Dual Ascensions

Alright, first thing first: sorry about the lack of intended updates. Starting up school again put a hamper on my free time, and I've since (hopefully) adjusted. Lots of Magic has been played, but hasn't been tracked too thoroughly. I plan on fairly frequent future updates. Now, onto some meat.

A few weeks back, I got tired of my Ajani Vengeant play set sitting around gathering dusty sleeves, so I thought up a deck around him. It was rather straightforward; red burn and white removal gives Ajani leeway to burn opponents' faces and land alike. Having a few weeks of Polymorph deck play back in February, I knew the problems of waiting for one of four cards to finally be drawn. To put statistics in my favor, I threw in a play set of Pyromancer Ascension, which I also eventually used in the Polymorph deck. Rationale being that the excessive amount of four-of counts and at least twenty instant/sorceries would mean I could eventually bolt creatures and players at the same time. Nothing wrong with that, right?

So I tried it out, and it was kind-of iffy, but consistent. I should probably apologize to Sonny about burning all his vampires so many times while waiting for the M11 Prerelease to begin...

Ajani was too vulnerable in a creature-less deck. Even with all the removal, all it'd take was a hasty creature or just one too many for me to handle at that moment in time and bam, win-condition gone. Oh yeah, decks fighting fire with fire could take him out as well.
This hasn't been my first deck devoid of creatures, thanks to a few months playing Underworld Dreams back in Kamigawa / Ravnica block, and I was rather content with this deck's results so far. Even if I didn't want to keep Ajani, I wanted to keep the concept. So I looked for another card to take his place.

I didn't have to look too far from the Pyromancer Ascension. That one random Bloodchief Ascension in my rare binder practically screamed "Pick me!" while I was passing by. I could imagine how well they fit together; I use Pyromancer Ascension with burn spells, and burn spells helped power up Bloodchief Ascension. With Bloodchief active, merely saving my own butt by killing a creature still would harm my opponent. Such potential! And with that, I had little hesitation taking out white.

Exposition aside, here's the deck after a few weeks of tinkering.

Dual Ascensions (aka ASCII)
---Land (24)---
x4 Dragonskull Summit
x4 Evolving Wilds
x4 Terramorphic Expanse
x6 Mountain
x6 Swamp

---Spells (35)---
x4 Bituminous Blast
x4 Blightning
x4 Bloodchief Ascension
x4 Burst Lightning
x4 Consuming Vapors
x4 Lightning Bolt
x3 Pyromancer Ascension
x4 Staggershock
x4 Terminate

---Artifacts (1)---
x1 Elixir of Immortality


---Sideboard (15)---
x3 Chain Reaction
x2 Consume the Meek
x3 Leyline of Punishment
x1 Pithing Needle
x3 Pyroclasm
x3 Volcanic Fallout


Breakdown:
- Evolving Wilds & Terramorphic Expanse guarantee me a color or second mountain that I might need, as well as thin out the deck a bit. Helpful for when I'm low on gas and need to draw more it. While I'm on the mana topic, the deck fluctuated between 20-22 mana before the fetchers were thrown in. Still a work in progress, as always.
- Bloodchief Ascension & Pyromancer Ascension are the heart of the deck. Left out one Pyromancer Ascension, since drawing multiple copies, as fun as a quadruple Blightning can be, is not always good. Particularly when one bolt away from victory or defeat.
- Burst Lightning & Lightning Bolt are general purpose burn. I like flexibility.
- Staggershock deserves special mention; it can rev up either Ascension superbly under the right conditions.
- Bituminous Blast, Consuming Vapors, & Terminate are creature-exclusive kill. I'd like to lower the count of this kind, but man lands and titans persuade me otherwise.
- Blightning is player exclusive, justified by its disruptive capabilities of course.
- Elixir of Immortality is just in the deck. I'd like to four-of it in the sideboard eventually. Still in thought I guess. It restocks my deck after Pyromancer goes active, although at the same time the fetchlands hinder that effort, it's still better to have the chance. The life gain is quite respectable as well. Good potential against Red Deck Wins and Mill, methinks.

Sideboard:
- Chain Reaction, Consume the Meek, Pyroclasm, and Volcanic Fallout are crowd control. Think I'm going to cut out Chain Reaction, as it's speed (in more than one respect) isn't living up to my satisfaction.
- Leyline of Punishment helps against Kor Firewalker a little, and eats lifegain decks fairly easy.
- Pithing Needle for use against planeswalkers and whatnot.

Feel free to voice your opinions about these selections. Should I keep the fetchland? Reduce land count and use more basics? Better sideboard tech on a budget?

Testing experience against other decks:
- Aura decks tend to get stomped. Burn spells kill while enchants are on the stack, and even Canopy Cover can't deal with Consuming Vapors very well.

- Discard decks tend to be decided by coin flip. It's hard to make me discard an Ascension, but my fuel is still fair game. With no enchantment destruction, it can turn into a race.

- Naya Beats beats my face in. Only have one game to base this off of, but it doesn't look good when half of one's removal spells are ineffective against Woolly Thoctar, Marisi's Twinclaws, and the like.

- Red Deck Wins is coin flippy, again. I've got direct burn to match his and then some, but Unearth variants of the deck eat them up.

- Titan Beats tend to be uphill battles, but with nondiscriminatory terminates and well timed Consuming Vapors, I've so far been able to keep their advantage limited long enough to at least claim a 60% win rate (won't claim any accuracy in this statement, as only five games were played. Shut up).

I can only theorize about the other decks, but considering I have nothing hard to go off of and have already typed quite a bit already, I think I'm done for the night.


Also, I've got to love it when a match makes me feel I have this out: