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SOLAR FLARE

Standard* Arena Competitive Control Reanimator WUB (Esper)

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The Comprehensive Guide to Solar Flare in Theros Beyond Death Standard

In this guide, I'm gonna go really in-depth on the deck and explain why I believe it to be a serious contender as one of the best decks in standard, as well as why I play the cards I play, and how to use them properly so as to maximize the deck's efficiency and potential.

First, Let's Answer the Big Question: Why Should You Play Solar Flare?

The simple answer? The cards are just really good. In Esper colors, you have a response/way to stop pretty much everything, and enough reliable card draw to get to it when you need it. Additionally, Solar Flare adds a super unexpected twist to your traditional Esper Control deck in its reanimation. To play this deck well, you have to understand that it's ok for an opponent to Planar Cleansing your Dream Trawler - most of the time you're just going to reanimate it with Bond of Revival a couple of turns later. Speaking of Dream Trawler, this card is insane. The amount of times that I have cast a turn 6 Trawler and my opponent has immediately scooped is beyond me. I'll get into it a little more later, but just understand that this card alone is a good enough reason to be playing control in general.

What Do The Cards Do (and Why do I Run Them)?

Dovin's Veto is an easy way to stop Nissa, Who Shakes the World , Narset, Parter of Veils , Fires of Invention , Cavalcade of Calamity , Etc. for only 2 mana. However, it doesn't stop creatures, which is definitely a problem against aggro.
Tyrant's Scorn kills Anax, Hardened in the Forge as soon as it comes into play. It also deals with other threats like Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath (if only temporarily), and can bounce a Dream Trawler back to your hand in response to an enemy board wipe.
Thassa's Intervention is a counterspell that becomes a draw spell later in the game. The card is definitely weak against ramp and does basically nothing against Fires of Invention , but if your opponent is playing ramp or fires, you should be using it to find & draw answers rather than failing to counter spells.
Absorb is the best counterspell in standard if you can cast it. Thanks to our wicked expensive mana base, we usually can! Regardless, countering spells is a key piece of any control deck's game plan, and Absorb , in my opinion, is the best way to do it.
Thirst for Meaning is actually more beneficial to the deck than one might think. This card has some pretty cool synergy with our Dream Trawler / Bond of Revival strategy, letting us discard reanimation targets early or draw 3 to pump our Trawler later in the game.
Chemister's Insight is a good way to spend your mana if an opponent doesn't cast anything worth countering, as well as a good card to discard to Thirst for Meaning , since you can jump-start it anyways. Also, don't forget that it can close out a game earlier when combined with Dream Trawler .
Thought Erasure is usually your best bet on turn two against any deck that runs on a specific card ( Fires of Invention , Wilderness Reclamation , etc.) as well as a good way to make sure you're drawing things you need early in the game. Also, making your opponent discard things with good cast/ETB triggers is a good way to deal with anti-control cards.
Shatter the Sky is the best wipe to use against aggro while remaining ready for midrange threats. Ritual of Soot avoids giving your opponents cards, but runs a pretty big risk of not killing everything you need to kill, so I choose to run Shatter the Sky maindeck and keep a copy of Ritual of Soot in the sideboard. I considered running Cry of the Carnarium to stop aggro decks really early, but it doesn't kill Anax, Hardened in the Forge and is generally awful in almost every other matchup, so I decided against it.
Bond of Revival is what makes Solar Flare the deck it is. Without Bond, the deck would just be Esper Control, and while I do believe Esper Control is definitely viable, I find Solar Flare to be much more resilient and much more surprising. Anyways, this is your secret win-con, ace-in-the-hole card that is meant to win games out of nowhere and frustrate opponents that just used their only board wipe to kill Dream Trawler . The haste it grants allows you to draw a card and gain life off of Dream Trawler the turn it comes into play, so often reanimating a Trawler is better than regularly casting it, especially when you do it on turn five.
Time Wipe Kills all your opponent's stuff and returns a creature (often your only creature) to your hand to be cast again. This is especially nice when the returned creature has adventure or a good ETB trigger (so basically every creature you have except Dream Trawler ). Returning Dream Trawler to your hand isn't necessarily a bad thing though, as sometimes it's better to have an empty board with a Trawler in hand than to have to deal with your opponent's things with a Trawler in play
Brazen Borrower is a wonderful stalling tool. Brazen Borrower is a great way to buy some time to draw the answers you need, delay aggro's game-plan, or kill a token. Brazen Borrower itself is made playable (IMO) by flash. Most of the time, the actual creature portion of this card is going to be cast when your opponent didn't play/have anything that needed a counterspell or removal on their turn. I like to think of it as a way to save mana- if the mana was going to go to waste anyway by being untapped right before your turn starts, casting Brazen Borrower is much better than nothing.
Murderous Rider takes care of threats like Nissa, Who Shakes the World , Kenrith, the Returned King , Teferi, Time Raveler , and so many others. The 2 life it takes is really only a problem against aggro, and targeted removal against aggro really isn't really worth it when you could be playing sweepers like Shatter the Sky or Time Wipe . However, straight up casting the rider as a creature is honestly not a bad play against aggro, as the lifelink and body it gives you is often good enough to gain you a little bit of life while killing or stalling enemy threats.
Dream Trawler is the deck's main win-con. Lifelink helps stabilize against aggro, Flying lets it get over most small chump-blockers, and the pseudo-hexproof lets it avoid almost all removal. It provides card advantage when it attacks, and can be pumped out of nowhere to end games by drawing cards. Also, turn 3 Thirst for Meaning , turn 4 Shatter the Sky , and turn 5 Bond of Revival targeting Dream Trawler is probably the best sequence you can have against mono-red.
Agent of Treachery isn't the best card to be playing against aggro or control, but stealing Wilderness Reclamation is just so nice. Also, it makes for a great reanimation target if you pitch it early and get it back on turn 5. However, I am seriously considering swapping it out for two copies of Gadwick, the Wizened , and if you did that with your list, I wouldn't blame you.
Teferi, Time Raveler beats counterspells & Simic/Izzet/Bant Flash decks, kills big tokens, bounces big threats, draws cards, and lets us play most of our deck on our opponent's turn, giving us plenty of time to counter/respond to whatever they do. On the other hand, if we're against control, Teferi lets us cast our Dream Trawler s and Bond of Revival s without any fear of being countered.
Narset, Parter of Veils does a lot more than I first gave it credit for. The repeated filtered card draw that it provides is super nice for finding the spells we need in a pinch, and while having to bottom a Dream Trawler isn't the most fun thing in the world, we'll still draw our other one (or some other win-con) later. The real reasoning behind this card's inclusion in the deck is its ability to prevent opponents from getting massive draws off of things like Hydroid Krasis or Gadwick, the Wizened , as well as stopping minor card advantage spells from doing anything good (no card advantage gained from Chemister's Insight , negative card advantage from Thirst for Meaning )
Banishing Light does a great job of taking out cards that just won't leave you alone ( Uro, Titan of Nature's Wrath , Arclight Phoenix , etc.), but it also works really well as plain non-biased removal. Your opponent has a Fires of Invention that needs dealing with? got it. Doom Foretold ? Witch's Oven ? Lucky Clover ? Nissa, Who Shakes the World ? Wilderness Reclamation ? The list goes on. If you've got a permanent problem, Banishing Light can take care of it. However, the card is vulnerable to a lot of stuff. if an opponent bounces it, they get their thing back. If an opponent destroys it, they get their thing back. It's a great card when it can stay on the battlefield, but if/when it doesn't, the removal it provides is only temporary. Side note: it can be discarded to Thirst for Meaning to save more cards.
Elspeth Conquers Death Does a lot of stuff really well. It permanently exiles most key cards of most decks (main exceptions being Witch's Oven and Cavalcade of Calamity ), makes it harder for your opponent to counter your stuff or do anything on your turn, and reanimates your Dream Trawler or Agent of Trechery after they've been killed or discarded. Overall, the value this card provides is pretty wicked, as a Reanimator/Control list, it would be foolish not to include it. The only reason I don't include more copies is that our 5-mana slot is already occupied by some pretty important cards ( Bond of Revival , Time Wipe , Labyrinth of Skophos Ability (I promise I'll explain that one later)).
I'm not going to explain why I have shock lands or basic lands. You'll notice that I only play lifegain lands that provide black mana, as I'll only be casting spells that cost life ( Murderous Rider ) when I have black mana. I play a scry land rather than a lifegain land in the U/W slot because the deck's best opening cards use black mana ( Thought Erasure , Tyrant's Scorn ), and if you're starting with a U/W land, you probably want to find a black source. That's just my reasoning on it though, feel free to do whatever you want with your mana.

Blast Zone is a good place to put your mana if you've got nowhere else to put it, and removal tied to a land is pretty nice later in the game when you care less about sacrificing it. When it comes to sacrificing lands, I prefer to run this over Cryptic Caves because the deck already has a lot of draw spells, and Cryptic Caves is honestly pretty bad.
Field of Ruin kills castles ( Castle Ardenvale , Castle Locthwain , Etc.), which is nice against decks that plan to throw a ton of mana into them and play super grindy games.
Okay, I know Labyrinth of Skophos might be considered a waste of a slot, but hear me out. Labyrinth does a great job of stopping/stalling single attacker threats like Gate Colossus until you find an answer to them, also, it's an effect on a land, so it can't be traditionally countered and doesn't cost you a card to play. You still don't really want it in your opening hand though, since colored mana is really important to the start of your game, hence why I only run one copy.
Castle Ardenvale usually enters untapped, is a source of white mana (it's not colorless) and is honestly really nice to have in longer games. The ability to create creatures will often neutralize enemy threats and sometimes trade with smaller attackers. Additionally, having the ability to be activated at instant speed makes it a great response to decks that try to get around Dream Trawler 's hexproof via Angrath's Rampage or Plaguecrafter .
Castle Locthwain is repeatable card draw on a land. That's a good effect to have even with the life loss drawback since usually you'll be gaining life back with cards like Absorb or Dream Trawler . The card is mainly good against control matchups where your life total is more of a resource in a war of card-advantage, and to that regard, Castle Locthwain is great.
Castle Vantress lets you avoid wasting mana before your turn begins while fixing your draws and not wasting cards. Generally a pretty great thing to have at almost any point in the game.

Sideboard (Subject to Change)

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Final Thoughts

I think that with a little more work, Solar Flare could definitely take its place as a tier 1 deck in standard, it just needs a little more time and someone to play it better than me. Let me know what you think, and please, if you have suggestions, give them to me. I'll post any updates I make to the list here, and will likely be playing this deck for as long as it takes to figure it all out. Thanks for your time, and feel free to try the deck out yourself, though I recommend you do it on Arena because damn if the deck isn't painfully pricy.

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Date added 4 years
Last updated 3 years
Legality

This deck is not Standard legal.
Rarity (main - side)

3 - 0 Mythic Rares

36 - 3 Rares

13 - 10 Uncommons

3 - 2 Commons
Cards 60
Avg. CMC 3.39
Tokens Human 1/1 W
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