the only way to prevent them from having extra etb triggers is by using path to exile. Both reflector mage and deputy of detention are not permanent solutions (even though they are permanents, and solutions ;))
Another card that struck my interest from the new set is Sky Tether, which in our build is a 1 mana pacifism and could be very interesting as removal choice in the more tempo-oriented builds like UW.
Oh I know, I meant I didn't want them re-playing whatever I bounced with Mage and get a bonus trigger from that.
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Current Modern Decks BG Elves // "He's back. And he brought his friends. And their friends." BG The Rock // "Dwayne Johnson approved." RU Izzet Phoenix // "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." UGW Bant Spirits // "Super Ghost Bros." BUG Sultai Wildnerness Teachings // "How many turns did I just take again?" C Colorless Eldrazi // "Smash you."
As you guys can see he used 2 Tithe Taker and 2 Deputy of Detention.
I think going hard on Thalia 3x is a bit too much. Two is more than enough. One of them can be replaced by remorseful cleric.
Also I am not sure about 1x Echoing truth main and 20 lands. Id rather keep 4x PTE
Hope to hear your thoughts about it
Id never register UW without 3 copies of Thalia. Echoing Truth is one of my favourite main Deck choices as well.
I tried a 3 Thalia, 2 Tithe Taker build and got 4-1.
Losing only to Mill because he had Bridge and Crypt Incursion back to back in both games, paired with a nuts field of ruin + double trap in the last one.
I beat Storm, Shadow and two different UR/Jeskai Titi/Phoenix decks.
how did tithe taker perform? did it contribute positively to your record?
Also, i'm going to experiment with a list that - heresy!- lacks noble hierarch, but in bant colors. Small splash for coco, it should play like UW does-.
since i just swapped noble hierarchs for rattlechains, i'll be watching closely if any hand could have developed better with the mana dork
It kind of forced main phase removal and one time the opponent forgot to fetch/ forgot the tax which disabled his 2 mana Fatal push in my attack step
It also won me a game vs. the UR Titi Deck. He had two counters on his Titi and was casting a Bolt on my Captain, leaving no Mana open. I vialed in the Taker and he couldnt cast his Gutshot which prevented the Titi flip and got me the win. It was a greedy misplay of him, because he wanted to bounce the whole board.
I liked it and I will test it further!
how did tithe taker perform? did it contribute positively to your record?
Also, i'm going to experiment with a list that - heresy!- lacks noble hierarch, but in bant colors. Small splash for coco, it should play like UW does-.
since i just swapped noble hierarchs for rattlechains, i'll be watching closely if any hand could have developed better with the mana dork
I have been asking myself for a long time now if such a built might work. My only concern is that losing Hierarchs this list gets back to the 8x 1cmc drops, which is not enough. Also 4x canopies would induce me to crack often, so I'm not sure how many times I'd be pacient with the 4th mana source, my plan would be to have 3x companies and probably 2 more cards to be played on turn 1, whatever they are.
Hey everyone! I didn't even know that this was a thing, but since I've been consistently playing spirits since EDM, I'm glad to see so many other people in on the deck! Right now, I'm working on tuning my list, which is a vial-less Esper build. I've had pretty good success with it (The last Thursday Night modern event I went to had me go 3-1 with the deck, beating GDS, Infect, and Soul Sisters, and losing to a Jeskai Control deck), but I'm always trying to improve the list. Here's what I have right now:
I'm currently looking to make a few adjustments, particularly to my sideboard. I haven't tested with him yet, but thinking on it again, I don't think Dovin is what the deck needs, even against control. Also, Thoughtseize is really good, but a poor top deck late game and requires me to use it at sorcery speed. I'm thinking of cutting those three in favor of a combination of unmoored ego, collective brutality, or additional copies of eidolon of rhetoric.
As for my main deck, after some play, I decided that 4 lingering souls were too many, so I cut a copy for bygone bishop, since it provides a means of refueling my hand late game, even if it is very slow. The other adjustment I'm considering is cutting 1 basic plains and 1 basic island in favor of additional utility, probably land destruction. I'm debating whether ghost quarter or field of ruin would be better. Ghost quarter is quicker, but puts me down a land, which is not great when I'm only running 22 anyways. Field is slower, but can still take out lands at instant speed without putting me behind my opponent. What do people think about this?
Report time for my Esper version.
I have made a couple of adjustments in the manabase and now everything seems to fall in the right place. 21 lands are necessary as much as the single Tar Pit in place of the Moorland Haunt, Tar Pit fixes colours and takes away big chunks of your opponent's life total: the 3 attack power is really what you need to cut your opponent off a turn each time it connects.
This said, the version I'm playing with now feels like the best version of a spirit deck I've had in my hands since I've jumped into modern two years ago. It's got ways to control the early game preventing the opponent from developing his board, it's got disruption, it's got ways to sink mana later in the game (read: powerful Lingering Souls topdecks). Everything in the mainboard seem to be coherent with the rest of the cards.
So I have been winning one 14 people FNM and one Local 30 people Tourney on Friday and Sunday.
The first was the FNM:
T1 Revolt Zoo: 2-0. Fatal Push and collective brutality removed two creatures and a bolt giving him none of the lands PtE would have provided if I was on UW. This is one of the two biggest features of the deck: the mana base is a bit more painful than the bicoloured version, but the black spells excel at rewarding that initial life points investment. This is something I didn't even imagine before the playtest.
T2 Izzet Phoenix: 2-0. G1 was a tight one, which I won because curious obsession on a wanderer drew me 3 cards . G2 he managed to have a phoenix in play on turn two, but rest in peace shut his lootings down and allowed me to stabilize. We played two more games for fun where he managed to do his degenerate stuff, like triple phoenix on turn 3, so I still believe the matchup is really really close.
T3 Bant Company: 1-1. G1 and G3 I just out-raced him as I am meant to do. G2 he went hierarch into Detention Steve removing my Vial, then he played a couple threats and that was too much for me to come back. Deputy looks convincing, especially when it hits some minor permanent so the opponent struggles to spend a removal spell on the 1/3, letting other threatening creatures stay on the board.
It ended up in a draw because the picked a Worship off the top before the extra time started. I decided not to play around his top deck and spent my spell queller to exile his one and have lethal on the following attack phase. Those times where no wraths or blowouts will show up you'd better play around the biggest threat left.
T4 Bant Spirits: 2-1. This game was against Ketoglutarato, it's been cool to test the two versions of the tribe with him. I have been lucky to have my brutality early in my hand in two games at least, and the -2 -2 ability has been so powerful to remove a Drogskol captain in the presence of a selfless spirit on the board. It's also true that a later brutality might have been ineffective and would have ended up in a less useful life drain.
Lingering Souls are an amazing card in the mirror and Creeping Tar Pit with the finest form of evasion made me think that's a natural mainboard answer to the board stalling the times it happens, and does help you turn the corner and race back the aggro deck.
I brought in Athreos, God of Passage , but that actually didn't work that well. He was at 14 life or more, so he accepted the 3 life loss a couple times not to give me my spirits back. Definitely not worth the spot in the mirror. I've also found out the games where I might want Athreos are the games where I also want RiP ( against midrange for example).
After this match I came to the conclusion that you either want to fight bant being bant yourself , or you'd better be on a configuration that allows you to fully play the control role from the beginning, which esper is much better at doing than UW.
That night I've got back home with a friend and we tested Esper against his Kiki Chord for long getting to convince ourselves that: the black spells slow the value plan down enough to let me maintain the aggro role even when they start with mana dork on the play. Lingering souls is an unmanageable threat for them.
After sideboard blood moons/magus of the moon are really scary and they are what you should play around for the first 4 turns, then you've got to watch out from the combo and some scary creatures like Cataclysmic Gearhulk and Lyra .
The deck looked so solid that I gave up UW to attend the 30 people tourney with Esper, along with a couple adjustments in the side to deal with ensnaring bridges and such permanents, so I registered two Deputy of Detention and one Unified Will.
T1 GW value. 2-0. It looked like a bye, nothing really to say, that deck wasn't interacting with me.
T2 Mono Red Ponza. 2-0. This one was trying to hit my lands with Boom/Bust targeting his own darksteel citadel, followed by stonerain effects and threats. Countersquall into Collective Brutality prevented his plan from taking off.
T3 Boros Burn. 2-0. Here the black spells shined the most proving how damn useful is to remove a creature without ramping his mana. He's kept a one lander one of the two games, and push helped stabilizing while keeping his mana chocked. Then he played eidolon and I escalated a collective Brutality on it Turning lands into value.
Burn was an important test for me to see how good this version is at dealing against the most aggro strategies. The match is still very close.
T4. ID to grant me the top 8.
T5. UW control. 2-1. I decided to play this to take the chance to be ranked first and start every match in the top8. This tourney is also part of a league and I wanted both the points and the experience.
Lingering souls again proved to be the most relevant card in the match. You cast it once and chip away their life. You'll be waiting to flash it back until the first two tokens are removed. It's what UW was missing and what bant has in the form of Collected Company. I'm not saying they do the same things, nor that they get played the same way, but they both provide you the form of advantage that the UW version can't rely on.
Baneslayers and Lyra are still a serious problem that has to be dealt with by having in 4x heterogeneous answers to their presence.
QUARTERFINALS. Burn. 2-0. Nothing really different from the previous match against burn. Brutality lets me turn garbage into value, they can't turn their lands into anything useful instead. Sometimes you find yourself where it's too late for a selfless spirit to be cast, so you just discard the creature escalating and keeping up with them.
SEMIFINALS. UW control. 2-1.
FINALS. UW control. 2-1. G3 i was on the draw, he mulled to 6 and I mulled to 5. I thought I was lost when I had to let him resolve one hieroglyphic illumination, I was on 3 cards, he started his next main phase with 6. it took me to play knowing that I would have won by hitting maybe a couple important spells with my spell quellers, but the truth is that two lingering souls is 3 turns drained him a negate, one cryptic command and one Snapcaster mage, still letting me recur to one last flashback in the presence of favorable winds on the floor, which I consider a card of paramount importance against deck that sweep the table. It's been an intense game where he attacked me down to one life with colonnade and Snapcaster, then I untapped finally drawing a lord, attacked for 6 with those two tokens pumped by Drogskol and favourable winds, and drained the last two points with a collective brutality which spent 6 to 8 turns in my hand waiting for a spot to be relevant.
Brutality is phenomenal against control, but it takes you to know when to use it. I'm not sure myself: some obvious situations induce you to discard a land and check their hands, so it's possible that you want to play stuff in their turn to force to tap out, some other times you have to use it as a bait to force a counterspell and then play the creature that you need to resolve.
So the results have been convincing so far, and I would fix a couple things in the sideboard only. One of these is to switch Dimir Cutpurse with Jace TMS, because the latter gives you so much more value for one more mana. Cutpurse felt like it can generate some huge card advantage but it comes one turn too late and really needs to be flashed in in their end step.
One final word on Lingering Souls: they really give sense to the low utility land count mana base (which was my biggest issue with leaving UW for a splah), along with Brutality. Souls may come early and build board presence, or come very late when you are flooding and impact the board with 4 tokens at one time, re-establishing a presence and giving those 5 lands a reason to be there . At that point one naked lord is turned into a very powerful topdeck too: I have played enough UW to know what it feels to have no gas in the tank left and be hoping to draw some spirit followed by a lord to rebuild you clock. Lingering Souls in the deck offer a solution to that problem by itself. 3x is the number I want for now, 4 are too clunky.
I've thought about the new Dovin too, but there's no reason not to play Jace TMS for one more mana, once again.
I believe I have finally found a version that match my tempo/control-ish playstyle.
That friend against whom I played the final sat close to me while I was playing a for fun game during a break, and watched what I was doing. After a couple of turns he told me: "so you are playing the opposite way of how Bant does". This wraps up what Esper Spirits is.
Report time for my Esper version.
I have made a couple of adjustments in the manabase and now everything seems to fall in the right place. 21 lands are necessary as much as the single Tar Pit in place of the Moorland Haunt, Tar Pit fixes colours and takes away big chunks of your opponent's life total: the 3 attack power is really what you need to cut your opponent off a turn each time it connects.
This said, the version I'm playing with now feels like the best version of a spirit deck I've had in my hands since I've jumped into modern two years ago. It's got ways to control the early game preventing the opponent from developing his board, it's got disruption, it's got ways to sink mana later in the game (read: powerful Lingering Souls topdecks). Everything in the mainboard seem to be coherent with the rest of the cards.
So I have been winning one 14 people FNM and one Local 30 people Tourney on Friday and Sunday.
The first was the FNM:
T1 Revolt Zoo: 2-0. Fatal Push and collective brutality removed two creatures and a bolt giving him none of the lands PtE would have provided if I was on UW. This is one of the two biggest features of the deck: the mana base is a bit more painful than the bicoloured version, but the black spells excel at rewarding that initial life points investment. This is something I didn't even imagine before the playtest.
T2 Izzet Phoenix: 2-0. G1 was a tight one, which I won because curious obsession on a wanderer drew me 3 cards . G2 he managed to have a phoenix in play on turn two, but rest in peace shut his lootings down and allowed me to stabilize. We played two more games for fun where he managed to do his degenerate stuff, like triple phoenix on turn 3, so I still believe the matchup is really really close.
T3 Bant Company: 1-1. G1 and G3 I just out-raced him as I am meant to do. G2 he went hierarch into Detention Steve removing my Vial, then he played a couple threats and that was too much for me to come back. Deputy looks convincing, especially when it hits some minor permanent so the opponent struggles to spend a removal spell on the 1/3, letting other threatening creatures stay on the board.
It ended up in a draw because the picked a Worship off the top before the extra time started. I decided not to play around his top deck and spent my spell queller to exile his one and have lethal on the following attack phase. Those times where no wraths or blowouts will show up you'd better play around the biggest threat left.
T4 Bant Spirits: 2-1. This game was against Ketoglutarato, it's been cool to test the two versions of the tribe with him. I have been lucky to have my brutality early in my hand in two games at least, and the -2 -2 ability has been so powerful to remove a Drogskol captain in the presence of a selfless spirit on the board. It's also true that a later brutality might have been ineffective and would have ended up in a less useful life drain.
Lingering Souls are an amazing card in the mirror and Creeping Tar Pit with the finest form of evasion made me think that's a natural mainboard answer to the board stalling the times it happens, and does help you turn the corner and race back the aggro deck.
I brought in Athreos, God of Passage , but that actually didn't work that well. He was at 14 life or more, so he accepted the 3 life loss a couple times not to give me my spirits back. Definitely not worth the spot in the mirror. I've also found out the games where I might want Athreos are the games where I also want RiP ( against midrange for example).
After this match I came to the conclusion that you either want to fight bant being bant yourself , or you'd better be on a configuration that allows you to fully play the control role from the beginning, which esper is much better at doing than UW.
That night I've got back home with a friend and we tested Esper against his Kiki Chord for long getting to convince ourselves that: the black spells slow the value plan down enough to let me maintain the aggro role even when they start with mana dork on the play. Lingering souls is an unmanageable threat for them.
After sideboard blood moons/magus of the moon are really scary and they are what you should play around for the first 4 turns, then you've got to watch out from the combo and some scary creatures like Cataclysmic Gearhulk and Lyra .
The deck looked so solid that I gave up UW to attend the 30 people tourney with Esper, along with a couple adjustments in the side to deal with ensnaring bridges and such permanents, so I registered two Deputy of Detention and one Unified Will.
T1 GW value. 2-0. It looked like a bye, nothing really to say, that deck wasn't interacting with me.
T2 Mono Red Ponza. 2-0. This one was trying to hit my lands with Boom/Bust targeting his own darksteel citadel, followed by stonerain effects and threats. Countersquall into Collective Brutality prevented his plan from taking off.
T3 Boros Burn. 2-0. Here the black spells shined the most proving how damn useful is to remove a creature without ramping his mana. He's kept a one lander one of the two games, and push helped stabilizing while keeping his mana chocked. Then he played eidolon and I escalated a collective Brutality on it Turning lands into value.
Burn was an important test for me to see how good this version is at dealing against the most aggro strategies. The match is still very close.
T4. ID to grant me the top 8.
T5. UW control. 2-1. I decided to play this to take the chance to be ranked first and start every match in the top8. This tourney is also part of a league and I wanted both the points and the experience.
Lingering souls again proved to be the most relevant card in the match. You cast it once and chip away their life. You'll be waiting to flash it back until the first two tokens are removed. It's what UW was missing and what bant has in the form of Collected Company. I'm not saying they do the same things, nor that they get played the same way, but they both provide you the form of advantage that the UW version can't rely on.
Baneslayers and Lyra are still a serious problem that has to be dealt with by having in 4x heterogeneous answers to their presence.
QUARTERFINALS. Burn. 2-0. Nothing really different from the previous match against burn. Brutality lets me turn garbage into value, they can't turn their lands into anything useful instead. Sometimes you find yourself where it's too late for a selfless spirit to be cast, so you just discard the creature escalating and keeping up with them.
SEMIFINALS. UW control. 2-1.
FINALS. UW control. 2-1. G3 i was on the draw, he mulled to 6 and I mulled to 5. I thought I was lost when I had to let him resolve one hieroglyphic illumination, I was on 3 cards, he started his next main phase with 6. it took me to play knowing that I would have won by hitting maybe a couple important spells with my spell quellers, but the truth is that two lingering souls is 3 turns drained him a negate, one cryptic command and one Snapcaster mage, still letting me recur to one last flashback in the presence of favourable winds on the floor, which I consider a card of paramount importance against deck that sweep the table. It's been an intense game where he attacked me down to one life with colonnade and Snapcaster, then I untapped finally drawing a lord, attacked for 6 with those two tokens pumped by Drogskol and favourable winds, and drained the last two points with a collective brutality which spent 6 to 8 turns in my hand waiting for a spot to be relevant.
Brutality is phenomenal against control, but it takes you to know when to use it. I'm not sure myself: some obvious situations induce you to discard a land and check their hands, so it's possible that you want to play stuff in their turn to force to tap out, some other times you have to use it as a bait to force a counterspell and then play the creature that you need to resolve.
So the results have been convincing so far, and I would fix a couple things in the sideboard only. One of these is to switch Dimir Cutpurse with Jace TMS, because the latter gives you so much more value for one more mana. Cutpurse felt like it can generate some huge card advantage but it comes one turn too late and really needs to be flashed in in their end step.
One final word on Lingering Souls: they really give sense to the low utility land count mana base (which was my biggest issue with leaving UW for a splah), along with Brutality. Souls may come early and build board presence, or come very late when you are flooding and impact the board with 4 tokens at one time, re-establishing a presence and giving those 5 lands a reason to be there . At that point one naked lord is turned into a very powerful topdeck too: I have played enough UW to know what it feels to have no gas in the tank left and be hoping to draw some spirit followed by a lord to rebuild you clock. Lingering Souls in the deck offer a solution to that problem by itself. 3x is the number I want for now, 4 are too clunky.
I've thought about the new Dovin too, but there's no reason not to play Jace TMS for one more mana, once again.
I believe I have finally found a version that match my tempo/control-ish playstyle.
That friend against whom I played the final sat close to me while I was playing a for fun game during a break, and watched what I was doing. After a couple of turns he told me: "so you are playing the opposite way of how Bant does". This wraps up what Esper Spirits is.
I like the look of this list, though I'm not able to run the vial package at the moment (for budgetary reasons, though I also just don't like how Vial plays). I'd been thinking about running Creeping Tar Pit as a tool against control for a while, so since you've had success with it, I'll have to give it a try! On the other hand, what do you think of Shambling Vent as a 1 of as well? It's not as good at getting damage through, but it's an extra tool against aggressive decks like Burn, and gaining life mainboard can be potentially relevant.
A few questions on your mana base: 1) how does your 8 fetch lands to 7 fetchable lands feel? I run 22 lands at the moment, and I'm probably not going to cut any more (since I'm not running vials), but running so many fetches to so relatively few mana producing lands feels a bit awkward. Also, is there any reason, in your opinion, to run Darkslick Shore over Concealed Courtyard? B/W seems to be more useful early game than U/W if you're playing Path and Fatal Push; I know U is more important overall, but I think that the deck is running enough U sources that it's not a huge issue.
I believe Aether Vials are not replaceable, their effect is unique and it also allows you to cut the 22nd land, while giving you more chances to fuel up Collective Brutality once you have reached your 3rd land drop.
As for the questions on the mana base:
- the difference between Tar Pit and Shambling is the unblockable and the extra point of damage. This means that they either have a removal or they will lose those 3 life. You mentioned the burn matchup where shambling is obviously more useful, but since we fall into the aggro category, there's a way higher number of matchups where you simply want to race the opponent and you lose when you fail at it. Tar Pit is excellent at pushing your race.
Do not expect it to stay in play for long against control, you need to keep it in your hand if a field is down. let them hit a shock land and then play it. Yesterday, I was able to use it just once while UW was tapped out, and still that Spell Queller and tar pit hitting for 5 made a world of a difference compared to spell Queller attacking alone. needless to say I couldn't care less about gaining life in that situation.
In your case, since you are vial-less and 22 lands list , I'd use two animables.
Test the Vents and let us know.
- 8 fetches with 7 targets feel great, I occasionally run out of targets when I'm playing UW where I have 7 fetchlands and 5 targets. I'm siding out one when I'm against control on the draw everytime, so there's a lot depending on how educated your choices are when it comes to siding against the different archetypes; the act of siding requires you to make changes in the mana base too.
- Darkslick vs courtyard is an important topic: when I build a mana base I always start from the concepts explained in these two articles, https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/frank-analysis-how-many-colored-mana-sources-do-you-need-to-consistently-cast-your-spells/ , https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/how-many-lands-do-you-need-to-consistently-hit-your-land-drops/ .
Despite many lists sticking up to the 14 sources of blue, I do not feel comfortable at all with a 90% chance of hitting my blue source in a random 7 cards hand, I find it too low and I want more consistency. The fact is that being able to play Wanderer when I have it in my hand is simply too important to gamble with a 10% rate of statistical failures. I believe that's too high in theory and I know that the practise includes hands I have to mull because the non land cards aren't good enough, so I want to be able to draw the next 6 with confidence. This is the reason why my list features 17 untapped blue sources + one tar Pit.
You may also want to note that PtE is the poorest 1cmc card you might ever play on turn one, I actually consider it a card that should be played from turn 3 at least. This to say that I want to grant myself enough black to be able to push on turn one if vials or wanderers are not in my hand. Here my mana base is actually struggling because I have 13 untapped black sources and cavern of souls doesn't count, while tar pit enters tapped. Fact is that white is also a colour I want to hit on turn two because of rest in peace and stony in my side, but again, blue is not the colour on which I intend to make any gamble.
This all comes from my experience with playing the tribe, articles are very important guide lines, but then there's the play test and the tourneys where you get to play a lot of games, and there you need the highest possible chances to have a consistent access to your primary colour: blue.
Let me finish this answer with an example about the importance of having the most blue sources as possible: yesterday I started my g3 in the finals against UW control with one single land in my hand, Tar Pit. If you look up for the post I made last week about Esper, you'll see Tar Pit has took the place of the Moorland Haunt I was running as my single utility land in the beginning. Had it sill been a moorland haunt, I would have had to go down to 4 or to start the game with no blue and 3 creatures with U in their casting cost.
This might be one single case, sure, but that's going to happen over the course of 7 or more games, and what... if it happens when you are on a mull to 5 in the very last match that separates you from the title?
Holy Ghost I think I've found the card that will make Jeskai Spirits playable! Light up the Stage
Still learning how to properly use Bant Spirits, but I'm using Light Up in experimental builds of Ponza and Mono-Red Prison. I need more games with it, but it's a very powerful filter card from the few games I've played so far, but its downside is that it needs to be Spectacle'd to be useful, otherwise it's a dead card compared to something like Faithless Looting.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Current Modern Decks BG Elves // "He's back. And he brought his friends. And their friends." BG The Rock // "Dwayne Johnson approved." RU Izzet Phoenix // "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." UGW Bant Spirits // "Super Ghost Bros." BUG Sultai Wildnerness Teachings // "How many turns did I just take again?" C Colorless Eldrazi // "Smash you."
This is true haha, I've been playing a lot of Red control decks lately, been meaning to go back to Spirits for awhile.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Current Modern Decks BG Elves // "He's back. And he brought his friends. And their friends." BG The Rock // "Dwayne Johnson approved." RU Izzet Phoenix // "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." UGW Bant Spirits // "Super Ghost Bros." BUG Sultai Wildnerness Teachings // "How many turns did I just take again?" C Colorless Eldrazi // "Smash you."
It costs half the mana.
My fear is to exile two 3cmc creatures, so the curve of the deck will involve some statistics to minimize that possibility and the timing will be relevant as well.
Other than that, I like the idea of jeskai spirits playing aggressively trying to end the game the soonest with some burn . For this reason I'd pick Light, because drawing two cards has never been any cheaper.
So, if an opponent casts a spell and leaves no mana open, and while its still on the stack I vial Tithe Taker - his spell will not resolve?
I'd guess that the spell will still resolve. The wording on Tithe Taker is that spells your opponents cast on your turn cost 1 more. At this point, they've already cast the spell and paid the mana cost for it. If they finish casting the spell, and you vial tithe taker in in response, it's too late and the tax won't apply except to future casts.
Of course, I'm not a rules expert or a judge, so I could very well be wrong, but that's how I'd interpret this.
Oh I know, I meant I didn't want them re-playing whatever I bounced with Mage and get a bonus trigger from that.
BG Elves // "He's back. And he brought his friends. And their friends."
BG The Rock // "Dwayne Johnson approved."
RU Izzet Phoenix // "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
UGW Bant Spirits // "Super Ghost Bros."
BUG Sultai Wildnerness Teachings // "How many turns did I just take again?"
C Colorless Eldrazi // "Smash you."
Id never register UW without 3 copies of Thalia. Echoing Truth is one of my favourite main Deck choices as well.
I tried a 3 Thalia, 2 Tithe Taker build and got 4-1.
Losing only to Mill because he had Bridge and Crypt Incursion back to back in both games, paired with a nuts field of ruin + double trap in the last one.
I beat Storm, Shadow and two different UR/Jeskai Titi/Phoenix decks.
Also, i'm going to experiment with a list that - heresy!- lacks noble hierarch, but in bant colors. Small splash for coco, it should play like UW does-.
since i just swapped noble hierarchs for rattlechains, i'll be watching closely if any hand could have developed better with the mana dork
4 mausoleum wanderer
4 rattlechains
3 selfless spirit
3 phantasmal image
4 supreme phantom
4 spell queller
4 drogskol captain
Spells (12)
4 aether vial
4 path to exile
4 collected company
1 cavern of souls
4 flooded strand
3 misty rainforest
1 temple garden
1 breeding pool
1 hallowed fountain
2 island
1 plains
1 forest
3 seachrome coast
4 horizon canopy
3 rest in peace
2 stony silence
2 unified will
2 damping sphere
2 knight of autumn
2 deputy of detention
2 eidolon of rhetoric
Elves || GSpirits G || Spirits || Fish
Pauper
GElvesG || CAffinityC
Commander
G Roon (and the Hidden Realms) G
It also won me a game vs. the UR Titi Deck. He had two counters on his Titi and was casting a Bolt on my Captain, leaving no Mana open. I vialed in the Taker and he couldnt cast his Gutshot which prevented the Titi flip and got me the win. It was a greedy misplay of him, because he wanted to bounce the whole board.
I liked it and I will test it further!
I have been asking myself for a long time now if such a built might work. My only concern is that losing Hierarchs this list gets back to the 8x 1cmc drops, which is not enough. Also 4x canopies would induce me to crack often, so I'm not sure how many times I'd be pacient with the 4th mana source, my plan would be to have 3x companies and probably 2 more cards to be played on turn 1, whatever they are.
4 rattlechains
4 selfless spirit
4 mausoleum wanderer
4 supreme phantom
4 Drogskol Captain
2 remorseful cleric
1 bygone bishop
3 lingering souls
2 zealous persecution
3 fatal push
3 path to exile
1 godless shrine
1 cavern of souls
2 seachrome coast
2 concealed courtyard
2 flooded strand
1 Moorland Haunt
4 polluted delta
3 island
3 plains
1 swamp
1 hallowed fountain
1 watery grave
My sideboard is currently:
I'm currently looking to make a few adjustments, particularly to my sideboard. I haven't tested with him yet, but thinking on it again, I don't think Dovin is what the deck needs, even against control. Also, Thoughtseize is really good, but a poor top deck late game and requires me to use it at sorcery speed. I'm thinking of cutting those three in favor of a combination of unmoored ego, collective brutality, or additional copies of eidolon of rhetoric.
As for my main deck, after some play, I decided that 4 lingering souls were too many, so I cut a copy for bygone bishop, since it provides a means of refueling my hand late game, even if it is very slow. The other adjustment I'm considering is cutting 1 basic plains and 1 basic island in favor of additional utility, probably land destruction. I'm debating whether ghost quarter or field of ruin would be better. Ghost quarter is quicker, but puts me down a land, which is not great when I'm only running 22 anyways. Field is slower, but can still take out lands at instant speed without putting me behind my opponent. What do people think about this?
I have made a couple of adjustments in the manabase and now everything seems to fall in the right place. 21 lands are necessary as much as the single Tar Pit in place of the Moorland Haunt, Tar Pit fixes colours and takes away big chunks of your opponent's life total: the 3 attack power is really what you need to cut your opponent off a turn each time it connects.
This said, the version I'm playing with now feels like the best version of a spirit deck I've had in my hands since I've jumped into modern two years ago. It's got ways to control the early game preventing the opponent from developing his board, it's got disruption, it's got ways to sink mana later in the game (read: powerful Lingering Souls topdecks). Everything in the mainboard seem to be coherent with the rest of the cards.
So I have been winning one 14 people FNM and one Local 30 people Tourney on Friday and Sunday.
The first was the FNM:
T1 Revolt Zoo: 2-0. Fatal Push and collective brutality removed two creatures and a bolt giving him none of the lands PtE would have provided if I was on UW. This is one of the two biggest features of the deck: the mana base is a bit more painful than the bicoloured version, but the black spells excel at rewarding that initial life points investment. This is something I didn't even imagine before the playtest.
T2 Izzet Phoenix: 2-0. G1 was a tight one, which I won because curious obsession on a wanderer drew me 3 cards . G2 he managed to have a phoenix in play on turn two, but rest in peace shut his lootings down and allowed me to stabilize. We played two more games for fun where he managed to do his degenerate stuff, like triple phoenix on turn 3, so I still believe the matchup is really really close.
T3 Bant Company: 1-1. G1 and G3 I just out-raced him as I am meant to do. G2 he went hierarch into Detention Steve removing my Vial, then he played a couple threats and that was too much for me to come back. Deputy looks convincing, especially when it hits some minor permanent so the opponent struggles to spend a removal spell on the 1/3, letting other threatening creatures stay on the board.
It ended up in a draw because the picked a Worship off the top before the extra time started. I decided not to play around his top deck and spent my spell queller to exile his one and have lethal on the following attack phase. Those times where no wraths or blowouts will show up you'd better play around the biggest threat left.
T4 Bant Spirits: 2-1. This game was against Ketoglutarato, it's been cool to test the two versions of the tribe with him. I have been lucky to have my brutality early in my hand in two games at least, and the -2 -2 ability has been so powerful to remove a Drogskol captain in the presence of a selfless spirit on the board. It's also true that a later brutality might have been ineffective and would have ended up in a less useful life drain.
Lingering Souls are an amazing card in the mirror and Creeping Tar Pit with the finest form of evasion made me think that's a natural mainboard answer to the board stalling the times it happens, and does help you turn the corner and race back the aggro deck.
I brought in Athreos, God of Passage , but that actually didn't work that well. He was at 14 life or more, so he accepted the 3 life loss a couple times not to give me my spirits back. Definitely not worth the spot in the mirror. I've also found out the games where I might want Athreos are the games where I also want RiP ( against midrange for example).
After this match I came to the conclusion that you either want to fight bant being bant yourself , or you'd better be on a configuration that allows you to fully play the control role from the beginning, which esper is much better at doing than UW.
That night I've got back home with a friend and we tested Esper against his Kiki Chord for long getting to convince ourselves that: the black spells slow the value plan down enough to let me maintain the aggro role even when they start with mana dork on the play. Lingering souls is an unmanageable threat for them.
After sideboard blood moons/magus of the moon are really scary and they are what you should play around for the first 4 turns, then you've got to watch out from the combo and some scary creatures like Cataclysmic Gearhulk and Lyra .
The deck looked so solid that I gave up UW to attend the 30 people tourney with Esper, along with a couple adjustments in the side to deal with ensnaring bridges and such permanents, so I registered two Deputy of Detention and one Unified Will.
T1 GW value. 2-0. It looked like a bye, nothing really to say, that deck wasn't interacting with me.
T2 Mono Red Ponza. 2-0. This one was trying to hit my lands with Boom/Bust targeting his own darksteel citadel, followed by stonerain effects and threats. Countersquall into Collective Brutality prevented his plan from taking off.
T3 Boros Burn. 2-0. Here the black spells shined the most proving how damn useful is to remove a creature without ramping his mana. He's kept a one lander one of the two games, and push helped stabilizing while keeping his mana chocked. Then he played eidolon and I escalated a collective Brutality on it Turning lands into value.
Burn was an important test for me to see how good this version is at dealing against the most aggro strategies. The match is still very close.
T4. ID to grant me the top 8.
T5. UW control. 2-1. I decided to play this to take the chance to be ranked first and start every match in the top8. This tourney is also part of a league and I wanted both the points and the experience.
Lingering souls again proved to be the most relevant card in the match. You cast it once and chip away their life. You'll be waiting to flash it back until the first two tokens are removed. It's what UW was missing and what bant has in the form of Collected Company. I'm not saying they do the same things, nor that they get played the same way, but they both provide you the form of advantage that the UW version can't rely on.
Baneslayers and Lyra are still a serious problem that has to be dealt with by having in 4x heterogeneous answers to their presence.
QUARTERFINALS. Burn. 2-0. Nothing really different from the previous match against burn. Brutality lets me turn garbage into value, they can't turn their lands into anything useful instead. Sometimes you find yourself where it's too late for a selfless spirit to be cast, so you just discard the creature escalating and keeping up with them.
SEMIFINALS. UW control. 2-1.
FINALS. UW control. 2-1. G3 i was on the draw, he mulled to 6 and I mulled to 5. I thought I was lost when I had to let him resolve one hieroglyphic illumination, I was on 3 cards, he started his next main phase with 6. it took me to play knowing that I would have won by hitting maybe a couple important spells with my spell quellers, but the truth is that two lingering souls is 3 turns drained him a negate, one cryptic command and one Snapcaster mage, still letting me recur to one last flashback in the presence of favorable winds on the floor, which I consider a card of paramount importance against deck that sweep the table. It's been an intense game where he attacked me down to one life with colonnade and Snapcaster, then I untapped finally drawing a lord, attacked for 6 with those two tokens pumped by Drogskol and favourable winds, and drained the last two points with a collective brutality which spent 6 to 8 turns in my hand waiting for a spot to be relevant.
Brutality is phenomenal against control, but it takes you to know when to use it. I'm not sure myself: some obvious situations induce you to discard a land and check their hands, so it's possible that you want to play stuff in their turn to force to tap out, some other times you have to use it as a bait to force a counterspell and then play the creature that you need to resolve.
So the results have been convincing so far, and I would fix a couple things in the sideboard only. One of these is to switch Dimir Cutpurse with Jace TMS, because the latter gives you so much more value for one more mana. Cutpurse felt like it can generate some huge card advantage but it comes one turn too late and really needs to be flashed in in their end step.
This is my updated Esper List
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Selfless Spirit
4 Rattlechains
4 Supreme Phantom
4 Spell Queller
4 Drogskol Captain
Spells: 15
4 Aether Vial
1 Curious Obsession
3 Fatal Push
2 Path to Exile
2 Collective Brutality
3 Lingering Souls
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted delta
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Watery Grave
1 godless shrine
2 Seachrome coast
2 Darkslick shore
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Stony Silence
2 Rest In Peace
2 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Echoing Truth
2 Countersquall
1 Unified Will
1 Favorable winds
2 Deputy of Detention
1 Nebelgast Herald
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
One final word on Lingering Souls: they really give sense to the low utility land count mana base (which was my biggest issue with leaving UW for a splah), along with Brutality. Souls may come early and build board presence, or come very late when you are flooding and impact the board with 4 tokens at one time, re-establishing a presence and giving those 5 lands a reason to be there . At that point one naked lord is turned into a very powerful topdeck too: I have played enough UW to know what it feels to have no gas in the tank left and be hoping to draw some spirit followed by a lord to rebuild you clock. Lingering Souls in the deck offer a solution to that problem by itself. 3x is the number I want for now, 4 are too clunky.
I've thought about the new Dovin too, but there's no reason not to play Jace TMS for one more mana, once again.
I believe I have finally found a version that match my tempo/control-ish playstyle.
That friend against whom I played the final sat close to me while I was playing a for fun game during a break, and watched what I was doing. After a couple of turns he told me: "so you are playing the opposite way of how Bant does". This wraps up what Esper Spirits is.
I like the look of this list, though I'm not able to run the vial package at the moment (for budgetary reasons, though I also just don't like how Vial plays). I'd been thinking about running Creeping Tar Pit as a tool against control for a while, so since you've had success with it, I'll have to give it a try! On the other hand, what do you think of Shambling Vent as a 1 of as well? It's not as good at getting damage through, but it's an extra tool against aggressive decks like Burn, and gaining life mainboard can be potentially relevant.
A few questions on your mana base: 1) how does your 8 fetch lands to 7 fetchable lands feel? I run 22 lands at the moment, and I'm probably not going to cut any more (since I'm not running vials), but running so many fetches to so relatively few mana producing lands feels a bit awkward. Also, is there any reason, in your opinion, to run Darkslick Shore over Concealed Courtyard? B/W seems to be more useful early game than U/W if you're playing Path and Fatal Push; I know U is more important overall, but I think that the deck is running enough U sources that it's not a huge issue.
As for the questions on the mana base:
- the difference between Tar Pit and Shambling is the unblockable and the extra point of damage. This means that they either have a removal or they will lose those 3 life. You mentioned the burn matchup where shambling is obviously more useful, but since we fall into the aggro category, there's a way higher number of matchups where you simply want to race the opponent and you lose when you fail at it. Tar Pit is excellent at pushing your race.
Do not expect it to stay in play for long against control, you need to keep it in your hand if a field is down. let them hit a shock land and then play it. Yesterday, I was able to use it just once while UW was tapped out, and still that Spell Queller and tar pit hitting for 5 made a world of a difference compared to spell Queller attacking alone. needless to say I couldn't care less about gaining life in that situation.
In your case, since you are vial-less and 22 lands list , I'd use two animables.
Test the Vents and let us know.
- 8 fetches with 7 targets feel great, I occasionally run out of targets when I'm playing UW where I have 7 fetchlands and 5 targets. I'm siding out one when I'm against control on the draw everytime, so there's a lot depending on how educated your choices are when it comes to siding against the different archetypes; the act of siding requires you to make changes in the mana base too.
- Darkslick vs courtyard is an important topic: when I build a mana base I always start from the concepts explained in these two articles, https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/frank-analysis-how-many-colored-mana-sources-do-you-need-to-consistently-cast-your-spells/ , https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/how-many-lands-do-you-need-to-consistently-hit-your-land-drops/ .
Despite many lists sticking up to the 14 sources of blue, I do not feel comfortable at all with a 90% chance of hitting my blue source in a random 7 cards hand, I find it too low and I want more consistency. The fact is that being able to play Wanderer when I have it in my hand is simply too important to gamble with a 10% rate of statistical failures. I believe that's too high in theory and I know that the practise includes hands I have to mull because the non land cards aren't good enough, so I want to be able to draw the next 6 with confidence. This is the reason why my list features 17 untapped blue sources + one tar Pit.
You may also want to note that PtE is the poorest 1cmc card you might ever play on turn one, I actually consider it a card that should be played from turn 3 at least. This to say that I want to grant myself enough black to be able to push on turn one if vials or wanderers are not in my hand. Here my mana base is actually struggling because I have 13 untapped black sources and cavern of souls doesn't count, while tar pit enters tapped. Fact is that white is also a colour I want to hit on turn two because of rest in peace and stony in my side, but again, blue is not the colour on which I intend to make any gamble.
This all comes from my experience with playing the tribe, articles are very important guide lines, but then there's the play test and the tourneys where you get to play a lot of games, and there you need the highest possible chances to have a consistent access to your primary colour: blue.
Let me finish this answer with an example about the importance of having the most blue sources as possible: yesterday I started my g3 in the finals against UW control with one single land in my hand, Tar Pit. If you look up for the post I made last week about Esper, you'll see Tar Pit has took the place of the Moorland Haunt I was running as my single utility land in the beginning. Had it sill been a moorland haunt, I would have had to go down to 4 or to start the game with no blue and 3 creatures with U in their casting cost.
This might be one single case, sure, but that's going to happen over the course of 7 or more games, and what... if it happens when you are on a mull to 5 in the very last match that separates you from the title?
Still learning how to properly use Bant Spirits, but I'm using Light Up in experimental builds of Ponza and Mono-Red Prison. I need more games with it, but it's a very powerful filter card from the few games I've played so far, but its downside is that it needs to be Spectacle'd to be useful, otherwise it's a dead card compared to something like Faithless Looting.
BG Elves // "He's back. And he brought his friends. And their friends."
BG The Rock // "Dwayne Johnson approved."
RU Izzet Phoenix // "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
UGW Bant Spirits // "Super Ghost Bros."
BUG Sultai Wildnerness Teachings // "How many turns did I just take again?"
C Colorless Eldrazi // "Smash you."
BG Elves // "He's back. And he brought his friends. And their friends."
BG The Rock // "Dwayne Johnson approved."
RU Izzet Phoenix // "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."
UGW Bant Spirits // "Super Ghost Bros."
BUG Sultai Wildnerness Teachings // "How many turns did I just take again?"
C Colorless Eldrazi // "Smash you."
Elves || GSpirits G || Spirits || Fish
Pauper
GElvesG || CAffinityC
Commander
G Roon (and the Hidden Realms) G
My fear is to exile two 3cmc creatures, so the curve of the deck will involve some statistics to minimize that possibility and the timing will be relevant as well.
Other than that, I like the idea of jeskai spirits playing aggressively trying to end the game the soonest with some burn . For this reason I'd pick Light, because drawing two cards has never been any cheaper.
I dont know how to feel about this.
I'd guess that the spell will still resolve. The wording on Tithe Taker is that spells your opponents cast on your turn cost 1 more. At this point, they've already cast the spell and paid the mana cost for it. If they finish casting the spell, and you vial tithe taker in in response, it's too late and the tax won't apply except to future casts.
Of course, I'm not a rules expert or a judge, so I could very well be wrong, but that's how I'd interpret this.
Tempo
Modern
Eldrazi and Staxes
Whir Prison
Legacy
5c Humans
DnT
"I'm a lead farmer... !" Quote ruined due to policy.