I’m not an innovator. I don’t create new archetypes. I’m not terribly good at identifying new tech. I’ve built two “innovative” decks recently. One was a blue-green control deck that ramped into Sphinx of Jwar Isle and used Djinn of Wishes to properly abuse the “look at the top card of your library” ability. And the other was a red-blue-green beast that ramped, dropped Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle then used Rite of Replication targetting a Mountain with Wind Zendikon to power out at least 15 instant speed damage. Oh, it also ran Rampaging Baloth for landfall love – 6 or more 4/4 beasts on turn 6? Yeah, why not?

So yeah, that’s my innovation history. Funny but not good.

I think my card evaluation skills are OK and have been getting better. I championed Sphinx of Jwar Isle when it was first legal, and even got my playset for a total of £1.20 – four rares for 30p each? Sweet. Few people would listen to me – it loses to Baneslayer Angel, they said. I mean sure, it’s relevant that it doesn’t have first strike but it’s also relevant that the Sphinx has shroud. It can’t killed with Doom Blade or double Lightning Bolt, it can’t commit an Act of Treason. So anyway, the Sphinx started seeing more and more play as a control finisher. Who knew? I also said that Bloodgift Demon was a bad call in an aggro metagame. Chosing between taking 1 damage or giving your opponent an extra card isn’t a good decision to give yourself when you’re expecting to face Stromkirk Noble, Insectile Aberration or Geist of Saint Traft most matches. I think I was actually told I was an idiot for that one, but I might be misremembering.

So where am I going with this?

I’m never going to set the world on fire – or indeed overrun it – as I can’t look at a pile of cards and make a decent deck out of them. I can, given time and opportunity for testing, take an existing deck and make good decisions about what cards to run in it that aren’t based on the hive mind. I’m never going to be more than a dirty netdecker. So, on with netdecking, I say!

Esper Control has seen a lot of love recently, but it’s a right pain in the arse to play, moreso that U/W or U/B Control decks of past Standard formats. I’ve not been putting up the results with this deck that I’d like to, so I’m going to take the deck apart and rebuild it from the ground up, using a combination of my own card evaluation and that of other players as I do so. My aim in doing so is to have a blue-white-black control deck that beats a metagame full of aggressive decks to the best of my play ability. This could be considered a thought experiment and literary review of Esper Control in the Scars-M12-Innistrad metagame.

The Plymouth Metagame?
Plymouth is rammed full of agressive beat down decks of all flavours. There are UW Delver, UR Delver, GW Thrun, RUG Delver Control, RDW and a smattering of Tempered Steel. The most prevalent card is probably Delver of Secrets, a one-drop that becomes a zero-drop. There’s a goodly dose of Hexproof creatures like the inoffensive Invisible Stalker and dastardly Thrun, the Last Troll and between Midnight Haunting and Moorland Haunt tokens are popular too.

What this means is that the value of spot removal is limited. If your opponent wants to beat down with dudes that you cannot target and with other dudes that are not cards, spending a card and two mana to kill one is either impossible to feels like extremely bad value.

So sweepers seem good at the moment as do edict effects. Generally, cards like Slagstorm, Day of Judgment, Black Sun’s Zenith and Ratchet Bomb can be played for value at the moment. Interestly, Ratchet Bomb doesn’t even look like it’s being sideboarded at the moment, despite the blow-out it offers a lot of opposing decks the opportunity to walk into – including mine, with its White Sun’s Zenith win condition.

So with this is mind, let’s examine Esper, from the ground up.

Removal Suite
The Esper colours offer the sexiest removal cards in Standard that the moment. Possibly the least compelling colour for removal of the three is blue. Realistic options are Vapor Snag and possibly Disperse. Sensory Deprivation has been tabled by Michael Braverman as a one-of in the sideboard. I think I’d rather run a straight up removal spell over it. It’s an answer for Delver of Secrets, certainly, but so are Doom Blade, Go for the Throat and Dismember. To be fair, I haven’t seen any lists mention Disperse except one of my own as I was preparing to return to playing Magic earlier this month, and even I cut it for the 27th land. However, Into the Roil saw play, but the lack of the cantrip option does sting. I think perhaps that in such a creature heavy metagame Vapor Snag is just better.

White’s removal is Oblivion Ring and Day of Judgment. Someone played a Rebuke against me recently – I think it was in a Bant deck – and I had to read it. I struck me that Condemn is looking expensive these days. I’m not a fan of conditional removal. I’ve been trained in software development so being agile is a part of my conditioning and cards like Rebuke are neither agile enough to be truly useful nor cheap enough to be forgiven. Oblivion Ring gets rid of almost everything you’d want it to. Millions of words have been written about the utility (agility?) of Oblivion Ring so I probably don’t need to say any more. Day of Judgment is simply too good in a control deck not to run in as many multiples as we can squeeze in. In a world where every decks attacks with multiple creatures – and a lot of those creatures have hexproof – Day of Judgment is king. And Ratchet Bomb is an Archduke.

Black. Doom Blade. I’ve seen two decks running black recently – mine and a Tezzeret infect deck with millions of artifact creatures. It’ll be the release of Dark Ascension before Doom Blade loses value in a control decks. For Blades 5 and 6 the Go for the Throat is a option, but I’m not convinced that three (plus one in the ‘board) isn’t enough anyway. The other options are Wring Flesh and Geth’s Verdict. I like the Verdict because it kills Thrun, the Last Troll as well as the other hexproof… things aggro likes to mess about with. Wring Flesh is there to answer the sames cards as Sensory Deprivation, for the most part, and as an instant arguably does it better.

As I’ve said before, in a world of wall to wall 1-drops I don’t hate Ratchet Bomb.

Counter Suite
There are, of course, the usual countermagic suspects: Mana Leak, Negate, Dissipate and Flash Freeze. Dissipate outclasses Cancel and Stoic Rebuttal for us by some considerable margin. There are too many blue-white aggro decks to run Flash Freeze in the main, but it deserves a solid place in any control sideboard at the moment. Mana Leak is a funny one. When it’s good it’s fantastic, but there are too many times when it is simply played around at the moment. LSV has noted that it opponents have a tendency to play as if you have it even if you don’t – so I might as well not, I guess.

I’ve already mentioned Mental Misstep as a sideboardable answer to all the 1cmc critters running around Standard at the moment. I like this, for all the reasons that Misstep is good, and in fact I like it so much I’m tempted to maindeck it.

Card Advantage Suite
I know it’s instrumental to blue-based control’s success, but taken individually I not too impressed by the card advantage options open in Standard at the moment. I mean they’re OK but I’d rather have the consistency of Jace’s Ingenuity over the scalability of Blue Sun’s Zenith. It’s only that Think Twice and Forbidden Alchemy are instants that I’m running them over Divination and Ponder.

Defensive Suite
Timely Reinforcements. Snapcaster Mage. Awesome. Next.

Threat Suite
I alluded to this at the outset but Grave Titan is bonkers and I don’t know why I didn’t realise it before, even after winning a blow out game when it resolved. That bad boy doesn’t even need to stay on the table to have an impact on the game.

A resolved Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is game over immediately, which is a shame as I’d quite like to be allowed to attack with an army of 4/4 cats into a 4/4 Primeval Titan.

Talking of which, White Sun’s Zenith is just too, too good not to have a place in this deck.

The other options for finishers are Sun Titan and Consecrated Sphinx. What are the most exciting permanents I could be bringing back from the graveyard? A used Ghost Quarter? A used Snapcaster Mage? A milled Island? None of that excites me. In the previous Standard with Wall of Omens, Spreading Seas, Jace Beleren and Ratchet Bombs Sun Titan was the shiz, but at the moment it’s a bit blah. Consecrated Sphinx is unarguably a blow-out if the other team doesn’t have spot removal, but a single end-of-turn or upkeep Vapor Snag and you’re time walking all the way back a turn.

Mana Base

Mana bases at the moment at rather unexciting. The Isolated Chapel cycle of dual lands has made archetypes like Esper viable. The non-basic land options are Glacial Fortress, Drowned Catacomb, Seachrome Coast, Darkslick Shores and Isolated Chapel. Another interesting choice could be Pristine Talisman – in multiples in can nullify aggro’s game plan, which is tempting.

Sideboarding
With a maindeck that I am resolutely aiming to tweak for an aggro metagame I need some decent answers for control as well as some specialised answer for specific aggro matchups.

The cards that seem good sideboard options are:

Karn and the Reins are long-game answers for control matchups, and in the same games Negate comes in for Mana Leak. Flashfreeze comes in for Mana Leak against red and/or green decks. Mental Misstep comes in against Delver decks.

So…
So, with those options what would you play?