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?

I played FNM at the Giant’s Lair again this week, and again went 2-3 in matches. I can’t remember my exact list, but basically I tried to skew the build to beat an aggro meta, added a Timely Reinforcements and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite to the main and ran Karn Liberated in the sideboard. I added a 4th Doom Blade to the side along with a pair of Steel Sabotages and a Ghost Quarter. Enough decks were running powerful artifacts and Inkmoth Nexus that the Sabotages seemed like viable options and the extra GQ was to help deal with Kessig Wolfrun and Inkmoth Nexus decks. I think the build was still not skewed enough to beat aggro and still cares too much about control.

I don’t want to do a full tournament report – even less so that last week – and I can’t even remember which round each of the following matches were but I think it’s worth noting a few things that occurred to me during each match.

UR Delver, 0-2
Mental Misstep is a real card in Standard at the moment. Sideboard material perhaps, but there are enough 1cmc spells to make it a good card.

Mana Leak is horrible. It’s been said a lot recently but, actually, it’s true. Dissipate and even Negate are much sweeter.

It’s not OK to gloat in victory. I’ve had two gloating opponents ever since starting to play again during M10 – one was a young teenager who beat me in a triple-Worldwake draft and this opponent, who gloats everytime he beats me. I don’t know how he responds when other players lose to him, but apparently I should take it as a compliment. I don’t.

U/w Delver, Rune Chanter’s Pike, 2-1
First it was “fucking Delver.” Now it’s “fucking Rune Chanter’s Pike.” The way to win this matchup is to counter Geist of Saint Traft and to counter or remove the Pike. Invisible Stalker, without any equipment, is oh-so-very crap – just as I said it would be during Innistrad spoiler season.

In game three my opponent played a turn one Gitaxian Probe and saw Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite and sandbagged a counter for it. This meant I could land Gideon Jura, Karn Liberated and White Sun’s Zenith with almost assured impunity. A resolved Elesh Norn wrecks his board and stops him playing any creatures. If he doesn’t draw a Vapor Snag, and I never saw one, it’s simply good game. Bad beats. Who’d have thought that a turn one uncast 7cmc beatstick would win me a match?

Look at me gloating. How ironic.

G/W/r Wolfrun Ramp, 1-2
Thrun, the Last Troll is a bastard. Mind you, if I was the last human I’d be a bastard too.

End-of-turn White Sun’s Zenith for 6 (12 power on the board) into pre-combat main phase Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite (for 28 power on the board) has become one of my favourite plays.

B/u Tezzeret Infect, 0-2
One poison counter means Esper Control is dead. This was a black and artifact deck that seemed to play blue only for Tezzeret only. I was expecting and playing around counters, so it’s possible that my opponent decided not to run out his Mana Leaks into my three untapped mana, I guess, but the only blue card I saw was Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas.

So yeah, cards like Throne of Geth, Contagion Engine and little infected gits like Inkmoth Nexus and Plague Myr did for me. It was very hard not to keep accumulating poison counters, although I suspect it’s possibly a case of practice.

Oh, and I made a horrible mistake in this game. Post-combat, after we’d traded all our creatures, I thought that playing Timely Reinforcements was the order of the day. I paid three to discard a card. Genius.

RUG Delver, 2-1
Refer to my artical from last week. This is an aggro-control deck geared very much towards an aggro meta. Mine is a control deck accidentally balanced for aggro and control opponents. Apart from some crappy draws in game two my deck did like what it oughta. And apart from some stupid plays in the same game I did alright in this match.

I loved it when I used my fourth, third then second best spells to bait counterspells, only to watch them resolve – followed by watching my best spell resolve on the last turn of the match.

Conclusion
That’s all for now. Some cards are good, some suck, some are annoying. I’m so good at this “breaking news” crap.

Laters.

Answer: Turn one – Island, Delver of Secrets, go.

Or rather I hadn’t, until I went to Friday Night Magic at The Giant’s Lair in Plymouth. The breath of fresh air that having my first night out in almost four months, combined with meeting some fantastic new people and playing with a deck and cards I haven’t played with before all add up to me having had a brilliant night. Thank you to all concerned – the TO, the players and the venue staff.

So yes. A new deck. I’ve retired Tezzeret for now; not necessarily permanently because I think the deck might be quite well placed in my local metagame, but I’d been working on the deck for months and it was definitely time to mix things up a bit. So instead I rocked an Esper control deck. Here’s the list.

Lands (27) 4 Glacial Fortress 3 Seachrome Coast 4 Drowned Catacomb 2 Darkslick Shores 3 Isolated Chapel 2 Swamp 3 Island 3 Plains 3 Ghost Quarter Creatures (3) 3 Snapcaster Mage Spells (31) 2 Gideon Jura 1 Karn Liberated 4 Think Twice 3 Forbidden Alchemy 3 Doom Blade 2 Oblivion Ring 4 Day of Judgment 2 Timely Reinforcements 4 Mana Leak 3 Dissipate 2 Blue Sun’s Zenith 1 White Sun’s Zenith Sideboard (15) 1 Timely Reinforcements 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite 2 Grave Titan 1 Flashfreeze 2 Divine Offering 1 Negate 2 Ratchet Bomb 2 Celestial Purge 1 Volition Reins 1 White Sun’s Zenith 1 Nihil Spellbomb

I was all set to take down the metagame with a 4-0 storm of raging cardboard doom. That’s not quite what happened. I went 2-3, handing out devastating death to Bant… something and RUG Delver. My arse was handed to me by Red Deck Wins and I also lost to Wolfrun Ramp and Tempered Steel.

I don’t want to do straight up tournament report, because I think those things are of limited value for FNM events. However, I think it makes sense to talk about a few specifics in the matchups. So obviously I start with the general run of the deck: 2-3 in matches, and 6-6 in games (0-2, 2-0, 1-2, 2-0, 1-2). The games I won I felt that the deck did what a control deck should do. Or rather, the games I lost I made horrible mulligan decisions, keeping hands with the wrong mana or too few lands or keeping an [ca/]Isolated Chapel[/card] and a [card]Glacial Fortress[card].

Round 1, RDW vs David McGlinchey
It was a common theme at this event that it felt like I had the cards in my 75 to win but didn’t see them. And even worse, the games when I did see the cards that could save me, I lost anyway. The first problem is due to making shocking mulligan decisions. The second problem was due to arsing up my plays. Against Dave I make some awful decisions and missed a critical activation on Gideon Jura – where I didn’t use its +2 ability in the face of about 5 damage Dave’s side of the board.

Of the cards I had I would have like to see more Timely Reinforcements – another recurring theme. That card is insane in this deck, possibly even the best card. Against aggressive decks like RDW getting an extra 6 life a couple of time during the game as well as getting a blocker for each attacker represents at least another couple of turns to stay alive – long enough to dig maybe another 6 to 12 cards and find a win condition.

Round 2, Bant, vs Ron Leacy
I got the feeling that Ron’s deck never really got going. That said, in game one my life total went down to 1 but even then I’d only really been pecked at by Skinshifters and pumped Birds of Paradise. Again, Timely Reinforcements lived up to its name and my life total never again dropped below 7.

Post-board Grave Titan was a beating – or rather the zombies he left behind after he was Oblivion Ringed before even recovering from summoning sickness. White Sun’s Zenith was bonkers. Actually, simply being able to keep mana open for counters and removal and play threats and draw spells (Blue Sun’s Zenith, Think Twice, Forbidden Alchemy) at end of turn is insane.

I’d like to keep the Titans and I think they’d work well in the main deck actually, but I think the cats are just a better threat and it seems better playing a Zenith for 5 cats into an empty board followed by tapping out for Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite.

Round 3, Wolfrun Ramp vs Marcus
I didn’t get his surname – or at least didn’t make a note of it. Wolfrun did what Wolfrun does and I only saw a couple of Ghost Quarters. There was a horrible choice between Quartering a Kessig Wolfrun or an Inkmoth Nexus. It’s like being ask how I’d like to die. Not pleasant. Again, I wanted more Timely Reinforcements. I should really think about packing a full playset in the main.

Round 4, RUG Delver vs Marc Silk Morris
We spent about 45,000 turns dancing around each other counterspells. Eventually the draw spells started flying, followed by the threats. Game two was a classic. I draw a grip of two Snapcaster Mage and got a third in my first draw step. I decided to play beat down and flashed them in end of turn and swung for 2 on turn three and for 6 turn five. Later on I tried to bait a counter with a Blue Sun’s Zenith for 6 and was allowed to draw the cards. By that point it was game over as it’s even for me not to sculpt a winning hand out of 14 cards.

Round 5, Tempered Steel vs George Williams
This matchup felt very much like I had the cards to win, and in fact I did win game 1. I think this suggests in some part that his sideboard was better than mine, but considering it was designed by LSV to take to Worlds 2011 I’m not surprised. This was another bad mulligan match. Game 2 I went to 6 with a grip that seemed OK if somewhat land-light. Game three my opening 7 has all my best cards but again 2 lands. Both games I struggled for mana, my draw spells didn’t dig me into removal and I got overrun but an army of 1/1s (3/3s game 3). It wasn’t pretty.

Conclusion
It’s a story as old as time: I need to make better mulligan decisions. I find it really difficult to do that though. I can judge a hand fairly accurately, I think, but I hate throwing my grip back and drawing a smaller one, especially if I’m going to be drawing 5. I’ve convinced myself that that any hand of 6 cards is better than any hand of 5 – and I genuinely believe that to be the case and the cold heat of battle it’s hard to let go of that.

I’m bad a sideboarding. I have an awesome array of big cards to choose from but I don’t trust myself to pilot my deck into the late game so I’m not bringing them in. For a control player not to trust they can see the late game, that seems a tad lame.

I want to rebuild the sideboard. I didn’t feel like I had enough answers for aggressive decks. I think I can afford to run fewer answers for control as that matchup seems pretty sweet. Without wishing to give away what I’ll be running this upcoming Friday, I think I need more spot removal. I’d like Day of Judgment 5 and 6 and Ratchet Bombs are too slow for that. Grave Titan was oddly cute when I played him but just feels too clunky at 4BB and sorcery speed. I feel I have better options for kill conditions.

Main deck, I loved Timely Reinforcements and wanted it in every game I played. I’d also like to swap around my threats.

So, to summarise, I need to man up, wise up, make better decisions and run better cards. Easy.