Sunfall from March of the Machine
- Card Name: Sunfall
- Mana Cost: 3WW
- Card Type: Sorcery
- Rules Text: Exile all creatures. Incubate X, where X is the number of creatures exiled this way. (Create an Incubator token with X +1/+1 counters on it and “2: Transform this artifact.” It transforms into a 0/0 Phyrexian artifact creature.)
- Flavor Text: “Let the light scour away your imperfect flesh.” -Heliod
- Illustrated by: Kasia ‘Kafis’ Zielinska
Sunfall Makes the Jeskai Deck
Here’s a Jeskai Control deck that I got from my friend Lanny Huang:
In case you don’t read, I dunno, anything and everything I write and / or record, I recently called Lanny the world’s best deck designer. I was wrong of course (it’s Sam Black right now)… But to his credit, Lanny refused to accept the title, knowing how good Sam is.
Lanny wrote an absolute banger of a first Magic: The Gathering article, and if you haven’t read it you should stop reading this and immediately click over to Medium:
In the unlikely event you are reading my personal blog but don’t believe me… How about Luis Scott-Vargas?
Excellent article, I really enjoyed reading it
— Luis Scott-Vargas (@lsv) January 25, 2023
Bang
Er
Anyway, I got this deck from Lanny. It’s not my usual speed. Even when I’m a Control guy, I tend to build around redundancy and consistency. I might not be Burning; but I have lots of Dragons. Or lots of Counterspells.
By contrast, this deck does a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. It has powerful (relatively cheap) threats like Fable of the Mirror-Breaker and Reckoner Bankbuster that you see in a variety of decks. But it’s also got a pair of Sanctuary Wardens at the six. Also a couple of Abrades. Three copies of Fires of Victory…
A little bit of this, and a little bit of that.
What holds the deck all together are the sweepers. I have a lot of thoughts about Farewell in today’s Standard. I think that it’s expensive and that the popularity of Battles limits just how sweeping a sweeper Farewell can be.
But it also has Sunfall.
My goodness, Sunfall. Sunfall makes the deck!
There are only two copies of Sunfall but it’s fantastic all the time. It’s a mana cheaper than Farewell and leaves you something. The more stuff there is to kill — of the opponent’s or sometimes your own stuff — the better Sunfall is next turn.
How to Turn a Lotus Petal into a Mox Sapphire
I’d say that you have to play Sunfall yourself to appreciate just how good it is; but clearly that’s not true. I did it for you here:
There’s an epic Sunfall in the first minute of this video; and there are plenty of times that the card digs me out of tough situations. Will I get the Play-In Point? I guess you’ll just have to watch the video to find out!
The other cool thing about this Jeskai deck is its four-of permission spell, Disruption Protocol:
Disruption Protocol from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
Disruption Protocol is kind of a Cancel masquerading as the original Counterspell. You’re going to be playing it for UU1 far more often than UU; and even when you do UU, that won’t be the end of your tapping.
What is cool about the card is that you can kinda sorta turn a turn-two Reckoner Bankbuster into a mana rock for purposes of Disruption Protocol. Later in the game when you have Treasures from Reckoner Bankbuster or Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, you can tap them to help cast it without actually sacrificing them. In that way, the card kind of turns a Lotus Petal into a Mox Sapphire.
And that’s pretty cool, don’t you think?
Anyway, go read Lanny’s article and also go watch my latest video. One is great but the other is still pretty good (and also I was having a great hair day).
LOVE
MIKE