Introduction

As all of you assuredly know, last Monday Wizards banned Nadu and Grief in Modern. For a few days after the announcement, I was struggling to find my footing in this somewhat refreshed format. Jeskai, a deck I’ve played for the majority of the last two months, has been letting me down recently, and after initial success with UR Wizards, the variance caught up to me and the shortcomings of the archetype had me searching for another weapon of choice. I’ve had a brief stunt with Frog decks, both Murktide and Ring, but both seemed a bit too poor into Energy for my liking, especially when compared to Jeskai. After those failed attempts, I reluctantly decided to give Jeskai another go, and that’s when I saw Gerrick Alford’s list with Tamiyos:

Granted, the list was a bit off by post-bans standards, but that’s mostly since it came from the last day of Nadu’s and Grief’s legality. When I accounted for that, as it wasn’t Gerrick’s fault whatsoever, I liked what I was seeing, so I decided to give Tamiyo a try. I was quickly impressed by her, and most of my doubts about how she’ll play into Energy decks turned out to be over exaggerated. Even though my results this weekend weren’t stellar (2-2 in the PTQ and 5-2 in the Challenge), the deck played out much better with Tamiyo and I’m fairly certain that she’s a great fit for Jeskai. Let’s go over why that’s the case.

Cons

Since I was initially down on Tamiyo in a world full of Phlages, it’s only fair to start with why that was the case.

Weakness to Phlage, and removal in general

This was by far the biggest reason why I was down on Tamiyo after hyping her up so much initially. Being an 0/3 that usually takes a few turns to transform means that it’s a prime target for the front side of Phlage, which is something that’s usually not very threatening for Jeskai. This is furtherly exacerbated in the Energy matchup, where they have plenty of removal and are somewhat incentivised to play Phlage in a timely manner so they can threaten escaping later on. While all of that still holds true, I failed to account for the differences between Jeskai and other archetypes I tried Tamiyo in. While decks like UB Frog often tread the line between offence and defence against Energy, Jeskai is firmly the control side of the matchup. Because of that, Tamiyo trading with their card early on isn’t as problematic, even more so, it requires them to spend resources to deal with her, as otherwise it blocks their board quite well. You might think “that all sure does sound nice, but their removal wouldn’t have targets otherwise”, which is true, but it’s not the whole truth. The relevant resource they’re using in this spot is mana. If you spend one mana on turn one that you’d likely waste anyway to slow their development, that’s often a worthy trade for you. Basically, the only two clearly bad scenarios for Tamiyo in this matchup are when she dies to Phlage or to a removal cast via Amped Raptor that otherwise wouldn’t have targets. I still am not thrilled with how the card plays against Energy, especially on the draw, and if possible I’d find a configuration that allows me to cut all of them in this matchup, but having a few copies in postboard isn’t as bad as I initially thought.

Opportunity cost, or not being “on plan”

This paragraph might sound a bit tautological, since literally every card in Magic has some degree of opportunity cost. What I mean by that in this case is that Jeskai lists in the past consisted mostly of Ring and interaction to stay alive, and Tamiyo is neither. While that’s a fair point, in my opinion Tamiyo provides enough power and card advantage to make up for the lost interaction slots.

Tension with sweepers

When chatting about the deck, multiple people raised concerns about how Tamiyo plays with sweepers, and in particular Wrath of the Skies. While sometimes you’ll be forced to destroy a bunch of your own material, overall I’d say that the only truly bad outcome is if you need to kill your Tamiyo in the process and don’t have any other source of card advantage. Otherwise, you’re usually coming ahead on this exchange, even if some Clues die in the process. On top of that, the flip side of Tamiyo forces opponents into overextending, as planeswalkers usually do, which actually plays quite nicely with Wraths.

Pros

Now we’re getting into reasons why you should run Tamiyo, and there’s a good deal of them.

Adding another dimension to the deck (punishes the consign/surgical angle (elaborate))

This is the main selling point of Tamiyo in my opinion. Jeskai, as powerful as it can be, is a fairly one-dimensional deck with clear points of weakness that can be targeted. The two main ones are Ring being a four mana artifact, which makes it extremely susceptible to Consign to Memory and countermagic in general, and Phlage getting hit with Surgical Extraction. Both of those cards are heavily played in the sideboards of various decks, and both of them don’t do much against Tamiyo. Because of that, she’s a great way of punishing people for trying to exploit your gameplan with narrow but effective cards like Consign and Surgical. One might think that Tamiyo doesn’t help all that much against Surgical, as your Phlages will still be gone, but once you ultimate her, you’ll be able to win with whatever Elementals/cyclers you have left in the deck in vast majority of cases, given that you’ll have a hand full of countermagic and Teferis to protect them.

Being an early play and a mana sink later on

Jeskai isn’t very good at spending its mana early on if not given targets for its interactive spells. Tamiyo solves this issue by providing a cheap threat and a way to spend mana on turns you don’t use it for anything else. This sort of ties to the multidimensionality point from earlier, as Tamiyo enabled openings that weren’t previously available to the deck, and offers a way of pressuring the opponent starting on turn one while still holding up mana for interaction on later turns.

Alternative card advantage engine

As we already established, Jeskai is very reliant on finding Ring to start accruing advantage. Because of that, people opt to play cards like Monumental Henge, which aren’t great but let you find Ring more often. Tamiyo is a way of increasing your card advantage count instead of resorting to these suboptimal deckbuilding choices.

Good blocker

Being a one mana 0/3 makes Tamiyo into a decent blocker against aggressive decks, which will save you a few points of life here and there which might be crucial later on with Ring in play. 

Forcing opponents into uncomfortable spots in sideboarding

This is basically the flip side of the “dies to removal” argument. While creating targets for otherwise irrelevant interaction isn’t ideal, putting your opponents in tough spots when deciding how to sideboard is a significant upside. Of course, it won’t affect every deck equally, as some decks will simply ignore her (Storm, Amulet), and some will have a good amount of baked-in removal for her (Kozilek’s Return in Tron, Phlage in various decks). However, some decks will have to plan for her specifically, with the most important one in this category being UB Frog. And even when it comes to decks from the first category, running such a powerful one drop out of a control deck always leaves an opening for your opponent to make a mistake in sideboarding, which is a small advantage that’s hard to quantify, but an advantage nonetheless.

Partially solving the “wrong half problem”

Interactive decks often struggle with drawing interaction that’s irrelevant in the given matchup, especially (and hopefully only) in game one. Tamiyo alleviates the issue slightly, both by finding the meaningful interaction via Clues or rebuying it with her minus ability, and by the virtue of being a generally strong proactive card.

Proactive threat out of a reactive deck

I already touched upon this point a couple of times in brief, but it’s important enough to warrant its own paragraph. Tamiyo shines in matchups where there is no clear way of going over the top, or getting there is fairly hard to achieve. I’m mostly talking about combo and big mana decks, where opening the game with Tamiyo will allow you to keep drawing cards while holding up interaction, and offers you a clear way of ending the game in a reasonable time frame.

Conclusion

I hope that by now, you’re as convinced as me that Tamiyo truly belongs in Jeskai. If not, I welcome you to discuss it with me in our Discord server! I’d be also remiss not to mention that I’ve already written some content about Jeskai that you can find here, and I intend on writing another piece about Jeskai with Tamiyos in the coming weeks, so be sure to either follow us on Twitter or simply join our Discord to know when it releases if that’s something you’re interested in. Regardless, I hope this article was a good read, and any feedback on it will be greatly appreciated!