You make good points and I agree with all of them! On a pure deckbuilding level I tend to normally be biased against most ramp strategies, yet I can’t deny their results. It’s one of my shortcomings that I tend to work on.

Trevor

Modern is slowly moving away from this fact, but not so long ago you really could play “anything” and do well with it. It seems that Bant Eldrazi’s rise is pushing decks to do “more faster” which reduces the list of viable decks a bit, but still, Modern is in a great place right now, where a bunch of archetypes are in play for the top tables every week. I’m holding out for another showing from Amulet/Scout 🙂

I’ve never felt like Dredge was oppressive or broken. The deck is too easily disrupted, even though it is doing powerful/unfair things.

I agree with all these points, my extensive experience playing Jeskai felt similar to how Jund plays out; you are doing strong things, but you’re often left hoping to draw the right half of your deck against most of the field.

Trevor

Regarding the Breach deck… I think you’re being a bit harsh on it. The fact that the deck can rip a T4 finish when its ramp package lines up right (similar to Ad Nauseam) while also presenting quality interaction against creature decks and attack on a weird enough axis to give midrange and control decks problems means that it can’t be dismissed out of hand. I think consistency is an issue for a lot of the shells out there (as it tends to be for most non-Tron ramp decks), but that can be mitigated once an optimal build is put together (and as this site mentioned earlier, the community’s not quite there yet).

Yes, you’re definitely correct there, those are also of a similar nature.

That still doesn’t really explain why R/G breach did so well in comparison to Tron. Why would you say it did?

Personally, I think that it comes down to how the deck is being constructed. When Jeskai draws its removal in the correct order then it is very favored in many matchups. However, the (I say inexplicable) trend towards not playing any sweepers means that it struggles to come from behind. If Supreme Verdict and Anger of the Gods saw more play the deck would be less vulnerable to aggro decks going wide and Eldrazi, which may have boosted its numbers enough to crack the Top 8s.

Hello, Michael and Francois. The answer is RG Breach’s breakout performance, which is a poor matchup for Jeskai (roughly 40-60). Also. Bant Eldrazi solidifying its position pushes the deck further down.

Indeed, Jeskai has even to favored matchups against Jund and, as Michael notes, decks like Affinity, Infect or Suicide Zoo. Players even packed RiP and more Angers for Dredge and did well. Sadly, 11-4 is not good enough to Top8 a GP.

As long as Modern is a diverse format, Jeskai will have a hard time keeping up with the metagame. It can surely be Tier 1 but the Bogles, Ad Nauseams, Valakuts and Trons of the format will keep it at bay.

Breach isn’t great against infect either, but it preys on the midrange decks almost as well as tron while being able to also beat tron. Plus it gets bonus points for being able to have turn 3 wins every once in a while. Those bonus points give it game against the hyper aggressive strategies.

It’s not about Infect by itself; it’s about the sheer volume of linear decks. Tron struggles against Burn, Affinity, Dredge, Infect, Zooicide, in addition to the obviously poor Infect matchup. Being good against 10% of the field (Jund) doesn’t mean much when you’re a huge dog to 75% of the field.

I would also actually like to know, especially if you also remember how prevalent and dominating it was during a large portion of the WMCQ’s. The fall off is kinda strange…

On a side note, I can understand the hesitancy with R/G breach, but having three of them make top 16 and also seeing no tron in the top 16 says something. Maybe it has something to do with the prevalence rates of both Jund and Infect? On the one end you would expect Tron to be present with Jund being such a large portion of the meta. On the other end, is there a value that Infect has to exceed in prevalence that really halters Tron in events of this size? I can’t imagine that R/G breach has a better match up against Infect, but there had to be some niche the deck was fulfilling for each event?