You may recall my article, Swept Under the RUG, in which I raved about Temur Ascendancy and its underrated power level. While you could argue I was playing it in a combo deck (and you’d be right), I have toyed with the card’s non-combo implications for the past few months. I’ve come to determine that playing a set of Ascendancies alongside sets of every good 4-power creature in Standard happens to be effective, as well. While my attempts to 4-0 weekly events at my LGS with a nearly identical list to the one on the left were alright, I wasn’t convinced I necessarily broke a new deck into tier-1 territory. Similar to how U/R Tutelage isn’t losing much at rotation, Temur Ascendancy Mid also loses very little in terms of card quality.
Ashcloud Phoenix and Thunderbreak Regent are already fantastic Magic cards without haste or netting you an extra card, but they aren’t exactly game-winners. I’ve found that Temur Ascendancy can give them the push they need to really impact the board and get the pressure going before my opponent has a chance to figure out how to approach the problem. A card I originally intended to include but wound up cutting was Savage Knuckleblade. It seemed it would be an auto-include when I set out to build a post-roation deck, but the new kid on the block, Woodland Wanderer, is simply the stronger of the two. For those of you playing at home, with Temur Ascendancy online, the Wanderer is a 5/5 Vigilance Trample Haste that draws me a card, all for 4 mana. Knuckleblade is a still a 4/4 that can get chumped and give itself... haste, again? It’s true that Knuckleblade is obviously still a good card with its multitude of uses, but it would be stronger in a slower, more controlling shell, where your mana is free to roam and graze as it pleases in lieu of being aggressively used up each turn.
As soon as she was spoiled, Kiora, Master of the Depths snagged my attention and lured me in. Upon some preliminary testing with this deck, Kiora is 100% exactly what this deck needed. Her +1 untaps a land and either Rattleclaw for even more mana or a creature to use as a blocker. Her -2 has something like a ~%60 chance (I did the math) to find both a creature and a land at the same time, further fueling the Temur flames. Finally (yet least importantly), let the lols ensue when if you somehow manage to fire off her ultimate ability with a Temur Ascendancy on the board.
Let it be known, however, that for as much as I love Temur Ascendancy, I do understand that you won’t always have it out when you need it. Pretending we don’t have it on the board, look at all the potent spells we still have to choose from and realize that the deck still plays like a more traditional ramping midrange deck without it. Ramp, drop a big guy, kill stuff, cast a Planeswalker, then play a game-winner and profit. See the Unwritten nets 2 creatures almost every time (you should’ve seen the face of the guy who was suddenly staring down 3 Thunderbreak Regents while at 8 life). That, combined with Sarkhan Unbroken, offers an enticingly powerful high-end from turns 4-7 - and one that likes to keep generating value. Toss in a few one-mana Negates to keep the cruise afloat and now you’re playing real midrange.
