they all attack in different ways. Your answers have to be specialized for the deck you’re dealing with to get a leg up against each of these decks.
Even Lightning Bolt will sometimes fail as a removal spell against some of these decks, and that’s in matchups where Lightning Bolt is great. It’s a glorified Lava Spike against combo decks, and you will often find your burn plan is too slow and your disruption too weak when playing against combo.
Reactive answers need to be specialized, or just vastly more powerful, to stack up against the specialized and powerful threats in Modern.
Nahiri, the Harbinger has helped the deck become more proactive when combined with Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, but she’s still quite slow. You can’t count on her to reliably ultimate before Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger eats her or Scapeshift resolves. She’s also rarely necessary to win games where you’ve already stabilized enough to protect her loyalty versus aggro.
The deck’s other main issue is consistency.
I hate drawing dead cards.
Ancestral Vision is inconsistent. It’s great on turn one. Not so much later in the game.
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn is inconsistent. It’s great when you don’t draw it, terrible when you do.
Are they both powerful? Absolutely. Are they worth running right now? I’m not so sure.
I think the next evolution is to cut Ancestral Vision and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn from the maindeck entirely. It’s possible they’re worth spots in the sideboard, but I think they’re too slow and clunky against the bulk of the Modern format.
It’s kind of funny since Jeskai didn’t run either of those cards just a few months ago and they seemed to be part of what revitalized the archetype. I think the key to a Jeskai comeback is going to fall squarely on Nahiri, the Harbinger’s shoulders for now.
It’s still a brave new world for Jeskai decks, even though it’s a hostile one, and there still isn’t really a consensus on the best way to build the deck.
So where do we go from here? I want to increase my Jeskai deck’s proactivity, consistency, or both.
Here are three builds I’d working on going forward:
Creatures (5)
Planeswalkers (4)
Lands (25)
Spells (26)
This first version is my take on Francis Cellona’s list after some light tweaking.
We still have Nahiri, the Harbinger, Serum Visions, a reasonable land count, and a playset of Celestial Colonnades, so our average draws are going to be nice and smooth with plenty to do in the later stages of the game.
The issue here is that we don’t have much in terms of pressure against combo and ramp decks.
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn got sent to the sideboard so it can still come in when we think we’ll need it, but it might also just be worth cutting entirely.
Creatures (7)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (25)
Spells (26)
Here’s a version with the heat cranked up.
Four Lightning Helix and three Vendilion Cliques mean we can apply a nice bit of face-melting pressure and race fairly well against most decks. Remand is also going to look much better here whenever it buys us another hit with the Clique.
Nahiri, the Harbinger still seems like a completely reasonable addition to the deck even when she’s no longer the centerpiece, which is something that hasn’t really been explored fully in Jeskai yet since the prospect of Emrakul, the Aeons Torn annihilating the opposition is so tempting. The idea is that Nahiri helps the deck a fair bit anyways thanks to her built-in removal and card draw.
Geist of Saint Traft coming in from the sideboard is going to help our clock against slower combo decks, although I’d still prefer the flash and potential card and information advantage our Vendilion Cliques offer from the maindeck.
This version will likely be your best option against Burn and G/R Tron.
Creatures (12)
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (25)
Spells (20)
For our last list we have a cozy little Kiki Control unit for those looking to combo for fun and profit while breaking some mirrors.
Wall of Omens and Restoration Angel both do a lot of good things for the deck right now… they’re great at protecting Nahiri, the Harbinger
Nahiri’s ultimate can search up either half of the Restoration Angel + Kiki-Jiki combo and if you happen to have the other piece in play already you can make infinite Angels. Who needs Emrakul anyway? This plan is going to be worse than getting Emrakul most of the time, since it’s still susceptible to spot removal, but it doesn’t require you to run a block of old cheese in your deck.
You want to run this version when you expect decks where Wall of Omens is a good blocker, or in matchups where Restoration Angel is good at grinding out card advantage, like Zoo or Jund.
Reach For The Jeskai
So there you have it, the Jeskai’s the limit as far as I’m concerned.
But are these Jeskai decks great in Modern or just a barely-playable fringe option? If the metagame is hostile, filled with Merfolk and Scapeshift like it is right now, maybe not so much… but things can change, and these lists will continue to be improved upon. I’m leaning more towards them being great. Jeskai Nahiri decks haven’t had major tournament success yet, but I think there’s a good chance they will start to soon.
Besides, being Jeskai Guy is so much better than being Jund Guy (and not just because it rhymes.)
Any questions about specific card choices, sideboarding options, or potential additions to Jeskai? Ask away in the comments!