I was thinking xathrid necromancer + gift of immortality + cartel aristocraft might be fun too, doesn't dome them but man you can generate a lot of zombies for free.
Oh I agree pithing needle probably isn't tremendously good for esper vs black other than turn in off whip or a connections. I'd much rather side in a planar cleansing or blood baron of vizkopa as esper control. It is however vitally important for some decks (fish) to side it in because it turns off pack rat.
By that argument no card stops underworld connections because unless it's turn 3 you always get a card from it. Although, Pithing needle is much better vs mono black as you can say swamp and it hoses them pretty good. (They can put it on mutavault but then they can never activate it for fear of losing the connections.)
Anyway, its hard to see esper being advantaged vs. BR. Keyrunes, mutavaults, slaughter games, rakdos' return, with hand disruption, ugh, just a nightmare to think about.
Yeah if Damnation gets printed, it'll be hard to argue for a reason to not play black devotion. It's already up there as one of the top decks if not the top deck.
UWR vs UW really just comes down to two cards: Pillar of flame and Warleaders Helix, and if those two cards are worth essentially playing a game when you give up 4 life on average to lands.
Caverned out sire of insanity is basically game over for UW unless they have renounce the guilds handy (which is narrow), where uwr can helix him. Voice of resurgence is also more annoying to deal with without pillar.
But right now the main aggro decks are burning earth decks, with lots of 3/3s and not voice decks. So pillar of flame ATM isn't as necessary as the 4 life saved from running basics. And Jund isn't really running Sire to much anymore mostly because control is a secondary concern.
That's why you're seeing more UW than UWR right now.
Thought scours big use in UWx decks was actually to be able to hit land drops with the marginal upside of feeding your snapcasters. This does the same thing with the marginal upside of sometimes getting a flash supreme verdict.
You could make the arguement that with Scavenging Ooze being a a thing, Thought Scour might give it fuel to grow, whereas Quicken will never do that.
Original Goblin Bombardment in this meta with Blood Artists and Lingering Souls would probably just be too good altogether. T1: Doomed Traveler, T2: Bombardment, T3: Souls, T4: Bood Artist + Flashback, do 16 damage.
UWR is the 4th most popular deck online, but its almost the solitary blue control with any sort of representation. Whereas there are a ton of aggro and midrange variations with less than 10% representation.
If 90% of the 3-1 and 4-0 decks aren't control we can say that control as an archetype is fairly weak right now.
Pro Tour Nagoya - Tempered Steel won and most represented.
Standard afterwards was mostly dominated by Delver and Wolf Run Ramp.
Pro Tour Avacyn Restored - Miracles won, naya most represented.
Standard afterwards (During RTR) was mostly dominated by reanimator, Jund, UWR and R/B aggro.
Block online post Avacyn Restored was basically all Jund, and during the Scars of Mirrodin block it was basically all Tempered steel, and those did translate to big decks, but not the only dominating ones. The standard meta is actually completely different than the block meta. All these control decks in the block tournament basically indicate that there will be a control deck available during the next rotation, not necessarily that it will be the best deck. Adding a new set, and being able to use core set cards really do go a long way in making a strategy more or less viable than it would be with a lesser card pool as in a block restricted contructed format.
You can determine which deck it is by turn 2 most of the time, and it's not really hard even with some fringe decks.
The following is mostly true for the main decks.
Reanimator Decks:
B/W/G + Mana Dork = Junk Reanimator
B/W/R/G or just seeing Faithless Looting = Human Reanimator
You can usually tell which one it is by the first mulch or grisly salvage by looking at their cards if you don't see looting or a dork or red mana.
Other Black Decks:
B/G/R + Farseek or nothing = Jund Midrange
B/G/R + Aggresive creature = Jund Aggro
B/W/R or Blood Artist or Cartel Aristocrat = Aristocrats. If you don't see a a green or blue mana by turn 2. Or a creature by turn 2. And it's still just b/r or b/w or r/w, it's probably still Aristocrats.
Blue Decks:
Black + Blue = Esper Control
Blue + Red = UWR flash or midrange
Blue + Green = There's 4 decks here it could be: Bant Auras, Bant Flash, Prime Speaker Bant, and Omnidoor. If they farseek it's either prime speaker or omnidoor, if they drop a dork it's prime speaker or auras, if they don't do either and think twice it's flash. Also they might do something obvious like drop an invisible stalker.
Aggro:
Mountain = Gruul or Rakdos Aggro, Gruul is more popular.
Green + White + Red (or Cavern) with aggressive creatures = Naya Blitz
Easy Fringe decks to identify by T2:
Multiple Island = Delver Variant
Swamp or a Zombie = Zombies
Golgari Guildgate, or Young Wolf = Golgari Aggro
This is no Boggart Ram-Gang even though it comes at a comparable price tag. One thing I hate about this design is that activating the beneficial ability, essentially invalidates my other beneficial ability. That is a sort of feel-bad moment that probably could have been avoided in my opinion."
His top 8 were:
8: Thrull Parasite
7: Ghor-Clan Rampager
6: Dimir Charm
5: Domri Rade
4: Skullcrack
3: Boros Charm
2: Obzedat, Ghost Council
1: The Shocklands
Notable ommissions: Experiment One, Burning Tree Emissary, Boros Reckoner.
That's why dead weight IMO is just better in junk colors. Instant speed 2 damage in junk colors isn't really tremendously useful because T1 and T2 you're ideally tapping out for pilgrim or farseek. Dead weight on the other hand is never dead against aggro. It shrinks their bigger dudes giving you favorable combat block, kills their tiny dudes, and can remove troublesome creatures which righteous blow can't.
In junk colors I'm not sure there are 5 better 1 mana removal spells. There's dead weight and tragic slip slip isn't necessarily better, dead weight kinda is though.
The main issue is that as a control list it has no card filtering or card advantage, so it's at the mercy of it's topdeck.
Anyway, its hard to see esper being advantaged vs. BR. Keyrunes, mutavaults, slaughter games, rakdos' return, with hand disruption, ugh, just a nightmare to think about.
Caverned out sire of insanity is basically game over for UW unless they have renounce the guilds handy (which is narrow), where uwr can helix him. Voice of resurgence is also more annoying to deal with without pillar.
But right now the main aggro decks are burning earth decks, with lots of 3/3s and not voice decks. So pillar of flame ATM isn't as necessary as the 4 life saved from running basics. And Jund isn't really running Sire to much anymore mostly because control is a secondary concern.
That's why you're seeing more UW than UWR right now.
You could make the arguement that with Scavenging Ooze being a a thing, Thought Scour might give it fuel to grow, whereas Quicken will never do that.
If you're anything else, you want to go first so that the aggro deck can't establish pressure as fast at the very least.
The only reason to go second is if you're playing a slow deck vs. slow deck, and even then, counters are better on the play than on the draw.
If 90% of the 3-1 and 4-0 decks aren't control we can say that control as an archetype is fairly weak right now.
Standard afterwards was mostly dominated by Delver and Wolf Run Ramp.
Pro Tour Avacyn Restored - Miracles won, naya most represented.
Standard afterwards (During RTR) was mostly dominated by reanimator, Jund, UWR and R/B aggro.
Block online post Avacyn Restored was basically all Jund, and during the Scars of Mirrodin block it was basically all Tempered steel, and those did translate to big decks, but not the only dominating ones. The standard meta is actually completely different than the block meta. All these control decks in the block tournament basically indicate that there will be a control deck available during the next rotation, not necessarily that it will be the best deck. Adding a new set, and being able to use core set cards really do go a long way in making a strategy more or less viable than it would be with a lesser card pool as in a block restricted contructed format.
The following is mostly true for the main decks.
Reanimator Decks:
B/W/G + Mana Dork = Junk Reanimator
B/W/R/G or just seeing Faithless Looting = Human Reanimator
You can usually tell which one it is by the first mulch or grisly salvage by looking at their cards if you don't see looting or a dork or red mana.
Other Black Decks:
B/G/R + Farseek or nothing = Jund Midrange
B/G/R + Aggresive creature = Jund Aggro
B/W/R or Blood Artist or Cartel Aristocrat = Aristocrats. If you don't see a a green or blue mana by turn 2. Or a creature by turn 2. And it's still just b/r or b/w or r/w, it's probably still Aristocrats.
Blue Decks:
Black + Blue = Esper Control
Blue + Red = UWR flash or midrange
Blue + Green = There's 4 decks here it could be: Bant Auras, Bant Flash, Prime Speaker Bant, and Omnidoor. If they farseek it's either prime speaker or omnidoor, if they drop a dork it's prime speaker or auras, if they don't do either and think twice it's flash. Also they might do something obvious like drop an invisible stalker.
Aggro:
Mountain = Gruul or Rakdos Aggro, Gruul is more popular.
Green + White + Red (or Cavern) with aggressive creatures = Naya Blitz
Easy Fringe decks to identify by T2:
Multiple Island = Delver Variant
Swamp or a Zombie = Zombies
Golgari Guildgate, or Young Wolf = Golgari Aggro
That's basically it.
Last set:
His top 8 were:
Notable ommissions: Experiment One, Burning Tree Emissary, Boros Reckoner.
Namely:
Lotleth troll
Predator ooze
Falkenrath aristrocrat
And with Boros charm going to be a thing you better believe -2/-2 is going to be more valuable than 2 damage.