The "prowess" mechanic offers a tenuous balance
to any deck that wants to try and exploit it.
You need the proper balance of creatures and
noncreatures. Oftentimes, a deck like this runs
the risk of drawing too many of one and not
enough of the other. The good news here is that
Prowess asks only for "noncreature spells", it
doesn't care what those spells are or what they
do. Today's card does a step further-- it
doesn't even care which creatures you use. To
that end, if your noncreature spells are card
draw (a reasonable choice given that Jeskai is
partly blue) then you can sift through your deck
and make sure you have enough of each type of
spell. Jeskai Ascendancy's second ability lets
you do just that-- it turns every noncreature
spell into a sifter. The discard isn't too bad
of a drawback, since you can discard whichever
you have more of; creatures or noncreatures.
This is before we even get into the first
effect-- +1/+1 and untap your entire team. If
you've got instants, this turns every one of
them into a combat trick as well as a draw
engine. It also lets you attack more often
without fear of having blockers open, as well as
get extra uses out of any activated abilities
that require tapping. Sadly, none of the
creatures with Prowess have such an ability yet
(and you do still want Prowess creatures, even
with this card, since they'll be getting +2/+2)
but you may still find one you want to exploit.
Today's card of the day is Jeskai Ascendancy
which is a three mana Blue, Red, and White
enchantment that allows you to draw a card and
then discard a card plus gives creatures you
control +1/+1 until end of turn and untaps them
when you cast a non-creature spell. This
is solid support for a deck balancing a creature
based offensive with combat tricks or removal as
untapping and giving the +1/+1 after declaring
the attack or before declaring them as blockers
is probably the most efficient usage. It
is a bit telegraphed, so an opponent can be
prepared for it, though the value is definitely
there and the hand filter can help set up
additional uses.
In Limited this is a very strong card for
maintaining offensive and defensive options more
often and is well worth working around in Sealed
by splashing a third color. In Booster it
is a solid, if somewhat restrictive, first pick
that can be the cornerstone to aggressive or
control builds depending on the pool.
If this card only gave (in effect) all your
creatures the prowess ability, it would already
be quite strong - note its colors and consider
how fast white, and sometimes red, can generate
tokens. Adding card selection on top of that
puts it in an area where I suspect the
competitive tables will also look at it. Drawing
cards is literally the most powerful thing you
can do in any Magic deck. Note also that you're
not actually required to make use of either
ability - you can build around one or both as
you please.
