“Sunset across the fairground”
Art:Shiko and Narset, Unified
by Chris Rallis
Table of Contents
We are here with one of my favorite color pairings, Jeskai! This deck is everything that you would expect from Jeskai: a ton of spellslinging, token making, and big swinging, all culminating into a precon that feels truly Jeskai and takes amazing advantage of being in red, white, and blue. This deck is pretty decent out of the box, but like pretty much every precon, it is considerably better with just a few upgrades. We are focusing on the budget upgrades today, and these upgrades not only improve the deck quite a bit but won’t break the bank! Without further ado, let’s get it!
Original Precon Decklist:
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Jeskai Striker Precon Decklist!
5 Budget Upgrades for the deck:
Add:
On TCGPlayer, copies of Kykar range from 1 to 3 dollars; some copies are a little cheaper, depending on the version.
Cut:
I’m honestly quite surprised that Kykar wasn’t in this deck already. it’s not an expensive card and can be a very strong source of mana generation and creature generation, which are two things the deck greatly benefits from. I decided to cut transcendent dragon because it’s an expensive effect and is not that strong in the deck. Kykar advances the game plan far more and is considerably cheaper.
Add:
On TCGPlayer, copies of Heliod’s Intervention range from 1 to 2 dollars; some copies are a little cheaper, depending on the version.
Cut:
I do like Abrade, but in a deck that doesn’t have trouble casting pretty big X spells, I think that Heliod’s Intervention is considerably better. Whether we destroy artifacts or enchantments or gain a ridiculous amount of life, Heliod is a great card in this deck and can easily trigger our commander. Abrade is not a bad card at all, but if we are looking to trigger our commander to have a card that works amazingly with our deck, I think that Heliod’s Intervention is better.
Add:
On TCGPlayer, copies of Dismantling Wave range from 1 to 2 dollars; some copies are a little cheaper, depending on the version.
Cut:
Magma Opus is an extremely expensive card, and I am not a huge fan of this deck. I don’t think it’s horrible, but I don’t think it’s super amazing either. In testing, I really liked Dismantling Wave. It works very well with our commander and is considerably cheaper than Magma Opus. I tested versions with both of these cards and found that Dismantling Wave overperformed while Opus greatly underperformed.
Add:
On TCGPlayer, copies of Irenicus’s Vile Duplication range from 2 to 3 dollars; some copies are a little cheaper, depending on the version.
Cut:
Curse of Opulence got cut mostly because it doesn’t further our gameplan at all, while it can take some heat off of us in the early game. Almost all of that heat comes back once we start spellslinging and going crazy. Irenicus’s Vile Duplication is a masterpiece in this deck. Being able to copy it twice with our commander and have three copies of our commander allows our deck to go absolutely bonkers. Irenicus’s Vile Duplication is quite a cheap card and one I’m surprised wasn’t already included.
Add:
On TCGPlayer, copies of Mizzix’s Mastery range from 1 to 3 dollars; some copies are a little cheaper, depending on the version.
Cut:
If you resolve Mizzix’s Mastery, I would be shocked if you didn’t just win the game or got super close. Being able to pay eight and copy every spell in our graveyard is actually nuts. Mizzix’s Mastery is truly a game wrecker, and with our commander or multiple copies of our commander, we can just get ridiculous. After jamming a bunch of games with this deck, I don’t think that caring about what our opponents are doing is good for us. We very much play on our own, and if someone is not directly disrupting our gameplan, we really don’t care what they do!
Conclusion:
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed our upgrades. It’s really nice to be able to upgrade the deck considerably without breaking the bank. Even with just these five upgrades, I found that the deck plays much nicer and is a lot stronger! Stay tuned for tomorrows article where we build on these and add 5 non-budget upgrades! Stay tuned and tap in.