Oversoul builds a Standard Jeskai Ascendancy deck for Standard

[Oversoul]

I can hardly believe it, but after all these years, I am finally caving in and playing Standard. I mean, I haven't actually taken this to FNM yet or anything, but I did build a Standard deck, so there is that step taken. An actual, Standard-legal deck is sitting on my desk in front of me right at this moment, sleeved up and ready to play. It's not a precon or a theme deck I built for someone else or anything like that, but a real deck intended for Standard tournament play. And what's more, I fully intend to play this against other Standard players in a Standard tournament at some point before the format rotates, which would imply that I am, myself, a Standard player. I have this nagging sensation that it's not too late to back down, but I choose to ignore it, as it is silly. This is all silly.

If you're following the current Standard and know what kind of decks I like, you could probably guess what I've built. Also, I wrote an article about the card I'm using, so you might have read that. Failing that, there's the title of this thread. Also, here's a decklist...

4x Sylvan Caryatid
4x Rattleclaw Mystic
1x Monastery Swiftspear
4x Jeskai Ascendancy
2x Altar of the Brood
4x Briber's Purse
1x Dragon Mantle
4x Retraction Helix
3x Dig Through Time
2x Treasure Cruise
3x Commune with the Gods
4x Taigam's Scheming
2x Swan Song
1x Ojutai's Command
1x Reclaim
4x Mana Confluence
2x Frontier Bivouac
1x Temple of Abandon
3x Temple of Enlightenment
2x Temple of Plenty
4x Yavimaya Coast
2x Shivan Reef
1x Battlefield Forge
1x Island

Sideboard:
1x Myth Realized
3x Monastery Mentor
3x Hornet Nest
2x Negate
2x Swan Song
4x Seismic Rupture

Similar lists crop up in tournaments, although not really that frequently. Mine has a few quirks of its own, although unfortunately I haven't had time to test it out. So this is sort of a rough draft. The usual win condition involves the following...

-Jeskai Ascendancy.
-A creature on the board that has had Retraction Helix cast on it.
-Altar of the Brood.
-Briber's Purse.

Once those elements are in place, I simply keep casting Briber's Purse for 0 and bouncing it with my Helixified creature, replaying it again and again, decking my opponent with Altar of the Brood. Of course, a five-card combo would be rather clunky, but the deck is pretty much always going to try to go off before it gets all five of those things. There are a number of combo pathways that lead to potential kills, and the deck has a suite of digging spells to set up some version of its combo. More later...

 

[Terentius]

So did you play this in a tournament?

 

[Oversoul]

Kind of? I played in a Legacy tournament with my "Oops, All Spells!" deck. There was a kid (like, someone under twelve) in the tournament playing his Standard B/G Elves, losing every round but still having a good time. Between rounds, I played my Standard deck against his. All four copies of Jeskai Ascendancy were in the bottom six cards of my deck, but I won anyway because he was too cautious to try to race me at first, so I built up defenses and just barely survived long enough to draw through my entire deck and find my combo. So I did play this deck and it was in a tournament, technically. But that's probably not what you had in mind.

 

[Terentius]

Hah. It was worth it to read your story about demolishing a child.