I swear I saw something that explained how your consistency gets hosed when you play 61...but this is amazing. And hell man, if the 61st card does it for you, keep knocking it out of the park. +1 from me!

abdulbaqr- You may be right. If someone wanted to run the deck with 60 you could cut the Restoration Angel or one Geist of Saint Traft. You could also cut the Slayers' Stronghold and a fetch and add in another dual land of some sort to lower the land count, but keep the colored sources the same. I just do it for superstitious reasons, but I don't expect anyone else to play it at 61. Whatever floats your boat :). I have actually been working on "WUR" delver for years now and the prowess mechanic really made it possible to make a Jeskai Delver deck that can compete regularly with Tier One decks. Thank you very much for the kind words and the upvote.

Do this to the description of my Vampiric Rapehouse deck and I will kiss you right on the mouth.

I'm back after co-brewing a RW aggro deck with my friend. I contributed 4 assault strobes and 4 kiln fiends, and he went and did something horrifying with 4 Seeker of the Way, Monastery Swiftspears and an assortment of protection spells.

I've tuned the deck and piloted it a couple times too, and I realized that with this set up, Kytheon, Hero of Akros  ^Flip is actually able to perform pretty well. There are 1-drop haste creatures for that surprise flip on turn 2, there are plenty of protection spells because we don't want to tap out for indestructible, and so on. I haven't gotten to field him all that much, but I thought its an interesting possibility to note.

TheBoraxKid...I'm happy to provide you the codes to put a background and clear boxes in. I can even format it with your photo so you just literally copy and paste it if you prefer. Would you like a Bloodghast Background?

Oh my god you are an amazing person and a gentleman!I am pretty illiterate at HTML, so that would be very helpful. And yes, I would like a Bloodghast as the background very much!For your help, I will repay the favor in the near future and give you a feature on a deck of your choice!

Sweet! <3 Prowess!!! xD Too bad I will never afford Snapcaster Mages.. or Id build it asap!

Ryotenchi if you don't care much about aesthetics you can buy them for "cheap" (50-60 bucks) more heavily played. I can't blame you for wanting them near mint though. :)

I rarely buy cards that arent played. :P 50$ is a lot nicer, though considering the mana base cost... it would be nice if I could luck out and find em cheaper.. >.< Sick as hell deck though.. I really want to run Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest myself. xD

I dont think I could come up with a better prowess deck, without more printings of psynergistic cards in the colors Ive tried. (...and Ive tried at least 4 lists.. Guess was a must.)

How do yeh stack up when facing the tier 1 decks?

Ryotenchi- Thank you for the kind words. This deck is a deck years in the making. It started as a WUR Delver list and has evolved since. When they printed the prowess mechanic I actually thought for a second that they printed it just for me :). I love prowess and I love Geist of Saint Traft so I wanted to make a deck that got the best out of both.

One major plus to playing Jeskai colors (especially white) is that we have access to most of the best sideboard cards in modern. This gives us a decent matchup against almost all decks. Another huge advantage we have with this deck is that we are proactive. In an unknown field and against tier two decks you really want to be proactive most of the time. Combining our versatile sideboard plan and our proactive strategy gives us a punters chance against most every deck in modern. That doesn't mean there aren't some tough matchups though :). I will post a matchup guide just after this response.

Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest is one of my favorite cards ever printed. He was in this deck up until about a month ago as a one of. He tested very well, but lost his spot when my favorite card of all time- Abbot of Keral Keep was spoiled. I would not fault you at all for including him in the deck. He can win matchups all by himself. With one Distortion Strike and his ability he is attacking for 10 unblockable damage by himself! I would not be surprised if he finds his way back into my deck in the near future.

Although the Snapcaster Mages do make the deck better in my opinion, I don't think they are a must. You could simply add another Abbot of Keral Keep or a Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest and possibly another Path to Exile and run the deck without Snaps.

I'm glad you like the deck. I will continue to run it in local events and test it thoroughly to keep it up with the every changing meta. The meta guide will follow this post. Thank you so much for the upvote! You were #100!

Here are my estimates of the matchups from my testing. Obviously these can all change as deck construction and lists evolve/change-

Affinity- 60% favorable.

-We have a ton of early answers and large amount of sideboard help. 60% might be conservative because we are favored, but affinity does have some unbeatable draws for any deck.

Grixis Control- 50% draw

-I have had success against this deck locally and in testing but I don't think we are as heavy of a favorite as my results have shown. Remand work very well on their delve creatures and we can attack through them or simply path them. They also hate a resolved Geist of Saint Traft. However, if the game goes long they can just out value us. They often take damage from their mana base and we can finish them off. Our sideboard gives us Celestial Purge, Dispel, Negate, Chandra, Pyromaster, and Spellskite.

Tron- 40% unfavored, post board much better.

-Tron is a toughy. Deflecting Palm is a house against them and so is Boros Charm. The advent of Ugin, the Spirit Dragon made our matchup much worse because Boros Charm does not save us from the spirit dragon. I basically hope that we can slow them down with Damping Matrix and counter magic long enough to race them out.

Jund- 55% favored

This is the biggest difference between the prowess unblockable build and prior builds of delver decks. We have a much better matchup against the Tarmogoyf decks. This is still a very tough matchup, but we I still think we are favored to win. The plan is basically start off with a threat, use removal/disruption to keep protect our threat and slow then down, then finish them off with reach.

Burn- 45% unfavored

We take some early damage from our mana so they can burn us out pretty easily in game one. We also don't have any life gain outside of two Lightning Helix. Post board we are much better with Deflecting Palm, Celestial Purge, Dispel, Negate, Spellskite, etc, but it can still be tough to beat them. I have tinkered with Kor Firewalker and Soulfire Grand Master in the sideboard in the past. If burn is a large portion of your meata you probably want to have an additional sideboard option for life gain.

Twin- 55% favored.

This one is really build dependent. We are exactly what they don't want to see in game one if they don't have a turn four kill in hand. We are a nightmare for them, but they can combo off on us because we are lighter on permission than most blue decks. Once you have a good feel on how to play against a twin deck it should be a favorable matchup for us. Post sideboard we are much more favored with Spellskite, Wear, Rending Volley, Damping Matrix, etc.

As you can see we don't have a ton of GREAT matchups, but we also don't have a bunch of TERRIBLE matchups. That is one think I love about this deck. Our sideboard offers great options against a lot of the tier 1 decks, but also gives us cards like Deflecting Palm, Celestial Purge, Damping Matrix, Engineered Explosives to help with some of the more tier 2 decks like Ad Nauseum, Boggles, Amulet Bloom, Grizhoalbrand, BW Tokens, etc.

Our worst matchups are probably Soul Sisters, Boggles, Tron, and to a lesser extent merfolk depending on the build.

Our best matchups are probably - Affinity, Infect, Zoo, Jund, Coco Abzan (depending on build)

Let me know what you have found to be good and bad matchups in your area and let me know where we differ. Thanks for reading.

Well.. My problem.. is with any deck with in it, I feel that if Snapcaster Mage isnt in the deck, then it is doomed to fail.. and the meta will eat it alive.. I even tried to make a budget ninja bear delver deck and discovered that without 'Taigo' and Vendilion Clique the deck just couldnt compete with even fnm random brews let alone tier 1..

I wish I could afford a beautiful machine like this one.. :( <3 it!

Nice deck i'm going to use the shell to make my own version of this that takes A little more advantage of kiln fiend and uses a playset. Maybe some assault strobe and a few artful Dodge and possibly young pyromancer instead of saint traft since I have 0.

@CurdBrosBrewingCo I think you should remove the Vapor Snag so that you have 60 cards.

Ryotenchi- I agree. That is why I am a big proponent of reprinting everything. Everyone should be able to play with Snapcaster Mage if they want to, but I do understand it is a business. I agree with you. I even feel that I am wrong with only two Tiagos in the deck, but I just can't squeeze any more in the deck. It's probably "right" to have at least three.

ColdHeartedSith- Your deck sounds awesome. I definitely think a more aggressive version of the deck can be competitive and would probably even be a much better choice in a combo heavy meta.

CaesiumReaction- I know it's weird to go with 61 cards. I do it for superstitious reasons more than anything, but I do prefer to add an additional land rather than run 18 at 60. It's kind of like running an additional half land to me. I agree with you that if you want to run the deck at 60 just take out the card that doesn't fit your playstyle. Vapor Snag has been good against the delve creatures, but we have enough creature removal/unblockable effects that removing it would not be a problem as all.

Given the current layout, I think 2 is just fine. :P Especially since yeh can draw into them or use them to "draw" cards out of your yard.

At least here yeh dodge the Serum Visions playset requiring 4 taigo, as it looks like your deck is too fast to care that much about mid to late game card advantage. =n.n=

one thing I wanted to mention is the rebound spells. If Your creatures are killed in response initially then when they rebound they have no targets. Rebound was always stronger in standard. Kind of thiking thats where my Artful Dodge and Assault Strobe will slot. What are your thoughts?

ColdHeartedSith- It is true that if no creatures are available at the beginning of turn, that the rebound spell will fizzle. However, that doesn't happen very often. Also, given that Emerge Unscathed is often cast in response to a removal spell, it almost always has a creature target on the following turn. Another point on the plus side is that the rebound spells are free spells for prowess. I don't often kill on a single turn, but more death by a thousand cuts (slashes in this case).

I have tested Artful Dodge in the past and did like it in the deck. I like to run a very low curve/land count and I found that I liked the free aspect of the Distortion Strike in my particular build. I do think that if you are setting up a one turn kill with a more "all-in" style deck, Artful Dodge would be a better choice because you can control when you want the unblockable ability more easily.

I didn't play during the original rebound days in rise of eldrazi standard so I can't comment on how strong rebound was in standard, but I do know the new rebound cards in Khans were TERRIBLE. I was so excited to see that rebound was a mechanic in Khans and then they printed a bunch of way overcosted rebound spells. They basically reprinted Emerge Unscathed as Center Soul and Distortion Strike as Taigam’s Strike but just tacked on more mana to the cost. I assume they were overcosted because of their interaction with prowess, but I'm not sure.

I would love to see your list. I will check out your decks.

Have you thought about Soulblade Djinn? It seems like something that may work well with this deck even though it is a 5 drop. I'm currently in the process of building this deck and I thoroughly enjoy it. But I'm just suggesting it. It is something that deserves a little consideration if you wanted to test other creatures!

HeWhoFartsRoses- First off, your name is epic :). Secondly, I'm glad you have enjoyed the deck so far. Thirdly, I have actually thought about him, but I don't think I have given him enough thought. I was thinking of using him in the more controlling version with Young Pyromancer and Monastery Mentor because I reach 5 mana a bit easier and he can pump all of the tokens. I think he is actually an underplayed/underrated card in the right builds. I do think your on to something with him. I will try him in the control build of the deck. Thank you for pointing him out.

This list is sweeeeet. Its ever sweeter that it has Abbot of Keral Keep in it. I just bought my 4th one for my Delver deck, and to see more people loving it makes me happy.

Personally, I'd like to see a bit more inevitability. I'm sure how long game this could go, personally. Maybe a 1 of Cryptic Command or Ojutai's Command for value purposes? Cryptic is straight up better in general, but Ojutai's has more synergy.

So, my wallet does not have enough cash in it for fetches, but I would still love to build this deck, what cards would you suggest allocating those missing lands to?

SwaggyMcSwagglepants- Love the name! I thought I had considered every card, but I had not thought of Ojutai's Command. I will definitely be giving that a try at the top end.

bluehawk1460- I totally understand. I purchase mine a couple of years ago when they were much cheaper. The game has gotten pretty pricey. I actually really love buddy lands (check lands) such as Sulfur Falls, Glacial Fortress, and Clifftop Retreat. With a basic land out they are just a straight dual land. They also don't get hit by Choke and Boil and are very cheap. I would probably suggest something along the lines of

2x Steam Vents2x Hallowed Fountain1x Sacred Foundry2x Sulfur Falls2x Glacial Fortress2x Clifftop Retreat3x Island2x Plains1x Mountain1x Slayers' Stronghold1x Faerie Conclave

There are also the Mirrodin fast lands, but they are a bit more pricey than the buddy lands also known as check lands. I haven't tested with this mana base, but I will give it a try. I have actually wondered in the past if running a bunch of buddy/check lands wasn't just better than shocks/fetches. I doubt it, but I bet it really is not much worse at all. Let me know how it goes. Have a good one.

You really only sac consistency and some of your speed.

Hey There!

I am also trying to build a Jeskai Tempo Deck, but I am taking a slightly more controlling take on the build, and running a lot more lands. Please give me some suggestions on this deck as I want to make it competitive for modern. You obviously know what you are doing with this deck.

Here is the link: Jeskai Tempo Control

Thank you, really like the deck by the way!