Very decent card, it stands its own on an empty field, it represent a different threat than curious obsession against control, it's very good at generating tempo against midrange and it's always a sweet card against burn. I ve used it to replace obsession because I wanted to diversify a little bit.
Digging ten is crazy yet very slow, and if you ultimate fast you were winning the game already most of the times. I'm hoping for improved 3cmc PW in the future, but this is definitely a reasonable one.
Thoughtseize is still a tempo negative card and it always will be. Fatal Push is sucha good upgrade because it can be tempo neutral or positive, this is the type of cards this decks need to work.
I like the split 1 deputy - 1 detention sphere by the way, because phoenix decks can't deal with the enchantment and there's no way for them to get back the stuff I steal them. The reason why I felt this change necessary was originally torpor orb, it shuts Deputy down and you have no way to remove the bridge when they are your only answers to it.
I think the question you've got to ask yourself is what am I getting from splashing that colour.
As far as I see, red gives you reach with bolts and Eidolon (sideboard card in my opinion: it's weird because you'd want it mainboard against phoenix, control and whirl prison, but the meta is also made of dredge, burn, humans, so you would rather not run the risk of drawing it in G1 where it's useless. Not to mention you have to fetch and lose life becasue you might need the double red for eidolon... you can see the implications of its presence mainboard ), and some decent card selection/advantage with Light up the Stage. This last card isn't easy to handle , it demands you to know which card of your sideboard are you able to cast if revealed and how bad it is not to be able to do so, to plan your land drops and sequence it correctly to maximize its effect, prioritizing it over the cards you've got in your hand or vice versa. You have to understand what's your position in the game and what type of effects are you looking for.
Sideboard options with red are Chandra, Torch of Defiance and Alpine Moon, they have both impressed me and I've been looking for more of these types of effects. Alpine moon specifically deals with big mana and Valakut, it curves out perfectly, it's non mana intensive, it allows you to keep playing your game without screwing you colours like Blood Moon does.
I've also tested Blood Sun, which is very interesting because it cycles itself and shuts down animable lands, field of ruins (not to be underestimated, leaving them with colourless mana can hurt) and azcanta. It's a very ok card against control and midrange, some matchups the jeskai version is not as well positioned against as Esper is. Midrange in particular is a very bad one because goyfs are boltproof almost always, oozes also slip quickly out of control, and so does raging ravine.
Jeskai in general is a bit faster than UW, but I wouldn't call it an aggro version... I'd rather call it a tempo version with reach. I've seen some lists running lots of burn spells, I think they are a liability: Timely Reinforcements or any effect of that kind (lighting helix in jeskai control aswell) is going to hit your plan too hard. I like having a minor burn plan, I don't feel comfortable relying too much on them. The damage has still to be dealt via creatures, and creatures are still the backbone of the deck, because they provide interactions and more damage on the long run.
This splash misses a piece and a flexible removal at the moment, something in the form of grim lavamancer, it requires 4+ drawing engines because it's easy to run out of gas and Light up the Stage is a 3of at most in my opinion. I'll stay away from MtGO for a while, but I'd test 3LutS and 2 Obsessions in addition to one or two Boros Charms, if I had the opportunity; my purpose would be to shoot their face or protect the card advantage engine from being removed.
I'm not giving this version too much credit at the moment, dredge and Phoenix both made Bolt weaker in the meta ( interesting to see Scapeshift running flame slash now to deal with thing in the ice and drakes), it really feels sub optimal every time you face one of these deck or a tarmogoyf. There will be better times to splash red.
Esper is the most defensive version but it's peculiar because it's able to turn from controlling to racing very fast thanks to Lingering Souls. Fatal Push and Souls are the reasons to splash black, these are two huge upgrades to the UW colours, they really make the difference. Splashing black means efficient removals to deal with aggro and a good curve topper, Souls, to race back or keep the pressure going against slower decks.
It is a bit weaker against Amulet and Eldrazi, because you're losing the 4x PtE and Nebelgast Herald/Deputy, depending which tempo plan you like most in UW. Other than that, I think is much more versatile and it's way better at taking one or the other role, depending on who's your opponent.
Sideboard choices are pretty much the same as UW, Countersquall is amazing, but I've haven't found anything else appealing... Unmoored Ego is one turn too slow, tried to make it work but I ended up cutting it every time.
Esper is so solid in the first 60s that you won't need anything fancy in the remaining fifteen, this is my conclusion. Also, I'm loving Collective Brutality because it means extra removals or extra disruption , versatile cards perfectly fill your flexible slots.
I'm not sure what type of card might realistically being printed to improve this version ( having a form of reach would be awesome), it suffers Aura Hexproof, big mana and stuff like dredge because it's not fast enough or because you have no mainboard answers to their plan, and phoenix just because they dig their deck so much that you get overwhelmed by the number of their threats. To be honest, this is the problem these decks are causing to the format, something every fair deck is having a hard time to deal with, when they draw 40 cards by the time you have drawn 20, there's not much you can do. Nonetheless, I think Esper has a 50-50 matchup against them, my report sheet says so far 7 wins and 7 losses against UR, and 5 wins and 3 losses against the mono red phoenix version. Some of these losses have been caused by blood moon, because yeah, why wouldn't you want to screw your opponent's mana in addition to drawing twice their cards and reanimating fliers for free?
I ve heard of Chalice of the Void in UW side, this explains pretty much the situation at the moment.
Let's wait for war of the spark and hope for some creative spirit to be released, I most welcome experiments like Pestilent Spirit.
In the mean time, I'll write down some new paragraphs so we can update the primer.
I ve begun to test this jeskai list. It's really hard to say what's the correct number of bolts and the split with pte ( which must be played in my opinion), as much as the role of Eidolon otGR mainboard.
Light up the Stage is a bomb in the mid and late game, it really gave me the feeling i can keep up with UR Phoenix thanks to that, something I fail at with Esper, which is a better version against midrange when it comes to winning the topdeck war with no support from faithless looting and manipulation. LutS also can be used to dig for a card you need and is something you can do under bloodmoon, very sweet feature indeed.
Chandra is a bomb and Slayer's Stronghold is so good at pumping wanderer or simply racing your opponent or forcing an attacker through.
I'll have to test it quite a lot, it feels good for now, but switching from esper to jeskai makes me feel something is lacking, and it's possible that this thing is fatal push, which now is very well positioned because of thing in the ice. Also moving from a list with lingering Souls to one without them does feel bad... Splashing helps you understand the tribe and see the many angles, the weaknesses and its points of strenght.
I'm trying not to react too radically or hastily, but I'm finding that Lingering Souls is just a poor card most of the time. It doesn't really trade well given all the recursive creatures around, and I'm rarely eager to see it off the top. At the same time, I'm finding I would really like mainboard GY hate much of the time. Similarly, people are consistently playing multiples of the same creature onto the board early, and Path to Exile isn't all that great. So, I'm thinking of cutting my number of copies of Lingering Souls to 2, and maybe cutting 1 Selfless Spirit for a pair of Remorseful Clerics to give me some extra graveyard hate. I'm also thinking of replacing Path to Exile with Declaration in Stone. While Path is better in an environment that rewards efficient 1/1 trades, it's not great against many of the threats currently being played. Declaration may be sorcery speed and cost 1 more, but it will permanently exile phoenixes, bloodghasts, Prized Amalgams, Champions of the Parish, etc... along with tokens; as an extra benefit, Declaration's downside of giving clues seems preferable to immediately ramping my opponent. What do you guys think about some of these adjustments?
Well first of all this metagame is being dominated by phoenix, dredge, tron, which are 3 mus we struggle to win in G1. This is worth noting. Other tier decks are burn and Shadow, I mean, this metagame is possibly one of the worse I have seen for Spirits since I ve jumped into modern.
Lingering Souls are still the cards that gives sense to the black splash, I do side them out a lot in a number of games because I need to play at flash speed only, or when I need not to draw clunky cards, but they still are the card you want against Midrange and Control and other GWx decks. There's been a time when I splashed black to see what that could give me and I remember a game where i came not to play souls against blue moon because all of the Spirits I was drawing were more effective. But then you get to play games over games and realize how important is a card that spreads your board and that you get to cast twice. Souls are putting a patch on two of the major issues of tribal decks: the weakness to spot removal density, the need of a critical mass on the board to have your race going.
The card advantage is real and in absence of other non-queller, non-rattlechains CA providers, Souls are the first card to look at when you want to increase that number.
As for PtE, I'm asking myself if one Blessed alliance is actually worse than Path; I'm considering a 1-1 split more precisely. I'll be testing this in the future.
Declaration is OKish, I ve been running this in the side, not a bad card, but then I considered the matchups where it had ad impact, and I ended up swapping it for Worship. I think I ve got enough removals and where my removals fail, I want some other type of effect to keep up with decks drawing 40 cards per game, or doing other degenerate stuff.
[quote from="Aramchik »" url="/forums/the-game/modern/established-modern/aggro-tempo/792118-modern-spirits?comment=839"]ok, now some serious question guys. How to side against Humans?
What does your list look like?
SIDEBOARD (15)
2 Stony Silence
2 Rest in Peace
2 Kor Firewalker
2 Geist of Saint Traft
2 Negate
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
1 Blessed Alliance
1 Damping Sphere
1 Grafdigger's Cage
I would actually bring in Alliance and Kira, that's it. They are both very good and the matchup against Humans has always been good/reasonable, at least from my UW perspective.
Thanks man, cool to see thay gave it a chance and showed what the deck is about. Hopefully someone else will be testing different Esper builts and will bring their contribution to this set of colours.
Ye that's the list I've posted on fryday I think. I've hit another 5-0 on saturday too,and almost did it a third time today losing the final game 2-1 to that dam tron.
I am currently testing Sorin, Lord of Innistrad in replacement of Nebelgast Herald, which is a little underpowered in my version running no Moorland Haunt and he 3x souls which come at sorcery speed.
I like Sorin defening himself while ticking up, something Gideon Ally doesn't do, he defends by staying at 4. I also very much appreciate the emblem (the bonus we only care about is that affecting the power of our creatures, as Osumatthew said) and the possibility to go for it while surviving, I believe it can take over the game against control and midrange if uncontested.
I did test both the gideons Trials and Ally in the past months while I still was on UW Spirits. trials is just not good enough for this deck, Ally of Zendikar is ok, it's a good card against midrange although assassin's trophy now is an issue and it really got worse when you compare it to the days when pulse was their only answer. It's not very well spended against aggro even when you are on the draw and you're likely to hit your 4th land. Against control it's mediocre, he is a threat but path to exile is a clean way to deal with it. Those tokens aren't bad, there's a weird situation where you are trying both to have the emblem and have the gideon on the field, so you want to tick up as you play it to emblem on the next turn, and there you expose it to pte and D shpere as you pass the turn. So you have to either produce a token, but what if they D sphere it ? 4 mana for a token and a card off your opponent's hand? Or you're going straight for the emblem, and this is why I prefer F Winds because it's coming down earlier and it's just as hard to remove, actually it's harder to remove because you can't path or attack it with creatures.
Sorry if this sounds a bit like a brainstorming, but these are the considerations I have made after testing it a while. A friend of mine has played it too in a different deck with the same purpose of grinding against midrange and controls, but we both came to this conclusion.
I think knowing how to play against control is way more important than any single card I might suggest. There is no card that wins on the spot against control the way Unmoored Ego wins against Ad Nauseam. I've had troubles myself in the past, and I still have when I'm facing skilled control players. I guess this is not the answer you want to hear, but to beat control you need to play the matchup and learn when it's time to accelerate the race, when it's time to expose a lord, and when not.
Speaking of single cards, Souls are incredible, they keep the pressure going; favorable winds is another card I love because it's not removed easily and doubles your race. I love Jace TMS too, they either have a D Sphere or they'll get overwhelmed by the amount of resources you re drawing every turn. But let me strss the relevance of L Souls: they spread the presence on the board so spot removals aren't that useful, and they are recursive: once they have killed the first two, here the second wave comes. This is the feature that control decks fail to deal with.
So these are my choices, but behind that there's the strategy: I'd never expose Jace into a counterspell, first I put myself in a position to force them to cryptic in my beginning of combat, then I play the Sculptor.
When it comes to deploying Favorable Winds I begin by attacking if I have a Wanderer that I mean to sacrifice to defend the enchantment on the stack. Other times I play a bait spell to force the counterspell or to test my opponent's hand, then I play Winds. Matches against this archetype are like playing chess, a weaker piece can bring more harm than a stronger one when you know what to do with it.
It would be too reductive from me to tell you: "play this card to adjust your matches against control", sure, Thalia and Geist are awesome, the question is: what are they doing for Esper in any other matchup? Are they doing anything we wouldn't be able to do otherwise? Do we need different cards in those side spots? My playstyle allows me to have a good winrate against them (currently 5 wins and 1 loss against UW control), so I don't feel the urge to have GoSt in my side.
One last thing worth mentioning is that people have different play-styles. I'm one who tends to play the cunning and control game; it's possible that your way to intend this tribe is different, or it is different from mine at the moment, and that Geist better fits your plan. Take the time to make your experiments and learn by experience. For me, nothing works best than giving a shot to other people's ideas once in a while, getting then back to mine and then comparing the results and the feelings about all the options I've tested.
I can see the frustration but that's not a scenario that justifies Geist. You have been unlucky, golgari charm is an occasional sideboard card, that deck also ( guess it's the new sultai control) is as much as occasional.
I think GoST is good with green because you have the spot to play it t2 on the play, which is nuts.
One thing I can't agree with is Geist in Esper. Geist is all what Esper is not planning to do: This version keeps the control of the early turns, makes land drops, ticks vial up, then races back the opponent. Of course you re still taking the aggro role against controls and big mana, but Geist isn't necessary when we have lingering souls to sustain the beat down.
Geist is not necessary when you properly use your resources, finding the right balance between committing to the board and saving some gas in case of the board being sweeped.
This is the first thing I'd change in a list with black.
I made it, 5-0 MTGO Competitive League with Esper Spirits on my second attempt with it.
The list I played is the one you see below, which is my usual. Just made a little change, down an Echoing truth, up an Unmoored Ego, because it wins some games single-handedly. The main reason for it is Tron, I want a 3rd piece other than the two stony silences to shut them down. It's true it may come too late,but when thyey hit tron on turn 3 it's over anyways. When they dont, Ego makes them play a fair game. I did like it.
On the other hand, Echoing Truth is good at bouncing bridges and cages for a turn, letting you alpha strike your opponent. Detention Steve comes at the risky cost of being removed. The reason why I like it over Detention Sphere is that it's vialable (I've added an image to prove how good is the instant speed nature of this interaction) and blocks, which makes it awesome against burn in my opinion: it has solved the problem of boarding in cards to deal with ensnaring bridge. Also hitting thing in the ice -resetting their counters -is as much as relevant. It suffers Torpor Orb, and this is a card I'm watching out for when I'm against prison decks, other than that, I prefer gambling on the Torpor Orb scenario( in case I don't get to use Jace as an alternative win con) to leaving out Unmoored Ego, Especially if I am to attend a 20+ people tourney.
To be fair, Ego is also spendable to call bridges and solve the problem in one shot.
Well, thanks for the service you've provided us so far. Hoping we'll have a new forum in the future which resembles this one. If so, I'll be still bringing my contribution and my experience there.
Digging ten is crazy yet very slow, and if you ultimate fast you were winning the game already most of the times. I'm hoping for improved 3cmc PW in the future, but this is definitely a reasonable one.
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Selfless Spirit
4 Rattlechains
4 Supreme Phantom
4 Spell Queller
4 Drogskol Captain
Spells: 15
4 Aether Vial
3 Fatal Push
2 Path to Exile
2 Collective Brutality
3 Lingering Souls
1 Dovin, Grand Arbiter
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
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
2 Damping Sphere
2 Countersquall
1 Favorable winds
1 Deputy of Detention
1 Detention Sphere
1 Worship
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
I like the split 1 deputy - 1 detention sphere by the way, because phoenix decks can't deal with the enchantment and there's no way for them to get back the stuff I steal them. The reason why I felt this change necessary was originally torpor orb, it shuts Deputy down and you have no way to remove the bridge when they are your only answers to it.
As far as I see, red gives you reach with bolts and Eidolon (sideboard card in my opinion: it's weird because you'd want it mainboard against phoenix, control and whirl prison, but the meta is also made of dredge, burn, humans, so you would rather not run the risk of drawing it in G1 where it's useless. Not to mention you have to fetch and lose life becasue you might need the double red for eidolon... you can see the implications of its presence mainboard ), and some decent card selection/advantage with Light up the Stage. This last card isn't easy to handle , it demands you to know which card of your sideboard are you able to cast if revealed and how bad it is not to be able to do so, to plan your land drops and sequence it correctly to maximize its effect, prioritizing it over the cards you've got in your hand or vice versa. You have to understand what's your position in the game and what type of effects are you looking for.
Sideboard options with red are Chandra, Torch of Defiance and Alpine Moon, they have both impressed me and I've been looking for more of these types of effects. Alpine moon specifically deals with big mana and Valakut, it curves out perfectly, it's non mana intensive, it allows you to keep playing your game without screwing you colours like Blood Moon does.
I've also tested Blood Sun, which is very interesting because it cycles itself and shuts down animable lands, field of ruins (not to be underestimated, leaving them with colourless mana can hurt) and azcanta. It's a very ok card against control and midrange, some matchups the jeskai version is not as well positioned against as Esper is. Midrange in particular is a very bad one because goyfs are boltproof almost always, oozes also slip quickly out of control, and so does raging ravine.
Jeskai in general is a bit faster than UW, but I wouldn't call it an aggro version... I'd rather call it a tempo version with reach. I've seen some lists running lots of burn spells, I think they are a liability: Timely Reinforcements or any effect of that kind (lighting helix in jeskai control aswell) is going to hit your plan too hard. I like having a minor burn plan, I don't feel comfortable relying too much on them. The damage has still to be dealt via creatures, and creatures are still the backbone of the deck, because they provide interactions and more damage on the long run.
This splash misses a piece and a flexible removal at the moment, something in the form of grim lavamancer, it requires 4+ drawing engines because it's easy to run out of gas and Light up the Stage is a 3of at most in my opinion. I'll stay away from MtGO for a while, but I'd test 3LutS and 2 Obsessions in addition to one or two Boros Charms, if I had the opportunity; my purpose would be to shoot their face or protect the card advantage engine from being removed.
I'm not giving this version too much credit at the moment, dredge and Phoenix both made Bolt weaker in the meta ( interesting to see Scapeshift running flame slash now to deal with thing in the ice and drakes), it really feels sub optimal every time you face one of these deck or a tarmogoyf. There will be better times to splash red.
Esper is the most defensive version but it's peculiar because it's able to turn from controlling to racing very fast thanks to Lingering Souls. Fatal Push and Souls are the reasons to splash black, these are two huge upgrades to the UW colours, they really make the difference. Splashing black means efficient removals to deal with aggro and a good curve topper, Souls, to race back or keep the pressure going against slower decks.
It is a bit weaker against Amulet and Eldrazi, because you're losing the 4x PtE and Nebelgast Herald/Deputy, depending which tempo plan you like most in UW. Other than that, I think is much more versatile and it's way better at taking one or the other role, depending on who's your opponent.
Sideboard choices are pretty much the same as UW, Countersquall is amazing, but I've haven't found anything else appealing... Unmoored Ego is one turn too slow, tried to make it work but I ended up cutting it every time.
Esper is so solid in the first 60s that you won't need anything fancy in the remaining fifteen, this is my conclusion. Also, I'm loving Collective Brutality because it means extra removals or extra disruption , versatile cards perfectly fill your flexible slots.
I'm not sure what type of card might realistically being printed to improve this version ( having a form of reach would be awesome), it suffers Aura Hexproof, big mana and stuff like dredge because it's not fast enough or because you have no mainboard answers to their plan, and phoenix just because they dig their deck so much that you get overwhelmed by the number of their threats. To be honest, this is the problem these decks are causing to the format, something every fair deck is having a hard time to deal with, when they draw 40 cards by the time you have drawn 20, there's not much you can do. Nonetheless, I think Esper has a 50-50 matchup against them, my report sheet says so far 7 wins and 7 losses against UR, and 5 wins and 3 losses against the mono red phoenix version. Some of these losses have been caused by blood moon, because yeah, why wouldn't you want to screw your opponent's mana in addition to drawing twice their cards and reanimating fliers for free?
I ve heard of Chalice of the Void in UW side, this explains pretty much the situation at the moment.
Let's wait for war of the spark and hope for some creative spirit to be released, I most welcome experiments like Pestilent Spirit.
In the mean time, I'll write down some new paragraphs so we can update the primer.
Light up the Stage is a bomb in the mid and late game, it really gave me the feeling i can keep up with UR Phoenix thanks to that, something I fail at with Esper, which is a better version against midrange when it comes to winning the topdeck war with no support from faithless looting and manipulation. LutS also can be used to dig for a card you need and is something you can do under bloodmoon, very sweet feature indeed.
Chandra is a bomb and Slayer's Stronghold is so good at pumping wanderer or simply racing your opponent or forcing an attacker through.
I'll have to test it quite a lot, it feels good for now, but switching from esper to jeskai makes me feel something is lacking, and it's possible that this thing is fatal push, which now is very well positioned because of thing in the ice. Also moving from a list with lingering Souls to one without them does feel bad... Splashing helps you understand the tribe and see the many angles, the weaknesses and its points of strenght.
Whatever, here's my current list
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Selfless Spirit
4 Rattlechains
4 Supreme Phantom
4 Spell Queller
4 Drogskol Captain
Spells: 15
4 Aether Vial
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Path to Exile
4 Light up the Stage
1 Favorable Winds
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Sacred Foundry
3 Spirebluff Canal
1 Inspiring vantage
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Slayers' Stronghold
1 Cavern of Souls
2 Stony Silence
2 Rest In Peace
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Negate
1 Unified Will
1 Alpine Moon
2 Eidolon of the Great Revel
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Deputy of Detention
1 Worship
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
1 Jace, the mind Sculptor
Well first of all this metagame is being dominated by phoenix, dredge, tron, which are 3 mus we struggle to win in G1. This is worth noting. Other tier decks are burn and Shadow, I mean, this metagame is possibly one of the worse I have seen for Spirits since I ve jumped into modern.
Lingering Souls are still the cards that gives sense to the black splash, I do side them out a lot in a number of games because I need to play at flash speed only, or when I need not to draw clunky cards, but they still are the card you want against Midrange and Control and other GWx decks. There's been a time when I splashed black to see what that could give me and I remember a game where i came not to play souls against blue moon because all of the Spirits I was drawing were more effective. But then you get to play games over games and realize how important is a card that spreads your board and that you get to cast twice. Souls are putting a patch on two of the major issues of tribal decks: the weakness to spot removal density, the need of a critical mass on the board to have your race going.
The card advantage is real and in absence of other non-queller, non-rattlechains CA providers, Souls are the first card to look at when you want to increase that number.
As for PtE, I'm asking myself if one Blessed alliance is actually worse than Path; I'm considering a 1-1 split more precisely. I'll be testing this in the future.
Declaration is OKish, I ve been running this in the side, not a bad card, but then I considered the matchups where it had ad impact, and I ended up swapping it for Worship. I think I ve got enough removals and where my removals fail, I want some other type of effect to keep up with decks drawing 40 cards per game, or doing other degenerate stuff.
I would actually bring in Alliance and Kira, that's it. They are both very good and the matchup against Humans has always been good/reasonable, at least from my UW perspective.
What does your list look like?
It was me to 5-0 with that list, that guy played the same 75s and went 4-1. Not sure he played friendly or competitive.
Thanks man, cool to see thay gave it a chance and showed what the deck is about. Hopefully someone else will be testing different Esper builts and will bring their contribution to this set of colours.
Ye that's the list I've posted on fryday I think. I've hit another 5-0 on saturday too,and almost did it a third time today losing the final game 2-1 to that dam tron.
I am currently testing Sorin, Lord of Innistrad in replacement of Nebelgast Herald, which is a little underpowered in my version running no Moorland Haunt and he 3x souls which come at sorcery speed.
I like Sorin defening himself while ticking up, something Gideon Ally doesn't do, he defends by staying at 4. I also very much appreciate the emblem (the bonus we only care about is that affecting the power of our creatures, as Osumatthew said) and the possibility to go for it while surviving, I believe it can take over the game against control and midrange if uncontested.
Sorry if this sounds a bit like a brainstorming, but these are the considerations I have made after testing it a while. A friend of mine has played it too in a different deck with the same purpose of grinding against midrange and controls, but we both came to this conclusion.
Speaking of single cards, Souls are incredible, they keep the pressure going; favorable winds is another card I love because it's not removed easily and doubles your race. I love Jace TMS too, they either have a D Sphere or they'll get overwhelmed by the amount of resources you re drawing every turn. But let me strss the relevance of L Souls: they spread the presence on the board so spot removals aren't that useful, and they are recursive: once they have killed the first two, here the second wave comes. This is the feature that control decks fail to deal with.
So these are my choices, but behind that there's the strategy: I'd never expose Jace into a counterspell, first I put myself in a position to force them to cryptic in my beginning of combat, then I play the Sculptor.
When it comes to deploying Favorable Winds I begin by attacking if I have a Wanderer that I mean to sacrifice to defend the enchantment on the stack. Other times I play a bait spell to force the counterspell or to test my opponent's hand, then I play Winds. Matches against this archetype are like playing chess, a weaker piece can bring more harm than a stronger one when you know what to do with it.
It would be too reductive from me to tell you: "play this card to adjust your matches against control", sure, Thalia and Geist are awesome, the question is: what are they doing for Esper in any other matchup? Are they doing anything we wouldn't be able to do otherwise? Do we need different cards in those side spots? My playstyle allows me to have a good winrate against them (currently 5 wins and 1 loss against UW control), so I don't feel the urge to have GoSt in my side.
One last thing worth mentioning is that people have different play-styles. I'm one who tends to play the cunning and control game; it's possible that your way to intend this tribe is different, or it is different from mine at the moment, and that Geist better fits your plan. Take the time to make your experiments and learn by experience. For me, nothing works best than giving a shot to other people's ideas once in a while, getting then back to mine and then comparing the results and the feelings about all the options I've tested.
I think GoST is good with green because you have the spot to play it t2 on the play, which is nuts.
Geist is not necessary when you properly use your resources, finding the right balance between committing to the board and saving some gas in case of the board being sweeped.
This is the first thing I'd change in a list with black.
The list I played is the one you see below, which is my usual. Just made a little change, down an Echoing truth, up an Unmoored Ego, because it wins some games single-handedly. The main reason for it is Tron, I want a 3rd piece other than the two stony silences to shut them down. It's true it may come too late,but when thyey hit tron on turn 3 it's over anyways. When they dont, Ego makes them play a fair game. I did like it.
On the other hand, Echoing Truth is good at bouncing bridges and cages for a turn, letting you alpha strike your opponent. Detention Steve comes at the risky cost of being removed. The reason why I like it over Detention Sphere is that it's vialable (I've added an image to prove how good is the instant speed nature of this interaction) and blocks, which makes it awesome against burn in my opinion: it has solved the problem of boarding in cards to deal with ensnaring bridge. Also hitting thing in the ice -resetting their counters -is as much as relevant. It suffers Torpor Orb, and this is a card I'm watching out for when I'm against prison decks, other than that, I prefer gambling on the Torpor Orb scenario( in case I don't get to use Jace as an alternative win con) to leaving out Unmoored Ego, Especially if I am to attend a 20+ people tourney.
To be fair, Ego is also spendable to call bridges and solve the problem in one shot.
So this is my list now :
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 Unmoored Ego
2 Countersquall
1 Unified Will
1 Favorable winds
2 Deputy of Detention
1 Nebelgast Herald
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Opponents were Dredge, Faeries, UR Phoenix, Mono red Phoenix, Mono red Phoenix.
No need to say how much the black splash is paying off.