Deck is out of date. With the release of Ravnica Allegiance and extensive playtesting + Pro Tour/personal GP results the deck has since been reworked for the current meta, and is performing exceedingly well. A new deck page would need to be made to reflect new changes and updates. Leaving current deck up as a reference for anyone, and also provides a glimpse on possible mistakes or older evaluations on card choices or quantities. -Blue
Hello internet!!!
Just brewing up a new list for the upcoming Guilds of Ravnica standard and am looking to respect the established pillars of previous standard. Played Esper control quite a lot during previous standard in PPTQs, RPTQs, and Grand Prix events and always liked its ability to handle 1 for 1 threats and have more inevitability late game vs most of the field. The first step was to re-fit a generic Teferi, Hero of Dominaria control list. For this iteration we're looking to take a stock list but simply adjust some #s and see where that takes us.
Deck Game plan and Tips:
Now we're not playing UW control here, this is a dedicated UB shell splashing for Teferi, Hero of Dominaria and a little greed splash for SB Lyra Dawnbringer. Don't fret the cost too much, there's enough fixing with the Evolving Wilds, duals, and card draw to facilitate it.
Our primary game plan should be to 1-for-1 most of the opponents major threats and run them out of resources long before we run out ourselves. In the event of go wide token decks we're less favored and will need to lean more on Ritual of Soot and Golden Demise because UB isn't know for having the best sweepers. Just keep your local or expected meta in mind and up some #s of sweepers or answers accordingly.
Once the board is clean and we can deploy our win-cons, that's where Teferi, Hero of Dominaria and Chromium, the Mutable come in. Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is a card draw engine, removal spell, and win-con via the infamous emblem + Teferi mill loop. For moments when we're feeling more merciful we can clean the board and run out Chromium, the Mutable to put up an evasive clock and a damn near un-killable threat. One word of caution though, at most you'll be running 1-2 chromium and there's not too many ways to recur them in the format so play them wisely and set up game plans where the likelihood of them dying is slim to none. So remember that we're in this for the long haul and worst case scenario we may just have to watch our opponent's slowly mill out while they are left with a board of 0 permanents while we loop Teferi's -3. Have Fun!
CARD UPDATES/UPGRADES:
Torrential Gearhulk somewhat swaps roles with Mission Briefing.
So this is a somewhat easy swap. Both cards do the same thing at an effect level but have different advantages and disadvantages. Torrential Gearhulk is both a win-con and recursive tool, but at the end of the format this slowed down for the most part because Gearhulk would usually eat a removal spell and just leave the spell behind. Mission Briefing is 4 mana less, leaves no body behind, adds cards to the graveyard, and helps dig for answers. This cost reduction is rather funny because the best cards to flashback are Vraska's Contempt or Settle the Wreckage which end up costing nearly the same as the Gearhulk, costing or . So fully knowing that losing the 5/6 ambush viper is going to be a big hit to the deck we still need to test the viability of Mission Briefing before making any hasty decisions.
initial inspection of Mission Briefing shows that it is a tad bit slow, does nothing on it's own, is color intensive, not helping further a board state can be annoying at times, and an opponent exiling you're graveyard can drastically weaken the effect. Even with that being said, it is the one and only kind of effect like this in standard ATM and is going to be doing dirty "flashback" value for it's run through standard. It also has the chance to crash and burn in a train of it's own hype. It could go either way and for one would love to see how it ends.
PSA: I'm sure everyone is aware that Torrential Gearhulk and Snapcaster Mage are superior to Mission Briefing in most settings due to actually having a body. To be rudely blunt, that argument accomplishes nothing when evaluating Mission Briefing's usefulness in standard. Snapcaster Mage is a busted modern all-star and Torrential Gearhulk has moved on to possibly fit in modern control shells. These cards do not exist in the same standard environment and are not competing for a slot in standard lists, so therefore it's nice to know the difference between them but not required to decide which is better in this standard environment.
4x Sinister Sabotage vs 4x Disallow
Not much to say here. Standard 3 mana hard counters are the norm in standard now and we need to accept that. the new counterspell lacks the Stifle effects but adds a scry-ish effect like Dissolve from Theros standard.
The Scarab God vs Chromium, the Mutable
So this one isn't really close. Both finishers end the game in deferent ways but both can pull their weight and end a game quickly after stabilizing. In a perfect world I would always play The Scarab God due to it's efficiency, base stats, and recursion but we need to work with what we have. Now Chromium is interesting, this beast has built in protection, can use dead cards (ex: discarding removal in control mirrors), has flash, has evasion, and in the hands of an experienced player he's neigh-impossible to kill.
4x Glimmer of Genius / Hieroglyphic Illumination vs 4x Chemister's Insight
Another easy swap, not much to say here. We lose scry and cycling in place of jump-start, essentially having us able to play 8 copies of Chemister's Insight along with added value binning to Search for Azcanta
and allowing us an outlet for dead cards in the late game.
Settle the Wreckage vs Ritual of Soot
To start, Settle the Wreckage is a very powerful card with a format warping effect on combat when the opponent is holding up the mana for it. This has meant that experienced players have needed to learn to play around it and essentially bait the control player into using it prematurely or where it's less damaging to the attacker. That being said, I'd stil love to simply jam 3x Settle the Wreckage and 2x Cleansing Nova but seeing that we don't have Hallowed Fountain yet I don't want to push our luck, in addition I don't feel that we actually need these cards to make a cohesive control shell.
In it's place we have the new guy Ritual of Soot. This is a conditional sweeper for that can clean up board states where either tokens or small aggressive creatures are running us over. It's also a source of the beautiful 3,4,5,etc. for 1 that control decks love. It's weak vs larger game 4cmc or higher but we have plenty of counter magic or removal to sweep the fodder and hunt the bigger game as it comes. So it's not perfect and it may be a deciding factor to not play UBx control in place of a UW control shell, but we'll have to test it when the format drops to know for sure.
The remaining card choices are meta dependent and will fluctuate as the format matures, but I feel that this is a good start.
UPDATING THE MANABASE:
Previous Esper control decks would normally lean on Teferi, Hero of Dominaria as the only white card plus some generic sideboard cards. However, now with the addition of Watery Grave and Hallowed Fountain coming in a few months I feel that we can try to be a bit more greedy here. So now we're looking to cast both Vraska's Contempt, Sinister Sabotage, and Lyra Dawnbringer from the SB in the same deck. To do this we need to respect the rules behind checklands.
We are playing full playsets of the following checklands:
To facilitate these we are playing:
This way we can play a land with a type and use that to power out checklands and have them enter untapped. Worst case scenario we play a tap land once or twice but I feel that power level of the white cards are enough to warrant a bit of a risk. Through brief testing the mana seemed very clean roughly 8/10 games, but there's always still room to improve.
Sideboard:
Tentative, all cards are on a test and trial basis. Will update after additional play testing.
Aggro/Token Strategies: Lyra Dawnbringer, Cast Down, Ritual of Soot
Control Mirrors: Thought Erasure, Unmoored Ego, Negate, Mission Briefing
Midrange: Varies greatly depending on each matchup, will require testing.
FAQ Section:
Q: So why not just play a base control deck possibly splashing for another color?
A: So I've never been a fan of oblivion ring removal effects in my control decks. The current standard format uses Seal Away and Ixalan's Binding as white removal effects. These are ok but the popularity of Thrashing Brontodon and the upcoming Knight of Autumn make playing these effects awkward. In addition if we move in to red the new Justice Strike is an excellent card but I'm not high on the other damage based spells acting as removal, like Lightning Strike or Shivan Fire. All around the removal effects in Black are just More efficient. We're just missing out on the catch all sweepers, but we can live without those for now if we play our cards right.
Q: Why are we playing Evolving Wilds instead of a tap land like Meandering River or a Dimir Guildgate?
A: As described above with upgrading the mana base, we need more lands with subtypes and Evolving Wilds finds us the perfect basic (usually an Island). After that pretty much all of the dual lands will enter untapped.
Q: How do you beat Carnage Tyrant, Vine Mare, or Nullhide Ferox?
A: Good old counter magic (not applicable to Carny T), Unmoored Ego, Thought Erasure, The Eldest Reborn, and a Detection Tower in the main and SB. In all honesty I'm still terrified of those cards though...
Conclusion:
So please feel free to comment with any card choices, ideas, critiques, or to simply say hello! Just remember though, competition breeds excellence!!!
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