Taming Fire
A pinch of red adds urgency to anything.
Counterflux illustrated by Scott M. Fischer
Jeskai looks to deal with opponent’s threats immediately, whether it’s through its 12 pieces of countermagic or its 9 instant-speed removal spells. Its swift responses provide it more opportunities to safely gain resources over its opponent, but their flexibility comes at a cost. Let’s see how Jeskai pulls it off.
Cheap Removal
Red removes small threats efficiently.
Blue-based control strategies typically struggle with smaller creatures, as those creatures tend to “go under” control’s interaction. To combat this, Jeskai plays Shock to answer problematic threats that have already hit the board. Its cheap cost and instant speed lets the deck deal with threats right away and still hold up additional interaction. Notably, the card effectively answers Vexing Shusher, Deathrite Shaman, and a down-ticked Vraska the Unseen. Firespouts similarly answers the small creatures on a larger scale, acting as a cheaper Wrath of God to wipe the board and hold up interaction a turn sooner.
Meta Interaction
Veto your opponent’s options or create your own.
Shock is effective early, but Izzet Charm’s flexibility makes it great in all stages of the game. Besides picking off small creatures, the counter mode on Charm safeguards Jeskai from powerful early plays like Stone Rain, Lifecrafter’s Bestiary, Tezzeret’s Touch, Bottomless Pit, and Pia’s Revolution. Once two damage or a two-mana tax becomes irrelevant, Izzet Charm can sculpt the hand. This is useful before sideboards, as the deck can discard spells that are terrible in the matchup while drawing into relevant ones. It maintains its strength after sideboards, digging towards ‘silver bullet’ additions.
With the meta shifting to a field with more countermagic, Counterflux has become well positioned. Counterflux isn’t as great at protecting a proactive spell like Sphinx’s Revelation. However, the uncounterable clause makes it an undeniable “no” while on defense. This patches up the Control archetype’s weakness to Tempo and Combo strategies that use countermagic to protect their game-ending spells. It’s also a mirror-breaker against other Control strategies that look to resolve only a few powerful threats.
The Cost
Jeskai Control is card hungry and mana intensive.
Jeskai Control plays slightly weaker spells for the opportunity to play them at instant speed, leading its interaction to tend to go one-for-one with the opponent. Therefore, it needs to draw more cards to continuously answer the opponent’s threats while hitting its land drops. Inspiration helps keep Jeskai’s hand full while holding up interaction, like a mini Sphinx’s Revelation.
The mana-base isn’t ideal. Early interaction meant to save life might cost that same amount of life to cast on time with shock lands. Sphinx’s Revelation stabilizes less when City of Brass is being used to cast it. Another mana concession Jeskai Control makes is its weakness to land destruction. The deck runs many non-basics, making it more susceptible to Ruination and Fulminator Mage. Having three colors makes it easier for a Stone Rain to cut off access to one of them, especially when Jeskai is relying on a Reflecting Pool.
Conclusion
While a painful mana base can lead to lopsided games, Jeskai Control sports a toolkit of interaction that gives it the potential for success in any matchup. Games may take a while to end, but each response from Jeskai is swift, and it utilized every card in its 75 to do so this past week.
