A list used to climb masters after the introduction of the Tales of Horus Travel. A more refined version of the previous Makto TJP control.
The deck wins by playing high value threats and out-drawing your opponent, usually ending the game with some combination of Channel and pinging your opponent's face all the time.
New additions:
Yetipult: Masterpiece of a card. The deck's sigil base is already built to enable high primal count making the influence requirement a non-issue. Comes right before Harsh Rule to pop all the annoying aegises, or creating a constant stream of value against control opponents. Kothon on 5 asks for an immediate answer that can then be followed up with Yetipult on 6 asking the same question.
Vision of Austerity: Considering increasing the number to 2 considering the amount of armory running rampant. Taking away half their arsenal and leaving them with just 1 weapon in their entire deck could be fun, but so far 1 has been enough. Perfect early game answer to relic weapons or power stone, neuters chalice completely, and lategame against any shadow-base control, you Omen for this to counter their Gift (happens so many times you wouldn't believe it). After adding this to my deck, I've never been successfully Gifted, which might warrant an increase in Omens.
Vanquish: Firemaw and Tavrod are the new big things. You need to kill them. Used to have Annihilate but that the deck would be too vulnerable to Icaria and Tavrod then. Tapping out isn't all that bad.
Levitate: Somehow Elysian midrange is a deck right now? They have this dorky 3 mana 5/5 that you kill at the end of their second turn after they ramp it out with an Acolyte. Also clears away Icaria aegis. Easy cycle in every matchup without aegis or frog.
"But how can you run so many random techy cards? What do I do with my vanquish or visions against skycrag?"
This is one of the reasons I believe Herald's Song is way superior to Trailblaze. You just throw the shit away you don't care about. You have a lot of lifesteal that allows you to stay alive against random aggressive decks and the amount of 'useless' cards per matchup isn't actually that high.
Learn to play with Harsh Rule. We also don't play Evelyn's Choice in the deck because it really doesn't answer anything we care about and we like to tapout and use our mana. Many times I've played creatures into Praxis board with 3x 6/6 with a Rule still in my hand; Stonepowder is perfect for this.
TLDR; Yetipult and Vision round out the worst matchups, Chalice and Armory. Taking out Lightning Storm makes turboface decks slightly worse but not bad enough that Yetipult can't help you recover in those cases.
Levitate
x3
1
Permafrost
x3
1
Seek Power
x4
2
Eye of Winter
x1
2
Herald's Song
x3
2
Kothon, the Far-Watcher
x4
2
Privilege of Rank
x2
2
Vanquish
x2
2
Vision of Austerity
x1
3
Slay
x3
3
Stonepowder Alchemist
x2
3
Wisdom of the Elders
x4
4
Steward of the Past
x2
4
Yetipult
x3
5
Harsh Rule
x4
6
Black-Sky Harbinger
x4
6
Celestial Omen
x1
9
Channel the Tempest
x4
Justice Sigil
x5
Primal Sigil
x7
Shadow Sigil
x2
Feln Banner
x2
Hooru Banner
x1
Seat of Cunning
x4
Seat of Order
x4
View Deck on Shiftstoned
also why Channel instead of Makto?
Comparing Makto to Channel is a strange one as they aren't even remotely in the same caliber. Makto is just a 5/5 dork with a surprisingly oppressive influence requirement for the deck. Sure, some games he punches for damage but more often than not he just gets silenced. Granted, every creature in the deck is begging you to silence them but Makto's value is in him dying, not when he comes to play. And even if he was immune to silence, it still wouldn't compare to the sheer versatility and value that Channel gives. It's a removal spell that kills anything, the best draw spell in the game, the best burn spell in the game. The deck doesn't function without Channel and we even play Omen as a 5th copy (the toolbox of silver bullets is secondary).
You can consider running Makto alongside Channel and you'd need to cut maybe a few Stewards, Levitates and Yetipults for it and change one Primal sigil to a Feln Banner. However, I highly doubt this is an improvement overall.
Channel is indeed savage,
And yea I stuck with Steward and 1 shadow inf only.
Vara's Favor vs.Levitate? Draw better than sigil? Yetipult reasons?
Vara's Favor doesn't really draw Sigils though. The deck runs 2 Shadow Sigils (a number I'd gladly drop to just 1 if it wasn't for the necessity of Stewards) that you very often search for with Seek Powers. It is also quite important to be able to pop aegis on opponent's turn, for example on Icaria, and then play Sigil to Channel it.
Yetipult is a slightly worse Lightning Storm that isn't dead in the matchups where Storm wouldn't be necessary. Even just as an 11-mana draw 3 that you can pay in increments it serves a purpose. 3 might be too much, but watching your opponent squirm as you go "Yetipult, draw 3" "Kill it" "Another Yetipult, draw 3" is what I live for.
No Feln Bloodcaster just feels so wrong :((
Also no Gifts to Omen for?
The only issue I have with this deck is how hard it is to actually end the game. You basically have Channel, and maybe Kothon. Your clock is even slower than Chalice, which is saying something. I haven't really been liking Channel outside of Chalice - Chalice can reliably get to the ultra late game with a hand full of cards. In JPS, near the late late game, I'm running on 3-4 cards in my hand, even with Staff of Stories out. Maybe Yetipult changes that, but if you're drawing 3 cards every 2 turns surely you can find more efficient win conditions?
And trust me, the deck has plenty of ways to end games. Usually, if you're not completely dead on board, you can commit to Channel + Channel over two turns and end the game. Your win-condition is Channel to the face and the dorky face-pingers help in that.
Adding a second Vision would mostly be for consistency against Chalice and Armory (and a bit against Feln control). What you cut depends on what you're not running against. If you don't see Praxis or other Dawnwalker decks, cut a Steward (Average against all of the above). Cutting a Permafrost would increase winrate against Armory and Chalice, but have you lose more games against Skycrag or Stonescar. If you're not running into Armory, but a lot of Chalice, consider cutting one Levitate as it's good against Aegis threats but not so against an army of 2/x creatures, although I've won games with flying over their guys over three turns and Channeling face.
The list is flexible so try it out! And even as it is, the deck does decently well against Armory lists. We run a lot of value creatures to block the hits and all the face-pingers make it hard for them to 2-for-1 with any weapon apart from Daisho and the only way they catch up in value is with Stash or Tavrod, one of which we save all our answers for and... well... can't do anything about Stash but that's only a 2-off at worst.
thanks for the insight on what to cut. i know that all those cuts would make sense and from what ive seeing on ladder it would probably make sense to cut one steward as i've yet to encounter dawnwalker decks, but only having access to one of those potential lifesavers makes me feel itchy. i think ill just leave the list as it is as i only lost 1 game so far with it