Sam Black, ever the Magic scientist, has to know how this new breakout brew functions! Join him as he improves on last week’s winner and shows you how to tweak it for #SCGCOL.
I imagine that, like me, many of you (especially those who didn’t catch the actual coverage of the event) are probably very interested to see how the breakout deck from last week, Jeskai Heroic Combo actually plays. After reading Todd Anderson’s article about the deck, I decided to make some of the changes he suggested. The build I’ll be playing falls somewhere in the middle, though I’m (admittedly questionably, due to the fact that that they are quite bad in multiples) playing the full four Lagonna-Band Trailblazers. They just seem so good against cheap removal, and I think Todd’s really skimping on creatures.
The mirror match may not be what I was imagining, but it’s interesting to see how it plays out. For the most part, based on this sample, I think it probably generally looks more like an aggro mirror than a combo mirror, and getting ahead on the board felt very important. Clearly, my opponent and I sided differently, and I think I’m happy with having taken out the Gods Willings, as they never looked great for either of us in either game, and mostly rotted in my hand in the first game.
Round 2
That matchup felt pretty bad. As I mentioned with the last matchup, I think it plays out more like an aggro mirror, but I think they’re a little better set up for that. I don’t think it’s horrible or anything, as a lot of it is just going to come down to who can spend mana faster, but their basic lands are a huge advantage there. I can see how Todd felt like the deck needs something like Scouring Sands, but I just think it’s too ineffective. So often they have too many guys with more than one toughness.
Round 3
In game 2, I probably should have used the Defiant Strike in my main phase to force my opponent to use the Perilous Vault so that I could have played my creatures in my second main phase, but my opponent would have a lot more life if I took that line, so I’m not sure if it really would have worked out any better. It was easy to forget how close game 3 was, as my opponent probably needed to draw exactly Hero’s Downfall on the turn the Trailblazer was going to attack for lethal to win.
Round 4
After feeling like the deck was just playing as a worse heroic deck against Mono-Red Heroic, it was nice to play some games where I got to watch Jeskai Ascendancy grind a control opponent down in the lategame.
