It's basically the old Familiars deck with Peregrine Drake slotted in for CoF. In fact the pilot said as much on the Pauper subreddit.
I played against him with my new brews of the list. His was alot better to be quite honest.
My UR and UG lists were pretty much total failures and not the least of which was my misreading what Sheltered Aerie actual does lol. I kept getting to the point where I would spin my heels without card draw/filtering and die. THough the UR list did a lot better and may have just suffered from some bad matches.
I think that will be pretty much the standard decklist in the upcoming leagues because it's the easiest starting point: just adopt the old shell and substitute CoF with Drake.
However, the Familiars themselves are bad creatures, and you don't definitely need the three colors, so I expect these decks to start shedding the Familiars when the dust settles and the meta has stabilized.
I've been thinking about it-- with Peregrine Drake, we can essentially make something that functions like Mono-Blue Tron by running black as well. A Pauper Peregrine Tron Prison Control deck.
I haven't completely figured out the entire deck (and I'm hoping you all might have some suggestions), but the main idea would be to get a board state with Archaeomancer/Mnemonic Wall, Peregrine Drake, and Chittering Rats. Use Ghostly Flicker to bounce Archaeomancer/Mnemonic Wall and Peregrine Drake so you can keep untapping and retapping the three Tron lands, a Swamp, and an Island in various orders, which, if I understand it right, should allow for infinite black/blue/colorless mana. Then you can Ghostly Flicker Archaeomancer/Mnemonic Wall and Chittering Rats to empty out your opponent's hand and continue to do that every turn so they topdeck the same card, essentially locking them out of the game. The rest of the cards would be Tron frequent fliers like Expedition Map and maybe some Chromatic Sphere/Stars, and the rest of the deck would be counterspells, removal spells (Snap and Capsize come to mind), kill spells, and Edict spells (and Curfew maybe) for Bogles/Hexproof. Mulldrifter would be a good addition as well, allowing you lots of card advantage, and Gray Merchant of Asphodel could be flickered over and over for infinite damage.
Maybe splash a little red for Rolling Thunder/Kaervek's Torch for a kill.
Maybe Pestermite for flickering shenanigans, so you can tap out your opponent every turn, as well. Not super necessary, I just love Faeries.
So basically:
Unlimited flicker of Chittering Rats - empty their hand and keep it empty
Unlimited flicker of Pestermite - tap all their spells and lands every time their upkeep comes around
Unlimited flicker of Mulldrifter - Draw your whole deck, basically? Not really necessary and potentially dangerous if you draw it out too much.
Unlimited flicker of Gray Merchant of Asphodel - Unlimited damage and lifegain.
However, the Familiars themselves are bad creatures, and you don't definitely need the three colors, so I expect these decks to start shedding the Familiars when the dust settles and the meta has stabilized.
You keep saying this, but I think you're mistaken. Don't think of the Familiars as creatures, they're barely creatures and more of ramp spells than anything (yeah yeah they die to removal spells, the deck has enough redundancy/card draw to overcome that though). They generate a ton of mana for the deck, even not taking into account how well they combine with Peregrine Drake. Powering out cheaper Compulsive Researches, Mulldrifters, and Sea Gate Oracles lets them churn through the deck at a very fast rate making it easy to find whatever combo piece, sideboard card, etc they need.
As far as the splashes, both add value to the deck and are worth the cost, even beyond just letting them play the Familiars. White especially gives you access to very important anti-aggro cards like Lone Missionary, Prismatic Strands, and Circle of Protection (green or red). Without these cards decks like Stompy and Goblins would roll over Drake combo every match. Removal spells like Lightning Bolt and whatever else you gain from playing a UR Drake deck don't bother me nearly as much as Lone Missionary when I'm playing Stompy, and Circle of Protection: Green puts you to the test - do you have an answer? If not gg. UR builds offer no cards like that which make it incredibly difficult for aggro to win, and in addition they lose out on the Familiars that let you churn through your deck so fast even when you don't have the Drake combo assembled.
Black feels like less crucial of a splash, however Reaping the Graves is an incredibly powerful way to attrition out control decks and combo in the face of copious amounts of removal so that plus Nightscape Familiar alone probably makes it worthwhile. Again, UR does not offer this functionality. If a control deck counters/kills all your combo pieces you're probably dead since you have no way to get them back (I guess Haunted Fengraf possibly, but that's unreliable).
However, the Familiars themselves are bad creatures, and you don't definitely need the three colors, so I expect these decks to start shedding the Familiars when the dust settles and the meta has stabilized.
You keep saying this, but I think you're mistaken. Don't think of the Familiars as creatures, they're barely creatures and more of ramp spells than anything (yeah yeah they die to removal spells, the deck has enough redundancy/card draw to overcome that though). They generate a ton of mana for the deck, even not taking into account how well they combine with Peregrine Drake. Powering out cheaper Compulsive Researches, Mulldrifters, and Sea Gate Oracles lets them churn through the deck at a very fast rate making it easy to find whatever combo piece, sideboard card, etc they need.
As far as the splashes, both add value to the deck and are worth the cost, even beyond just letting them play the Familiars. White especially gives you access to very important anti-aggro cards like Lone Missionary, Prismatic Strands, and Circle of Protection (green or red). Without these cards decks like Stompy and Goblins would roll over Drake combo every match. Removal spells like Lightning Bolt and whatever else you gain from playing a UR Drake deck don't bother me nearly as much as Lone Missionary when I'm playing Stompy, and Circle of Protection: Green puts you to the test - do you have an answer? If not gg. UR builds offer no cards like that which make it incredibly difficult for aggro to win, and in addition they lose out on the Familiars that let you churn through your deck so fast even when you don't have the Drake combo assembled.
Black feels like less crucial of a splash, however Reaping the Graves is an incredibly powerful way to attrition out control decks and combo in the face of copious amounts of removal so that plus Nightscape Familiar alone probably makes it worthwhile. Again, UR does not offer this functionality. If a control deck counters/kills all your combo pieces you're probably dead since you have no way to get them back (I guess Haunted Fengraf possibly, but that's unreliable).
Why would you want Familiars as ramp that die to removal to power up cheap draw when you can play Mono Blue / UW (if you want lifegain that badly) Tron? The reason the original Esper shell used familiars is because you had to make Flicker at least mana neutral to go off. Drake now allows you to go off by itself and even make excess mana without the need of Bouncelands, Familiars or any other color, and the combo pieces are good by themselves, which makes it a great finisher for Control decks.
If you want to draw through your deck for cheap, U/x Tron does the same thing that Familiars do (with a much higher speed) and with a consistent manabase due to it being mostly monocolored. The fact that you already run cantrips and draw for the combo makes it easier to assemble the Tron, and the deck only demands Expedition Map as oppossed to 7-8 Familiars. You even have a plan B in simply churning out Eldrazis, and a Uw deck can use White for Journey to Nowhere + Ruin Processor on top of Lone Missionary for lifegain.
The benefits are that the combo are much more resilient to spot removal thanks to both Grim Harvest and Mortuary Mire. Bojuka Bog could also be added for reusable GY hate.
What I'd want to add though, are the 1-of silver bullets that make Teachings actually good. Things like Exclude, Echoing Decay, Wail of the Nim, one or two pieces of catch-all removal like Rend Flesh and an actual fetchable kill spell in Comparative Analysis. It would also help against Boggles since we run 5 edict effects, 3 of which reusable. The playset of Disfigure is totally needed in order to deal with Delver and Stompy though.
The risk of wrapping the Drake loop into an otherwise-(almost) integral Teachings shell is that yu don't have any other B-plan, so if your Ghostly Flicker gets exiled you can't win in any other way. For the Drake plan to be reliable you need to play more permanents that synergize with Flicker, which should be at least a 2-ofs. Prophetic Prism, Coiling Oracle, Sea Gate Oracle, Mulldrifter are quite essential because they happen to be good when Drake (and Archaeomancer) is also at its best, i.g. when you can Flicker them and squeeze value.
Perhaps you could try adding a couple of Mulldrifters and the second GFlicker to enhance that package.
This was meant more as a spin on the classical Teachings list with Drake combo as a finisher, with recursion for inevitability. But you're probably right that only 1 flicker is precarious.
Even if I fit 2 Drifters and 1 Flicker I still need to fit that silver bullet package tho, so I don't know if it's worth it.
Way too many cards, and I feel as if I'm spreading myself too thin somewhere. I'd really like to fit Ponder or Preordain in somewhere, too, but it may not be necessary with the Transmute-tutoring idea I have going on.
Drift of Phantasms, Muddle the Mixture, and Brainspoil all seemed like good additions, because this is a deck that can actually handle Brainspoil's high cost in a pinch, but it's really there for the sake of Transmute so you can tutor up a Mnemonic Wall, Peregrine Drake, Mulldrifter, or Gray Merchant of Asphodel. Drift of Phantasms can give us a decent blocking body, but more importantly can be used to Transmute-tutor up Chittering Rats, Pestermite, Capsize, and Ghostly Flicker. Muddle the Mixture is a nice counterspell, and it lets us Transmute-tutor Deprive, Counterspell, Chainer's Edict, Snap, or Grim Harvest.
So rather than needing to cross your fingers for the exact combo piece you need, you can simply search your deck for them.
But still, way too many cards. What should I do? The best idea I have is to more or less cut black out of the picture, but that completely ruins the point of the Chittering Rats lock and the Asphodel kill. I suppose I can do a similar lock by comboing off with Pestermite on every opponent upkeep, but they'd still be drawing cards which gives them a chance to counter/kill the combo.
However, the Familiars themselves are bad creatures, and you don't definitely need the three colors, so I expect these decks to start shedding the Familiars when the dust settles and the meta has stabilized.
You keep saying this, but I think you're mistaken. Don't think of the Familiars as creatures, they're barely creatures and more of ramp spells than anything (yeah yeah they die to removal spells, the deck has enough redundancy/card draw to overcome that though). They generate a ton of mana for the deck, even not taking into account how well they combine with Peregrine Drake. Powering out cheaper Compulsive Researches, Mulldrifters, and Sea Gate Oracles lets them churn through the deck at a very fast rate making it easy to find whatever combo piece, sideboard card, etc they need.
As far as the splashes, both add value to the deck and are worth the cost, even beyond just letting them play the Familiars. White especially gives you access to very important anti-aggro cards like Lone Missionary, Prismatic Strands, and Circle of Protection (green or red). Without these cards decks like Stompy and Goblins would roll over Drake combo every match. Removal spells like Lightning Bolt and whatever else you gain from playing a UR Drake deck don't bother me nearly as much as Lone Missionary when I'm playing Stompy, and Circle of Protection: Green puts you to the test - do you have an answer? If not gg. UR builds offer no cards like that which make it incredibly difficult for aggro to win, and in addition they lose out on the Familiars that let you churn through your deck so fast even when you don't have the Drake combo assembled.
Black feels like less crucial of a splash, however Reaping the Graves is an incredibly powerful way to attrition out control decks and combo in the face of copious amounts of removal so that plus Nightscape Familiar alone probably makes it worthwhile. Again, UR does not offer this functionality. If a control deck counters/kills all your combo pieces you're probably dead since you have no way to get them back (I guess Haunted Fengraf possibly, but that's unreliable).
Why would you want Familiars as ramp that die to removal to power up cheap draw when you can play Mono Blue / UW (if you want lifegain that badly) Tron? The reason the original Esper shell used familiars is because you had to make Flicker at least mana neutral to go off. Drake now allows you to go off by itself and even make excess mana without the need of Bouncelands, Familiars or any other color, and the combo pieces are good by themselves, which makes it a great finisher for Control decks.
If you want to draw through your deck for cheap, U/x Tron does the same thing that Familiars do (with a much higher speed) and with a consistent manabase due to it being mostly monocolored. The fact that you already run cantrips and draw for the combo makes it easier to assemble the Tron, and the deck only demands Expedition Map as oppossed to 7-8 Familiars. You even have a plan B in simply churning out Eldrazis, and a Uw deck can use White for Journey to Nowhere + Ruin Processor on top of Lone Missionary for lifegain.
Sure, you don't need the Familiars to combo anymore, but that doesn't mean they are now bad cards. The Familiars generate absurd amounts of mana and let the deck do degenerate things that UR or Mono-U builds aren't capable of. Maybe Tron is capable of them thanks to the Tron lands but I don't think the mana of Tron is as consistent as you are claiming based on my experience playing against Izzet Tron decks. The Tron lands don't tap for colored mana at all and they take up 12 land slots in your deck which limits the number of colored sources you have access to. They also mean you have to play cards like Prophetic Prism and Expedition Map to help fix your mana, which takes away from interactive spells and/or combo pieces you could put in the deck. It's not uncommon to play games against Tron where they're flailing about with only one or two colored sources of mana, and that's actually a huge bottleneck on how many draw spells they can reasonably cast in a turn. So I do not agree with the assertion that Tron draws its deck faster. Familiar will be much more efficient at drawing its deck under most circumstances.
As far as B - plans, Familiar has Reaping the Graves as I've mentioned, but it also has eight 2 power flyers that can get the job done. Yesterday I played against a Familiars deck that never even found a Mnemonic Wall to combo with but it didn't matter because he drew like 40 cards and put several Mulldrifters and Drakes on the board so I was just dead in 2 attacks.
Sure, you don't need the Familiars to combo anymore, but that doesn't mean they are now bad cards. The Familiars generate absurd amounts of mana and let the deck do degenerate things that UR or Mono-U builds aren't capable of. Maybe Tron is capable of them thanks to the Tron lands but I don't think the mana of Tron is as consistent as you are claiming based on my experience playing against Izzet Tron decks. The Tron lands don't tap for colored mana at all and they take up 12 land slots in your deck which limits the number of colored sources you have access to. They also mean you have to play cards like Prophetic Prism and Expedition Map to help fix your mana, which takes away from interactive spells and/or combo pieces you could put in the deck. It's not uncommon to play games against Tron where they're flailing about with only one or two colored sources of mana, and that's actually a huge bottleneck on how many draw spells they can reasonably cast in a turn. So I do not agree with the assertion that Tron draws its deck faster. Familiar will be much more efficient at drawing its deck under most circumstances.
As far as B - plans, Familiar has Reaping the Graves as I've mentioned, but it also has eight 2 power flyers that can get the job done. Yesterday I played against a Familiars deck that never even found a Mnemonic Wall to combo with but it didn't matter because he drew like 40 cards and put several Mulldrifters and Drakes on the board so I was just dead in 2 attacks.
Sure you have to play cards like Prism and Map to help fix your mana, but don't you have to play Familiars to accelerate in the Familiars version, which also take away from interactive spells? Mono Blue doesn't struggle for colored sources of mana since 12-13 Islands + 4 Prophetic Prism is more than enough to cast various spells per turn, whereas in Esper you have the inconsistencies of 3 color manabases in Pauper. Drake untapping Tron lands generates absurd amounts of mana, and threatening to combo at every turn while an Ulamog's Crusher beats the opponent senseless and decimates his board state seems like a legitimate plan. Pressure + Combo is a time and tested strategy throughout Magic's history, and an Eldrazi beatdown backed up by 2 power flyers seems like a good enough backup plan on it's own. Complementing a Crusher with Control cards like Repeal and Condescend to answer threats and dig up for combo pieces puts the opponent in a tough position: defend from the immediate answer and use the removal on it, or save it for the combo I've been assembling while taking care of your threats.
Sure, you don't need the Familiars to combo anymore, but that doesn't mean they are now bad cards. The Familiars generate absurd amounts of mana and let the deck do degenerate things that UR or Mono-U builds aren't capable of. Maybe Tron is capable of them thanks to the Tron lands but I don't think the mana of Tron is as consistent as you are claiming based on my experience playing against Izzet Tron decks. The Tron lands don't tap for colored mana at all and they take up 12 land slots in your deck which limits the number of colored sources you have access to. They also mean you have to play cards like Prophetic Prism and Expedition Map to help fix your mana, which takes away from interactive spells and/or combo pieces you could put in the deck. It's not uncommon to play games against Tron where they're flailing about with only one or two colored sources of mana, and that's actually a huge bottleneck on how many draw spells they can reasonably cast in a turn. So I do not agree with the assertion that Tron draws its deck faster. Familiar will be much more efficient at drawing its deck under most circumstances.
As far as B - plans, Familiar has Reaping the Graves as I've mentioned, but it also has eight 2 power flyers that can get the job done. Yesterday I played against a Familiars deck that never even found a Mnemonic Wall to combo with but it didn't matter because he drew like 40 cards and put several Mulldrifters and Drakes on the board so I was just dead in 2 attacks.
Sure you have to play cards like Prism and Map to help fix your mana, but don't you have to play Familiars to accelerate in the Familiars version, which also take away from interactive spells? Mono Blue doesn't struggle for colored sources of mana since 12-13 Islands + 4 Prophetic Prism is more than enough to cast various spells per turn, whereas in Esper you have the inconsistencies of 3 color manabases in Pauper. Drake untapping Tron lands generates absurd amounts of mana, and threatening to combo at every turn while an Ulamog's Crusher beats the opponent senseless and decimates his board state seems like a legitimate plan. Pressure + Combo is a time and tested strategy throughout Magic's history, and an Eldrazi beatdown backed up by 2 power flyers seems like a good enough backup plan on it's own. Complementing a Crusher with Control cards like Repeal and Condescend to answer threats and dig up for combo pieces puts the opponent in a tough position: defend from the immediate answer and use the removal on it, or save it for the combo I've been assembling while taking care of your threats.
The Familiars can interact with your opponent more than Prisms/Maps ever could though. They're creatures so they can block if you're so inclined (and one of them even regenerates if you can spare the mana). Against a deck full of 2 power creatures Sunscape Familiar can act as a removal spell and a ramp spell, not unlike Sylvan Caryatid. They're more versatile cards than you are giving them credit for.
The Esper manabase is actually pretty good in my experience as far as 3 color manabases go. They have numerous bouncelands to fix as well as Teramorphic Expanse/Evolving Wilds. Also as a base blue deck they can often find the other colors they need just off the back of card draw (which again, they do more efficiently than Tron). I would wager that the 3 color Esper manabase is much more consistent than the 2 color Tron manabases I've played against. 12 colorless lands really does a lot to tank your manabase's consistency. As for mono-U Tron, sure it will be way more consistent than two-color Tron decks. But then you lose the versatility that other colors provide. I don't think Ulamog's Crusher is even that good of a plan. Plenty of decks are capable of racing it, or removing it and when you desperately need a blocker it decides to attack instead. Cloudpost decks used to play it too but it was a mediocre plan at best compared to simply killing your opponent with a big Rolling Thunder or attacking with Mulldrifter.
Sure, you don't need the Familiars to combo anymore, but that doesn't mean they are now bad cards. The Familiars generate absurd amounts of mana and let the deck do degenerate things that UR or Mono-U builds aren't capable of. Maybe Tron is capable of them thanks to the Tron lands but I don't think the mana of Tron is as consistent as you are claiming based on my experience playing against Izzet Tron decks. The Tron lands don't tap for colored mana at all and they take up 12 land slots in your deck which limits the number of colored sources you have access to. They also mean you have to play cards like Prophetic Prism and Expedition Map to help fix your mana, which takes away from interactive spells and/or combo pieces you could put in the deck. It's not uncommon to play games against Tron where they're flailing about with only one or two colored sources of mana, and that's actually a huge bottleneck on how many draw spells they can reasonably cast in a turn. So I do not agree with the assertion that Tron draws its deck faster. Familiar will be much more efficient at drawing its deck under most circumstances.
As far as B - plans, Familiar has Reaping the Graves as I've mentioned, but it also has eight 2 power flyers that can get the job done. Yesterday I played against a Familiars deck that never even found a Mnemonic Wall to combo with but it didn't matter because he drew like 40 cards and put several Mulldrifters and Drakes on the board so I was just dead in 2 attacks.
Sure you have to play cards like Prism and Map to help fix your mana, but don't you have to play Familiars to accelerate in the Familiars version, which also take away from interactive spells? Mono Blue doesn't struggle for colored sources of mana since 12-13 Islands + 4 Prophetic Prism is more than enough to cast various spells per turn, whereas in Esper you have the inconsistencies of 3 color manabases in Pauper. Drake untapping Tron lands generates absurd amounts of mana, and threatening to combo at every turn while an Ulamog's Crusher beats the opponent senseless and decimates his board state seems like a legitimate plan. Pressure + Combo is a time and tested strategy throughout Magic's history, and an Eldrazi beatdown backed up by 2 power flyers seems like a good enough backup plan on it's own. Complementing a Crusher with Control cards like Repeal and Condescend to answer threats and dig up for combo pieces puts the opponent in a tough position: defend from the immediate answer and use the removal on it, or save it for the combo I've been assembling while taking care of your threats.
The Familiars can interact with your opponent more than Prisms/Maps ever could though. They're creatures so they can block if you're so inclined (and one of them even regenerates if you can spare the mana). Against a deck full of 2 power creatures Sunscape Familiar can act as a removal spell and a ramp spell, not unlike Sylvan Caryatid. They're more versatile cards than you are giving them credit for.
The Esper manabase is actually pretty good in my experience as far as 3 color manabases go. They have numerous bouncelands to fix as well as Teramorphic Expanse/Evolving Wilds. Also as a base blue deck they can often find the other colors they need just off the back of card draw (which again, they do more efficiently than Tron). I would wager that the 3 color Esper manabase is much more consistent than the 2 color Tron manabases I've played against. 12 colorless lands really does a lot to tank your manabase's consistency. As for mono-U Tron, sure it will be way more consistent than two-color Tron decks. But then you lose the versatility that other colors provide. I don't think Ulamog's Crusher is even that good of a plan. Plenty of decks are capable of racing it, or removing it and when you desperately need a blocker it decides to attack instead. Cloudpost decks used to play it too but it was a mediocre plan at best compared to simply killing your opponent with a big Rolling Thunder or attacking with Mulldrifter.
The interaction applies both ways though. An opponent can remove Familiars, but they can't remove a Map or a Prism on G1. Any deck has answers to a 0/3 and even to a regenerating 1/1, and if they don't they can simply go wide around your blockers. There's a reason the other familiars of the cycle or similar cards like Frogtosser Banneret or Etherium Sculptor don't see any play (Sculptor only does in a super-rogue Eggs deck, which is another Combo deck). Sylvan Caryatid's main selling point was that it had Hexproof, which avoided interaction from your opponent entirely, and to a lesser extent, that it was the only useful dork in it's Standard lifetime. It's no coincidence it's highly outclassed by Birds of Paradise or Noble Hierarch in formats that have all of them in their card pool.
A fistful of Fetchlands + Bouncelands, while making a manabase more reliable, are the main reason Familiars folds hard to Aggro if they don't pack lifegain like Lone Missionary. It takes far more time to durdle with their manabase than a mono color Tron deck would: Tron can simply play a Map here, a Prism there, while playing untapped lands and colored sources turn after turn and then be done for the rest of the game. Sure there are decks out there that are capable of racing or removing Ulamog's Crusher, but last time I checked they're also capable of racing a Mulldrifter. If you need to block / gain life there are other Eldrazis like Eldrazi Devastator (evasive big body that can sit back and block) and Ruin Processor, which coupled with cards like Journey to Nowhere give you a fat wall of meat and beatstick + life. While Rolling Thunder is certainly the better option, 8/8's have always been better than 2/2's at least in my book. It's also a bit contradictory that you say that the Eldrazi plan is bad because opponents can outrace it, but then claim that a 2/2 beatdown plan, which is far more slow is better than it.
Sure, you don't need the Familiars to combo anymore, but that doesn't mean they are now bad cards. The Familiars generate absurd amounts of mana and let the deck do degenerate things that UR or Mono-U builds aren't capable of. Maybe Tron is capable of them thanks to the Tron lands but I don't think the mana of Tron is as consistent as you are claiming based on my experience playing against Izzet Tron decks. The Tron lands don't tap for colored mana at all and they take up 12 land slots in your deck which limits the number of colored sources you have access to. They also mean you have to play cards like Prophetic Prism and Expedition Map to help fix your mana, which takes away from interactive spells and/or combo pieces you could put in the deck. It's not uncommon to play games against Tron where they're flailing about with only one or two colored sources of mana, and that's actually a huge bottleneck on how many draw spells they can reasonably cast in a turn. So I do not agree with the assertion that Tron draws its deck faster. Familiar will be much more efficient at drawing its deck under most circumstances.
As far as B - plans, Familiar has Reaping the Graves as I've mentioned, but it also has eight 2 power flyers that can get the job done. Yesterday I played against a Familiars deck that never even found a Mnemonic Wall to combo with but it didn't matter because he drew like 40 cards and put several Mulldrifters and Drakes on the board so I was just dead in 2 attacks.
Sure you have to play cards like Prism and Map to help fix your mana, but don't you have to play Familiars to accelerate in the Familiars version, which also take away from interactive spells? Mono Blue doesn't struggle for colored sources of mana since 12-13 Islands + 4 Prophetic Prism is more than enough to cast various spells per turn, whereas in Esper you have the inconsistencies of 3 color manabases in Pauper. Drake untapping Tron lands generates absurd amounts of mana, and threatening to combo at every turn while an Ulamog's Crusher beats the opponent senseless and decimates his board state seems like a legitimate plan. Pressure + Combo is a time and tested strategy throughout Magic's history, and an Eldrazi beatdown backed up by 2 power flyers seems like a good enough backup plan on it's own. Complementing a Crusher with Control cards like Repeal and Condescend to answer threats and dig up for combo pieces puts the opponent in a tough position: defend from the immediate answer and use the removal on it, or save it for the combo I've been assembling while taking care of your threats.
The Familiars can interact with your opponent more than Prisms/Maps ever could though. They're creatures so they can block if you're so inclined (and one of them even regenerates if you can spare the mana). Against a deck full of 2 power creatures Sunscape Familiar can act as a removal spell and a ramp spell, not unlike Sylvan Caryatid. They're more versatile cards than you are giving them credit for.
The Esper manabase is actually pretty good in my experience as far as 3 color manabases go. They have numerous bouncelands to fix as well as Teramorphic Expanse/Evolving Wilds. Also as a base blue deck they can often find the other colors they need just off the back of card draw (which again, they do more efficiently than Tron). I would wager that the 3 color Esper manabase is much more consistent than the 2 color Tron manabases I've played against. 12 colorless lands really does a lot to tank your manabase's consistency. As for mono-U Tron, sure it will be way more consistent than two-color Tron decks. But then you lose the versatility that other colors provide. I don't think Ulamog's Crusher is even that good of a plan. Plenty of decks are capable of racing it, or removing it and when you desperately need a blocker it decides to attack instead. Cloudpost decks used to play it too but it was a mediocre plan at best compared to simply killing your opponent with a big Rolling Thunder or attacking with Mulldrifter.
The interaction applies both ways though. An opponent can remove Familiars, but they can't remove a Map or a Prism on G1. Any deck has answers to a 0/3 and even to a regenerating 1/1, and if they don't they can simply go wide around your blockers. There's a reason the other familiars of the cycle or similar cards like Frogtosser Banneret or Etherium Sculptor don't see any play (Sculptor only does in a super-rogue Eggs deck, which is another Combo deck). Sylvan Caryatid's main selling point was that it had Hexproof, which avoided interaction from your opponent entirely, and to a lesser extent, that it was the only useful dork in it's Standard lifetime. It's no coincidence it's highly outclassed by Birds of Paradise or Noble Hierarch in formats that have all of them in their card pool.
A fistful of Fetchlands + Bouncelands, while making a manabase more reliable, are the main reason Familiars folds hard to Aggro if they don't pack lifegain like Lone Missionary. It takes far more time to durdle with their manabase than a mono color Tron deck would: Tron can simply play a Map here, a Prism there, while playing untapped lands and colored sources turn after turn and then be done for the rest of the game. Sure there are decks out there that are capable of racing or removing Ulamog's Crusher, but last time I checked they're also capable of racing a Mulldrifter. If you need to block / gain life there are other Eldrazis like Eldrazi Devastator (evasive big body that can sit back and block) and Ruin Processor, which coupled with cards like Journey to Nowhere give you a fat wall of meat and beatstick + life. While Rolling Thunder is certainly the better option, 8/8's have always been better than 2/2's at least in my book. It's also a bit contradictory that you say that the Eldrazi plan is bad because opponents can outrace it, but then claim that a 2/2 beatdown plan, which is far more slow is better than it.
As far as your first paragraph, sure that's true re: Familiars being susceptible to removal where Map isn't (well it is but would require a narrow window and conditional sideboard cards). That's not the point I was trying to make though, I was mentioning extra utility the cards have in addition to being huge mana generators. You are acting as if the Familiars are completely one-dimensional cards which isn't really true.
As far as cards like Frogtosser Banneret, those cards are much more limited/narrow in their cost reductions than the Familiars. It's a similar reason to why I think the 2/2 blue Warden may not make an impact on the format. The Familiars on the other hand make all blue spells in your deck cheaper (unless they use only colored mana like Preordain, but Tron doesn't help with that either). As for why the other Familiars (Thunderscape, Thornscape, etc) they don't fuel all the powerful blue draw spells that let you run through the deck. Blue is the single most powerful color in the format with the best payoffs for cost reductions so I don't think it's much of a stretch to see why Sunscape/Nightscape are good at what they do while the others are not.
"Familiars folds if they don't pack lifegain". Okay? They do pack lifegain though. Tron decks traditionally have to pack lifegain too - see Pulse of Murasa in Izzet Tron, or Fangren Marauder in RUG Tron or they also get run over by aggro decks for durdling around and setting up their lands. If you play Mono-U Tron then you don't get any good life gain cards which is a huge disadvantage compared to other decks of that nature. Ruin Processor is not good enough to see play if you have to rely on other cards to make it work (hence why it has seen little to no play in the past). I never said a 2/2 beatdown plan is better than an Eldrazi plan. Both are weak in my estimation and are only secondary options anyways but you're already playing the 2 power creatures in your deck so you're not losing anything to have that plan. Adding Ulamog's Crushers to your deck is a real cost by comparison. Eldrazi Devastator might be better than Crusher, I can't say I've played it though so I don't know.
"but last time I checked they're also capable of racing a Mulldrifter"
I don't see the point of this comment. Mulldrifter isn't in the deck to race, it's in the deck to draw cards while sometimes acting as a speed bump or an attacker once you turn the corner. If you have Crusher in your deck it's more clear your plan is toturbo out Crusher and try to ride it to victory since it's a much more one dimensional card than Mulldrifter is.
It's very all-in, but doesn't bother with the inconsistencies of running Tron or the 3 color Familiars manabase. Clearly this deck just wants to combo as fast as possible and little else though seeing as it has a whopping 16 cantrips and only creatures that draw cards outside of the combo pieces. It also plays few interactive spells with just a singleton Capsize and 3 Gigadrowse to tap down the opponent the turn before they can go off.
The pilot posted two 5-0s with it in one day, so either they ran hotter than the sun or there might be something there with this list. I have all the cards for it so maybe I'll give it a spin myself tomorrow.
Yeah, that's a build I like a lot more than the Familiars one. It turbodraws through the deck to amass the component, then goes off, completely ignoring any kind of interaction like a true Combo deck should. I expect something like this to be the top tier dedicated Combo build of the deck and not Familiars, either with or without Tron. We'll have to wait for the Control deck until the meta stabilizes and Control adapts and starts doing well to see which is the best variant of the deck, which ultimately will be boiled down to which Ux control deck can fare better against Peregrine Combo, Delver, Stompy, Affinity and Tron and are willing to implement Drake as a combo finish for the deck.
Well the Mono-U version is pretty good I am finding however comboing takes up a lot of time with it since you only generate 2 mana per loop at best. The single Sage's Row Denizen can help you win faster but you don't always find it and Capsizing their board takes a whole lot of combo iterations. The deck's biggest enemy may be the clock, more so than for Familiars or other lists so it might be necessary to splash red just for Rolling Thunder (and Izzet Boilerworks) to combo off more efficiently. Then again there's Izzet lists like this that don't bother with Rolling Thunder:
Well the Mono-U version is pretty good I am finding however comboing takes up a lot of time with it since you only generate 2 mana per loop at best. The single Sage's Row Denizen can help you win faster but you don't always find it and Capsizing their board takes a whole lot of combo iterations. The deck's biggest enemy may be the clock, more so than for Familiars or other lists so it might be necessary to splash red just for Rolling Thunder (and Izzet Boilerworks) to combo off more efficiently. Then again there's Izzet lists like this that don't bother with Rolling Thunder:
Maybe it's me, but these lists seem to be quite off. How can they succeed in going off with zero amount of counterspells/Dispels? Are they planning on resolving a swarm of flyers and then occasionally ging off if circumstances are favorable? It may as well be, but that would not justify such a heavy number of Flickers.
Also: how the hell is it possible to play ten five-drops in a format where Goblins, Stompy, Auras and Affinity are still alive and well?
Plus, that mono-blue list that 5-0ed twice seems to straight lose to t1 Delver and some Counterspell on the right piece in between. At least consider some Snaps?
I don't know, I took the Izzet list for a spin in the practice room and I lost to a Teachings control opponent despite assembling the combo because the deck had no Rolling Thunder to kill with and one of my walls was dead so I couldn't Flicker two Walls to recur Bolt either. Basically he had 40+ life and two Pristine Talismans so I was going to be decked before my remaining two Peregrine Drakes could get the job done despite having the ability to generate infinite mana. I don't see how the deck can not include at least Rolling Thunder and hope to beat decks with removal spells.
I think the Mono-U list can get by on the fact that it can assemble the combo fast enough to race and Gigadrowse can buy you the time you need while also ensuring Counterspells don't mess up your plan. But it can still be a struggle at times since decks like Stompy and Affinity can definitely kill turn 4-5 unimpeded, and with only Capsize and Sage's Row Denizen to "go off" with it sometimes takes an unreasonable amount of clock to kill.
This UB list is kind of interesting, it's got the Chittering Rats lock as well as the normal Drake combo (flicker Rats + Wall in their draw step every turn, unless they draw and cast an instant they never get to draw a new card again). Could probably do with some Reaping the Graves action in the sideboard though (or some kind of recursion).
That's kind of what I was trying to make a while back. I tried the Thought Scour Mill version of the deck and I don't like it, nor do I see how it's doing well. At least this one has some kind of game plan while you're digging for combo pieces instead of throwing cantrips to the wind.
Though I'd probably ditch Snuff Out for Chainer's Edict or something.
You can replace Cruise with Artificer's Epiphany or Accumulated Knowledge. If you decide to go with Knowledge, I'd cut something to go with a full set. If you want silly card draw, you should try Knowledge when your opponent is also playing it
There has been a few UR Peregrine Control lists on the last days, a few Mono Blue pure combo (Tron or Tronless), and Dimir but without Teachings which makes me believe Teachings isn't the optimal control shell for Drake (unless I've somehow missed it). Teachings is still playing it's own game, and Murasa Tron has adopted the Drake woute as well. As I predicted, the Familiars were dumped, and quite fast at that, with only the first day deck being a straight up Familiars build.
First week's numbers leaves us with either Izzet Control (Pauper Twin) at third position with 8'33 % and Murasa Tron at first position at 11'67 % as the more consistent Peregrine deck choices, with Mono Blue falling far behind at 3'33 %.
Since this is the Peregrine Control thread, I would suggest focusing on Izzet Drake as the deck of choice, as it's the proven best Control shell that fits Drake, while Murasa Tron can get it's own thread (or be discussed in the Tron Primer). As soon as the weeks pass, EMN arrives and lists get polished and their core defined, I'll update this thread into a full official Primer for the deck.
Let's discuss the core for now. Every deck seems to be playing this skeleton:
I think we can now build up from this core. The landbase can include utility lands like the Cycle lands Forgotten Cave and Lonely Sandbar which would replace Mountains and Islands respectively, never going below 8 mono Blue sources and 5 mono Red sources it seems. A list cut two Blue sources down to 6 to include a pair of Radiant Fountain, probably to fight Aggro decks. It's interesting to note that no deck surpasses 21 lands, with one of them even going down to 20 (the Radiant Fountain one).
About the Wall / Mancer spot, I prefer Mancer due to it costing 1 less, which allows me to cast him for value at 5-6 mana in order to recover a kill spell or a counterspell, as oppossed to Wall where I would need to wait at 6-7, which might prove a daunting task in a 20-21 land deck. I would also include a third Mancer just in case, as it's nice to have redundancy in case one gets killed and them being cast for value is a pretty nice option.
In the Counterspell vs Memory Lapse department I think we all can agree about Counterspell being miles better, specially in a Control deck. Perhaps Lapse was included because people got a hold of them in EMA or because their possibility to be cast out of a single Izzet Boilerworks. Anyways, I think going up to 4 will pretty much be the standard route in the days to come, maybe with Dispel and/or Memory Lapse going side to side with it. I would also run 1-2 Exclude as it's Pauper's Cryptic Command, and nullifies a threat that has a strong ETB (Drake, Drifter or Gray Merchant of Asphodel) or one that our deck is poorly equipped to deal with (Gurmag Angler, Fangren Marauder or Ulamog's Crusher) while drawing a card and advancing our gameplan.
Lightning Bolt and Flame Slash seem the standard removal suite, although there are decks that run fewer than 4 Bolts, which is something I wouldn't do. Bolt is a 1 CMC piece of interaction against Peregrine Drake, doubles as burn reach, and you either run 4 or none, as it gets better in multiples. After these, decks opt for Firebolt because of it's ability to 2-for-1 critters, although I think I'm leaning more on Burst Lighting since it does the same at face value (and at instant speed) and it deals the full 4 dmg for 1 CMC cheaper than Firebolt at the cost of not doing a 2-for-1. These one are more of flex slots, and we'll need to test if it's better to take out X/4's and have a better game against Delver thanks to Instant speed answers, or simply 2-for-1'ing people.
About the card draw, all list included 4 copies of Compulsive Research except one that eschewed a copy in favor of a singleton Rolling Thunder, which I think is better. Thunder can be a kill spell like Research's 4th copy, but it can also be a wrath in an emergency, and seeing all those Elves, Stompy and Goblins decks these days has made me wary about it. Also, while Research can kill opponents, it's worth noting that it's sorcery speed card draw, and if we want to take a more reactive approach to the meta, we should run just 1 as a kill spell that draws cards if drawn early (then it can be picked up by one of our critters before the kill) and run Think Twices instead of the rest. Kaervek's Torch isn't needed IMO since we already run counterspells and we can always pick up the Thunder if it gets countered by simply starting the loop anew and picking it up when we have infinite mana.
Here's a list I would run with the following changes I've said:
I think 1 Rolling Thunder is very necessary for the UR deck, especially online. I tried the version without it and had a situation where I assembled infinite mana but couldn't actually win because I only had one Archaeomancer left (was a grindy match vs Teachings and they killed the other 2). I don't mind the idea of Think Twice since the deck doesn't actually have many 2 drops anyways but Compulsive is a much more powerful draw spell dsepite being less flexible.
These decks have a lot of deficiencies still though. Burn matchup can be pretty tough, especially if you draw the slow half of the deck. You can shore it up with Hydroblasts after board but Molten Rain can still be a huge setback. Maybe the 1 Radiant Fountain is necessary for it. Hexproof is a poor matchup so devoting some number of sideboard slots to Curfew could be necessary (it has been seeing an uptick in popularity so I don't think ignoring it is viable). Stompy gives the deck trouble too. Playing as a UR control deck against Stompy isn't actually very good so you pretty much have to race to the combo there. On the bright side they have few ways to disrupt you if you do get the combo going.
The Tron versions haven't impressed me much, though they seem to beat UR handily in the semi-mirror. They lose to their mana too often for me to like them over the UR deck in general though.
What do we think about Galvanic Bombardment vs Flame Slash? Murasa Tron, Izzet Peregrine, Delver and Hexproof are the most played decks right now. Against Boggles we can't do jack *****, but against the other three the first Bombardment is fine, and the second can already interact with Drake combo at instant speed. Only downside is that it has to wait for the third copy to hit 4/4s, but the fourth one can take out a 5/5.
It's basically the old Familiars deck with Peregrine Drake slotted in for CoF. In fact the pilot said as much on the Pauper subreddit.
I played against him with my new brews of the list. His was alot better to be quite honest.
My UR and UG lists were pretty much total failures and not the least of which was my misreading what Sheltered Aerie actual does lol. I kept getting to the point where I would spin my heels without card draw/filtering and die. THough the UR list did a lot better and may have just suffered from some bad matches.
However, the Familiars themselves are bad creatures, and you don't definitely need the three colors, so I expect these decks to start shedding the Familiars when the dust settles and the meta has stabilized.
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
I haven't completely figured out the entire deck (and I'm hoping you all might have some suggestions), but the main idea would be to get a board state with Archaeomancer/Mnemonic Wall, Peregrine Drake, and Chittering Rats. Use Ghostly Flicker to bounce Archaeomancer/Mnemonic Wall and Peregrine Drake so you can keep untapping and retapping the three Tron lands, a Swamp, and an Island in various orders, which, if I understand it right, should allow for infinite black/blue/colorless mana. Then you can Ghostly Flicker Archaeomancer/Mnemonic Wall and Chittering Rats to empty out your opponent's hand and continue to do that every turn so they topdeck the same card, essentially locking them out of the game. The rest of the cards would be Tron frequent fliers like Expedition Map and maybe some Chromatic Sphere/Stars, and the rest of the deck would be counterspells, removal spells (Snap and Capsize come to mind), kill spells, and Edict spells (and Curfew maybe) for Bogles/Hexproof. Mulldrifter would be a good addition as well, allowing you lots of card advantage, and Gray Merchant of Asphodel could be flickered over and over for infinite damage.
Maybe splash a little red for Rolling Thunder/Kaervek's Torch for a kill.
Maybe Pestermite for flickering shenanigans, so you can tap out your opponent every turn, as well. Not super necessary, I just love Faeries.
So basically:
Unlimited flicker of Chittering Rats - empty their hand and keep it empty
Unlimited flicker of Pestermite - tap all their spells and lands every time their upkeep comes around
Unlimited flicker of Mulldrifter - Draw your whole deck, basically? Not really necessary and potentially dangerous if you draw it out too much.
Unlimited flicker of Gray Merchant of Asphodel - Unlimited damage and lifegain.
WB Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim | WBR Queen Marchesa | WUBR Breya, Etherium Shaper
Modern:
/ Death and Taxes | W/ Soul Sisters | Spirits | U Faeries | Tempered Steel Affinity
You keep saying this, but I think you're mistaken. Don't think of the Familiars as creatures, they're barely creatures and more of ramp spells than anything (yeah yeah they die to removal spells, the deck has enough redundancy/card draw to overcome that though). They generate a ton of mana for the deck, even not taking into account how well they combine with Peregrine Drake. Powering out cheaper Compulsive Researches, Mulldrifters, and Sea Gate Oracles lets them churn through the deck at a very fast rate making it easy to find whatever combo piece, sideboard card, etc they need.
As far as the splashes, both add value to the deck and are worth the cost, even beyond just letting them play the Familiars. White especially gives you access to very important anti-aggro cards like Lone Missionary, Prismatic Strands, and Circle of Protection (green or red). Without these cards decks like Stompy and Goblins would roll over Drake combo every match. Removal spells like Lightning Bolt and whatever else you gain from playing a UR Drake deck don't bother me nearly as much as Lone Missionary when I'm playing Stompy, and Circle of Protection: Green puts you to the test - do you have an answer? If not gg. UR builds offer no cards like that which make it incredibly difficult for aggro to win, and in addition they lose out on the Familiars that let you churn through your deck so fast even when you don't have the Drake combo assembled.
Black feels like less crucial of a splash, however Reaping the Graves is an incredibly powerful way to attrition out control decks and combo in the face of copious amounts of removal so that plus Nightscape Familiar alone probably makes it worthwhile. Again, UR does not offer this functionality. If a control deck counters/kills all your combo pieces you're probably dead since you have no way to get them back (I guess Haunted Fengraf possibly, but that's unreliable).
Why would you want Familiars as ramp that die to removal to power up cheap draw when you can play Mono Blue / UW (if you want lifegain that badly) Tron? The reason the original Esper shell used familiars is because you had to make Flicker at least mana neutral to go off. Drake now allows you to go off by itself and even make excess mana without the need of Bouncelands, Familiars or any other color, and the combo pieces are good by themselves, which makes it a great finisher for Control decks.
If you want to draw through your deck for cheap, U/x Tron does the same thing that Familiars do (with a much higher speed) and with a consistent manabase due to it being mostly monocolored. The fact that you already run cantrips and draw for the combo makes it easier to assemble the Tron, and the deck only demands Expedition Map as oppossed to 7-8 Familiars. You even have a plan B in simply churning out Eldrazis, and a Uw deck can use White for Journey to Nowhere + Ruin Processor on top of Lone Missionary for lifegain.
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
This was meant more as a spin on the classical Teachings list with Drake combo as a finisher, with recursion for inevitability. But you're probably right that only 1 flicker is precarious.
Even if I fit 2 Drifters and 1 Flicker I still need to fit that silver bullet package tho, so I don't know if it's worth it.
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
2 Archaeomancer
4 Mnemonic Wall
4 Peregrine Drake
2 Chittering Rats
3 Mulldrifter
2 Pestermite
2 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
2 Drift of Phantasms
2 Deprive
3 Counterspell
2 Muddle the Mixture
Removal (9)
2 Chainer's Edict
4 Snap
1 Capsize
2 Brainspoil
Combo (9)
4 Ghostly Flicker
4 Expedition Map
1 Grim Harvest
4 Urza's Mine
4 Urza's Power Plant
4 Urza's Tower
4 Dismal Backwater
3 Swamp
5 Island
1 Radiant Fountain
Way too many cards, and I feel as if I'm spreading myself too thin somewhere. I'd really like to fit Ponder or Preordain in somewhere, too, but it may not be necessary with the Transmute-tutoring idea I have going on.
Drift of Phantasms, Muddle the Mixture, and Brainspoil all seemed like good additions, because this is a deck that can actually handle Brainspoil's high cost in a pinch, but it's really there for the sake of Transmute so you can tutor up a Mnemonic Wall, Peregrine Drake, Mulldrifter, or Gray Merchant of Asphodel. Drift of Phantasms can give us a decent blocking body, but more importantly can be used to Transmute-tutor up Chittering Rats, Pestermite, Capsize, and Ghostly Flicker. Muddle the Mixture is a nice counterspell, and it lets us Transmute-tutor Deprive, Counterspell, Chainer's Edict, Snap, or Grim Harvest.
So rather than needing to cross your fingers for the exact combo piece you need, you can simply search your deck for them.
But still, way too many cards. What should I do? The best idea I have is to more or less cut black out of the picture, but that completely ruins the point of the Chittering Rats lock and the Asphodel kill. I suppose I can do a similar lock by comboing off with Pestermite on every opponent upkeep, but they'd still be drawing cards which gives them a chance to counter/kill the combo.
WB Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim | WBR Queen Marchesa | WUBR Breya, Etherium Shaper
Modern:
/ Death and Taxes | W/ Soul Sisters | Spirits | U Faeries | Tempered Steel Affinity
Remove Rats and Pestermite, then replace Gray Merchant of Asphodel with maybe Grim Guardian or Bloodhunter Bat to reduce the black requirement?
Sure, you don't need the Familiars to combo anymore, but that doesn't mean they are now bad cards. The Familiars generate absurd amounts of mana and let the deck do degenerate things that UR or Mono-U builds aren't capable of. Maybe Tron is capable of them thanks to the Tron lands but I don't think the mana of Tron is as consistent as you are claiming based on my experience playing against Izzet Tron decks. The Tron lands don't tap for colored mana at all and they take up 12 land slots in your deck which limits the number of colored sources you have access to. They also mean you have to play cards like Prophetic Prism and Expedition Map to help fix your mana, which takes away from interactive spells and/or combo pieces you could put in the deck. It's not uncommon to play games against Tron where they're flailing about with only one or two colored sources of mana, and that's actually a huge bottleneck on how many draw spells they can reasonably cast in a turn. So I do not agree with the assertion that Tron draws its deck faster. Familiar will be much more efficient at drawing its deck under most circumstances.
As far as B - plans, Familiar has Reaping the Graves as I've mentioned, but it also has eight 2 power flyers that can get the job done. Yesterday I played against a Familiars deck that never even found a Mnemonic Wall to combo with but it didn't matter because he drew like 40 cards and put several Mulldrifters and Drakes on the board so I was just dead in 2 attacks.
Sure you have to play cards like Prism and Map to help fix your mana, but don't you have to play Familiars to accelerate in the Familiars version, which also take away from interactive spells? Mono Blue doesn't struggle for colored sources of mana since 12-13 Islands + 4 Prophetic Prism is more than enough to cast various spells per turn, whereas in Esper you have the inconsistencies of 3 color manabases in Pauper. Drake untapping Tron lands generates absurd amounts of mana, and threatening to combo at every turn while an Ulamog's Crusher beats the opponent senseless and decimates his board state seems like a legitimate plan. Pressure + Combo is a time and tested strategy throughout Magic's history, and an Eldrazi beatdown backed up by 2 power flyers seems like a good enough backup plan on it's own. Complementing a Crusher with Control cards like Repeal and Condescend to answer threats and dig up for combo pieces puts the opponent in a tough position: defend from the immediate answer and use the removal on it, or save it for the combo I've been assembling while taking care of your threats.
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
The Familiars can interact with your opponent more than Prisms/Maps ever could though. They're creatures so they can block if you're so inclined (and one of them even regenerates if you can spare the mana). Against a deck full of 2 power creatures Sunscape Familiar can act as a removal spell and a ramp spell, not unlike Sylvan Caryatid. They're more versatile cards than you are giving them credit for.
The Esper manabase is actually pretty good in my experience as far as 3 color manabases go. They have numerous bouncelands to fix as well as Teramorphic Expanse/Evolving Wilds. Also as a base blue deck they can often find the other colors they need just off the back of card draw (which again, they do more efficiently than Tron). I would wager that the 3 color Esper manabase is much more consistent than the 2 color Tron manabases I've played against. 12 colorless lands really does a lot to tank your manabase's consistency. As for mono-U Tron, sure it will be way more consistent than two-color Tron decks. But then you lose the versatility that other colors provide. I don't think Ulamog's Crusher is even that good of a plan. Plenty of decks are capable of racing it, or removing it and when you desperately need a blocker it decides to attack instead. Cloudpost decks used to play it too but it was a mediocre plan at best compared to simply killing your opponent with a big Rolling Thunder or attacking with Mulldrifter.
The interaction applies both ways though. An opponent can remove Familiars, but they can't remove a Map or a Prism on G1. Any deck has answers to a 0/3 and even to a regenerating 1/1, and if they don't they can simply go wide around your blockers. There's a reason the other familiars of the cycle or similar cards like Frogtosser Banneret or Etherium Sculptor don't see any play (Sculptor only does in a super-rogue Eggs deck, which is another Combo deck). Sylvan Caryatid's main selling point was that it had Hexproof, which avoided interaction from your opponent entirely, and to a lesser extent, that it was the only useful dork in it's Standard lifetime. It's no coincidence it's highly outclassed by Birds of Paradise or Noble Hierarch in formats that have all of them in their card pool.
A fistful of Fetchlands + Bouncelands, while making a manabase more reliable, are the main reason Familiars folds hard to Aggro if they don't pack lifegain like Lone Missionary. It takes far more time to durdle with their manabase than a mono color Tron deck would: Tron can simply play a Map here, a Prism there, while playing untapped lands and colored sources turn after turn and then be done for the rest of the game. Sure there are decks out there that are capable of racing or removing Ulamog's Crusher, but last time I checked they're also capable of racing a Mulldrifter. If you need to block / gain life there are other Eldrazis like Eldrazi Devastator (evasive big body that can sit back and block) and Ruin Processor, which coupled with cards like Journey to Nowhere give you a fat wall of meat and beatstick + life. While Rolling Thunder is certainly the better option, 8/8's have always been better than 2/2's at least in my book. It's also a bit contradictory that you say that the Eldrazi plan is bad because opponents can outrace it, but then claim that a 2/2 beatdown plan, which is far more slow is better than it.
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
As far as your first paragraph, sure that's true re: Familiars being susceptible to removal where Map isn't (well it is but would require a narrow window and conditional sideboard cards). That's not the point I was trying to make though, I was mentioning extra utility the cards have in addition to being huge mana generators. You are acting as if the Familiars are completely one-dimensional cards which isn't really true.
As far as cards like Frogtosser Banneret, those cards are much more limited/narrow in their cost reductions than the Familiars. It's a similar reason to why I think the 2/2 blue Warden may not make an impact on the format. The Familiars on the other hand make all blue spells in your deck cheaper (unless they use only colored mana like Preordain, but Tron doesn't help with that either). As for why the other Familiars (Thunderscape, Thornscape, etc) they don't fuel all the powerful blue draw spells that let you run through the deck. Blue is the single most powerful color in the format with the best payoffs for cost reductions so I don't think it's much of a stretch to see why Sunscape/Nightscape are good at what they do while the others are not.
"Familiars folds if they don't pack lifegain". Okay? They do pack lifegain though. Tron decks traditionally have to pack lifegain too - see Pulse of Murasa in Izzet Tron, or Fangren Marauder in RUG Tron or they also get run over by aggro decks for durdling around and setting up their lands. If you play Mono-U Tron then you don't get any good life gain cards which is a huge disadvantage compared to other decks of that nature. Ruin Processor is not good enough to see play if you have to rely on other cards to make it work (hence why it has seen little to no play in the past). I never said a 2/2 beatdown plan is better than an Eldrazi plan. Both are weak in my estimation and are only secondary options anyways but you're already playing the 2 power creatures in your deck so you're not losing anything to have that plan. Adding Ulamog's Crushers to your deck is a real cost by comparison. Eldrazi Devastator might be better than Crusher, I can't say I've played it though so I don't know.
"but last time I checked they're also capable of racing a Mulldrifter"
I don't see the point of this comment. Mulldrifter isn't in the deck to race, it's in the deck to draw cards while sometimes acting as a speed bump or an attacker once you turn the corner. If you have Crusher in your deck it's more clear your plan is toturbo out Crusher and try to ride it to victory since it's a much more one dimensional card than Mulldrifter is.
http://www.mtgo-stats.com/decks/38772
It's very all-in, but doesn't bother with the inconsistencies of running Tron or the 3 color Familiars manabase. Clearly this deck just wants to combo as fast as possible and little else though seeing as it has a whopping 16 cantrips and only creatures that draw cards outside of the combo pieces. It also plays few interactive spells with just a singleton Capsize and 3 Gigadrowse to tap down the opponent the turn before they can go off.
The pilot posted two 5-0s with it in one day, so either they ran hotter than the sun or there might be something there with this list. I have all the cards for it so maybe I'll give it a spin myself tomorrow.
WB Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim | WBR Queen Marchesa | WUBR Breya, Etherium Shaper
Modern:
/ Death and Taxes | W/ Soul Sisters | Spirits | U Faeries | Tempered Steel Affinity
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
http://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/433794#online
I don't know, I took the Izzet list for a spin in the practice room and I lost to a Teachings control opponent despite assembling the combo because the deck had no Rolling Thunder to kill with and one of my walls was dead so I couldn't Flicker two Walls to recur Bolt either. Basically he had 40+ life and two Pristine Talismans so I was going to be decked before my remaining two Peregrine Drakes could get the job done despite having the ability to generate infinite mana. I don't see how the deck can not include at least Rolling Thunder and hope to beat decks with removal spells.
I think the Mono-U list can get by on the fact that it can assemble the combo fast enough to race and Gigadrowse can buy you the time you need while also ensuring Counterspells don't mess up your plan. But it can still be a struggle at times since decks like Stompy and Affinity can definitely kill turn 4-5 unimpeded, and with only Capsize and Sage's Row Denizen to "go off" with it sometimes takes an unreasonable amount of clock to kill.
http://www.mtgo-stats.com/decks/38907
Though I'd probably ditch Snuff Out for Chainer's Edict or something.
WB Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim | WBR Queen Marchesa | WUBR Breya, Etherium Shaper
Modern:
/ Death and Taxes | W/ Soul Sisters | Spirits | U Faeries | Tempered Steel Affinity
First week's numbers leaves us with either Izzet Control (Pauper Twin) at third position with 8'33 % and Murasa Tron at first position at 11'67 % as the more consistent Peregrine deck choices, with Mono Blue falling far behind at 3'33 %.
Since this is the Peregrine Control thread, I would suggest focusing on Izzet Drake as the deck of choice, as it's the proven best Control shell that fits Drake, while Murasa Tron can get it's own thread (or be discussed in the Tron Primer). As soon as the weeks pass, EMN arrives and lists get polished and their core defined, I'll update this thread into a full official Primer for the deck.
Let's discuss the core for now. Every deck seems to be playing this skeleton:
2 Archaeomancer // Mnemonic Wall
4 Mulldrifter
4 Sea Gate Oracle
4 Peregrine Drake
4 Preordain
4 Flame Slash
4 Compulsive Research
Instant (9)
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Ghostly Flicker
2 Counterspell // Memory Lapse
4 Swiftwater Cliffs
4 Izzet Boilerworks
8 Island
5 Mountain
I think we can now build up from this core. The landbase can include utility lands like the Cycle lands Forgotten Cave and Lonely Sandbar which would replace Mountains and Islands respectively, never going below 8 mono Blue sources and 5 mono Red sources it seems. A list cut two Blue sources down to 6 to include a pair of Radiant Fountain, probably to fight Aggro decks. It's interesting to note that no deck surpasses 21 lands, with one of them even going down to 20 (the Radiant Fountain one).
About the Wall / Mancer spot, I prefer Mancer due to it costing 1 less, which allows me to cast him for value at 5-6 mana in order to recover a kill spell or a counterspell, as oppossed to Wall where I would need to wait at 6-7, which might prove a daunting task in a 20-21 land deck. I would also include a third Mancer just in case, as it's nice to have redundancy in case one gets killed and them being cast for value is a pretty nice option.
In the Counterspell vs Memory Lapse department I think we all can agree about Counterspell being miles better, specially in a Control deck. Perhaps Lapse was included because people got a hold of them in EMA or because their possibility to be cast out of a single Izzet Boilerworks. Anyways, I think going up to 4 will pretty much be the standard route in the days to come, maybe with Dispel and/or Memory Lapse going side to side with it. I would also run 1-2 Exclude as it's Pauper's Cryptic Command, and nullifies a threat that has a strong ETB (Drake, Drifter or Gray Merchant of Asphodel) or one that our deck is poorly equipped to deal with (Gurmag Angler, Fangren Marauder or Ulamog's Crusher) while drawing a card and advancing our gameplan.
Lightning Bolt and Flame Slash seem the standard removal suite, although there are decks that run fewer than 4 Bolts, which is something I wouldn't do. Bolt is a 1 CMC piece of interaction against Peregrine Drake, doubles as burn reach, and you either run 4 or none, as it gets better in multiples. After these, decks opt for Firebolt because of it's ability to 2-for-1 critters, although I think I'm leaning more on Burst Lighting since it does the same at face value (and at instant speed) and it deals the full 4 dmg for 1 CMC cheaper than Firebolt at the cost of not doing a 2-for-1. These one are more of flex slots, and we'll need to test if it's better to take out X/4's and have a better game against Delver thanks to Instant speed answers, or simply 2-for-1'ing people.
About the card draw, all list included 4 copies of Compulsive Research except one that eschewed a copy in favor of a singleton Rolling Thunder, which I think is better. Thunder can be a kill spell like Research's 4th copy, but it can also be a wrath in an emergency, and seeing all those Elves, Stompy and Goblins decks these days has made me wary about it. Also, while Research can kill opponents, it's worth noting that it's sorcery speed card draw, and if we want to take a more reactive approach to the meta, we should run just 1 as a kill spell that draws cards if drawn early (then it can be picked up by one of our critters before the kill) and run Think Twices instead of the rest. Kaervek's Torch isn't needed IMO since we already run counterspells and we can always pick up the Thunder if it gets countered by simply starting the loop anew and picking it up when we have infinite mana.
Here's a list I would run with the following changes I've said:
4 Sea Gate Oracle
4 Mulldrifter
3 Peregrine Drake
3 Archaeomancer
Instant (15)
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Counterspell
3 Ghostly Flicker
2 Exclude
2 Think Twice
4 Flame Slash
4 Preordain
1 Compulsive Research
1 Rolling Thunder
Land (21)
4 Izzet Boilerworks
4 Swiftwater Cliffs
7 Island
5 Mountain
1 Radiant Fountain
I'm trying to find some room to fit a 3rd Think Twice and two Burst Lightning, but I think I've got this overall.
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!
These decks have a lot of deficiencies still though. Burn matchup can be pretty tough, especially if you draw the slow half of the deck. You can shore it up with Hydroblasts after board but Molten Rain can still be a huge setback. Maybe the 1 Radiant Fountain is necessary for it. Hexproof is a poor matchup so devoting some number of sideboard slots to Curfew could be necessary (it has been seeing an uptick in popularity so I don't think ignoring it is viable). Stompy gives the deck trouble too. Playing as a UR control deck against Stompy isn't actually very good so you pretty much have to race to the combo there. On the bright side they have few ways to disrupt you if you do get the combo going.
The Tron versions haven't impressed me much, though they seem to beat UR handily in the semi-mirror. They lose to their mana too often for me to like them over the UR deck in general though.
Thanks to DNC from Heroes of the Plane Studios for the sig
Check my Pauper Cube!