Today's deck of the moment is: Jeskai Sagavan! Both Max and I have been playing this deck for quite some time now and we've deviated quite a bit away from the more "stock" variants of this deck.
Decklist
First off, the decklist we're working with:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4207498#paper
This list looks like a stock Jeskai Sagavan deck for the most part, but you'll notice no copies of here, and we include copies of both and , which most of the other lists have eschewed.
Why I'm playing This
Most of you know me as a "fair blue" control player specializing in Miracles over time. However, I've also coming off of an extremely long break from Magic due to life stuff, and when I dove back in with Bant Miracles, I did extremely poorly in a few events and decided that it was time to simply relearn the format with something quite a bit more proactive. I chose Jeskai Sagavan since it seemed like a tempo deck, another of my loves, and I could learn how to work with some of the new cards on base power level alone. One thing led to another and I absolutely fell in love with the combinatin of , and . These cards are so incredibly powerful together and I've been winning quite a bit with it, significantly more so than with Miracles, and I'll be practicing this deck for the forseeable future.
Other Cool Stuff
To compare this version to the versions, let's take a look at the following stock list:
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/4261714#paper
I want to be clear on one thing. is a better raw card than . It's always a +1 without needing an additional card to set it up compared to . However, the reason we are playing instead is due to the manabase primarily. First of all, is a busted card if you've played any amount of Legacy over the past few weeks, and we believe that this card allows decks in this fashion an avenue of attack that's good against some specific matchups. These matchups Bant/4C Control and anything that wants to attack you with graveyard hate, such as and . This diversified angle helps alleviate spot removal as a pain point in several 'psuedo-mirrors' as well.
That being said, the reason these decks have cut the package is that it helps alleviate some of the manabase concerns as the deck is already extremely color and mana intensive as it is, you're always utilizing your mana every turn if things are going well enough.
It somewhat depends on what metagame you're expecting, but we've chosen to go down the route of and the colorless lands. does a similar impression to , but requires an enabler:
Cantrips such as , , and
An on-board
An opponent's scry effect such as or
The biggest Galaxy-brain imaginable for predicting opponent's cards after a cantrip resolution
When utilizing , there are a handful of tricks you need to keep in mind:
If you have a fetchland in play, and your opponent has a in play, you will need to fetch, hold priority, and then cast so your opponent cannot interrupt your ability to get a land or the draw two for .
Often times if you're pressed on either mana or a clock, and you need to find a card that does something sooner. In these instances, it's fine to cycle only for a single card, but if you're not pressed for time/clock reasons, it's wise to hold the card for an enabler if at all possible
With , you'll need to always keep the card on top with the Surveil trigger in order to resolve your correctly.
There are a lot of other tricks that come up with that could likely use a dedicated article on it someday, but feel free to comment below if you find tricks while playing the deck!
Special thanks to Cardhoarder for sponsoring us to allow us to make content like this!
If you have any input on the deck or any fun tricks with please feel free to comment below or reach out to me on Twitter! @Minniehajj