Raka (Jeskai) Control

[BlakLanner]

[deck]Raka Control[/deck]

At first glance, I figured that UWR was going to be a more controlling shell so I came up with this. Given that End Hostilities costs so much mana, I figured that a shift to Aetherspouts (one sided) and Elspeth (stays in play) would be better to act as sweepers.

Ram will help us stop the small to medium sized creatures and gain us some
life. Mantis Rider puts pressure on our opponents to do something and survives Elspeth. Clever Impersonator is there just because I think it might be fun. Font of Fortunes is our card draw. It gives us something else to do with 2 mana if we don't have a Ram and let's us split the cost of the draw between two turns. Elspeth, Keranos, and Sarkhan are our finishers.

The sideboard is fairly rough. A bunch of anti-aggro options along with a few more focused counters. Deflecting Palm could act as a pseudo-Lightning Helix, stopping damage while hitting them in the head.

It is hard to say how well this will perform until the meta starts settling. I just wanted to get a rough outline up for discussion.

[Kaitscralt]

Definitely don't agree with Aetherspouts over End Hostilities, also why do you think Font of Fortunes is going to be good now when Divination has been the choice for control thus far

[BlakLanner]

I like Font over Divination because it lets us draw at instant speed but not have to spend 4 mana at once to use. Previous control decks had Rev which gave them instant speed options. Being able to hold up counter mana, then draw cards if they don't do anything worth countering, like the Think Twice plans of old, seems like a reasonable plan.

Edit - Why do you prefer End Hostilities? It catches all of our creatures in the blast and there will very likely be decks that utilize the graveyard heavily. I do understand that they will get to draw those creatures again but the opening that clearing their board gives us should allow us to drop our win condition, if not kill them outright, while they rebuild.

[zenbitz]

Pair Jace's Ingenuity with Aetherspouts?

[BlakLanner]

What exactly would that do?

[Tyrael]

I feel like I'd rather be running Brimaz, King of Oreskos as your three-drop creature of choice since he's significantly better at blocking and can easily run away with a game if left unchecked too

Edit - Why do you prefer End Hostilities? It catches all of our creatures in the blast and there will very likely be decks that utilize the graveyard heavily. I do understand that they will get to draw those creatures again but the opening that clearing their board gives us should allow us to drop our win condition, if not kill them outright, while they rebuild.

I would always prefer a clean boardwipe since it also gets rid of mana dorks and the like

[BlakLanner]

Brimaz vs Mantis Rider was something I have been debating. Brimaz survives Anger but Mantis flies and you can have multiples out. It may be that I want a mix of the two, particularly if Clever Impersonator doesn't work out.

[Tyrael]

I'll definitely be testing Dig Through Time and Treasure Cruise too, I've heard pretty positive things about them from others who have been testing out jeskai builds

I'm also pretty sure we want 4 Flooded Strand in here and up the land count to 26 (you're running 6-drops with limited draw after all)

I'm also not a fan of Sarkhan, Clever Impersonator or Mindswipe in this style of deck since you're only going to be the beatdown when you're ahead and since you're a control deck you won't need to be running that many win conditions anyway

I definitely think Jeskai is a viable control/midrange strategy but I'm not sure this is the way to do it

[deck=Tyrael's Jeskai Control]
Spells (25)
4 Banishing Light
3 Dissolve
3 Last Breath
2 Divination
3 Jace's Ingenuity
3 Jeskai Charm
4 End Hostilities
2 Ætherspouts

Walkers (2)
2 Elspeth, Sun's Champion

Creatures (7)
1 Keranos, God of Storms
3 Brimaz,
King of Oreskos
3 Nyx-Fleece Ram

Lands (26)
4 Battlefield Forge
2 Island
2 Plains
4 Flooded Strand
4 Mystic Monastery
4 Temple of Enlightenment
4 Temple of Epiphany
2 Temple of Triumph

Sideboard (15)
1 Nyx-Fleece Ram
2 Gainsay
3 Negate
3 Anger of the Gods
2 Magma Spray
3 Disdainful Stroke
1 Crater's Claws
[/deck]

This is obviously only a rough draft. I feel the deck lacks a significant early game presence (just the ram isn't enough) which means you might just die to aggro before you reach five mana. This is a big problem.

edit: I forgot about Last Breath, oops.

[Jamie]

What is so good about Jeskai Charm? Seems like the weakest mainboard card in these lists.
I feel like in a Jeskai control vs Sultai Control matchup, jeskai has the advantage. I guess we're still at the stage of not dying to aggro since we don't know what aggro decks exist.

[BlakLanner]

It is a utility card. You can put creatures on top of their deck to buy you time, make them shuffle the creature away in response to a fetch, the +1/+1 and lifegain will certainly help buy you some time or maybe even win a race. 4 damage can finish but that will be the least used mode of the card in this shell.

[Jamie]

I did a lot of testing this weekend with my own jeskai control list, Blaklanner's list (from his signature), and some esper control list. In the esper, murderous cut was great! and everything else was not as good as the red splash. A lot of the times I would use Dispise (or thoughtseize I played with a lot too) look at the hand and think "i can just anger this entire hand of his except for one card I could just counter". In fact, it happened quite a bit against my temur creatures brew. Basically I'm giving Anger of the gods a A+. The mantisrider-Angerofthegods deckbuilding blunder came up zero relevant times so far. It'll be hard to find a matchup where its a dead card so far, but of course meta hasn't even begun to shape up yet.
Maybe I could just take the jeskai land from these lists and just add an urborg and some black fetches for murderous cut. I really like the cheap instantspeed removal. Maybe if its
instant speed removal I could just play some kind of burn?

I'll post a list tomorrow, I'm still changing so many things and I want to see how painful black painlands/fetches could be in some 4color control deck. It could would give access to mardu charm which I think is stronger than jeskai charm in this kind of deck. But its most certainly a little too far out there to be consistent.
regardless, I've got a lot of info about which cards are great when and where

[Jamie]

[deck]
Things 28
3 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
2 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
2 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver

4 Dissolve
3 Anger of the Gods
2 Last Breath
2 Nullify
3 Murderous Cut
4 Banishing Light
2 End Hostilities
1 Utter End

Draws 5
3 Divination
2 Font of Fortunes

Lands 27
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Mountain
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Polluted Delta
1 Temple of Silence
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Swiftwater Cliffs
4 Temple of Epiphany
1 Wind-Scarred Crag
2 Temple of Triumph
3 Tranquil Cove
3 Temple of Enlightenment
2 Plains

Sideboard
3 Mantis Rider
1 End Hostilities
3 Disdainful Stroke
4 Magma Spray
4 Despise
[/deck]
Ended up with this list after 17 games with my duders. I won 8 which is a pretty much 50%, like I was hoping. Lives through most aggro and is a long tough game against the midrange abzan and the midrange mardu decks. Loses hard vs green devotion when you don't draw sarkhan. Loses
hard vs green devotion anyway, really. Don't really know how to solve that problem.
The land felt fine. Exactly as mediocre as a 3color deck with taplands.
I'm running very little card draw and it is a mistake. That's the first change I should do I think
Mantis Rider performed abysmally. It kills Xenagos alright but its incredibly narrow. It gets removed by lightning strike from red aggro decks so there's no point in wasting 3 cards bringing him in in any matchup. Might go to Nyx-Fleece ram in the sideboard instead. Maybe I haven't found the right matchup to bring him in yet.

Ashiok and Elspeth do the same thing - help you live until the board is clear, and then win the game by itself. I think I should be playing one in sideboard and switch it up in certain matchups but that doesn't feel right either.
Sarkhan is solid. He fights other walkers or is a 5mana mizzium mortars. Great card and absolutely necessary vs x/4 monster decks.
None of the decks I played against had a lot of enchantment hate.
What kind of decks in KTK standard would run a lot? The only time my banishinglights got killed was by other banishing lights.

Gonna go one more day with it and if I can't get it to perform like a tier1 day0 deck I'm gonna give it a rest.

[Jamie]

[deck]3 Brimaz, King of Oreskos
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
2 Prognostic Sphinx
Creatures [9]

2 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
2 Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker
Planeswalkers [4]

3 Banishing Light
2 Deflecting Palm
2 End Hostilities
4 Hordeling Outburst
2 Jace's Ingenuity
3 Jeskai Charm
3 Lightning Strike
3 Magma Jet
2 Raise the Alarm
Spells [24]

2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
2 Mountain
1 Plains
4 Temple of Enlightenment
4 Temple of Epiphany
4 Temple of Triumph
Lands [23]
Deck Total [60]



2 Anger of the Gods
2 Deicide
1 End Hostilities
2 Keranos, God of Storms
1 Lightning Strike
4 Nyx-Fleece Ram
3 Perilous Vault[/deck]

http://www.magic-league.com/deck/85910/ ... rd_t2.html
Way more midrangey

[zenbitz]

My comment about Jace's Ingenuity/Aetherspouts is that you can hold up 5 mana and if they play around spouts you draw 3.

This whole format is going to be a big pile o' midrange isn't it??

[BlakLanner]

This whole format is going to be a big pile o' midrange isn't it??

It certainly feels like it if the Magic League results are indicative of anything. On the bright side, control tends to do well in midrange-heavy formats.

[Jamie]

Which of these cards would you rather play?
[deck]
1 Fated Retribution
1 Perilous Vault
[/deck]

Also I lose too often to devotion strategies to play aetherspouts mainboard

[BlakLanner]

Given the number of ORing-like effects we play, Fated Retribution is probably better. I like how you can dissuade your opponent from putting more on the board with Vault but using a sweeper only to have them get back the threats we have already dealt with seems like a bad plan.

[Jamie]

http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdat ... ckID=73400

Similar list that drops the permissions and carddraws and has a transformational sideboard against anything that tries to control over it.