What Does This Deck Do?
Well, it's eggs, just scrambled!
Keep playing little artifacts that draw card and/or fix mana, amassing as many on the field as possible. Then around turn 4 sacrifice them all, preferably to Krark-Clan Ironworks. Bring em back with Faith Rewarded, draw more cards make more mana, just keep fooling around until you can get Emrakul, the Aeons Torn onto the field. One attack is then usually enough, but against decks like burn you don't want to be giving them one more turn with that last remaining mountain they held onto. So we need to run something that makes sure that next turn seals it. While a second Emrakul does the trick, Tezzeret the Seeker 's ultimate does the trick in a more useful and immensely flashier way.
The mainboard is somewhat standard for post-Second Sunrise eggs (Poached Eggs?), with some notable changes. Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Tezzeret the Seeker , the man-lands, etc. Generally speaking these pieces are part of the decks alternate plans that give it resiliency and flexibility. These changes really spice up our game against control and pox decks which otherwise might be able to disrupt us, and of course hate cards like Rest in Peace which would normally be impossible to win through without drawing a bounce spell.
What's plan B? Why do we have backups?
Eggs is awesome and wins almost every game 1 against most decks. But hate can shut the deck down entirely, which is a big part of why the deck is so fringe. Nobody sideboards against eggs, but they don't have to, they can just wreck eggs with their Dredge, Affinity, etc. hate.
So game 2 we won't be eggs anymore! We'll be Jeskai Ascendancy combo! I mean, what are eggs but little metal Sleight of Hands and Manamorphoses? We don't need to go infinite to win, simply activating a manland or two and cycling a few eggs is more than enough to take someone down!
Depending on the matchup I usually remove the Faith Rewardeds and the Nihil Spellbomb. Now the plan is no longer to amass trinkets and set them off at once, we want to think of them as mana fixing to let us cast Ascendancy. No need to worry about cracking them before finding the rest of the combo.
Ascendancy Plan B is my go to against anything white, control decks, pox, Faeries, Merfolk, blue tron, and more. Basically I go to Ascendancy anytime I think I'm about to see significant disruption, or need to deal with a deck that's as fast or faster. I usually only stay full eggs against Scapeshift, R/G tron, and anything fair that isn't white.
Note that even if we're not expecting hate, switching to ascendancy still might be the right call. This is because when we're in ascendancy mode we can start cracking eggs early and often to find answers. For example, game 2 we aren't very worried about hate cards from storm, but they're a faster combo deck than us so switching to a game plan that allows for early cracking can help us get Ethersworn Canonist to defend ourselves is helpful.
A Look at Some Card Choices
Mox Opals are almost self explanatory. I really think the deck functions without them if you want to build on a budget, but there's no doubt they speed the deck up.
Ghostly Prison is amazing, makes our good matchups against fair decks REALLY good and is a huge help in the weak Merfolk/Faeries matchups where we have a lot of trouble with small damage getting through while they leave up counterspell mana. Instead of running two I'm testing Ensoul Artifact, which can block stuff and beat on control decks, and is unlikely to get removed since the opponent more than likely boarded out their Disfigures! Merfolk are usually unblockable though, so I may eventually need the slot back.
Pithing Needle is mostly for Tron. If we can shut down Karn Liberated we are a much faster deck!
Timely Reinforcements is suuuuch a good card for us. Tech for Burn, Tech for aggro, Tech for pox/rack, and tokens+Ascendancy is quite nice.
As far as my choice of eggs, the fixing they give is actually quite important so I'm not using Conjurer's Bauble. Having playsets of both Chromatic Star and Terrarion would make it hard for Ascendancy to work against Rest in Peace (since you don't draw cards off them with that out), but having 4 of the 8 is still good as they give a lot of value when sacrificed to Krark-Clan Ironworks.
Dragonlord Dromoka may seem like an extremely odd choice, but that's what makes it so great. People board out their removal and board in their counterspells, and NOBODY expects Dromoka!
As I mentioned Tezzeret the Seeker is partly here to make sure our extra turn from Emmy is the game's last turn. Additionally though he's great as a 5th Krark-Clan Ironworks. In fact, he's basically a full fledged egg! He can -4 to fetch an Ichor Wellspring every time Faith's Reward brings him back. Also, I've won several games from simply casting him on turn 4 off a signet, +1 him to drop another egg, and winning turn 5 off of his ultimate.
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas is nicely flexible. In eggs mode he can simply +1, but he really shines when making use of his -1. Used on a Darksteel Citadel or signet it gives us a dude to combo with Jeskai Ascendancy, or even just a 5/5 to beat face with.
What do you think? Any ideas?
