Jeskai Ephemerate Sideboard Guide

Introduction

Jeskai Ephemerate is a white-blue-red control deck that counters and kills only the spells that matter, then pulls ahead on cards by blinking Mulldrifter, Augur of Bolas, and Archaeomancer with Ephemerate until a handful of small fliers and Murmuring Mystic's Bird tokens finish the job. It sits at 2.2% of the field, a modest presence in a metagame dominated by faster decks, and it rewards players who like long games decided by card flow rather than by the first few attacks.

Recent results back the deck up. ChaoticMTG took 3rd with it at the August 30 Pauper Challenge and 7th at the September 28 edition, Tictom made the top four of a 43-player event on September 27 and Kai De Gast finished 2nd at Lega Genova the next day, and copies posted 5-0 League runs on September 22 and 29.

The deck beats creature decks that fight on the board, where its removal and blockers line up well against small attackers, and most of the fair midrange and control decks that try to trade with it one for one, since so many of its trades are backed by an extra card or a spell it gets back. It is favored against Monster Tron, Elves, Jund Wildfire, Dimir Faeries, Esper Affinity, Golgari Gardens, and White Aggro, and slightly favored against Mono Red Madness, Blue Terror, Dimir Terror, and Familiars.

It struggles against combo decks that ignore the board, because its kill is slow and a few counterspells are the only thing standing between the opponent and their win. It is slightly unfavored against Spy Combo and Grixis Affinity, and unfavored against Dimir Control, Black Sacrifice, Gruul Ramp, Madness Burn, and Bogles.

General Strategy

Every card in this deck is meant to be worth more than the card the opponent spent to deal with it. The early turns go to land drops and cheap selection: Preordain smooths the draws, Augur of Bolas digs for interaction, and Counterspell and Skred are held for the spells and creatures that actually threaten you, not for the first thing the opponent plays. Once the mana is there, Mulldrifter, Archaeomancer, and Murmuring Mystic come down and Ephemerate starts blinking them, so every turn banks extra cards while the opponent runs out of things to do. The priority that decides most games is keeping the creatures that draw cards alive and re-triggering: treat each one as a source of cards first and a body second, and spend life total freely to protect that flow.

The engine is Ephemerate aimed at a creature with an enters-the-battlefield trigger. One cast blinks the creature twice: once when the spell resolves, and once more when its rebound lets you recast it for free at your next upkeep. Each blink re-triggers the creature, so Mulldrifter draws two more, Augur of Bolas digs three deeper, and Archaeomancer returns another instant or sorcery. The copy cast from hand is exiled by rebound, but the rebound copy is put into the graveyard as it resolves, which means an Archaeomancer blinked by the rebound copy can hand that same Ephemerate straight back to you. From there the loop repeats every turn for a single white mana.

A typical game has three phases. The setup phase is lands and selection: Preordain, Augur of Bolas, and Lórien Revealed cycled for the land you are missing, with Counterspell mana open whenever possible. The payoff phase starts when , , and hit the table and begins recycling their triggers; each instant and sorcery you cast along the way adds a flying Bird from . The close is combat in the air: a growing squad of Birds plus attacks over several turns while your answers keep the ground clear, and the opponent never gets to a point where their cards outnumber yours.

The Cards

Ephemerate

The namesake and the reason the deck's creatures are worth more than their bodies. For one white mana it blinks a creature you control, re-triggering its enters-the-battlefield ability, and rebound gives you a free second cast at your next upkeep, so one card produces two triggers. Its other job is protection: cast in response to a removal spell, it makes the target leave and come back as a new object, so the removal has nothing to hit. Never point it at a Bird token, since a token that leaves the battlefield ceases to exist and does not come back.

Archaeomancer

The card that turns the engine into a loop. Its trigger returns an instant or sorcery from your graveyard, and because the rebound cast of Ephemerate ends up in the graveyard, blinking Archaeomancer with that copy hands the blink spell back to you. Outside the loop it is a 1/2 that rebuys whichever answer the game demands, most often Counterspell or Skred, or a Lórien Revealed for the late game. Its value depends on instants and sorceries sitting in your graveyard, so an opponent who exiles the graveyard leaves it as a bare body.

Mulldrifter

The best two-for-one in the deck and one of its two finishers. Its printed cost is five mana for a 2/2 flier that draws two cards, and evoking it for three gives you the two cards without the body. The flier is what closes games alongside the Bird tokens, and it is also the best blink target: every Ephemerate on it is two more cards. Hardcast it when the board is stable and you want a clock, evoke it when you need cards now and have a blink ready to respond.

Role Assignment

Jeskai Ephemerate is an interactive, tempo-negative control deck with high inevitability: it spends the early turns behind on board, trades one for one with Counterspell, Dispel, Skred, and Ride's End, and expects to win any game that goes long because the Ephemerate loop out-draws almost anything. Every matchup is fought on some mix of four axes: whether the opponent lands real pressure before Skred grows and Counterspell mana is online, whether their removal ever trades profitably into creatures that already drew their cards and can be blinked in response, how much of their plan can be forced through a small number of counterspells, and whether they can out-value or break the blink loop before the fliers finish.

Vs. Aggro. Against aggro you are the control, without exception. The matchup is decided on the speed axis: their creatures arrive before your removal is worth much, so the job is to survive the first attacks, not to race them. The play that defines the role is holding two mana on their turn and exiling the best attacker with Ride's End after it taps, while Augur of Bolas or Murmuring Mystic blocks another attacker. Life total is a resource to spend; once Mulldrifter starts drawing cards the game is yours.

Vs. Midrange. Against midrange you are again the control, but the fight moves to the removal-quality axis. Their plan is to trade removal for your creatures and threats for your answers, and that exchange favors you because your creatures already paid for themselves on entry and Ephemerate in response makes their spot removal miss entirely. The defining play is passing with white mana up and blinking Mulldrifter in response to the removal spell, drawing two more cards while they lose a card for nothing.

Vs. Control. Against other control decks the role depends on who has more inevitability, and the Archaeomancer loop usually means it is you, so the default is still control: hold counters, force them to act first, and let the long game decide it. The counter fight is the axis that matters. The defining play is baiting with a spell you can afford to lose, an evoked or a , and then resolving with or ready for their answer. If their engine visibly outpaces yours, flip to the beatdown and lean on the fliers to end the game before the value gap closes.

Play Patterns

Evoke Mulldrifter and cast Ephemerate on it with both of its enters triggers still on the stack. Evoke puts the draw trigger and the sacrifice trigger on the stack together; responding with the blink returns Mulldrifter as a new object the sacrifice trigger can no longer find, so the 2/2 flier stays. The original draw trigger still resolves, the fresh trigger draws two more, and the rebound cast at your next upkeep draws another two: six cards and a flier for four mana across two turns, far more than either card gives alone and cheaper than a hardcast.
Hold Ephemerate to cast in response to removal aimed at a key creature, not on your own turn for value. The blink removes the target and returns it as a new object, so single-target removal loses its only target and does nothing; you keep the creature, collect another trigger, and still have the rebound cast coming. Cast proactively, the same card leaves your creatures exposed to the next removal spell. When the opponent's turn passes without a removal spell, their end step is the moment to spend it. With Augur of Bolas and Murmuring Mystic on the board and a Plains untapped, blink Augur of Bolas at their end step: the cast makes a Bird and Augur of Bolas digs again. The rebound cast at your upkeep adds a second Bird and a second dig.
Point the rebound copy of Ephemerate, not the copy cast from hand, at Archaeomancer when you want the spell back. The hand-cast copy is exiled by rebound as it resolves, so the Archaeomancer trigger it creates cannot fetch it. The rebound copy goes to the graveyard instead and is already there when the trigger resolves, so it returns to hand and the loop keeps running. Imagine Archaeomancer cast on the fourth land to return a Preordain. The next turn, cast Preordain again, then at the opponent's end step blink from hand: the only spell it can return is , because is on its way to exile. At your upkeep, recast it from exile on and the trigger returns itself. You end with both spells in hand and the same loop available two turns later.

Black Sacrifice

Carrion Feeder - emblematic card for this matchup — Read the Black Sacrifice primer →

Matchup - Unfavored

They are the faster deck, and we are unfavored. About three quarters of their nonland cards cost one mana and their creatures start attacking right away, while our snow duals enter tapped and our small fliers need many attacks to finish a game. That puts us in the control role: kill the payoffs that grow (Carrion Feeder, Mortician Beetle, Bloodthrone Vampire), wall the ground with Augur of Bolas and Murmuring Mystic, and let our extra cards outlast a deck whose 1/1s do little once the payoffs are gone. They have to finish us with those attackers and a closing Rite of Consumption before the wall and our removal take hold, and our fliers start attacking only once the payoffs are handled. The die roll matters more than usual: on the play, their one-drops and Bloodthrone Vampire are attacking before our tapped duals let us hold up Skred and Ephemerate together, while on our play Augur of Bolas lands before their first real attack.

Spend Skred on the payoffs, not on Nested Shambler, Infestation Sage or Nezumi Linkbreaker, which leave a token behind anyway. Every creature they cast has 1 toughness, so a single snow land makes Skred lethal, and the time to fire it is while their board is thin: once they have fodder, they sacrifice it in response and grow the target past the damage. Ride's End is for a payoff that has already outgrown Skred, such as a creature wearing Sadistic Glee. It costs two mana against a tapped attacker, exile can't be outgrown, and it leaves nothing for Supernatural Stamina or Unearth to bring back.

Augur of Bolas and Murmuring Mystic hold the ground, but count their fodder before blocking. Two sacrifices to Bloodthrone Vampire after blockers make it a 5/5 that kills Murmuring Mystic, and Supernatural Stamina lets any 1/1 kill a blocking Augur of Bolas and come back. Their own removal is thin: Shambling Ghast's death trigger picks off Bird tokens, and roughly a third of lists run each of Snuff Out and Tragic Slip. Hold Ephemerate for whichever of those targets Murmuring Mystic, since the blink makes it miss. Counterspell is a poor trade against a one-mana creature when they can cast two a turn, so save it for Rite of Consumption, Sadistic Glee or Accursed Marauder.

Key Threats

Carrion Feeder is their main attacker and a free sacrifice outlet, so it has to die before their fodder piles up. Leave it alive and any spot removal we point at their other creatures turns into a permanent counter on it, because they sacrifice the target to it in response. When the choice is between this and another payoff, kill this one first.

Mortician Beetle grows off every sacrifice by either player, which includes ours. Evoking Mulldrifter without Ephemerate puts a counter on their Beetle ourselves, so while it or a Sadistic Glee creature is out, evoke only when we can blink Mulldrifter in response to the evoke trigger and skip the sacrifice.

Rite of Consumption is the finisher: after a big attack they cash in a grown Carrion Feeder or pumped Bloodthrone Vampire, hitting us for its full power and gaining that much life. Don't tap out of Counterspell mana while they have a big creature. The sacrifice is paid on casting, so countering it leaves them a creature down with no drain and no lifegain. When Counterspell isn't available, Union of the Third Path cast in response can push our life total above the drain.

Accursed Marauder, in a little over half of main decks, is the one piece of their removal Ephemerate can't beat. The edict asks for a nontoken creature, so Bird tokens can't shield Murmuring Mystic, and running Mystic out as our only nontoken creature loses it. Keep an Augur of Bolas or Mulldrifter that has already done its job beside Mystic, and blink that creature in response to the edict to get one more enters trigger before sacrificing it. Both sacrifices grow Mortician Beetle, so countering the Marauder itself is the clean answer.

Sideboard Plan

In:

2 Breath Weapon

Out:

2 Counterspell

Breath Weapon comes in because every creature in their deck has 1 toughness and every token they make dies to 2 damage. One instant wipes their board unless they sacrifice fodder in response to lift a payoff above 2 toughness.

Two copies of Counterspell go out: holding up its mana on their turn trades two mana for one of their one-mana creatures, and they can cast two a turn. The other two stay because Rite of Consumption is a sorcery, which Dispel can't touch. Dispel stays at full count because it costs one mana and lines up with their one-mana instants: Village Rites, Supernatural Stamina and the Tragic Slip they bring in.

Sideboarding moves the matchup moderately toward us: we gain a one-card sweep against a deck built on 1-toughness creatures, while their bring-ins are mostly targeted removal that Ephemerate makes miss, Accursed Marauder's edict aside.

Post-board Strategy

Breath Weapon is the big change: cast it at instant speed after they commit to the board, and one card clears their fodder plus any payoff they can't grow in response. They can save payoffs by sacrificing: one sacrifice lifts Bloodthrone Vampire to 3/3, and two fed to Carrion Feeder make it and Mortician Beetle 3/3s. A Sadistic Glee creature that survives gets a counter for every creature that dies, ours included, so remove that one before sweeping. Augur of Bolas and Murmuring Mystic are our only creatures that survive the 2 damage, and they block the tokens their death triggers leave afterward, though a Shambling Ghast dying to the sweep can finish a damaged Augur with its -1/-1. Hold Mulldrifter and Archaeomancer at full cost until after the sweep, and Archaeomancer can then return the spent Breath Weapon for a second one.

Keep Ephemerate or Dispel up once Murmuring Mystic is on the battlefield, because their bring-ins are aimed at it. Nearly every list boards in Tragic Slip, which a free sacrifice turns into a kill on anything. Some add more Snuff Out, which hits any of our creatures since none are black. Either answer makes both miss. Extra copies of Accursed Marauder usually come in too, so the rule about keeping a second nontoken creature beside Mystic matters even more.

Save the two remaining Counterspell for Rite of Consumption and Mesmeric Fiend, which can take Breath Weapon, Ephemerate or a counter out of our hand. With a sacrifice outlet out they can sacrifice the Fiend while its enters trigger is on the stack, and the card never comes back. For the same reason, if it resolves, don't kill it with that trigger still on the stack. Rotten Reunion sometimes comes in as well and can exile the card Archaeomancer's trigger is targeting in response, so make the rebuy when they're tapped out if that card matters.