Look at the card. Now back to Jace. Now back to that card, now back to Jace! Sadly, it isn't Jace, but if it stopped being a junk rare and became relevant, it could act like it's Jace. Crack some Worldwake. What do you have? You have a Jace, the card you wish this card could be like. Look again. THE CARD IS NOW A $75 BILL. Anything possible when you play Magic with Jace and not junk rares. This is probably spam.
collective brutality is really good in general, but I don't feel it's at its best in the draw-go builds of esper--brutality is at its best when it serves to trade some cards in the early game to buy a little bit of time, for decks that have a very proactive gameplan that just can't quite come online in time to beat the fast aggressive decks. In our case, we're already dedicating most of our cheap cards to doing that anyway, since we want to naturally win in the late game. Therefore, we don't really want to compromise on the speed vs effectiveness of our sideboard slots--we either want the card that is the most flexible, regardless of cost (cryptic command, blessed alliance, celestial purge), or we want the card that is fastest at the job, or that comes online the earliest (duress/thoughtseize/surgical extraction). compromises in the middle are for midrange-style decks that want to go both ways. we just want maximum effectiveness at the cheap mana costs so that our expensive spells can take over in the mid to late game.
if tron decks and ad nauseam weren't in the format, I might consider collective brutality to be a more reasonable spell, since it has almost as much value as thoughtseize or duress in the control/combo mirrors otherwise and is good against burn, but tron, ad nauseam, and the similar big ramp decks that we need our discard spells to hit are a big enough part of the meta that we can't really afford to ignore them.
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Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
I've played about 25 hands of Ryan's version of this deck (my first Modern Esper deck played). I honestly cannot tell whether it's flat out terrible or if I just cannot find the right lines during games. In the past I've run Grixis and Skred, but I'm having a real hard time picking up this deck.
*note: I have read through the primer and reasoning for specific cards, these are just my knee-jerk reactions.
Here's some of my initial thoughts while playing. 1)I feel like I want more early game disruption, perhaps in the form of discard. Some early way of interacting with my opponent. 2)Understanding that Think Twice is card advantage spread out over multiple turns, most of the time I end up wishing I had something like an Anticipate to enable to me to search for specific cards I need in a situation. 3) I have no idea how to play Esper Charm correctly. It's easily the hardest card in my deck to understand what and when to do with, second to... 4)Snapcaster Mage, specifically with a card like Esper Charm. Do people generally sit back on this to resurrect a counter or proactively go after card draw? 5)What do you do against a Thrun, the last Troll? and 6)Does anyone run the new flashing Gearhulk and what do you think of it?
I've played about 25 hands of Ryan's version of this deck (my first Modern Esper deck played). I honestly cannot tell whether it's flat out terrible or if I just cannot find the right lines during games. In the past I've run Grixis and Skred, but I'm having a real hard time picking up this deck.
*note: I have read through the primer and reasoning for specific cards, these are just my knee-jerk reactions.
Here's some of my initial thoughts while playing. 1)I feel like I want more early game disruption, perhaps in the form of discard. Some early way of interacting with my opponent. 2)Understanding that Think Twice is card advantage spread out over multiple turns, most of the time I end up wishing I had something like an Anticipate to enable to me to search for specific cards I need in a situation. 3) I have no idea how to play Esper Charm correctly. It's easily the hardest card in my deck to understand what and when to do with, second to... 4)Snapcaster Mage, specifically with a card like Esper Charm. Do people generally sit back on this to resurrect a counter or proactively go after card draw? 5)What do you do against a Thrun, the last Troll? and 6)Does anyone run the new flashing Gearhulk and what do you think of it?
Thanks so much!
What do you mean by 25 hands? Like gold fish games? You really cannot grasp this deck through gold fishing due to how reactive it is.
As for early disruption you just need enough to not die otherwise just draw cards and reset the board. Unlike those midrange decks a true control deck has more come back from behind cards.
I played the Ryan list at FNM this week. I lost to Spirits, and Merfolk. A common theme was my dissatisfaction with 4 Think Twice/4 Esper Charm and no Serum Visions. I was either getting mana screwed or flooded and really missed Visions ability to filter. It also felt like not having Vision in the deck hurt the overall potential in early Logic Knots. I'm going to go back to something closer to Wafo-Tapa's original Esper list that featured 2 Serum Visions and trim elsewhere to make room for Fatal Push.
Speaking of Fatal Push; the card didn't feel overwhelmingly powerful to me, but I didn't get to cast it on any Goyfs/Thought-Knots/Grim Flayers.
Some more information would be needed. Like what you played against and how they went down. Maybe the sample size was just too small and you lost to variance by flooding. The deck is pretty difficult to pilot and takes a lot of practice. There are no true hard answers to some of your questions like with charm or how to utilize snapcaster because those are matchup dependent and two of the most skill testing cards in the deck.
Itetone: Welcome to the thread! This is not an easy deck to pick up, takes a while before you develope a mentalimage of the lines of play. Took me a couple of months to not suck.
On early interactions: We keep discard in the sb, to deal with specific matchups. T1 is path/push/snare/collonade, t2 lknot, t3 charm/tt. T4 we're in business, boardwipes and cryptics should let you start taking over.
Esper charm should usually draw you cards, until you areready to turn the game around. Until you've piloted the deck some more and gotten to know it better, I recommend thinking of esper charm as a card drawing engine only.
Theory-wise, I would assume the big-mana/spell based type decks give us the most trouble? I also saw the recent list with the crumble to dust and was wondering how much something like geist of saint traft has been discussed as a card to be a bit more aggressive in those matchups? I've tried to tune the deck to slant more aggressive for these matchups in very subtle ways
I also have been running a smallpox brew with shadow of doubt, and can attest that the card is good right now against those big mana matchups.
This is my first draft with the idea of hedging against big mana with mb shadow which is versatile anyway. How are people on spell snare? Seems too good not to play.
So the geist package includes the tar pits (for the aggressive slant), countersquall (for damage), shadow of doubt (for search effects), ghost quarter and surgical (for the wombo combo).
Do any of these inclusions seem like they would hurt the integrity of the deck at all? It could be possible with the change in mana base due to tar pit, that damnation might be needed over the third supreme? or even a 2/1 split?
Theory-wise, I would assume the big-mana/spell based type decks give us the most trouble? I also saw the recent list with the crumble to dust and was wondering how much something like geist of saint traft has been discussed as a card to be a bit more aggressive in those matchups? I've tried to tune the deck to slant more aggressive for these matchups in very subtle ways
I also have been running a smallpox brew with shadow of doubt, and can attest that the card is good right now against those big mana matchups.
This is my first draft with the idea of hedging against big mana with mb shadow which is versatile anyway. How are people on spell snare? Seems too good not to play.
So the geist package includes the tar pits (for the aggressive slant), countersquall (for damage), shadow of doubt (for search effects), ghost quarter and surgical (for the wombo combo).
Do any of these inclusions seem like they would hurt the integrity of the deck at all? It could be possible with the change in mana base due to tar pit, that damnation might be needed over the third supreme? or even a 2/1 split?
I would suggest at least 1 more source of black mana that comes into play untapped on the first turn to support turn 1 fatal push. As for the aggressive plan I like a more flash style of aggression to beat tron. Vendilion Cliques, Aven Mindcensor, mana destruction, stony Silence (tron only), and a few thoughtseize should be a good plan to handle big mana. If you can somehow find a way to fit at least 18 black sources to reliably cast turn 3 fulminator mage I would highly recommend that over any other plan since he is good against ad nauseum too.
I played the Ryan list at FNM this week. I lost to Spirits, and Merfolk. A common theme was my dissatisfaction with 4 Think Twice/4 Esper Charm and no Serum Visions. I was either getting mana screwed or flooded and really missed Visions ability to filter. It also felt like not having Vision in the deck hurt the overall potential in early Logic Knots. I'm going to go back to something closer to Wafo-Tapa's original Esper list that featured 2 Serum Visions and trim elsewhere to make room for Fatal Push.
Speaking of Fatal Push; the card didn't feel overwhelmingly powerful to me, but I didn't get to cast it on any Goyfs/Thought-Knots/Grim Flayers.
The original wafo-tapa esper build was GP boston/worcester 2014.
He played 26 lands (irrelevant manabase because it was pre-ktk fetches)
and the following spells:
Serum visions is not a part of the original versions of this deck in any way, shape, or form. His earlier builds on similar strategies were UWRb and ALSO didn't play serum visions.
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Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Hello Esper fellows!
Yesterday I tried a complete different Esper attempt in my local FNM. Im not sure if it still fits to the "Draw-Go"-scheme. However at least it originated from it and should bring some new thought-waves I wanted to share with you.
I don't want to derail the thread for something that a lot of people here likely wouldn't touch, but I do like running the Fuse synergy in a deck implementing a more-or-less Draw-Go gameplan, and I think it holds a lot of interesting lessons for people who love the archetype. Rather than write a bunch, I'd just say a couple of things that might help you in future testing.
1) Yahenni's Expertise is a narrow card, and, while I can't speak to your local context, it's almost certainly a trap in the wider meta. Being able to Fuse Beck//Call off of it doesn't justify running a card that's overwhelmingly geared toward matchups you're already favored in with Verdicts (and that's worse in a number of those matchups for not being Verdict). It does do things against Dredge specifically, but that's much less true when it's cast as a sorcery.
2) Having two Brains out is actually amazing from a Draw-Go perspective. It's a solid mana dump (a much better one with 2 out) that you can also tweak to break card valuation for multiple cards at once (leave one Jar on 3 to hold up an Instant-speed board wipe while scrying into a value play/answer with the other, have one on 2 when you Beck so that you can follow up by Esper Charming for one mana if you draw into it, etc.). I say this understanding that YE felt good to you as you played it, and you're right that just fusing Beck//Call while doing nothing else is almost always going to skyrocket your percent-to-win. I do, however, suggest that with more testing/reps you'll find that Jar actually does a lot of things that you want to be doing in the deck even without Beck in hand. I'm not sure how much you've played this sub-archetype, but I've been running it for some months (and it was actually solid before AER), and over time you'll probably find you want 3-4 Jar. Additionally, favoring Jar greatly improves the quality of whatever Expertise card you do draw. Favoring the Expertise cards, on the other hand, is significantly weakening the impact that drawing a later Jar has on the game. That being the case, I'd try cutting all the YE's, running some Verdicts, and adding two Sram's Expertise for matchups where the threat of Jar forces opponents to water down their deck with mediocre (vs us) cards like Abrupt Decay. Those are incidentally going to be matchups that don't handle tokens very well, so your enabler is more focused on broadening your ability to execute across matchups than it would be with YE. You also get a bonus removal, counter, get-7-1/1's-and-draw-4 sequence to start out games that will once in a while give you an aggressive alternative to the usual turn 20 win.
If my response sounds kind of curt, it's just because I'm trying to be concise for the sake of all of the players here who aren't interested in fusing the Beck shenanigans into traditional Esper. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to talk more about options and experiences--the deck's a blast and surprisingly strong, and I'm really happy you're experimenting with it!
Well, he designed it for a specific metagame (that one tournament), it didnt really work that well (he switched to jeskai, as you said). I've been running this list, or lists based on this. In my opinion, the 26land novision version is vastly superior. Remember, wafos list has matchups it has no way of beating. Topdecking filtercards makes you loose games.
This deck is almost identical to the list Ryan played except it's been updated for Fatal Push. Wafo's list has the same matchup problems that the Ryan list has so I don't see that being a great argument against it. I think I'd cut the Ancestral Vision, Think Twice, and Verdict for 3 Fatal Push and see how it works out. The mana base would need to be tweaked a bit for the extra black cards.
I honestly don't know how you can say ryan's list is the same except for push.
Ryan has -4(!) serum visons, -1 ancestral visions, -1 verdict, -1 mana leak,
+1 think twice, +1 negate, +1 secure, +2 push, +1 snapcaster mage, +1 land, not to mention the changes in the mana base itself, or the changes in the sideboard.
Yea, its the same archtype, but saying its "almost identical except for the pushes" is inaccurate.
For all the talk of wafo being in the thread or not, I would certainly like to ask him his thoughts on the Lille list (specifically looking back on his choices) and what he would play now in esper (with/without push?)
That all being said, its been repeated again and again that serum visions is simply a weak card in this deck.
Just because wafo played it doesn't necessarily change that, especially with such a lackluster result.
I honestly think that anyone struggling with this deck (and not only against very bad matchups) should not be looking to make changes or add serum visions, they should be looking at how they're playing the decks, what decisions they're making, and what the cost of those decisions are.
Many of us have been playing lists that are all pretty similar to each other's for a while now, to reasonable success.
Round 1 (win): beat colorless eldrazi-tron. Matchup is relatively even overall, but particular opponent was weak--kept chalice in for game 2/3, and got punished for it badly. I strip spell snares out and bring in elspeth, baneslayers, and wrath.
round 2 (loss): BG infect. Not a good matchup. She takes game one, game two I grind it out and win, game three she drops elf, then has thoughtseize + might of old krosa on 2, turn 3 thoughtseize/might/blossoming defense kills me.
Round 3 (loss): Jeskai cheese, no nahiri/emrakul package. Game one he has triple bolt, snapcaster, clique, double dispel on the play, and I die rather quickly. Game two, I get cheesed really hard. He ends up having two gideon, ally of zendikar, three copies of goblin assault, multiple counterflux... it was cheesy city here, and it completely got me. This player has been on nahiri for like, six months and I found out he's on a really cheesy build at the moment (the goblin assaults are mainboard, 4 spreading seas mainboard, etc) and I just sideboarded very incorrectly. No, goblin assault is not a card you should be mainboarding in modern in anything, it's only good at cheesing wins against decks like esper.
Overall impressions: BG infect is interesting. It's more threat-dense than the UG build of infect, but our spells all resolve. It's still uncomfortable when they have the glistener elf, and I don't think these matchups will ever be positive for us, but they certainly feel winnable. This is the first time I've lost a round to this jeskai player in forever, and I credit this entirely to his cheesy build for the day. Eldrazi tron does not feel great, but I certainly think it's a better matchup than bant eldrazi is.
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Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Against Thrun, you should have Blessed Alliance / SB ***.
Torrential Gearhulk is not terrible, some people run it, but it's very slow.
Man, the thought of having to play against someone with 2014 tech like Thrun the Last Troll makes me cry on the inside. I swear these small local Modern tournaments are like a different format. Still, if I had to deal with random creature beatdown decks, I would put 2x Elspeth, Sun's Champion, Baneslayer Angel, or Grave Titan in the sideboard. Elspeth is going to be best against decks without Path to Exile. Grave Titan is a far stronger card than Elspeth if you're not worried about Path and want block all non-flyers, while also dodging the majority of counterspells against blue decks (assuming Grixis cuts Terminate for Fatal Push). Baneslayer is going to stabilize the best against random aggro decks, but is the only one that straight-up loses to Path/Terminate/Dismember. Worth noting that Elspeth gets "countered" by Siege Rhino and more importantly Reality Smasher. I'm going with Grave Titan on the strength of the Eldrazi matchup. Gideon Jura seems like an option, but in my experience requires a density of spot removal to be able to "-2" creatures and stay on the battlefield. Great card in UWR, but not so hot in Esper.
I played the Ryan list at FNM this week. I lost to Spirits, and Merfolk. A common theme was my dissatisfaction with 4 Think Twice/4 Esper Charm and no Serum Visions. I was either getting mana screwed or flooded and really missed Visions ability to filter. It also felt like not having Vision in the deck hurt the overall potential in early Logic Knots. I'm going to go back to something closer to Wafo-Tapa's original Esper list that featured 2 Serum Visions and trim elsewhere to make room for Fatal Push.
Speaking of Fatal Push; the card didn't feel overwhelmingly powerful to me, but I didn't get to cast it on any Goyfs/Thought-Knots/Grim Flayers.
The main reason Wafo went to Serum Visions (I speculate), was because the format was taken over with blitz aggro, and you needed to really goldfish these creature decks by playing removal spell after removal spell. He could have went to 6-8 spot removal spells maindeck, but Condemn was way weaker than Fatal Push and that tanks your percentages against non-creature decks. If you look at the deck differences he basically cut all the middling filler spells like Remand, Shadow of Doubt, Spell Snare, etc., and built a high-velocity deck that could find spot removal early and play Supreme Verdict on turn 4 maybe 75% of games. With the metagame slowing way down if I had to guess, he'd be on something similar to his 2014 list, with different filler cards that better deal with the deck's tighter matchups, like Eldrazi and maybe Tron. I think he'd be back on 2 Snapcasters again, since having more Paths is no longer so crucial, either a single Secure the Wastes or just plain White Sun's Zenith (Secure for x=2 isn't going to trade with a pump spell nearly as often).
I'm still waiting to get Fatal Push on MODO, so I haven't played any games in the new metagame, but this is going to be the list that I start with:
I still have 3x Snapcaster since I want to at least try Fatal Push maindeck. The other option for me was Runed Halo, but I'm thinking Fatal Push is going to be more consistent at stopping early-game pressure.
Thirst for Knowledge is a 3-mana Brainstorm that I'm hoping helps with a lot of the "auto-lose" scenarios this deck has, where you draw counterspells against creature decks, removal spells against spell-based combo, or more often just 4 lands and you end up losing to a guy that's top-decking. I used to run 1 Careful Consideration, which was too expensive but almost guaranteed you to "go off" on around turn 5-6 when you can play it as a sorcery and still interact. The ceiling on these cards is high, but when you already like your current hand they're admittedly just expensive cantrips. Serum Visions in this deck is basically just a free "Scry 2" and you need to fighting hard for some sort of positional advantage payoff to justify it. I don't think I'm goldfishing for Verdicts and Paths anymore so I'm trying out new filler spells. It's definitely a safer card so I may just go back to them in a week.
Another thing you never see on this forum is 2 Spell Snare in the sideboard. I originally had 2x Dispel, but figure this card is better against blue decks (Snapcaster is by far the best card in those matchups) and Affinity, while being about the same against Burn.
Still haven't gotten to try Blessed Alliance, but it's hard for me to imagine how this card is better than more Fatal Push, just because you can cast it for 4 mana and gain 4 life. I'm thinking Burn is the only matchup where that's the case. Being able to actually "Bolt the Bird" with this deck and play more removal as an instant just seems more flexible. I'm also addicted to playing 2 spells in 1 turn in Magic...
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I'd recommend searching the thread, it's been discussed at length.
URURxUR
UWUWxUW
if tron decks and ad nauseam weren't in the format, I might consider collective brutality to be a more reasonable spell, since it has almost as much value as thoughtseize or duress in the control/combo mirrors otherwise and is good against burn, but tron, ad nauseam, and the similar big ramp decks that we need our discard spells to hit are a big enough part of the meta that we can't really afford to ignore them.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
*note: I have read through the primer and reasoning for specific cards, these are just my knee-jerk reactions.
Here's some of my initial thoughts while playing. 1)I feel like I want more early game disruption, perhaps in the form of discard. Some early way of interacting with my opponent. 2)Understanding that Think Twice is card advantage spread out over multiple turns, most of the time I end up wishing I had something like an Anticipate to enable to me to search for specific cards I need in a situation. 3) I have no idea how to play Esper Charm correctly. It's easily the hardest card in my deck to understand what and when to do with, second to... 4)Snapcaster Mage, specifically with a card like Esper Charm. Do people generally sit back on this to resurrect a counter or proactively go after card draw? 5)What do you do against a Thrun, the last Troll? and 6)Does anyone run the new flashing Gearhulk and what do you think of it?
Thanks so much!
What do you mean by 25 hands? Like gold fish games? You really cannot grasp this deck through gold fishing due to how reactive it is.
As for early disruption you just need enough to not die otherwise just draw cards and reset the board. Unlike those midrange decks a true control deck has more come back from behind cards.
Speaking of Fatal Push; the card didn't feel overwhelmingly powerful to me, but I didn't get to cast it on any Goyfs/Thought-Knots/Grim Flayers.
Some more information would be needed. Like what you played against and how they went down. Maybe the sample size was just too small and you lost to variance by flooding. The deck is pretty difficult to pilot and takes a lot of practice. There are no true hard answers to some of your questions like with charm or how to utilize snapcaster because those are matchup dependent and two of the most skill testing cards in the deck.
Torrential Gearhulk is not terrible, some people run it, but it's very slow.
Budget / Casual Below
On early interactions: We keep discard in the sb, to deal with specific matchups. T1 is path/push/snare/collonade, t2 lknot, t3 charm/tt. T4 we're in business, boardwipes and cryptics should let you start taking over.
Esper charm should usually draw you cards, until you areready to turn the game around. Until you've piloted the deck some more and gotten to know it better, I recommend thinking of esper charm as a card drawing engine only.
Theory-wise, I would assume the big-mana/spell based type decks give us the most trouble? I also saw the recent list with the crumble to dust and was wondering how much something like geist of saint traft has been discussed as a card to be a bit more aggressive in those matchups? I've tried to tune the deck to slant more aggressive for these matchups in very subtle ways
I also have been running a smallpox brew with shadow of doubt, and can attest that the card is good right now against those big mana matchups.
This is my first draft with the idea of hedging against big mana with mb shadow which is versatile anyway. How are people on spell snare? Seems too good not to play.
2 secure the wastes
4 fatal push
2 path to exile
2 logic knot
2 spell snare
1 shadow of doubt
4 think twice
4 cryptic command
2 sphinx's revelation
4 esper charm
3 supreme verdict
2 celestial colonnade
1 ghost quarter
4 polluted delta
4 flooded strand
1 marsh flats
2 hallowed fountain
2 watery grave
1 godless shrine
1 plains
1 swamp
2 island
1 mystic gate
1 sunken ruins
2 path to exile
2 thoughtseize
2 countersquall
2 runed halo
2 stony silence
2 blessed alliance
1 surgical extraction
So the geist package includes the tar pits (for the aggressive slant), countersquall (for damage), shadow of doubt (for search effects), ghost quarter and surgical (for the wombo combo).
Do any of these inclusions seem like they would hurt the integrity of the deck at all? It could be possible with the change in mana base due to tar pit, that damnation might be needed over the third supreme? or even a 2/1 split?
I would suggest at least 1 more source of black mana that comes into play untapped on the first turn to support turn 1 fatal push. As for the aggressive plan I like a more flash style of aggression to beat tron. Vendilion Cliques, Aven Mindcensor, mana destruction, stony Silence (tron only), and a few thoughtseize should be a good plan to handle big mana. If you can somehow find a way to fit at least 18 black sources to reliably cast turn 3 fulminator mage I would highly recommend that over any other plan since he is good against ad nauseum too.
The original wafo-tapa esper build was GP boston/worcester 2014.
He played 26 lands (irrelevant manabase because it was pre-ktk fetches)
and the following spells:
4 spell snare
2 logic knot
4 esper charm
4 think twice
2 sphinx's revelation
2 supreme verdict
1 wrath of god
2 snapcaster mage
2 remand
2 shadow of doubt
1 white sun's zenith
Serum visions is not a part of the original versions of this deck in any way, shape, or form. His earlier builds on similar strategies were UWRb and ALSO didn't play serum visions.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Welcome to the thread! (Polite, interested in learning from us, willing to search for info? My favorite new person!
Insite search suxx. Try something like this in google: site:http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/developing-competitive-modern "esper draw-go" "runed halo"
I don't want to derail the thread for something that a lot of people here likely wouldn't touch, but I do like running the Fuse synergy in a deck implementing a more-or-less Draw-Go gameplan, and I think it holds a lot of interesting lessons for people who love the archetype. Rather than write a bunch, I'd just say a couple of things that might help you in future testing.
1) Yahenni's Expertise is a narrow card, and, while I can't speak to your local context, it's almost certainly a trap in the wider meta. Being able to Fuse Beck//Call off of it doesn't justify running a card that's overwhelmingly geared toward matchups you're already favored in with Verdicts (and that's worse in a number of those matchups for not being Verdict). It does do things against Dredge specifically, but that's much less true when it's cast as a sorcery.
2) Having two Brains out is actually amazing from a Draw-Go perspective. It's a solid mana dump (a much better one with 2 out) that you can also tweak to break card valuation for multiple cards at once (leave one Jar on 3 to hold up an Instant-speed board wipe while scrying into a value play/answer with the other, have one on 2 when you Beck so that you can follow up by Esper Charming for one mana if you draw into it, etc.). I say this understanding that YE felt good to you as you played it, and you're right that just fusing Beck//Call while doing nothing else is almost always going to skyrocket your percent-to-win. I do, however, suggest that with more testing/reps you'll find that Jar actually does a lot of things that you want to be doing in the deck even without Beck in hand. I'm not sure how much you've played this sub-archetype, but I've been running it for some months (and it was actually solid before AER), and over time you'll probably find you want 3-4 Jar. Additionally, favoring Jar greatly improves the quality of whatever Expertise card you do draw. Favoring the Expertise cards, on the other hand, is significantly weakening the impact that drawing a later Jar has on the game. That being the case, I'd try cutting all the YE's, running some Verdicts, and adding two Sram's Expertise for matchups where the threat of Jar forces opponents to water down their deck with mediocre (vs us) cards like Abrupt Decay. Those are incidentally going to be matchups that don't handle tokens very well, so your enabler is more focused on broadening your ability to execute across matchups than it would be with YE. You also get a bonus removal, counter, get-7-1/1's-and-draw-4 sequence to start out games that will once in a while give you an aggressive alternative to the usual turn 20 win.
If my response sounds kind of curt, it's just because I'm trying to be concise for the sake of all of the players here who aren't interested in fusing the Beck shenanigans into traditional Esper. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to talk more about options and experiences--the deck's a blast and surprisingly strong, and I'm really happy you're experimenting with it!
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Serum Visions
1 Ancestral Vision
4 Supreme Verdict
3 Think Twice
4 Esper Charm
2 Sphinx's Revelation
4 Path to Exile
3 Logic Knot
1 Mana Leak
1 Negate
4 Cryptic Command
1 Secure the Wastes
4 Polluted Delta
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Watery Grave
3 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
3 Celestial Colonnade
3 Glacial Fortress
3 Drowned Catacomb
60 Cards
3 Condemn
3 Engineered Explosives
2 Dispel
2 Lingering Souls
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
1 Gideon Jura
Ryan has -4(!) serum visons, -1 ancestral visions, -1 verdict, -1 mana leak,
+1 think twice, +1 negate, +1 secure, +2 push, +1 snapcaster mage, +1 land, not to mention the changes in the mana base itself, or the changes in the sideboard.
Yea, its the same archtype, but saying its "almost identical except for the pushes" is inaccurate.
For all the talk of wafo being in the thread or not, I would certainly like to ask him his thoughts on the Lille list (specifically looking back on his choices) and what he would play now in esper (with/without push?)
That all being said, its been repeated again and again that serum visions is simply a weak card in this deck.
Just because wafo played it doesn't necessarily change that, especially with such a lackluster result.
I honestly think that anyone struggling with this deck (and not only against very bad matchups) should not be looking to make changes or add serum visions, they should be looking at how they're playing the decks, what decisions they're making, and what the cost of those decisions are.
Many of us have been playing lists that are all pretty similar to each other's for a while now, to reasonable success.
Round 1 (win): beat colorless eldrazi-tron. Matchup is relatively even overall, but particular opponent was weak--kept chalice in for game 2/3, and got punished for it badly. I strip spell snares out and bring in elspeth, baneslayers, and wrath.
round 2 (loss): BG infect. Not a good matchup. She takes game one, game two I grind it out and win, game three she drops elf, then has thoughtseize + might of old krosa on 2, turn 3 thoughtseize/might/blossoming defense kills me.
Round 3 (loss): Jeskai cheese, no nahiri/emrakul package. Game one he has triple bolt, snapcaster, clique, double dispel on the play, and I die rather quickly. Game two, I get cheesed really hard. He ends up having two gideon, ally of zendikar, three copies of goblin assault, multiple counterflux... it was cheesy city here, and it completely got me. This player has been on nahiri for like, six months and I found out he's on a really cheesy build at the moment (the goblin assaults are mainboard, 4 spreading seas mainboard, etc) and I just sideboarded very incorrectly. No, goblin assault is not a card you should be mainboarding in modern in anything, it's only good at cheesing wins against decks like esper.
Overall impressions: BG infect is interesting. It's more threat-dense than the UG build of infect, but our spells all resolve. It's still uncomfortable when they have the glistener elf, and I don't think these matchups will ever be positive for us, but they certainly feel winnable. This is the first time I've lost a round to this jeskai player in forever, and I credit this entirely to his cheesy build for the day. Eldrazi tron does not feel great, but I certainly think it's a better matchup than bant eldrazi is.
Yes, I am a local area mod.WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVEPrimary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Man, the thought of having to play against someone with 2014 tech like Thrun the Last Troll makes me cry on the inside. I swear these small local Modern tournaments are like a different format. Still, if I had to deal with random creature beatdown decks, I would put 2x Elspeth, Sun's Champion, Baneslayer Angel, or Grave Titan in the sideboard. Elspeth is going to be best against decks without Path to Exile. Grave Titan is a far stronger card than Elspeth if you're not worried about Path and want block all non-flyers, while also dodging the majority of counterspells against blue decks (assuming Grixis cuts Terminate for Fatal Push). Baneslayer is going to stabilize the best against random aggro decks, but is the only one that straight-up loses to Path/Terminate/Dismember. Worth noting that Elspeth gets "countered" by Siege Rhino and more importantly Reality Smasher. I'm going with Grave Titan on the strength of the Eldrazi matchup. Gideon Jura seems like an option, but in my experience requires a density of spot removal to be able to "-2" creatures and stay on the battlefield. Great card in UWR, but not so hot in Esper.
The main reason Wafo went to Serum Visions (I speculate), was because the format was taken over with blitz aggro, and you needed to really goldfish these creature decks by playing removal spell after removal spell. He could have went to 6-8 spot removal spells maindeck, but Condemn was way weaker than Fatal Push and that tanks your percentages against non-creature decks. If you look at the deck differences he basically cut all the middling filler spells like Remand, Shadow of Doubt, Spell Snare, etc., and built a high-velocity deck that could find spot removal early and play Supreme Verdict on turn 4 maybe 75% of games. With the metagame slowing way down if I had to guess, he'd be on something similar to his 2014 list, with different filler cards that better deal with the deck's tighter matchups, like Eldrazi and maybe Tron. I think he'd be back on 2 Snapcasters again, since having more Paths is no longer so crucial, either a single Secure the Wastes or just plain White Sun's Zenith (Secure for x=2 isn't going to trade with a pump spell nearly as often).
I'm still waiting to get Fatal Push on MODO, so I haven't played any games in the new metagame, but this is going to be the list that I start with:
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Secure the Wastes
Spells
3 Negate
3 Logic Knot
4 Cryptic Command
4 Path to Exile
2 Fatal Push
3 Supreme Verdict
4 Think Twice
2 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Esper Charm
2 Sphinx's Revelation
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
4 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
4 Celestial Colonnade
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Drowned Catacomb
2 Watery Grave
1 Godless Shrine
1 Supreme Verdict
3 Runed Halo
3 Vendilion Clique
2 Spell Snare
1 Grave Titan
3 Stony Silence
2 Fatal Push
I still have 3x Snapcaster since I want to at least try Fatal Push maindeck. The other option for me was Runed Halo, but I'm thinking Fatal Push is going to be more consistent at stopping early-game pressure.
Thirst for Knowledge is a 3-mana Brainstorm that I'm hoping helps with a lot of the "auto-lose" scenarios this deck has, where you draw counterspells against creature decks, removal spells against spell-based combo, or more often just 4 lands and you end up losing to a guy that's top-decking. I used to run 1 Careful Consideration, which was too expensive but almost guaranteed you to "go off" on around turn 5-6 when you can play it as a sorcery and still interact. The ceiling on these cards is high, but when you already like your current hand they're admittedly just expensive cantrips. Serum Visions in this deck is basically just a free "Scry 2" and you need to fighting hard for some sort of positional advantage payoff to justify it. I don't think I'm goldfishing for Verdicts and Paths anymore so I'm trying out new filler spells. It's definitely a safer card so I may just go back to them in a week.
Another thing you never see on this forum is 2 Spell Snare in the sideboard. I originally had 2x Dispel, but figure this card is better against blue decks (Snapcaster is by far the best card in those matchups) and Affinity, while being about the same against Burn.
Still haven't gotten to try Blessed Alliance, but it's hard for me to imagine how this card is better than more Fatal Push, just because you can cast it for 4 mana and gain 4 life. I'm thinking Burn is the only matchup where that's the case. Being able to actually "Bolt the Bird" with this deck and play more removal as an instant just seems more flexible. I'm also addicted to playing 2 spells in 1 turn in Magic...