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Finished 34th at the #SCGMINN Regional Championship. While I wish I placed a little bit better I had an insane rally from 2-3 to 13-3-1. Shoutout to @fivewithflores for helping me with the list at the 13th hour. @fireshoes pic.twitter.com/3KYolOuLWr
— Roman Fusco, MPSE (@roman_fusco) May 5, 2025
Roman and I talked today and he was particularly happy with his choice (I mean who wouldn't be?) because the winner of the Regional Championship was also on Jeskai Shiko, albeit a different list.
Roman will undoubtedly go over a longer tournament report in his weekly article. From my side I just want to talk about the brainstorming and tuning process that we used to get here.
The Base: The Rogue Strategy
Initially I was encouraging Roman to play a Cori-Steel Cutter deck, especially the week I wrote Cori-Steel Learning Curve. At the time, I couldn't lose with Cutter. And to be fair, if everyone didn't know how good Cutter is, it would be the overwhelming best choice. But Roman thought kind of ahead. Rather than play a Cutter deck himself, he wanted to play a deck that was good against Cutter. Which meant either a Black-White Bounce deck with Temporary Lockdown... Or a deck like the one he ended up playing.
I think that Roman ended up beating the popular Cutter deck seven times and losing to it only once over the course of the tournament. He liked the power level of Jeskai much more than Orzhov (which itself gets overwhelmed by Jeskai or can end up just sitting there). Though both decks are obviously strong against Cutter.
Roman wanted to utilize the principles of The Rogue Strategy, which you can listen to, above. Even though the Regional Championships was an open deck list tournament, he could defy expectations, play somewhat strange cards, or bias his choices to get an edge.
My contributions were mostly in lowering the curve and helping to keep future opponents honest.
The initial list he sent me was just a bunch of clunkers. More Beza. More Three Steps Ahead. No Roiling Dragonstorm.
I was just imagining all the draws he could get where all his lands came in tapped and all his cards cost four or more. No bueno. With a mana base like this one there is no getting around the many conditionally awkward lands... But he could lower the curve and get action faster.
I actually advocated for four Dispelling Exhale and no Three Steps Ahead for this reason. I mean who can pay four for a Mana Leak? And also no Jeskai Revelation. I mean ew. Roman made the point that games against Cutter can go long because there is so much trading early on. That often means you can pay for Spell Pierce if they even have it. I want to put it out there that I wouldn't play Jeskai Revelation, personally.
To me it's Doppelgang. You have to think about cards like whether they're Doppelgang or not. I play a lot of decks that lose to Doppelgang. I play a lot of Mono-White Tokens and Black-White and even decks like this Jeskai. If the opponent has one thousand mana and casts Doppelgang. Yeah. They're going to get a lot of interesting permanents. And maniacs who have Doppelgang are never satisfied playing one Doppelgang.
So you have to ask yourself: Does my deck lose to Doppelgang? I tend to play decks that lose to Doppelgang but are well prepared for Emberheart Challenger. There are many ways to beat a Doppelgang opponent in three games.
I like Doppelgang Jeskai Revelation even less than I did before the tournament. Roman says it was great. But before actually playing the deck I thought you could discard it with Roiling Dragonstorm and then freebie it on turn five. You can't! If it's me I'd play a fourth Lightning Helix or something.
The secret of this deck is that because it has Three Steps Ahead and because Dispelling Exhale so often forces the opponent to pay four mana, you can actually beat a Doppelgang in Game 1 pretty decently. Therefore you don't have to be as big as a Doppelgang. You only have to be bigger than Mice or Cutters; and something like another Abrade, Temporary Lockdown, or Lightning Helix help with that much better. Also drawing hella Lightning Helixes in a Shiko deck is a pretty good way to sneakily race the opponent.
The main important flexible cards in the main deck are:
Spell Pierce is by far the most important of these. You want your opponent to know you have Spell Pierce. Often you will side out Spell Pierce. You want them thinking about Spell Pierce. If you catch them? Even better.
The Abrade creates texture with the sideboarded Brotherhood's End. You don't really want a main deck Brotherhood's End. But an Abrade isn't great, either. Like when would you ever want an Abrade rather than the fourth Lightning Helix? Exactly. A decent amount of the time!
Because this deck has so many Surveil lands, Marang River Regents, and Stock Ups you can find the Abrade for a pesky Urabrask's Forge. You can even re-cast it with Shiko, Paragon of the Way.
I am not the biggest fan of Rediscover the Way, but Roman explained to me "it's the fifth Stock Up" and I can't really disagree with that. You don't get much action from Chapter Three though.
Finally, Ride's End was just another effort to lower the main deck curve. It can easily be a Horned Loch-Whale for much the same utility.
I made a lot of my contributions to the sideboard. I actually wish I had remembered Disdainful Stroke is still in Standard (Standard being huge). Would have gotten that one in there!
Exorcise - I would have liked this to be a second Destroy Evil, because we added Brotherhood's End. I like the less powerful Destroy Evil because it has better interactions with Omniscience combo.
Urabrask's Forge - Probably my favorite addition to the sideboard. Roman was the first person I knew to play Jace, the Perfected Mind in 
Control. He used to play two to "get" the Domain people. Punish them for all their card drawing. Our Jaces have gone up and down, but their original function was to beat Domain, and to a lesser extent the mirror once that became a thing.
I'm glad I convinced Roman that Urabrask's Forge is actually the Jace you want in this deck. The problem with Jace is that if we're moving from 2 + 2 to 0 + 2 it becomes a lot harder to actually kill someone with Jace. But you know who almost no one can interact with once it's already on the battlefield? Urabrask's Forge. Enchantments? Get Lost that. Destroy Evil that. But artifacts? Punch me again next turn, sir.
Authority of the Consuls - Urabrask's Forge has somewhat become a victim of its own success. People stopped playing it as much because of Authority. This became Roman's most The Rogue Strategy combination. If the opponent had Authority maybe he just wouldn't side in Forge. The best is if the opponent has Authority against our deck, right? But what if we want to play Forge anyway? We can destroy Authority with Destroy Evil, Exorcise, Loran of the Third Path, or even Temporary Lockdown. Maybe Urabrask's Forge is still a trump!
Authority of the Consuls has a sneaky synergy with Brotherhood's End. I wanted Authority against Cutter decks as well as opposing Forges. But there comes a point where Cutter can still overwhelm you through an Authority of the Consuls. If your follow up is Temporary Lockdown, that's kind of good and kind of sucky because it removes the Authority. But what if it's Brotherhood's End? You can kill Cutters if you need to, and sweep little guys to essentially reset Authority's position of primacy on the battlefield. My biggest vote for this card is that Slick-Shot Showoff has jumped back up in Standard stock; and Authority of the Consuls prevents the opponent from sandbagging that card with Plot.
Riverchurn Monument - This card is also Jace, the Perfected Mind (but better, and crossed with Urabrask's Forge). Instead of a one-time fifteen spot; instead of being answerable with Get Lost, you have the artifact version that can do much more deck damage, come down earlier, and surprisingly get reset in a number of ways. This one was Roman's brain child and ended up his most memorable sideboard card.
Our Hero was just along for the ride this time.
I'm colossally proud of the padawan's comeback story from 2-3 all the way to 13-3-1. I don't know anyone who I'd rather see pick up a Pro Tour invite. But still, 34th is nothing to sneeze at.
