Win con Plan A: Typical Delver Tempo strats. Place early threat and protect.
Plan B: Manlands Celestial Colonnade and Creeping Tar Pit
Why Esper? I'm newish to Modern, love controlling decks and really like the idea of Delver (even though he's fallen out of favor with many). I've tried to build the deck in several archetypes (Jeskai, Grixis, Izzet), but I'm not sure of them. Izzet doesn't have enough to play the long game. Grixis does due to its delve creatures, but we can play Esper and still keep those Delve creatures so nothing is really lost there. Jeskai felt like a much weaker burn.
That led me to the Esper build. Posting my reasoning and deck breakdown here and will follow up with deck performance as I play with it more. Check back later for updates, +1 if you like the deck and please offer constructive criticism for me to work off of (Constructive criticism is not saying "play Grixis instead").
Creatures The creature list is fairly straightforward. All of them are evasive in their own ways and all of them are early big drops.
We're running 27 spells in the deck (Instants/Sorceries) so Delver of Secrets
flips very reliably on turn 2. Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Gurmag Angler can be delved into by turn two with a good set up (fetchland, thought scour, two lands can get Tasigur in on turn two, Gitaxian Probe allows us to one land him and leave up blue to protect). Geist of Saint Traft is evasive through having hexproof and hits with a 4/4 flying angel beater every time he attacks.
Draw We have 12 spells that give us the ability to draw (
Ojutai's Command
, Thought Scour, Gitaxian Probe, and Serum Visions , 14 if you want to count the
Dimir Charm
's that fuel our delve and set up our next draw step.
Kill We have 8 (9) kill spells in our deck (Murderous Cut, Path to Exile, Silumgar's Command ((counting this as 2 hence the (9))), and
Dimir Charm
).
Counter We have 11 counter spells (Countersquall,
Dimir Charm
, Mana Leak,
Ojutai's Command
, Silumgar's Command, Spell Snare).
If we don't want something to hit the board, we can probably counter it. If it hits, we have plenty of removal. Remember, we are just trying to keep our creature safe on the board so he can keep swinging in.
Delve
Dimir Charm
can help us fuel our Delve cards, while also scrying one of our top 3 cards to the top. Thought Scour gives us cards in the graveyard and one in our hand. Tasigur, the Golden Fang can also be used to similar effect as Thought Scour.
Remember with all of these spells that Snapcaster Mage can fire back anything in our yard for added protection.
I won't comment on the sideboard since that is different for whatever you're in. Always looking for constructive criticism on deck building. I know there are better decks out there, but I really like the Delver archetype (That being said I am also working on a Grixis midrange deck. Love control man).
