I know I've been mostly absent over the last 18 months. I have a two week block of leave scheduled in June; for one of those weeks I'll be at a scout camp, but for the other I'll be mostly free so I intend to overhaul the primer, which last had a good cleanup in 2016.
Major milestones:
JTMS unban
Teferi HoD
Zach Allen's list and the phoenix/dredge meta
From the hype, it seems like Jace was supposed to instantly win every game when played. I personally just want a 4-mana permanent that comes down onto late-game board state and Brainstorms every turn. The fact that Jace does other things is just gravy for me.
This was my feeling with jace for the most part as well. However, with Teferi, I'm not sure that we actually want that effect (or multiples of it) anymore. I haven't gotten my teferi foils yet, but more and more I'm thinking about going "back" to a more flash-based build with think twice and giving secure + teferi x2 + jace a try. Search for Azcanta finding walkers is in my opinion a huge thing for control in modern--it makes it much more reasonable to play 1-3 walkers in your deck and just depend on hitting them in the mid-game, because search makes it that much easier to find your tools. I think my GWP when I get azcanta online for more than one turn is probably over 80%. The card is super good at fixing the biggest problem modern control has--consistency.
I think that for me, the identity of esper has really been that of the transformational control deck:
Against fair decks, it's a white based removal deck with card draw.
Against unfair decks, it's a white/black prison deck of sorts, with card draw.
Against other controlling decks, it's a blue draw-go deck with discard to trump.
I've always had some flak over the presence of leylines and all the lock-piece type cards I've gone to in the board, but I think in many senses that feature has come to define esper control over the last few years.
Jace and Search for Azcanta, at least how I view them, just serve as multipliers on that gameplan. They both provide ways to dig for lock pieces, wraths, or serve as powerhouse threats in the control mirror.
I probably do have a different view than most in here, but it works for me, and my long term average winrate is pretty good.
I agree with those rankings but would insert open day 2's at 4.5.
Most of shaheens modern play is modo or opens--he only has five modern GP's, with one 11-4, one mediocre day 2 (+1 win over losses) and three failures to day 2. (Data from mtg elo project)
Shaheen is not a strong modern player. He's much much stronger as a standard/legacy player.
I look at shaheens list in every format to figure out what the biggest possible impact sideboard cards are for every match, because that's how he builds his decks--piles of the biggest impact cards. With little or no regard for having a cohesive deck or gameplan in a matchup he doesn't pre-plan bombs for.
If you look at his mtgo results, he's pretty consistently worse than most of the dedicated modern control streamers. Donny is probably a 60% winrate in competitive leagues if he puts in the reps on Esper. That's as good as shaheen's usual win rate in paper events, which have a softer field and a wider variety of decks.
There's a very good set of reasons for all of the items you mentioned.
Let me go through the weird stuff one at a time:
2 MB leylines: these have nothing to do with JTMS. Those of you who've been here at all the last couple of years know I play them. It's been a ton of testing, experience, and play with that configuration to get to where I'm at. I attribute my long term win percentage with the deck very heavily to the mainboard esper charms and leylines vs the tech/benefits of most other control builds in modern.
2 thoughtseize: I spent a few weeks on 6 or 7 discard spells in a variety of configurations. I then cut to four, then three, then two. Two is where I decided I wanted to be overall, and it was a choice between collective brutality, thoughtseize, and duress. I eventually determined I wanted thoughtseize to hit cryptic and thought knot seer/tron threats. I started them main because I had good experiences with them + jace bounce against fair decks and I wanted a couple of ways mainboard to get a look at my opponent's hand. They've never been dead; i've not even shuffled them away when I had the option to.
I'm playing a wrath because the MODO account I borrowed only had three verdicts and I wanted to keep it consistent over the last few days. It should be four verdict, we can beat thrun with blessed alliance.
Only two manlands: I won't leave home in UBx in modern without at least one tarpit. It's the jace slayer, and it was pivotal in one match vs UWR. I played the colonnade because the first one is both quite powerful AND a great bait for opposing field of ruin, to maybe leave me with an azcanta for a bit longer against jund. I can't play 7 basics and 3 field of ruin and more creature lands, so I opted to keep the mana disruption and the basics. Having lots of painless lands to fetch is great.
Timely reinforcements mainboard: flex slot plain and simple. I have a lot of revolt zoo and goblins/burn players in my local meta, and it isn't too shabby as a time walk against mardu pyromancer and BR hollow one either.
Zenith: still the best late game win condition. Plain and simple. Everyone is ready for jace and jtms takes a number of turns to put the game out of reach. Wsz is an immediate 6 or 7 for one that nullifies whatever board position your opponent had immediately.
No cantrips/TT: i've been shaving the pure card draw down ever since we got search for azcanta. By packing more actual spells in the deck instead of air, we alleviate the problem of drawing into air a bit AND we reduce our need to hit a million land drops. It plays a lot more like miracles in legacy, where you hit 3 or 4 lands most of the time and kind of stabilize there and only make intermittent land drops for a bit. This hasn't bit me in a control mirror yet, probably because esper has more tools for the control mirror than anyone else to start with.
Dimir charm: is kind of like blessed alliance in that it's modal, castable against everyone (never completely dead) and the portent mode is game over against any nonblue deck with jace out because it virtually guarantees 3-4 turns of a fateseal lock. Instead of being scaleable in power level like alliance, it's just the right cmc to be an early game interactive spell that doesn't fall off lategame.
Related but separate topic: i graduate from this army school mid-april. At that time, I'm going to look to do a full rewrite of the primer, hopefully condensing a lot of the current primer into a historical section.
I played miracles from 2013 until the top ban (the ban was the impetus to rebuy a tabernacle and return to my greatest love).
I played Jace the entire time he was in standard, and I jammed him briefly in thopter-depths extended.
Some of you are seriously overestimating jace. Couple of things to keep in mind:
1. Jace is not a healthy planeswalker. He comes down squishier than literally every other walker except liliana of the veil if he has to protect himself. Unlike all of the gideons or other jace/new lilly/nahiri, jtms does not come down on turn four against two creatures and live for you to untap and clean up.
2. This is not legacy. Casting jtms with protection is doable on turn four, with a cb, preset top of library and force available. In modern, that's like having seven mana and two interactive spells plus the jace.
3. This is not legacy. Everybody in modern puts you under immense pressure. In legacy, this is not really the case because everyone slows down to interact with combo. In modern tapping out on turn four will just leave you dead against most combo AND most aggressive decks if you aren't wrathing them.
4. This is not legacy. Lingering souls is the biggest nightmare for jtms decks in legacy without terminus, and is hard to fight through with terminus. In modern, every aggressive deck can go that wide OR big enough to smash jace pretty easily if they aren't already on lockdown.
5. Bricking out on jace is a thing. The biggest selling point on jace heavy builds in legacy was that your win cons were blue for better force of will handling in combo matchups and easier fetching around moon/back to basics plans. In modern, outside of blue moon you aren't worried about the mana, and we don't look for "blue" as an objective benefit to a card.
6. Modern has bolt. Very few legacy decks (comparatively) have bolt. This applies both on the "jace on 3 is not safe even on an open board" side AND on the "your life total is so pressured you can't afford to slow down to win with jace, you have to stabilize at a real life total" sense.
We are going to try to leave this open with the expectation that players will just vote here and do nothing else. NO DISCUSSION OR POSTING. That includes responses to other people and even explanations of your choices. If you want to explain/argue/talk, go the banlist thread.
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1
Major milestones:
JTMS unban
Teferi HoD
Zach Allen's list and the phoenix/dredge meta
1
This was my feeling with jace for the most part as well. However, with Teferi, I'm not sure that we actually want that effect (or multiples of it) anymore. I haven't gotten my teferi foils yet, but more and more I'm thinking about going "back" to a more flash-based build with think twice and giving secure + teferi x2 + jace a try. Search for Azcanta finding walkers is in my opinion a huge thing for control in modern--it makes it much more reasonable to play 1-3 walkers in your deck and just depend on hitting them in the mid-game, because search makes it that much easier to find your tools. I think my GWP when I get azcanta online for more than one turn is probably over 80%. The card is super good at fixing the biggest problem modern control has--consistency.
1
Against fair decks, it's a white based removal deck with card draw.
Against unfair decks, it's a white/black prison deck of sorts, with card draw.
Against other controlling decks, it's a blue draw-go deck with discard to trump.
I've always had some flak over the presence of leylines and all the lock-piece type cards I've gone to in the board, but I think in many senses that feature has come to define esper control over the last few years.
Jace and Search for Azcanta, at least how I view them, just serve as multipliers on that gameplan. They both provide ways to dig for lock pieces, wraths, or serve as powerhouse threats in the control mirror.
I probably do have a different view than most in here, but it works for me, and my long term average winrate is pretty good.
1
Most of shaheens modern play is modo or opens--he only has five modern GP's, with one 11-4, one mediocre day 2 (+1 win over losses) and three failures to day 2. (Data from mtg elo project)
Shaheen is not a strong modern player. He's much much stronger as a standard/legacy player.
1
If you look at his mtgo results, he's pretty consistently worse than most of the dedicated modern control streamers. Donny is probably a 60% winrate in competitive leagues if he puts in the reps on Esper. That's as good as shaheen's usual win rate in paper events, which have a softer field and a wider variety of decks.
1
1
Let me go through the weird stuff one at a time:
2 MB leylines: these have nothing to do with JTMS. Those of you who've been here at all the last couple of years know I play them. It's been a ton of testing, experience, and play with that configuration to get to where I'm at. I attribute my long term win percentage with the deck very heavily to the mainboard esper charms and leylines vs the tech/benefits of most other control builds in modern.
2 thoughtseize: I spent a few weeks on 6 or 7 discard spells in a variety of configurations. I then cut to four, then three, then two. Two is where I decided I wanted to be overall, and it was a choice between collective brutality, thoughtseize, and duress. I eventually determined I wanted thoughtseize to hit cryptic and thought knot seer/tron threats. I started them main because I had good experiences with them + jace bounce against fair decks and I wanted a couple of ways mainboard to get a look at my opponent's hand. They've never been dead; i've not even shuffled them away when I had the option to.
I'm playing a wrath because the MODO account I borrowed only had three verdicts and I wanted to keep it consistent over the last few days. It should be four verdict, we can beat thrun with blessed alliance.
Only two manlands: I won't leave home in UBx in modern without at least one tarpit. It's the jace slayer, and it was pivotal in one match vs UWR. I played the colonnade because the first one is both quite powerful AND a great bait for opposing field of ruin, to maybe leave me with an azcanta for a bit longer against jund. I can't play 7 basics and 3 field of ruin and more creature lands, so I opted to keep the mana disruption and the basics. Having lots of painless lands to fetch is great.
Timely reinforcements mainboard: flex slot plain and simple. I have a lot of revolt zoo and goblins/burn players in my local meta, and it isn't too shabby as a time walk against mardu pyromancer and BR hollow one either.
Zenith: still the best late game win condition. Plain and simple. Everyone is ready for jace and jtms takes a number of turns to put the game out of reach. Wsz is an immediate 6 or 7 for one that nullifies whatever board position your opponent had immediately.
No cantrips/TT: i've been shaving the pure card draw down ever since we got search for azcanta. By packing more actual spells in the deck instead of air, we alleviate the problem of drawing into air a bit AND we reduce our need to hit a million land drops. It plays a lot more like miracles in legacy, where you hit 3 or 4 lands most of the time and kind of stabilize there and only make intermittent land drops for a bit. This hasn't bit me in a control mirror yet, probably because esper has more tools for the control mirror than anyone else to start with.
Dimir charm: is kind of like blessed alliance in that it's modal, castable against everyone (never completely dead) and the portent mode is game over against any nonblue deck with jace out because it virtually guarantees 3-4 turns of a fateseal lock. Instead of being scaleable in power level like alliance, it's just the right cmc to be an early game interactive spell that doesn't fall off lategame.
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I played Jace the entire time he was in standard, and I jammed him briefly in thopter-depths extended.
Some of you are seriously overestimating jace. Couple of things to keep in mind:
1. Jace is not a healthy planeswalker. He comes down squishier than literally every other walker except liliana of the veil if he has to protect himself. Unlike all of the gideons or other jace/new lilly/nahiri, jtms does not come down on turn four against two creatures and live for you to untap and clean up.
2. This is not legacy. Casting jtms with protection is doable on turn four, with a cb, preset top of library and force available. In modern, that's like having seven mana and two interactive spells plus the jace.
3. This is not legacy. Everybody in modern puts you under immense pressure. In legacy, this is not really the case because everyone slows down to interact with combo. In modern tapping out on turn four will just leave you dead against most combo AND most aggressive decks if you aren't wrathing them.
4. This is not legacy. Lingering souls is the biggest nightmare for jtms decks in legacy without terminus, and is hard to fight through with terminus. In modern, every aggressive deck can go that wide OR big enough to smash jace pretty easily if they aren't already on lockdown.
5. Bricking out on jace is a thing. The biggest selling point on jace heavy builds in legacy was that your win cons were blue for better force of will handling in combo matchups and easier fetching around moon/back to basics plans. In modern, outside of blue moon you aren't worried about the mana, and we don't look for "blue" as an objective benefit to a card.
6. Modern has bolt. Very few legacy decks (comparatively) have bolt. This applies both on the "jace on 3 is not safe even on an open board" side AND on the "your life total is so pressured you can't afford to slow down to win with jace, you have to stabilize at a real life total" sense.