For many years, Jeskai Ascendancy combo has been a fringe archetype in Modern. The deck saw a bit of a resurgence with the unbanning of Mox Opal and the printing of some powerful support cards, but never really broke out in a meaningful way.
However, the deck continues to gain new tools and evolve. This week, Jeskai Ascendancy combo boasted a top eight finish in a Magic Online Modern Challenge, abusing a new Edge of Eternities powerhouse. This new artifact staple synergizes well with the deck’s combo gameplan and also provides a strong backup plan.
Infinite Combo
Before we discuss how Pinnacle Emissary turbocharges the archetype, we first have to go over how the combo actually works. Jeskai Ascendancy combo revolves around two specific cards. Unsurprisingly, the first is Jeskai Ascendancy itself, while the second is Emry, Lurker of the Loch.
On its own, Emry is a potent value engine. Returning Mishra’s Bauble over and over to draw extra cards or Milling over Mox Opal to replay it will pull you farther and farther ahead.
Once you factor in the presence of Jeskai Ascendancy, though, you can actually make your creatures infinitely large! All you need to do is have both cards in play (Emry can’t have Summoning Sickness) and a zero-mana artifact in your graveyard that you can reliably get back into your graveyard at will (such as Mishra’s Bauble). From there, you can execute the following steps:
- Use Emry’s activated ability to target Mishra’s Bauble from the graveyard
- Cast Mishra’s Bauble, triggering Jeskai Ascendancy, thus growing and untapping all of your creatures
- Sacrifice Mishra’s Bauble
- Repeat steps one through three over and over
- Attack for lethal damage
Notably, Mox Opal and Mox Amber can fill a similar role as Mishra’s Bauble. You just need a copy of either in play and another copy in your graveyard. Because both Moxen are legendary, you simply start by tapping the Mox in play for mana, then recast the graveyard copy with Emry. You’ll lose the tapped copy via the “Legend Rule,” but then you’re free to float more mana and recast the other Mox once again.
Remember, Jeskai Ascendancy allows you to loot through your deck as necessary during this process. Once you start recasting and tapping your Moxen, you’ll have infinite mana to work with to cast anything you’d need to cross the finish line.
Pinnacle Emissary to the Rescue
The combo is definitely powerful, and with the right acceleration, can be executed very quickly. However, part of what makes this archetype intriguing in its current stage is that you don’t need to combo kill your opponent to close games. You have a robust backup plan that only got better thanks to Pinnacle Emissary’s inclusion.
Pinnacle Emissary is already a well-established upgrade for Affinity decks in Modern. Alongside Moxen and Mishra’s Bauble, Warping Pinnacle Emissary on turn one, then casting a bunch of artifacts and spewing out Drone tokens is a great way to pull ahead.
Well, this deck plays a whopping 12 maindeck zero-mana artifacts, so that line of play is still available. These Drones more than pull their weight here, too. They enable you to maximize both Thoughtcast and Meeting of Minds as efficient card draw spells, which in turn make it trivial to flip Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student. They buff your Urza’s Saga Construct tokens. And, most importantly, they threaten lots of damage in short order.
In some games, simply making a few Drones, then buffing them by sticking Jeskai Ascendancy and casting a few spells will be enough to win the game. This backup plan only gets stronger with the playset of Cori-Steel Cutter in the mix. Cori-Steel Cutter also synergizes with your main combo as a way to give your enormous attackers Trample and Haste.
A Dual Threat
The amount of value this deck is capable of generating makes it quite scary to play against, especially when you combine that with the threat of a combo kill. Because this shell can gain advantages in a number of ways, it’s difficult to gameplan against.
Previous iterations of Jeskai Ascendancy combo suffered in the face in the face of hate. If Jeskai Ascendancy got countered and Emry was killed on sight, you ran the risk of spinning your wheels without actually getting anywhere. Pinnacle Emissary and Cori-Steel Cutter address this problem well.
Against opposing combo decks like Amulet Titan and Ruby Storm, having access to a fast combo unlike traditional Affinity comes in handy. At the same time, against decks like Dimir Murktide where actually sticking Jeskai Ascendancy or Emry is hard, flooding the board with Drone tokens and casting cheap card draw spells gives you a shot at grinding through your opponent’s slew of interaction.
You also have access to some potent hate cards of your own out of the sideboard. Whipflare cleans up Boros Energy’s early creatures while leaving your Drone tokens intact. Metallic Rebuke and Consign to Memory are excellent disruptive elements for a variety of matchups, and Tormod’s Crypt being a zero-mana artifact that is searchable with Urza’s Saga is useful, too.
There’s still a lot of room to explore within the archetype, and the deck’s excellent performance showcases its potential moving forward. Anyone who enjoys playing artifacts and combo strategies should give this shell a chance.
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