Esper Draw-Go single match

Standard Competitive Control Counterspell WUB (Esper)

Grimblee

Land (27)

• 4x Adarkar Wastes
• 3x Deserted Beach
• 1x Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire
• 3x Island
• 1x Otawara, Soaring City
• 1x Plains
• 4x Raffine's Tower
• 4x Shattered Sanctum
• 4x Shipwreck Marsh
• 2x Takenuma, Abandoned Mire

Instant (21)

• 3x Cut Down
• 3x Dissipate
• 4x Impulse
• 4x Memory Deluge
• 3x Negate
• 4x Void Rend

Creature (1)

• 1x Hullbreaker Horror

Sorcery (7)

• 2x Depopulate
• 2x Farewell
• 3x Silver Scrutiny

Enchantment (2)

• 2x The Meathook Massacre

Planeswalker (2)

• 2x The Wandering Emperor

---

Maybeboard

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Path of Peril

---

Competitive deck for single match, need to work on sideboard.

I've always been a huge fan of draw-go style decks, played them a lot in modern a few years back (Grixis and Esper control, when Cruel Ultimatum was playable).

Been grinding MTGA for some time now and as always gravitated toward the same kind of decks.

Here's my take at draw-go in current rotation, I'm currently platinum with it and trying to tweak it.

Here's some card choice explainations:

• Void Rend is now so good since manlands rotated out, it hits everything!
• Impulse is great at fixing 2 land hands and digging for whatever you need.
• Silver Scrutiny seemed a bit meh at first but ended up going up to 3 copies, does a great job at x=3 but sometimes I do a big one late game against decks that aren't a threat while topdecking
• Replaced Path of Peril with Depopulate because it wasn't hitting that many targets early enough and often clogged my hand (sad it messes up my mana curve tho' but playtest validate this choice).
• Dissipate over anything in this recursion heavy metagame imho, never again seeing MBC blitz underdog every turn. (Combine that with Farewell and a lot of decks are just scooping outright).
• The Wandering Emperor is very versatile as a spot removal x wincon, the singleton Hullbreaker Horror complementing the later part.

Good hands needs 3 lands (or 2 and an Impulse) and as much early interaction as possible, if you can get a Memory Deluge or Silver Scrutiny to refuel midgame then it's perfect.

You need to be very careful with the few wincons, if you lose them all then you've lost by default.

It's a bit early to say what are the worse matchups but I would say Rakdos is though with Lili and that casuality Ob Nixilis as well as quick aggro decks featuring Reckless Stormseeker   (this one is 100% why I moved away from Path of Peril).

Top Ranked	Achieved #68 position overall 1 year ago Achieved #4 position in Standard 1 year ago Achieved #2 position in Standard Control 1 year ago
Date added	1 year
Last updated	1 year
Legality	This deck is not Standard legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 0 Mythic Rares 39 - 0 Rares 6 - 0 Uncommons 7 - 0 Commons
Cards	60
Avg. CMC	3.00
Tokens	Samurai 2/2 W