RumTitan I completely agree with you, I've been testing out an esper control list involving narset and I deffinitly see potential somewhere there. Your post in fact is the reason I decided to join the conversation instead of just spectating, which I've been doing for quite some time. There definitely are people here entrenched in the draw go style of esper and it looks like a great list but I think if anything is going to push a tap out style of control it's going to involve narset and she seems to have the best options doing that in esper colours. I'm writing this on my phone but later on ill post the 75 I've been playing.
I'm very glad you brought up this version of esper, when I read your previous post it was almost verbatim to the things I had been thinking. Hopefully with at least the 2 of us we can find an esper narset list that works!
I don't have anything against narset. The problem I see with her is that we already have Jace, which at a -2 guarantees us one good card, or drawing two. Additionally, you can tap out for it relatively safely in most cases. Narset AT BEST is +1/2 card per turn. This means she doesn't replace herself for 2 turns (we're accounting for average variance here) whereas jace can do it immediately. What I see when I look at narset in the context of modern is a 4 drop that I can't safely tap out for and that doesn't generate actual value for three (four) turns. Jace, I can safely tap out for and he can generate value instantly. The pro to narset is that she has a high loyalty to ensure she sticks around, but she doesn't affect the board on her own. She requires that you have something that can affect the board in hand, AND that it be a card you want to cast at sorcery speed. This pushes narset into the discard-heavy styles of build, which in turn means you don't really want topdecks that don't directly impact the board immediately since you already have to contend with topdecking discard spells.
It kind of creates a catch-22 where the value she generates isn't enough, but the board impact she makes also isn't quite enough. She gets much more powerful in a slightly slower format, but that is not the modern of today.
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Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
I dont think youre wrong, amalek, but i think you need to build around her a bit more. Shes not ever going to win a game on her own, its what she helps the rest of the deck do that will.
First on the odds of bricking on narset: i dont think its as bad as you think. Currently I'm trying her in a list of 33 spells, 2 creatures and 25 lands. Taking into account the critical mass of targets, fetches thinning by the time narset hits (marginal i know but its something) and the serum visions, i find she hits more than 50/50, id say around 2/3 of the time.
Regarding jace: the only deck hes really stopping that its safe to tap out for with him on turn 4 is twin. His +1 is nice and it does buy you time to find a verdict or something against other decks, but if your using him to fact or fiction you might as well play a 4 mana draw spell like concentrate, cause then you get to keep everything.
Maybe its a loose analogy but i see narset as a sphinxs revelation. Dropping her on turn 4 and then plussing her till turn 8 lets say nets you 2-3 cards plus any life if they redirected attacks or bolts towards her. A sphinx on turn 8 is probably getting you somthing similar, 2-4 cards and 2-4 life. (For right or wrong thats what im doing is playing her over sphinx)
Moreover though, a tap out style goes much farthur than just narset, theres discard to look at, ive been playing around with lili, (who has been promising)especially when you have those dead cards in hand, wherther its lands or inquisitions or mana leaks and best case lingering souls.
If you topdeck Sphinx's Revelation on turn 8, you instantly gain 3 or 4 life and draw that many cards. On turn 10 or 12, it can be double that. You topdeck Narset, and you get the most mediocre continous card draw effect I can think of. Just half a card per turn. You referenced her sitting on board for 4 turns, but only Tibalt isn't busted if he gets to sit around for 4 turns. A planeswalker is either going to draw cards or deal with board; these things are basically R&D "fixing" artifacts so that players with creature decks can interact with them without knowledge of proper deck construction. The obvious choices are the ones that can go Phyrexian Processor and just end the game, like Gideon or Elspeth, but if you choose to play a Jayemdae Tome walker Jace, Architect of Thought is just better at drawing cards than Narset.
Not sure why you guys insist I'm saying you have to play "draw-go". I personally believe that tap-out midrange/control hybrids are a stronger choice in Modern, even if I play Think Twice -> Revelation in Esper. Just because you're running a bunch of bombs, doesn't mean you can just cut all your counters and run six Thoughtseize. You'll have hands where you go Thoughtseize -> Thoughtseize -> [Nothing], and then get killed by topdecks from an opponent you're not pressuring with your goyfless deck. If you don't believe me, look at Shaheen Soorani:
He placed the highest of any control variant at Richmond with his UW list. Notice his Esper list only had 2 Lingering Souls as well.
I think the archetype is powerful for this format, you just have to make the bottom half of your curve look more like a draw-go list than a Jund one. They'll win the fight otherwise (Their threats are cheaper). There's a reason you don't see more than one 5 drop in these Jund lists.
I strongly agree with Cipher WRT tap-out vs draw-go. We don't play draw-go because we think it's the strongest build in modern; we'd be on sultai midrange if we wanted that. We play it because it's the style of deck we enjoy playing, or we really want to make life miserable for twin players. Or both.
Narset doesn't hit 2/3 of the time. Let's do some statistics:
33 spells, 2 creatures, 25 lands: This means you have a 33/60 chance to hit on narset. Let's do some further math:
We already have 4 lands out, and a narset. This means that, statistically, our minimum remaining odds are actually 32/55. Presuming we *did* things on two out of the first three turns, 30/55. So, I'll use this as the density of hits remaining; it will serve to act as our "edge case" load for things like extra narsets being dead and having cracked fetchlands. So, a given activation has a 30/55 chance of success. Every serum visions is a card that doesn't do anything except replace itself, so it's not really a hit--Anyone who plays legacy understands the concept that drawing a cantrip is worth *slightly* less than another nonland card to your actual hand. In this case, where we're looking for interaction, your scry off of a serum visions is 1-(30/55)^2 to fail, or 1-(30/55)^3 to fail on the blind flip after. Again, we're just ballparking. If you jam these numbers together and crunch the actual hypergeometric distribution, you end up with about a 55% hit rate based on deck composition with 4 serum visions. And bear in mind, this means you have to hit TWICE to net card advantage, so even if you min-max with fetches and such you're looking at, best case, a 60% chance to hit, which means to generate actual card advantage off of narset's +1 you only get there by the 4th turn 52% of the time (56% if you fail to account for cards drawn for the turn changing numbers--still not a big difference). Put in confidence interval terms, my ballpark says you only hit card advantage (at the .1 or 90% level) by the 5th turn. That's not good enough for me--As cipher pointed out, any walker that gets to sit in play for three or four turns should just win the game anyway. Therefore, MATH says that narset doesn't belong unless her -2 is relevant and useful to your victory in a material way in the great majority of matches, and in modern where many decks are simply immune to the spells you could cast with rebound for value, it seems particularly naive to bank on it. This compares to Jace, where your "worst case" is a poor concentrate, and your best case is that he DOES in fact win the game in four turns, as versus to merely having generated card advantage.
Another way to look at things: In modern, a 2 card COMBO has to win the game--else why not splinter twin? Narset doesn't do anything powerful enough to be relevant on a consistent basis (as per math above) except in combination with something else to rebound. Ergo, we're in two-card combo territory. Now, narset is repeatable--sure, fine. But, unless narset's -2 consistently puts you in a position where you've all but won the game, it's not doing its job as part of a two-card combo. So, this means the majority of your spells have to be viable to rebound with narset, and the simple fact is most of the time you aren't going to rebound a spell for actual "value" on a consistent basis--the threat of rebounding wipes or removal might buy you time, but it's certainly not directly buying you card advantage. At which point, we're deep into "synergy" territory of pieces working together to do things greater than the sum of their parts, something something magical Christmas land something something every deck either plays countermagic or thoughtseize (or a pile of lightning bolts).
It is incorrect to fail to consider the best case when evaluating a card in modern--that's how people miss things like affinity in a first pass through a potential card pool, or amulet bloom. It's also a mistake to fail to account for the realities of the format at large and variance in particular.
Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
I'm not quite sure how Narset is being compared to Jace. Jaces card advantage obviously nets more cards in one turn. The difference is that it leaves him at 2 loyalty. Narset, even if she misses, is at 7 loyalty. If you haven't played her yet it is a different kind of card.
I also never said that 6 thoughtseizes and 5 drop bombs would replace all counterspells. I was asking if people had some ideas for the low end. But Cipher, you literally just wrote "just have to make the bottom half of your curve look more like a draw-go list than a Jund one" in the same post as you asked why people insisted you were playing draw go. The lack of ability to see anything but draw go control or Jund style control makes me question why you bothered replying to my comment that just asked to explore a new idea.
Esper is not powerful in the current modern format. Despite Shaheens innovations, esper has continually put up worse results than UWR. I believe that building around new cards might hold hope for being more competitive. Specifically I see Narsets synergy with scry effects, discard spells, Lilliana, and Gideon, as something that might break the mold. I was just asking if anyone would consider a new way to build, not just slot Narset into the build they already like to play.
My intent is not hostility, but I feel like my original post was misunderstood. I'm going to play around with a list this week and looking forward to seeing Maty78s list as well.
There's an innate disadvantage to playing narset, lilly, and Gideon with discard--everyone else in modern is either on a plan to go under your planeswalker bombs, or is playing their own discard into more efficient threats. It's not a question of a different strategy with esper (or any other control-color wedge or pair) being *better* in the metagame, it's a question of "if I'm trying to play discard into strong bombs, what exactly is the advantage to whatever I'm doing over playing Abzan midrange?"
At some point, you have to look at your deck and decide if topdecking narset and Gideon after your thoughtseize-mana leak-lingering souls start is where you want to be, or if you want to be the one hitting tasigur, goyf, siege rhino, and the like. Too many people push their decks farther and farther down the tap-out path (i.e. heading towards midrange) and see marginal improvements in some respect, so they do it again, etc, etc, until eventually you just have to ask yourself why you aren't playing thoughtseize into goyf? I think Fabiano's Esper list is a prime example of this--it may be a "control" deck compared to most of the midrange decks of the format, but he still has the games that go thoughtsieze-goyf-planeswalker, and the ability to play that game is part of the strength of sultai. I personally think that his Sultai list is the result of going "blue based control is where I want to be, but I need a strong early threat and disruption... kind of like those thoughtseize-tarmogoyf opening hands... oh wait, let's just do that anyway". I'm not saying it's an invalid or poor way to attack the format, just that when going the tap out route, you very quickly have to start justifying the advantage of slower planeswalkers and other tap-out bombs over playing a more efficient package with goyf and thoughtseize.
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Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Okay, I see the point that discard is good with Tarmogoyf. Why play walkers when you can play a 2 mana creature that kills them. But then that begs the question, why play esper? Nothing in black in this style deck is as good as lightning bolt. At some point either you are trying new things, or you are just playing the deck because you like the style and colours. UWR is the 'more efficient package'.
Not necessarily. UWR and Esper are both mostly instant-speed, so they're both "draw-go" in that respect. Sure, nothing in esper is "as efficient" as lightning bolt at dealing with small creatures. Equally, nothing in UWR is "as efficient" as targeted discard at beating combo. Nothing in UWR is "as efficient" at drawing cards and grinding out games as Esper Charm.
I tend to argue that UWR is to Esper as RUG delver (in legacy) is to BUG delver--One is streamlined, mana and tempo efficient, but survives on very slim margins, while the other is bulkier, better able to grind things out, trading raw efficiency in cost for a little more oomph.
Efficiency is always a reason to play a deck, but remember that efficiency always comes with a cost--power level. There is NO SPELL in Rug Delver that is "as powerful" in an abstract sense as esper charm because nothing in RUG delver actually generates card advantage. There's also nothing in RUG delver that costs as much as esper charm--ponder, brainstorm, tarmogoyf, daze... they're all super efficient spells, and RUG has a huge advantage in efficiency over almost ever other deck in any format, but the easiest way to beat RUG is to have some kind of CA generation that overwhelms their efficient but low-power spells.
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Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
I'm back and forth with discard like inquisition and thoughtseize in the deck, currently I'm playing without them in favour of full serum visions and some targeted kill spells. lili is also a test and this list is very fluid as i try different things out. this is just todays list
other cards I'm considering testing out somewhere are:
I'm not really fluent in delver, but I can speak to the idea of power vs efficiency. What makes lightning bolt more powerful than esper charm, is that it gives an alternative gameplan in the deck. Sometimes you bolt, snap, bolt, attack and win. I didn't even bring up electrolyze, which on top of being a 3 mana 2-1, sometimes it's a 3-1. Bolt doesn't just kill small creatures, it is one of the pillars of the format. There has to be a good reason to justify not playing it.
This isn't to say that I am advocating only playing UWR. Just more to the point that having black instead of red with ultimately having the same control gameplan doesn't make sense. It is just worse. And results have proven that over dozens of modern tournaments on both a pro and amateur level. It's the same reason people play Abzan instead of Jund now. The cards in white for that particular strategy are currently more powerful than the red. New cards maw cause that to swing back but they need to be innovated, tested, and repeated.
I keep writing from my iPad, so it's tough to post a deck list, but on Sunday I'll have a chance to post my 75 and then I'll write some e results when I play Monday night. As I said before, im almost certain that remand and snapcaster is correct, but I want to play some Lilliana's and lingering souls. Gerard Fabiano just built a bug deck out of all the powerful cards in those colours. Nobody had played that before, maybe it works in any colour combo!
@maty - I like it a lot, my build will be close, probably with more Lilliana's, a few discard spells, and less pointed black removal. I also think remand is too good to pass up, as you are going to grind virtual card advantage with your plainswalkers, the card advantage becomes less important than the tempo needed to get them into play.
Inherently yes, UWR has the alternative gameplan of "turning the corner" and bolt-snap-bolt untap activate colonnade + swing, oops you're dead from 12. The ability to change game plans fluidly is one consideration for a deck. My assertion is that, while UWR derives a lot of its power from the ability to turn the corner rapidly, it does so at the cost of being less powerful at enacting the primary gameplan of answering every threat and remaining firmly in control of the game.
Flexibility has a cost. Izzet charm gives you the choice of three different 1 mana spells, but it costs 2 mana. Cryptic command gives you the choice of two separate spells, each generally worth about 1 1/2 mana, at the cost of four mana in significantly more restricted colors. Most of what maelstrom pulse can kill can be done at 2 mana, the extra mana is there because of the flexibility.
It's the same for decks. The flexibility of UWR to switch gameplans means it's slightly less good at enacting either plan. The flexibility of UR twin to switch between combo deck mode and tempo-beatdown means it's significantly worse at either game plan individually. Choosing to play draw-go esper as vs UWR is basically a choice to give up that flexibility in exchange for being *better* at the primary control game plan--answer every threat, accrue card advantage, eventually win.
Part of the reason UWR sees so little play right now is that it CAN'T reliably beat abzan with lingering souls. The stars have to align too perfectly for UWR's removal suite in order for the pile of bolts, helices, and electrolyzes to match up favorably enough with a pile of 4/5's.
People play abzan over jund because the format is such that white hate cards are necessary to fight the linear decks and lingering souls is game-breaking in the midrange mirror, nothing more. Jund is making a comeback and its on the back of being a more efficient predator of the other midrange decks. To say that white is more powerful than red is somewhat incorrect, it's more that the tools red provides are not those that the BGx decks of the format need to combat the expected metagame, and white's tools ARE the tools to fight the metagame.
If everyone were on BW tokens, storm, small zoo, and merfolk, you can bet your ass jund would become the marquis midrange deck because bolt (efficient small dude removal), anger of the gods (efficient swarm wipes), clocks that provide a stream of disruption (dark confidant + pile of bolts), and individual threats that can stabilize against swarm agro (huntmaster of the fells) are better than path to exile, stony silence, and siege rhino.
That's not the format right now though.
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Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
Maybe I'm just not seeing how having esper charm and more dedicated control strategy is 'better' than having red. There are no results to corroborate that, only personal anecdotes. So it appears to be back to just playing what you like.
Maybe it would be clearer to me if I had your opinion of what the meta game actually is right now. So I have a better understanding of what I should be trying to build my deck to fight against. Is it just build for Abzan and Twin and pray you can beat everything else with sideboard cards?
Esper doesn't have results YET. To be fair, the deck has only had the chance to EXIST for less than a year, as of the reprinting of onslaught fetches in KTK.
I'm not arguing that Esper charm and more dedicated control is "better" than UWR. I'm arguing that esper charm and more dedicated control is better at controlling the long game than UWR is at controlling the long game. A is a better basketball player than B does not imply that A's team is better than B's team. They may be correlated, but there is no causation. Reading comprehension is important folks.
Also, results vs effectiveness is correlation, not causation. Just because a deck is strong does not mean it will have results, and vice versa. Amulet bloom wasn't even on the radar six months ago. There was no card printed to suddenly make it better or the metagame less hostile, it simply didn't have results yet, mostly due to sample size relative to population size.
Check out the modern nexus site, it has some solid statistics in a few of the articles to highlight these concepts; repeated strong performances may indicate that a deck could be powerful, but we have plenty of evidence back from the days of Trix that just because a deck always top 8's doesn't make it good, it can often be a function of a deck severely underperforming but being severely over-represented.
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Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
I also never said that 6 thoughtseizes and 5 drop bombs would replace all counterspells. I was asking if people had some ideas for the low end. But Cipher, you literally just wrote "just have to make the bottom half of your curve look more like a draw-go list than a Jund one" in the same post as you asked why people insisted you were playing draw go. The lack of ability to see anything but draw go control or Jund style control makes me question why you bothered replying to my comment that just asked to explore a new idea.
I said "look more like a draw-go list" to basically say that you want to run counterspells and instant-speed removal. That doesn't make you a draw-go deck. The thing about this game is everyone looks at things from an incremental standpoint. People take a starting point of some sort, and add things they want to try out to "evolve" a given list. It's rare that people build decks from the top-down, and that leads to decks with identity crises and frustrated builders. The bottom-up style of tuning is great when you have a solid base, but a lot of these Esper lists are just collections of the sweet "control" cards in these colors.
As I see it, the bottom half of your curve in Modern are the 1 & 2 CMC spells that accomplish 1 or more of several things:
Stack Disruption
Hand Disruption
Removal
Ramp
Card Draw
Most lists are running between 4 and 6 removal spells, and around 8 stack disruption spells, alongside either a straight card draw spell or cantrips that serve as a half-and-half combination of things.
In the draw-go lists, Wafo used raw card drawing and cantrips to sift through his deck and hit land drops, so that either a Supreme Verdict or the mana to cast multiple spells in 1 turn could make up for the positional advantage your opponent can get when you "do nothing". If you don't want to be a Sphinx's Revelation deck, then your other option for an endgame is to pressure your opponent with bombs. You could load the bottom half of your curve with more Doom Blades and Inquisitions and never lose to creature decks, but what do you do when you play combo? Your core gameplan is fundamentally unfair to decks like Affinity or Pod; they don't do well against Gideons, sweepers, and Lingering Souls. The question is how to not look like so much trash against a tempo (Twin) deck or actual combo deck.
Hand disruption is only good in your opener + first three or so drawsteps. A GBx deck doesn't need longer than that; they can create and exploit the holes from Thoughtseize as early as turn 2. Goyf can lead to kills by turn 4-6. Whatever planeswalker you drop, you're not killing them that quickly. That means you need to run blue hand disruption to interact with them in the midgame. That's why I say "look like a draw-go deck". If you want to try something different, maybe a prison build is possible? There's Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, basically the sweetest and most overpowered card to not be properly supported in this format. Cards like Spellskite, Ensnaring Bridge, and Torpor Orb and put the brakes on combo decks without you having to run blue stack disruption, but what it all breaks down to is either killing a combo deck fast enough or interacting with them through the game. That's why I think UWR is better if you're not going to play the Wafo build; Bolt -> Snapcaster -> Bolt is ridiculous, and Gideon does finish of people alongside colonnade on turn 6. Our creature removal doesn't double as anything, though. Note that Tezzeret could turn 6 people very easily even when the card was in standard. I used to run it in Grixis. I've also considered Tamiyo, but she's just a "fixed" Ajani, really. Narset in theory could serve as disruption, but you'd have to run...Silence? Maybe land destruction? I don't think a combo deck cares about you doubling Lingering Souls.
Of course, most combo decks all come down to a creature, as a design principle in modern Magic. Only a few like Scapeshift, Tron, Living End, Storm, etc. can simply ignore your Doom Blades. You could just run the most anti-creature list possible and pack your sideboard with Negates and such. Maybe there are percentage points to be had there.
That might just be why pretty much everyone plays 4 (or more) wraths in the 75. That being said, zoo isn't a good matchup--it's the classic fast-agro vs a wrath deck. I like our odds if they don't have the triple one-drop start, but if they do, yeah, it's probably GG unless we happen to hit paths and snaps.
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Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
@cipher: I appreciate your feedback! i think you made a lot of good points that reflect the avenues of 'control' in a wide format like modern. That I believe is what I was trying to ask in the first place and I think you nailed it.
I've been a long time follower of Shaheen Sooranis builds of esper and I have even sleeved up a few for my local modern nights. In the second article you linked of his, in the discard section, he states that discard (2TS/2IoK) is the only reason to run esper over UW. You mentioned a few times not that having discard makes you weak to combo. I'm having trouble understanding that one. Discard is the premier way to fight combo. Just because Abzan and Jund use discard to clear a path for tarmogoyfs, shouldn't take away from the fact that thoughtseizing turn one or two and taking your opponent off curve is one of the most powerful control elements in the game of magic, not just modern. That effect scales up as the power level and especially synergy of cards goes up.
@JJKMan: if you have a lot of zoo in your meta, Purphory Nodes is a sweet card that can buy you a lot of time vs aggressive creature decks, but having access to timely reinforments is probably a better use of sideboard slots
Discard to disrupt your opponents' curve is powerful, yes. However, it doesn't perform well in draw-go builds because it makes such a poor topdeck and is poor against redundant decks. In tap-out style decks, where you have a very proactive clock, it performs much better because you only need to make small windows of opportunity to slam your threats after which the game ends in short order. Jund and Junk follow much the same pattern, only they slam for turn 2/turn 3 threats whereas esper tap-out goes for turn 4/5/6 threats. Other than that, their game plans are fundamentally very much the same.
Taking your opponent off-curve in draw-go is almost pointless because the time you save is not being met by any sort of tempo advantage in your favor and trading 1 for 1 when your opponent hasn't invested in their plays at all leaves you behind in mana investiture, not a position the draw-go deck wants to be in.
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Yes, I am a local area mod. WELP. GOOD LIFE CHANGES ALL HAPPEN AT ONCE AND SOME ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE
Primary Decks:
Modern: Esper Draw-Go
Legacy: RUG Lands
EDH: Sidisi turn-3 storm
@cipher: I appreciate your feedback! i think you made a lot of good points that reflect the avenues of 'control' in a wide format like modern. That I believe is what I was trying to ask in the first place and I think you nailed it.
I've been a long time follower of Shaheen Sooranis builds of esper and I have even sleeved up a few for my local modern nights. In the second article you linked of his, in the discard section, he states that discard (2TS/2IoK) is the only reason to run esper over UW. You mentioned a few times not that having discard makes you weak to combo. I'm having trouble understanding that one. Discard is the premier way to fight combo. Just because Abzan and Jund use discard to clear a path for tarmogoyfs, shouldn't take away from the fact that thoughtseizing turn one or two and taking your opponent off curve is one of the most powerful control elements in the game of magic, not just modern. That effect scales up as the power level and especially synergy of cards goes up.
I'd run 2 or 3 Thoughtseize/Inquisition in a walkers list, just like what I posted earlier. Even in Standard UB I ran 2 copies. Even in Jace, the Mind Sculptor UB people ran 2x Inquisition. You just want it in numbers where the chances of drawing a second are slim. In my mind, that number's 2. It sucks to have more dead cards to draw later, when you already have Mana Leak, possibly Snare, etc., but the turn 1 Thoughtseize is just about the strongest play in Modern (Ponder's banned). I couldn't imagine running 4 like Soorani, but once again I can't argue with the man's success, so I guess he knows how to play those expensive sorceries better than I do.
Just take a moment to sit, reflect, and ask yourself this question: "Would I flip the table if I topdecked 2 in a row with my opponent hellbent, game 3 of the finals???"
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I'm very glad you brought up this version of esper, when I read your previous post it was almost verbatim to the things I had been thinking. Hopefully with at least the 2 of us we can find an esper narset list that works!
It kind of creates a catch-22 where the value she generates isn't enough, but the board impact she makes also isn't quite enough. She gets much more powerful in a slightly slower format, but that is not the modern of today.
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
First on the odds of bricking on narset: i dont think its as bad as you think. Currently I'm trying her in a list of 33 spells, 2 creatures and 25 lands. Taking into account the critical mass of targets, fetches thinning by the time narset hits (marginal i know but its something) and the serum visions, i find she hits more than 50/50, id say around 2/3 of the time.
Regarding jace: the only deck hes really stopping that its safe to tap out for with him on turn 4 is twin. His +1 is nice and it does buy you time to find a verdict or something against other decks, but if your using him to fact or fiction you might as well play a 4 mana draw spell like concentrate, cause then you get to keep everything.
Maybe its a loose analogy but i see narset as a sphinxs revelation. Dropping her on turn 4 and then plussing her till turn 8 lets say nets you 2-3 cards plus any life if they redirected attacks or bolts towards her. A sphinx on turn 8 is probably getting you somthing similar, 2-4 cards and 2-4 life. (For right or wrong thats what im doing is playing her over sphinx)
Moreover though, a tap out style goes much farthur than just narset, theres discard to look at, ive been playing around with lili, (who has been promising)especially when you have those dead cards in hand, wherther its lands or inquisitions or mana leaks and best case lingering souls.
Hope you see all of this as constructive debate
Not sure why you guys insist I'm saying you have to play "draw-go". I personally believe that tap-out midrange/control hybrids are a stronger choice in Modern, even if I play Think Twice -> Revelation in Esper. Just because you're running a bunch of bombs, doesn't mean you can just cut all your counters and run six Thoughtseize. You'll have hands where you go Thoughtseize -> Thoughtseize -> [Nothing], and then get killed by topdecks from an opponent you're not pressuring with your goyfless deck. If you don't believe me, look at Shaheen Soorani:
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/26348_Esper-Walkers-In-Modern.html
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/28012_Last-Minute-Preparation-For-Richmond.html
He placed the highest of any control variant at Richmond with his UW list. Notice his Esper list only had 2 Lingering Souls as well.
I think the archetype is powerful for this format, you just have to make the bottom half of your curve look more like a draw-go list than a Jund one. They'll win the fight otherwise (Their threats are cheaper). There's a reason you don't see more than one 5 drop in these Jund lists.
Narset doesn't hit 2/3 of the time. Let's do some statistics:
33 spells, 2 creatures, 25 lands: This means you have a 33/60 chance to hit on narset. Let's do some further math:
We already have 4 lands out, and a narset. This means that, statistically, our minimum remaining odds are actually 32/55. Presuming we *did* things on two out of the first three turns, 30/55. So, I'll use this as the density of hits remaining; it will serve to act as our "edge case" load for things like extra narsets being dead and having cracked fetchlands. So, a given activation has a 30/55 chance of success. Every serum visions is a card that doesn't do anything except replace itself, so it's not really a hit--Anyone who plays legacy understands the concept that drawing a cantrip is worth *slightly* less than another nonland card to your actual hand. In this case, where we're looking for interaction, your scry off of a serum visions is 1-(30/55)^2 to fail, or 1-(30/55)^3 to fail on the blind flip after. Again, we're just ballparking. If you jam these numbers together and crunch the actual hypergeometric distribution, you end up with about a 55% hit rate based on deck composition with 4 serum visions. And bear in mind, this means you have to hit TWICE to net card advantage, so even if you min-max with fetches and such you're looking at, best case, a 60% chance to hit, which means to generate actual card advantage off of narset's +1 you only get there by the 4th turn 52% of the time (56% if you fail to account for cards drawn for the turn changing numbers--still not a big difference). Put in confidence interval terms, my ballpark says you only hit card advantage (at the .1 or 90% level) by the 5th turn. That's not good enough for me--As cipher pointed out, any walker that gets to sit in play for three or four turns should just win the game anyway. Therefore, MATH says that narset doesn't belong unless her -2 is relevant and useful to your victory in a material way in the great majority of matches, and in modern where many decks are simply immune to the spells you could cast with rebound for value, it seems particularly naive to bank on it. This compares to Jace, where your "worst case" is a poor concentrate, and your best case is that he DOES in fact win the game in four turns, as versus to merely having generated card advantage.
Another way to look at things: In modern, a 2 card COMBO has to win the game--else why not splinter twin? Narset doesn't do anything powerful enough to be relevant on a consistent basis (as per math above) except in combination with something else to rebound. Ergo, we're in two-card combo territory. Now, narset is repeatable--sure, fine. But, unless narset's -2 consistently puts you in a position where you've all but won the game, it's not doing its job as part of a two-card combo. So, this means the majority of your spells have to be viable to rebound with narset, and the simple fact is most of the time you aren't going to rebound a spell for actual "value" on a consistent basis--the threat of rebounding wipes or removal might buy you time, but it's certainly not directly buying you card advantage. At which point, we're deep into "synergy" territory of pieces working together to do things greater than the sum of their parts, something something magical Christmas land something something every deck either plays countermagic or thoughtseize (or a pile of lightning bolts).
It is incorrect to fail to consider the best case when evaluating a card in modern--that's how people miss things like affinity in a first pass through a potential card pool, or amulet bloom. It's also a mistake to fail to account for the realities of the format at large and variance in particular.
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
I also never said that 6 thoughtseizes and 5 drop bombs would replace all counterspells. I was asking if people had some ideas for the low end. But Cipher, you literally just wrote "just have to make the bottom half of your curve look more like a draw-go list than a Jund one" in the same post as you asked why people insisted you were playing draw go. The lack of ability to see anything but draw go control or Jund style control makes me question why you bothered replying to my comment that just asked to explore a new idea.
Esper is not powerful in the current modern format. Despite Shaheens innovations, esper has continually put up worse results than UWR. I believe that building around new cards might hold hope for being more competitive. Specifically I see Narsets synergy with scry effects, discard spells, Lilliana, and Gideon, as something that might break the mold. I was just asking if anyone would consider a new way to build, not just slot Narset into the build they already like to play.
My intent is not hostility, but I feel like my original post was misunderstood. I'm going to play around with a list this week and looking forward to seeing Maty78s list as well.
At some point, you have to look at your deck and decide if topdecking narset and Gideon after your thoughtseize-mana leak-lingering souls start is where you want to be, or if you want to be the one hitting tasigur, goyf, siege rhino, and the like. Too many people push their decks farther and farther down the tap-out path (i.e. heading towards midrange) and see marginal improvements in some respect, so they do it again, etc, etc, until eventually you just have to ask yourself why you aren't playing thoughtseize into goyf? I think Fabiano's Esper list is a prime example of this--it may be a "control" deck compared to most of the midrange decks of the format, but he still has the games that go thoughtsieze-goyf-planeswalker, and the ability to play that game is part of the strength of sultai. I personally think that his Sultai list is the result of going "blue based control is where I want to be, but I need a strong early threat and disruption... kind of like those thoughtseize-tarmogoyf opening hands... oh wait, let's just do that anyway". I'm not saying it's an invalid or poor way to attack the format, just that when going the tap out route, you very quickly have to start justifying the advantage of slower planeswalkers and other tap-out bombs over playing a more efficient package with goyf and thoughtseize.
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
I tend to argue that UWR is to Esper as RUG delver (in legacy) is to BUG delver--One is streamlined, mana and tempo efficient, but survives on very slim margins, while the other is bulkier, better able to grind things out, trading raw efficiency in cost for a little more oomph.
Efficiency is always a reason to play a deck, but remember that efficiency always comes with a cost--power level. There is NO SPELL in Rug Delver that is "as powerful" in an abstract sense as esper charm because nothing in RUG delver actually generates card advantage. There's also nothing in RUG delver that costs as much as esper charm--ponder, brainstorm, tarmogoyf, daze... they're all super efficient spells, and RUG has a huge advantage in efficiency over almost ever other deck in any format, but the easiest way to beat RUG is to have some kind of CA generation that overwhelms their efficient but low-power spells.
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
4 path to exile
4 serum visions
1 spell snare
3 mana leak
2 logic knot
1 doom blade
1 smother
1 liliana of the veil
4 esper charm
3 lingering souls
2 narset transcendent
1 wrath of god
2 supreme verdict
2 cryptic command
1 gideon jura
1 batterskull
I'm back and forth with discard like inquisition and thoughtseize in the deck, currently I'm playing without them in favour of full serum visions and some targeted kill spells. lili is also a test and this list is very fluid as i try different things out. this is just todays list
other cards I'm considering testing out somewhere are:
This isn't to say that I am advocating only playing UWR. Just more to the point that having black instead of red with ultimately having the same control gameplan doesn't make sense. It is just worse. And results have proven that over dozens of modern tournaments on both a pro and amateur level. It's the same reason people play Abzan instead of Jund now. The cards in white for that particular strategy are currently more powerful than the red. New cards maw cause that to swing back but they need to be innovated, tested, and repeated.
I keep writing from my iPad, so it's tough to post a deck list, but on Sunday I'll have a chance to post my 75 and then I'll write some e results when I play Monday night. As I said before, im almost certain that remand and snapcaster is correct, but I want to play some Lilliana's and lingering souls. Gerard Fabiano just built a bug deck out of all the powerful cards in those colours. Nobody had played that before, maybe it works in any colour combo!
@maty - I like it a lot, my build will be close, probably with more Lilliana's, a few discard spells, and less pointed black removal. I also think remand is too good to pass up, as you are going to grind virtual card advantage with your plainswalkers, the card advantage becomes less important than the tempo needed to get them into play.
Flexibility has a cost. Izzet charm gives you the choice of three different 1 mana spells, but it costs 2 mana. Cryptic command gives you the choice of two separate spells, each generally worth about 1 1/2 mana, at the cost of four mana in significantly more restricted colors. Most of what maelstrom pulse can kill can be done at 2 mana, the extra mana is there because of the flexibility.
It's the same for decks. The flexibility of UWR to switch gameplans means it's slightly less good at enacting either plan. The flexibility of UR twin to switch between combo deck mode and tempo-beatdown means it's significantly worse at either game plan individually. Choosing to play draw-go esper as vs UWR is basically a choice to give up that flexibility in exchange for being *better* at the primary control game plan--answer every threat, accrue card advantage, eventually win.
Part of the reason UWR sees so little play right now is that it CAN'T reliably beat abzan with lingering souls. The stars have to align too perfectly for UWR's removal suite in order for the pile of bolts, helices, and electrolyzes to match up favorably enough with a pile of 4/5's.
People play abzan over jund because the format is such that white hate cards are necessary to fight the linear decks and lingering souls is game-breaking in the midrange mirror, nothing more. Jund is making a comeback and its on the back of being a more efficient predator of the other midrange decks. To say that white is more powerful than red is somewhat incorrect, it's more that the tools red provides are not those that the BGx decks of the format need to combat the expected metagame, and white's tools ARE the tools to fight the metagame.
If everyone were on BW tokens, storm, small zoo, and merfolk, you can bet your ass jund would become the marquis midrange deck because bolt (efficient small dude removal), anger of the gods (efficient swarm wipes), clocks that provide a stream of disruption (dark confidant + pile of bolts), and individual threats that can stabilize against swarm agro (huntmaster of the fells) are better than path to exile, stony silence, and siege rhino.
That's not the format right now though.
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
Maybe it would be clearer to me if I had your opinion of what the meta game actually is right now. So I have a better understanding of what I should be trying to build my deck to fight against. Is it just build for Abzan and Twin and pray you can beat everything else with sideboard cards?
I'm not arguing that Esper charm and more dedicated control is "better" than UWR. I'm arguing that esper charm and more dedicated control is better at controlling the long game than UWR is at controlling the long game. A is a better basketball player than B does not imply that A's team is better than B's team. They may be correlated, but there is no causation. Reading comprehension is important folks.
Also, results vs effectiveness is correlation, not causation. Just because a deck is strong does not mean it will have results, and vice versa. Amulet bloom wasn't even on the radar six months ago. There was no card printed to suddenly make it better or the metagame less hostile, it simply didn't have results yet, mostly due to sample size relative to population size.
Check out the modern nexus site, it has some solid statistics in a few of the articles to highlight these concepts; repeated strong performances may indicate that a deck could be powerful, but we have plenty of evidence back from the days of Trix that just because a deck always top 8's doesn't make it good, it can often be a function of a deck severely underperforming but being severely over-represented.
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
I said "look more like a draw-go list" to basically say that you want to run counterspells and instant-speed removal. That doesn't make you a draw-go deck. The thing about this game is everyone looks at things from an incremental standpoint. People take a starting point of some sort, and add things they want to try out to "evolve" a given list. It's rare that people build decks from the top-down, and that leads to decks with identity crises and frustrated builders. The bottom-up style of tuning is great when you have a solid base, but a lot of these Esper lists are just collections of the sweet "control" cards in these colors.
As I see it, the bottom half of your curve in Modern are the 1 & 2 CMC spells that accomplish 1 or more of several things:
Stack Disruption
Hand Disruption
Removal
Ramp
Card Draw
Most lists are running between 4 and 6 removal spells, and around 8 stack disruption spells, alongside either a straight card draw spell or cantrips that serve as a half-and-half combination of things.
In the draw-go lists, Wafo used raw card drawing and cantrips to sift through his deck and hit land drops, so that either a Supreme Verdict or the mana to cast multiple spells in 1 turn could make up for the positional advantage your opponent can get when you "do nothing". If you don't want to be a Sphinx's Revelation deck, then your other option for an endgame is to pressure your opponent with bombs. You could load the bottom half of your curve with more Doom Blades and Inquisitions and never lose to creature decks, but what do you do when you play combo? Your core gameplan is fundamentally unfair to decks like Affinity or Pod; they don't do well against Gideons, sweepers, and Lingering Souls. The question is how to not look like so much trash against a tempo (Twin) deck or actual combo deck.
Hand disruption is only good in your opener + first three or so drawsteps. A GBx deck doesn't need longer than that; they can create and exploit the holes from Thoughtseize as early as turn 2. Goyf can lead to kills by turn 4-6. Whatever planeswalker you drop, you're not killing them that quickly. That means you need to run blue hand disruption to interact with them in the midgame. That's why I say "look like a draw-go deck". If you want to try something different, maybe a prison build is possible? There's Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, basically the sweetest and most overpowered card to not be properly supported in this format. Cards like Spellskite, Ensnaring Bridge, and Torpor Orb and put the brakes on combo decks without you having to run blue stack disruption, but what it all breaks down to is either killing a combo deck fast enough or interacting with them through the game. That's why I think UWR is better if you're not going to play the Wafo build; Bolt -> Snapcaster -> Bolt is ridiculous, and Gideon does finish of people alongside colonnade on turn 6. Our creature removal doesn't double as anything, though. Note that Tezzeret could turn 6 people very easily even when the card was in standard. I used to run it in Grixis. I've also considered Tamiyo, but she's just a "fixed" Ajani, really. Narset in theory could serve as disruption, but you'd have to run...Silence? Maybe land destruction? I don't think a combo deck cares about you doubling Lingering Souls.
There's also Painter's Servant + Celestial Purge, Devout Lightcaster, Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, etc. Bottled Cloister locks out attack phases with Ensnaring Bridge and gives you a Staff of Nin, at the cost of losing your entire hand to a Disenchant. These are just some ideas I've had in the past.
Of course, most combo decks all come down to a creature, as a design principle in modern Magic. Only a few like Scapeshift, Tron, Living End, Storm, etc. can simply ignore your Doom Blades. You could just run the most anti-creature list possible and pack your sideboard with Negates and such. Maybe there are percentage points to be had there.
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
I've been a long time follower of Shaheen Sooranis builds of esper and I have even sleeved up a few for my local modern nights. In the second article you linked of his, in the discard section, he states that discard (2TS/2IoK) is the only reason to run esper over UW. You mentioned a few times not that having discard makes you weak to combo. I'm having trouble understanding that one. Discard is the premier way to fight combo. Just because Abzan and Jund use discard to clear a path for tarmogoyfs, shouldn't take away from the fact that thoughtseizing turn one or two and taking your opponent off curve is one of the most powerful control elements in the game of magic, not just modern. That effect scales up as the power level and especially synergy of cards goes up.
@JJKMan: if you have a lot of zoo in your meta, Purphory Nodes is a sweet card that can buy you a lot of time vs aggressive creature decks, but having access to timely reinforments is probably a better use of sideboard slots
Taking your opponent off-curve in draw-go is almost pointless because the time you save is not being met by any sort of tempo advantage in your favor and trading 1 for 1 when your opponent hasn't invested in their plays at all leaves you behind in mana investiture, not a position the draw-go deck wants to be in.
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
I'd run 2 or 3 Thoughtseize/Inquisition in a walkers list, just like what I posted earlier. Even in Standard UB I ran 2 copies. Even in Jace, the Mind Sculptor UB people ran 2x Inquisition. You just want it in numbers where the chances of drawing a second are slim. In my mind, that number's 2. It sucks to have more dead cards to draw later, when you already have Mana Leak, possibly Snare, etc., but the turn 1 Thoughtseize is just about the strongest play in Modern (Ponder's banned). I couldn't imagine running 4 like Soorani, but once again I can't argue with the man's success, so I guess he knows how to play those expensive sorceries better than I do.
Just take a moment to sit, reflect, and ask yourself this question: "Would I flip the table if I topdecked 2 in a row with my opponent hellbent, game 3 of the finals???"