In this week’s ban announcement, Underworld Breach finally bit the dust. Grinding Breach had been a dominant force in Modern since Mox Opal was unbanned, so seeing Underworld Breach get banned isn’t too shocking.
However, the core of Mox Opal and Emry, Lurker of the Loch remains intact, and there’s still a bit of concern from the players that leaving Mox Opal in the format is a mistake. To help showcase this, one player took it upon themselves and went undefeated in a Magic Online Modern Last Chance event with a Jeskai Ascendancy build that closely resembles Grinding Breach decks of old.
This Jeskai Ascendancy shell is still capable of winning games via a combo kill as well as generating tons of value. Underworld Breach may be gone, but it’s possible Wizards didn’t go far enough with the bans.
The Combo
The combo this deck has access to revolves around Emry, Jeskai Ascendancy, and either Mishra’s Bauble or multiple copies of Mox Opal or Mox Amber. Emry needs to not have Summoning Sickness, as you’ll need to use its final ability to combo. Once you have Emry, Jeskai Ascendancy, and Mishra’s Bauble lined up, you’ll be able to make your creatures infinitely large by executing the following steps:
- Sacrifice Mishra’s Bauble
- Tap Emry, targeting Mishra’s Bauble in your graveyard
- Cast Mishra’s Bauble, triggering Jeskai Ascendancy. Untap and grow all your creatures, and you may loot if you wish
- Repeat steps one through three over and over
At minimum, you’ll have an infinitely large Emry to attack with. Notably, as you’re churning through your library with Jeskai Ascendancy, once you have two copies of Mox Opal or Mox Amber in your graveyard, you can also proceed to generate infinite mana.
At that point, rather than targeting Mishra’s Bauble with Emry, you can target your Mox. Casting the Mox will untap Emry all the same. From there, float a mana with the Mox, then tap Emry to cast another copy of the same Mox from your graveyard. When you cast it and trigger Jeskai Ascendancy once more, you’ll have to put one copy into your graveyard via the “Legend Rule.” Repeating this process will let you generate tons of mana.
Eventually, you can use this mana to repeatedly cast and crack Aether Spellbomb to bounce opposing blockers back to your opponent’s hand. Remember, Jeskai Ascendancy’s looting ability is a “may” ability, so you aren’t in fear of losing via decking yourself.
Tons of Value
As strong as this combo is, part of what makes this deck tick is its incredible value engine. Similar to Grinding Breach, this deck isn’t the easiest to hate out, and the amount of value Jeskai Ascendancy, Emry, and Urza’s Saga can generate is incredible.
Between Mishra’s Bauble, Mox Opal, and Mox Amber, casting Emry turn one is very realistic. If the opponent doesn’t have a removal spell at the ready immediately, Emry will start pulling you ahead on resources every turn. The combination of Emry and Mishra’s Bauble in particular is amazing and digs for Jeskai Ascendancy to complete the combo.
Besides Emry, Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student is another excellent turn one play. Flipping Tamiyo is trivial, but even just building up your Clue count can help in the long game.
Urza’s Saga is a threat on its own as well. In this deck, the Constructs you make are bound to be huge. Whether you’re tutoring up a hate piece like Soul-Guide Lantern or just a Mox with Urza’s Saga, you’re still ahead on the exchange.
Has This Shell Overstayed its Welcome?
Overall, while Underworld Breach is certainly a huge step up over Jeskai Ascendancy, the immediate results that this shell is putting up even with Underworld Breach out of the picture is a bit alarming. Obviously, Jeskai Ascendancy itself is a very fair card, and the drop-off from Underworld Breach to Jeskai Ascendancy in terms of individual power level is quite high.
This really goes to show just how pushed Mox Opal is. Turning on metalcraft in this archetype is easy, and the mana advantage it provides only makes Urza’s Saga, Emry, and Tamiyo better.
This deck’s success raises the question: did the Underworld Breach ban go far enough? There’s still plenty of time for Modern to adapt, and it’s unlikely Modern Jeskai Ascendancy will eat up a metagame share anywhere close to that of Grinding Breach.
Regardless, the play patterns associated with Mox Opal and Emry are frustrating, and there’s an argument that if the goal is to keep Mox Opal around, Emry should bite the dust as well. Hate pieces like Stony Silence do stop the Emry+Mishra’s Bauble loops while shutting down Mox mana production at the same time. Unfortunately, Stony Silence does nothing against Urza’s Saga tokens.
Plus, Jeskai Ascendancy letting you loot away excess Moxen and dig for answers to hate, such as Wear//Tear, is a very underrated part of the card. The combination of Urza’s Saga, Emry, Tamiyo, and Moxen should be good in Modern for the foreseeable future even without Underworld Breach, and perhaps Jeskai Ascendancy will prove to be the best support card available.