Standard

It’s Jeskai Saheeli, Not Copycat – 6th at GP Pittsburgh

Sometimes, everything just goes your way. My friends and I spent the week between the Pro Tour and Grand Prix Pittsburgh testing this new Standard metagame almost every night. Most of us were dead-set on some kind of [card]Ishkanah, Grafwidow[/card] variant, while I spent the week championing Mardu Vehicles, trying to find a way to beat BG consistently without [card]Fumigate[/card]. I failed, so in my indecisiveness, I brought the cards to build my old stalwart, Jeskai Saheeli. I had shelved the deck after the results of the Pro Tour, since the deck simply didn’t have legs against Mardu in the slightest. I tried adding [card]Shock[/card] back to the maindeck alongside [card]Kozilek’s Return[/card] in the sideboard, but I struggled to find a balance between being able to handle aggressive starts, [card]Scrapheap Scrounger[/card], and [card]Gideon, Ally of Zendikar[/card].

For posterity’s sake, here’s the Mardu Vehicles build I brought with me, designed for a metagame of mirrors and low-to-the-ground [card]Winding Constrictor[/card] decks. As you might tell, it’s heavily based on Frank Karsten’s deck that Lucas Esper Berthoud took to a Pro Tour win, upsetting flavour judges across the globe.

Daniel Fournier – Mardu Vehicles

[deck]
[Creatures]
3 Inventor’s Apprentice
4 Toolcraft Exemplar
4 Thraben Inspector
4 Veteran Motorist
4 Scrapheap Scrounger
2 Pia Nalaar
1 Depala, Pilot Exemplar
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Fatal Push
4 Heart of Kiran
4 Unlicensed Disintegration
2 Cultivator’s Caravan
3 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
[/Spells]
[Lands]
4 Mountain
2 Plains
2 Aether Hub
4 Concealed Courtyard
4 Inspiring Vantage
4 Spire of Industry
1 Foreboding Ruins
1 Shambling Vent
1 Needle Spires
[/Lands]
[Sideboard]
1 Needle Spires
2 Release the Gremlins
2 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
2 Skysovereign, Consul Flagship
1 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2 Fragmentize
1 Shock
1 Fatal Push
1 Skywhaler’s Shot
2 Fumigate
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

So yeah. I thought I had a great Mardu deck, but I was also deeply concerned that everybody at this tournament would be gunning for Mardu, and that no matter how many big scary planeswalkers I put in my sideboard, I’d be unable to beat running [card]Ishkanah, Grafwidow[/card]s. At this point in the week, I was really waffling on my deck choices, and was starting to feel like I should play one of the big BG Delirium decks that my friends were working on. However, we didn’t own a million copies of [card]Grim Flayer[/card], so my hopes were dashed.

Normally, Pittsburgh is a solid five hours from my home of Toronto, but the snowstorm that had just hit the north-east had made its way to Canada, and immediately destroyed our venerable transit system. How could they have known there was inclement weather coming and prepared appropriately? It was literally impossible to predict! As such, our five hour ride turned into an eight hour nightmare, which left me lots of time to waffle further on my deck choice.

At some point during this ride, Omar Beldon, who has literally only been wrong once, when he told me to play [card]Decommission[/card] instead of [card]Fragmentize[/card], mentioned that Jeskai was a good call for the weekend, since Magic Online was infested with black-green variants. It doesn’t take much to convince me to play [card]Torrential Gearhulk[/card], so there I was, tuning a Jeskai deck in my head.

I’m going to take a moment here to address the elephant in the room. Why does Wizards insist on calling this deck Copycat? Magic has a storied history of garbage deck names (Nic Fit, anyone?), but we finally managed to move past that as Wizards replaced them all with boring names like Temur Delver and Jeskai Black. Why do we suddenly get to return to fancy deck names for something as terrible, cheesy, and kitschy as Copycat? Yeah, [card]Saheeli Rai[/card] makes a copy. Yeah, [card]Felidar Guardian[/card] is a cat. Who cares? Copycat sounds stupid. Stop it. Jeskai Saheeli. It sounds nice, and everyone knows what you’re talking about. A Jeskai [card]Saheeli Rai[/card] deck. If I wasn’t familiar with the combo, I’d hear Copycat and think “what the hell is this idiot talking about?”. But I digress…

Regardless of the fact that this was a metagame choice to beat black-green, I knew I would have to hedge my bets a bit and build my deck in such a way that it could reasonably contest the Mardu matchup. Looking at Magic Online lists, it seemed that [card]Shock[/card] was more reasonable than ever against black-green thanks to the prevalence of cards like [card]Tireless Tracker[/card] and [card]Glint-Sleeve Siphoner[/card], which are must-kill cards for the control deck. I also figured it was a good time to jam [card]Horribly Awry[/card], and we’re off to the races!

Daniel Fournier – Jeskai Saheeli – GP Pittsburgh

[deck]
[Creatures]
4 Felidar Guardian
3 Torrential Gearhulk
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Saheeli Rai
1 Fumigate
4 Harnessed Lightning
4 Glimmer of Genius
4 Anticipate
2 Shock
1 Horribly Awry
2 Immolating Glare
3 Negate
2 Disallow
[/Spells]
[Land]
4 Inspiring Vantage
4 Aether Hub
2 Needle Spires
6 Island
2 Plains
3 Port Town
4 Spirebluff Canal
1 Wandering Fumarole
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
1 Fumigate
1 Disallow
2 Kozilek’s Return
4 Spell Queller
1 Immolating Glare
1 Dispel
1 Linvala, the Preserver
1 Negate
2 Fragmentize
1 Quarantine Field
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

Given that this was rather hastily put together, I’m extremely happy with the results of the tournament. Granted, I did play against BG variants 12 times, and against Mardu only twice, but I guess that’s just the gamble I was trying to make. The deck was built largely off of experience and theory rather than testing, which led me to have a bunch of sideboard cards that I didn’t really end up wanting in a lot of matchups.

For instance, I felt that [card]Spell Queller[/card] was good against BG, because it helped overload their removal to force the combo, and was a hard counter against [card]Walking Ballista[/card], typically a problem. The reality was that the BG decks that people were playing were too aggressive to want many copies of [card]Saheeli Rai[/card] in, while [card]Nissa, Vital Force[/card] and [card]Ob Nixilis, Reignited[/card] were popular sideboard cards. As such, I stopped bringing [card]Spell Queller[/card] in for that matchup early on, relegating it to a mediocre role of “I guess this is better than [card]Disallow[/card] against Mardu”. Of course, the card is much better against a wide open metagame with weird, diverse threats you need to answer…

What else sucked? Maindeck [card]Negate[/card] was mediocre. It’s great against Mardu in theory due to [card]Gideon, Ally of Zendikar[/card] being a problem, but we’re not set up maindeck to be able to mitigate their aggro plan while holding up the counterspell. In a metagame heavy on creature-laden BG decks, [card]Negate[/card] loses a lot of its value. I also felt like I’d want another maindeck [card]Fumigate[/card], since it’s pretty much your best card against BG and is serviceable against Mardu.

With that in mind, here’s what I would play this weekend were I to play Jeskai Saheeli:

Daniel Fournier – Jeskai Saheeli – Post-GP Pittsburgh

[deck]
[Creatures]
4 Felidar Guardian
3 Torrential Gearhulk
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Saheeli Rai
2 Fumigate
4 Harnessed Lightning
4 Glimmer of Genius
4 Anticipate
2 Shock
2 Horribly Awry
1 Immolating Glare
1 Negate
3 Disallow
[/Spells]
[Land]
4 Inspiring Vantage
4 Aether Hub
2 Needle Spires
6 Island
2 Plains
3 Port Town
4 Spirebluff Canal
1 Wandering Fumarole
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
1 Fumigate
1 Disallow
2 Kozilek’s Return
2 Immolating Glare
1 Dispel
1 Linvala, the Preserver
3 Negate
2 Fragmentize
1 Quarantine Field
1 Aether Meltdown
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

I’ve received a lot of requests over this week for an updated decklist, but also for a sideboard guide alongside a guide for when to combo, and when to hold onto things, so I figure it’s worth spending a bit of time covering these two topics.

First off, I don’t really believe in sideboard guides. Especially when it comes to a Twin-like deck such as this one, part of the deck’s strength is the fluidity of its sideboard. Your opponent can never be too sure how much of the combo to expect, and so it’s important to constantly be reactive with how you sideboard your combo. It’s usually correct to trim at least 2 cards from it, sometimes up to 4, sometimes all of it! There’s no easy answer, but here are a few guidelines: If your opponent doesn’t apply sufficient pressure to kill a turn 3 [card]Saheeli Rai[/card] with creatures, assuming you don’t have removal, then you probably want all four copies. If your opponent plays a bunch of a card like [card]Lost Legacy[/card] or [card]Authority of the Consuls[/card], then you don’t want more than 2 copies of each piece, and can consider cutting them entirely. Conversely, if your opponent’s deck is extremely powerful against your control plan, consider leaving the full combo in and try to cheese them.

As for the actual cards in the sideboard, I’ll give you a list of the matchups they’re for, and let you decide when to bring them in.

[card]Fumigate[/card]: all BG variants, decks that lean heavily on [card]Whirler Virtuoso[/card] to beat you, random creature decks

[card]Disallow[/card]: [card]Verdurous Gearhulk[/card] decks, mirror, control matchups

[card]Kozilek’s Return[/card]: Mardu Vehicles

[card]Immolating Glare[/card]: Mardu Vehicles, all BG variants

[card]Dispel[/card]: mirror, any [card]Glimmer of Genius[/card] deck

[card]Linvala, the Preserver[/card]: Mardu Vehicles, all BG variants

[card]Negate[/card]: Mardu Vehicles, BG Delirium and occasional other BG variants, depending on planeswalker threat density, mirror, etc. This card is much better post-board than pre-board in lots of matchups.

[card]Fragmentize[/card]: Mardu Vehicles, not [card]Aethersphere Harvester[/card] BG

[card]Quarantine Field[/card]: Mardu Vehicles, all BG variants, any midrange deck with difficult-to-answer threats

[card]Aether Meltdown[/card]: any [card]Scrapheap Scrounger[/card] deck, also serviceable against aggressive BG variants

Finding the cards to board out is a bit more challenging. Of course, [card]Fumigate[/card] is bad against control, and [card]Disallow[/card] is bad against Vehicles, but finding the last few slots is never easy. Here are a few tips: Don’t hesitate to board out a copy of [card]Anticipate[/card], but never trim on [card]Glimmer of Genius[/card] if you intend on playing a control game. Always leave in some number of [card]Harnessed Lightning[/card] against control decks, because they’ll usually have some kind of unbeatable creature like [card]Tireless Tracker[/card] post-board.

It’s difficult, bordering on impossible, to write a guide for how and when to combo or use the combo pieces, but again, I’ll try to give some tips. Whether on the play or on the draw, if you’re able to clear the board to allow you to untap and jam a [card]Saheeli Rai[/card], you should do it. That is one of the most powerful starts this deck can have because of the pressure it applies on your opponent. However, pay attention to the things your opponent can do to take care of an on-board [card]Saheeli Rai[/card]. For instance, if they have a [card]Winding Constrictor[/card], [card]Rishkar, Peema Renegade[/card] threatens to take out the planeswalker, and therefore jamming her is not safe. If you’re able to stick her, however, your opponent is stuck in an awkward position where they probably have to hold up mana. You should use this point in the game to try and get as far ahead in terms of land drops and card advantage as possible. The real combo in this deck is [card]Glimmer of Genius[/card] and [card]Torrential Gearhulk[/card], after all.

If you’re in a situation where you have the combo and your opponent is representing, say [card]Grasp of Darkness[/card] or [card]Unlicensed Disintegration[/card] over several turns, you should only combo if it’s your last resort. If a deck is representing, say, [card]Shock[/card], I’d recommend calling that bluff. [card]Shock[/card] is unpopular as of late in favour of [card]Fatal Push[/card], so if you don’t have some kind of powerful plan B like [card]Glimmer of Genius[/card], you’re probably going to get away with the win.

So there we have it. Play Jeskai Saheeli if you think you’re going to play against BG variants 12 times, remember that the real combo is [card]Glimmer of Genius[/card] into your opponent’s open mana, and respect your opponent’s removal spells.

Follow me on Twitter at @tirentu, and let me know if you have any questions!

PS: I realize that most of you read this as a food blog rather than a strategy article. We had two real dinners in Pittsburgh. The first was at Primanti Bros, which was a reasonable, if overrated and poorly assembled, sandwich place. Cheap, but good rather than excellent. Sunday night we went to Mercato, a dope meatball place right by the venue, which was stellar. I had some kind of spicy pork meatballs on a bed of the most delicious, creamy mac ‘n cheese in history. I thought it would be an odd combination, but it was unreal. 10/10, highly recommend that place.

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