Hordeling Outburst is great against Jeskai, and its strength makes sense in a world with relatively few sweepers. There are a lot of decks that are just trying to use spot removal, and those are all terrible against tokens. The problem with Hordeling Outburst is that the creatures don’t fight other creatures well, but if you can kill the opponent’s creatures or make yours better, you can take full advantage of the Outburst.
Today, I’m going to use another incredibly powerful card the way it was probably “intended,” but not the way anyone actually uses it. This deck uses Jeskai Ascendancy as an anthem and source of inevitability without any intention to “go off.” So far, I’ve been pretty impressed by Jeskai Ascendancy’s “fair mode,” but let’s see how it does today.
Creatures (8)
Lands (24)
Spells (28)
- 1 Magma Jet
- 4 Raise the Alarm
- 4 Lightning Strike
- 4 Stoke the Flames
- 4 Jeskai Charm
- 4 Treasure Cruise
- 4 Hordeling Outburst
- 3 Jeskai Ascendancy
Sideboard
I’m not sure if Seeker of the Way or Monastery Swiftspear is better, so I just split the difference.
Round 1
Those losses were definitely on me. I don’t know how much it would have mattered, but in the first game, when I decided not to play Raise the Alarm for an extra damage, I also should have chosen not to attack with the Monastery Swiftspear at all so that I’d be able to kill the token if he played Goblin Rabblemaster. I lost the second game in sideboarding. If I’d had a better understanding of his deck, which I think I should have been able to guess, I would have had Disdainful Stroke in my deck instead of Anger of the Gods, which would have swung the game by allowing me to try to counter his Stormbreath Dragon, which he would Negate, but then I’d be able to resolve Stoke the Flames to kill it.
Round 2
While Hall of Triumph is very impressive in the token mirror, when they don’t have it, it’s hard for them to get ahead when each of their spells is about as good as a token.
Round 3
Whip of Erebos is an extremely difficult card to beat, and the rest of the deck is filled with cards that are particularly good against this approach. I’m glad the second game happened, to see how it can be won if they don’t have Whip, but without more answers, this matchup seems quite bad.
Round 4
That was just an ideal display of everything I’m trying to do with this deck.
Overall, the deck has a few issues, but I’ve been impressed by the things that it’s doing that are different than other Jeskai decks, so I definitely think it’s a direction worth exploring.