Since you have no vial, you have to make sure you have control of the board in the early stage of the game, I'd jam one collective brutality at the very least, two would be better. Your curve is very high I'd trim the two ojutai's command. I like the card, it's very efficient and it's one very good card advantage engine, I did tested it one year ago, but it's so heavy on the curve.
The one thing I see in your list is the number of 3 cmc drops, they are 12 + 2 commands, it's exposing you to the risk of opening clunky hands.
Bigone bishop is worse than than Curious Obsession: I can see how obsession is much better in a Vial shell, because you have multiple interactions available and you better exploit the mana advantage, which is fueled by the enchantment, but still it's a good card that wins me games even when I don't have the vial. I find it very important against combo to dig you deck.
I also think Countersquall is one of the best counterspells in modern, in particular in a deck like ours trying to race the opponent. You'll be surprised to see how those two lifes mattered at the end of the race. People love Negate, this is a Negate with upsides.
Your blue sources are fine, also good luck with shambling vents. I haven't tried it yet, but I have paid attention at the games whre I have drawn tar pit and pretended that to be a SV, and I still believe Tar Pit is the kind of land we need. It ignores blockers and races incredibly well, I think it's the kind of utility we want and need in this version.
Persecution in a card I like, once in a while you wipe out your opponent's silly elves and you feel like a bos;, my issue with that is it's no longer a good metagame for it. Mardu pyromancer is gone, and other decks just partially care about that -1 -1 effect, I believe now it's more important to have a coulpe Detention Steves, even more because KCI has transformed into 4c Prison, which is disgusting and demands an answer to their permanents. Looking at your 75s I see no answers to Ensnaring Bridge once it has resolved. This is a bug in your list in my opinion.
As a final suggestion, I'd consider one favourable winds in your mainboard, probably in replacement of one remorseful cleric. You have no vial, which is the best play against control. FW lets you commit less creatures, it encreases your clock by spending less resources, it's hard to remove, and if they do, they are spending a D Sphere to take that away, which lets you respond since it comes at sorcery speed and is also tempo negative for them at the very least.
I dont' know your meta, but let me stress the power of collective brutality (very skill intensive spell to be honest) to keep up with the early developement of the board, or to better interact with your opponent's hand.
(though it's admittedly a very light splash for lingering souls and fatal push in the mainboard, along with a few tech options out of the sideboard). It's quite powerful and offers far better interaction with many of the other meta decks running around in modern right now.
I believe that is actually the right approach to Esper. The kit of early removals and the power of lingering souls as a top deck are something UW misses. I believe UW sits in between a version trying to hit the gas pedal (Bant), and a version that is good at taking the control role (Esper). But it misses something, there's no real reason to stay in between beside the manabase. It misses another card advantage engine, it's forced to play striclty a tempo game (Thalia isn't part of the successful lists just by chance), but when that tempo-plan fails it's over. It's a worse version at playing both an aggro and a control strategy, given the pool of cards we have right now.
I've been playing UW for two years and now I've splashed my version with black I can see such big upsides that I'm not getting back.
"Once you go black..." they say, you know.
Question to anybody playing with Curious Obsession: is the last copy an auto side out against UW control in game 2 and 3?
I think I've read about one guy here playing with it having his plan centered on defending the enchanted spirit, which makes a lot of sense, but still I'm not sure about this kind of plan.
I can also see a list with the full playset of rattlechains, or an esper list with additional creatures (lingering souls) being a good shell for the single copy of that enchantment to force control to respond and extend into your answers.
Do you have a sideboard guide for this Esper list?
Not yet, just jumped on this configuration of the deck. Some choiches are all but intuitive too, like that of keeping lingering souls mb against midrange when you also want RiP to shut down their clock. They re both very good cards against them but the conflict between the two is real.
I would like to hear a piece of advice from you guys.
Second game is on and my opponent sides 2-3 Anger of the Gods. Its fourth Turn and I have a Spell Qualler in hand. Shall I play it in the end of his turn to keep the pressure or save it in case of Anger of the God?
Which way is the best way to play?
Well, we'd need some more details here, however: as a general rule I do not overextend my resources into a field threatened by wraths once my clock is at least 3 damages per turn and I'm winning the race. I actually like to hold back spell queller against Anger of the Gods decks because you never know.
Things that might change my mind are the absence of a clock , a faster clock from my opponent that demnds presence on the board, the presnce of a selfless spirit on the battlefield, or abundance of resources in my hand ( a second spell queller or counterspells).
Isnt Light up the Stage NONBO with Vial?
I dont know how to feel about this.
It just doesn't sinergize (thalia + Company is a nonbo), it would have been a crazy engine otherwise. This is why I think it will require the structure of the deck to be coherent with the effect of the card.
It costs half the mana.
My fear is to exile two 3cmc creatures, so the curve of the deck will involve some statistics to minimize that possibility and the timing will be relevant as well.
Other than that, I like the idea of jeskai spirits playing aggressively trying to end the game the soonest with some burn . For this reason I'd pick Light, because drawing two cards has never been any cheaper.
I believe Aether Vials are not replaceable, their effect is unique and it also allows you to cut the 22nd land, while giving you more chances to fuel up Collective Brutality once you have reached your 3rd land drop.
As for the questions on the mana base:
- the difference between Tar Pit and Shambling is the unblockable and the extra point of damage. This means that they either have a removal or they will lose those 3 life. You mentioned the burn matchup where shambling is obviously more useful, but since we fall into the aggro category, there's a way higher number of matchups where you simply want to race the opponent and you lose when you fail at it. Tar Pit is excellent at pushing your race.
Do not expect it to stay in play for long against control, you need to keep it in your hand if a field is down. let them hit a shock land and then play it. Yesterday, I was able to use it just once while UW was tapped out, and still that Spell Queller and tar pit hitting for 5 made a world of a difference compared to spell Queller attacking alone. needless to say I couldn't care less about gaining life in that situation.
In your case, since you are vial-less and 22 lands list , I'd use two animables.
Test the Vents and let us know.
- 8 fetches with 7 targets feel great, I occasionally run out of targets when I'm playing UW where I have 7 fetchlands and 5 targets. I'm siding out one when I'm against control on the draw everytime, so there's a lot depending on how educated your choices are when it comes to siding against the different archetypes; the act of siding requires you to make changes in the mana base too.
- Darkslick vs courtyard is an important topic: when I build a mana base I always start from the concepts explained in these two articles, https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/frank-analysis-how-many-colored-mana-sources-do-you-need-to-consistently-cast-your-spells/ , https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/how-many-lands-do-you-need-to-consistently-hit-your-land-drops/ .
Despite many lists sticking up to the 14 sources of blue, I do not feel comfortable at all with a 90% chance of hitting my blue source in a random 7 cards hand, I find it too low and I want more consistency. The fact is that being able to play Wanderer when I have it in my hand is simply too important to gamble with a 10% rate of statistical failures. I believe that's too high in theory and I know that the practise includes hands I have to mull because the non land cards aren't good enough, so I want to be able to draw the next 6 with confidence. This is the reason why my list features 17 untapped blue sources + one tar Pit.
You may also want to note that PtE is the poorest 1cmc card you might ever play on turn one, I actually consider it a card that should be played from turn 3 at least. This to say that I want to grant myself enough black to be able to push on turn one if vials or wanderers are not in my hand. Here my mana base is actually struggling because I have 13 untapped black sources and cavern of souls doesn't count, while tar pit enters tapped. Fact is that white is also a colour I want to hit on turn two because of rest in peace and stony in my side, but again, blue is not the colour on which I intend to make any gamble.
This all comes from my experience with playing the tribe, articles are very important guide lines, but then there's the play test and the tourneys where you get to play a lot of games, and there you need the highest possible chances to have a consistent access to your primary colour: blue.
Let me finish this answer with an example about the importance of having the most blue sources as possible: yesterday I started my g3 in the finals against UW control with one single land in my hand, Tar Pit. If you look up for the post I made last week about Esper, you'll see Tar Pit has took the place of the Moorland Haunt I was running as my single utility land in the beginning. Had it sill been a moorland haunt, I would have had to go down to 4 or to start the game with no blue and 3 creatures with U in their casting cost.
This might be one single case, sure, but that's going to happen over the course of 7 or more games, and what... if it happens when you are on a mull to 5 in the very last match that separates you from the title?
Report time for my Esper version.
I have made a couple of adjustments in the manabase and now everything seems to fall in the right place. 21 lands are necessary as much as the single Tar Pit in place of the Moorland Haunt, Tar Pit fixes colours and takes away big chunks of your opponent's life total: the 3 attack power is really what you need to cut your opponent off a turn each time it connects.
This said, the version I'm playing with now feels like the best version of a spirit deck I've had in my hands since I've jumped into modern two years ago. It's got ways to control the early game preventing the opponent from developing his board, it's got disruption, it's got ways to sink mana later in the game (read: powerful Lingering Souls topdecks). Everything in the mainboard seem to be coherent with the rest of the cards.
So I have been winning one 14 people FNM and one Local 30 people Tourney on Friday and Sunday.
The first was the FNM:
T1 Revolt Zoo: 2-0. Fatal Push and collective brutality removed two creatures and a bolt giving him none of the lands PtE would have provided if I was on UW. This is one of the two biggest features of the deck: the mana base is a bit more painful than the bicoloured version, but the black spells excel at rewarding that initial life points investment. This is something I didn't even imagine before the playtest.
T2 Izzet Phoenix: 2-0. G1 was a tight one, which I won because curious obsession on a wanderer drew me 3 cards . G2 he managed to have a phoenix in play on turn two, but rest in peace shut his lootings down and allowed me to stabilize. We played two more games for fun where he managed to do his degenerate stuff, like triple phoenix on turn 3, so I still believe the matchup is really really close.
T3 Bant Company: 1-1. G1 and G3 I just out-raced him as I am meant to do. G2 he went hierarch into Detention Steve removing my Vial, then he played a couple threats and that was too much for me to come back. Deputy looks convincing, especially when it hits some minor permanent so the opponent struggles to spend a removal spell on the 1/3, letting other threatening creatures stay on the board.
It ended up in a draw because the picked a Worship off the top before the extra time started. I decided not to play around his top deck and spent my spell queller to exile his one and have lethal on the following attack phase. Those times where no wraths or blowouts will show up you'd better play around the biggest threat left.
T4 Bant Spirits: 2-1. This game was against Ketoglutarato, it's been cool to test the two versions of the tribe with him. I have been lucky to have my brutality early in my hand in two games at least, and the -2 -2 ability has been so powerful to remove a Drogskol captain in the presence of a selfless spirit on the board. It's also true that a later brutality might have been ineffective and would have ended up in a less useful life drain.
Lingering Souls are an amazing card in the mirror and Creeping Tar Pit with the finest form of evasion made me think that's a natural mainboard answer to the board stalling the times it happens, and does help you turn the corner and race back the aggro deck.
I brought in Athreos, God of Passage , but that actually didn't work that well. He was at 14 life or more, so he accepted the 3 life loss a couple times not to give me my spirits back. Definitely not worth the spot in the mirror. I've also found out the games where I might want Athreos are the games where I also want RiP ( against midrange for example).
After this match I came to the conclusion that you either want to fight bant being bant yourself , or you'd better be on a configuration that allows you to fully play the control role from the beginning, which esper is much better at doing than UW.
That night I've got back home with a friend and we tested Esper against his Kiki Chord for long getting to convince ourselves that: the black spells slow the value plan down enough to let me maintain the aggro role even when they start with mana dork on the play. Lingering souls is an unmanageable threat for them.
After sideboard blood moons/magus of the moon are really scary and they are what you should play around for the first 4 turns, then you've got to watch out from the combo and some scary creatures like Cataclysmic Gearhulk and Lyra .
The deck looked so solid that I gave up UW to attend the 30 people tourney with Esper, along with a couple adjustments in the side to deal with ensnaring bridges and such permanents, so I registered two Deputy of Detention and one Unified Will.
T1 GW value. 2-0. It looked like a bye, nothing really to say, that deck wasn't interacting with me.
T2 Mono Red Ponza. 2-0. This one was trying to hit my lands with Boom/Bust targeting his own darksteel citadel, followed by stonerain effects and threats. Countersquall into Collective Brutality prevented his plan from taking off.
T3 Boros Burn. 2-0. Here the black spells shined the most proving how damn useful is to remove a creature without ramping his mana. He's kept a one lander one of the two games, and push helped stabilizing while keeping his mana chocked. Then he played eidolon and I escalated a collective Brutality on it Turning lands into value.
Burn was an important test for me to see how good this version is at dealing against the most aggro strategies. The match is still very close.
T4. ID to grant me the top 8.
T5. UW control. 2-1. I decided to play this to take the chance to be ranked first and start every match in the top8. This tourney is also part of a league and I wanted both the points and the experience.
Lingering souls again proved to be the most relevant card in the match. You cast it once and chip away their life. You'll be waiting to flash it back until the first two tokens are removed. It's what UW was missing and what bant has in the form of Collected Company. I'm not saying they do the same things, nor that they get played the same way, but they both provide you the form of advantage that the UW version can't rely on.
Baneslayers and Lyra are still a serious problem that has to be dealt with by having in 4x heterogeneous answers to their presence.
QUARTERFINALS. Burn. 2-0. Nothing really different from the previous match against burn. Brutality lets me turn garbage into value, they can't turn their lands into anything useful instead. Sometimes you find yourself where it's too late for a selfless spirit to be cast, so you just discard the creature escalating and keeping up with them.
SEMIFINALS. UW control. 2-1.
FINALS. UW control. 2-1. G3 i was on the draw, he mulled to 6 and I mulled to 5. I thought I was lost when I had to let him resolve one hieroglyphic illumination, I was on 3 cards, he started his next main phase with 6. it took me to play knowing that I would have won by hitting maybe a couple important spells with my spell quellers, but the truth is that two lingering souls is 3 turns drained him a negate, one cryptic command and one Snapcaster mage, still letting me recur to one last flashback in the presence of favorable winds on the floor, which I consider a card of paramount importance against deck that sweep the table. It's been an intense game where he attacked me down to one life with colonnade and Snapcaster, then I untapped finally drawing a lord, attacked for 6 with those two tokens pumped by Drogskol and favourable winds, and drained the last two points with a collective brutality which spent 6 to 8 turns in my hand waiting for a spot to be relevant.
Brutality is phenomenal against control, but it takes you to know when to use it. I'm not sure myself: some obvious situations induce you to discard a land and check their hands, so it's possible that you want to play stuff in their turn to force to tap out, some other times you have to use it as a bait to force a counterspell and then play the creature that you need to resolve.
So the results have been convincing so far, and I would fix a couple things in the sideboard only. One of these is to switch Dimir Cutpurse with Jace TMS, because the latter gives you so much more value for one more mana. Cutpurse felt like it can generate some huge card advantage but it comes one turn too late and really needs to be flashed in in their end step.
One final word on Lingering Souls: they really give sense to the low utility land count mana base (which was my biggest issue with leaving UW for a splah), along with Brutality. Souls may come early and build board presence, or come very late when you are flooding and impact the board with 4 tokens at one time, re-establishing a presence and giving those 5 lands a reason to be there . At that point one naked lord is turned into a very powerful topdeck too: I have played enough UW to know what it feels to have no gas in the tank left and be hoping to draw some spirit followed by a lord to rebuild you clock. Lingering Souls in the deck offer a solution to that problem by itself. 3x is the number I want for now, 4 are too clunky.
I've thought about the new Dovin too, but there's no reason not to play Jace TMS for one more mana, once again.
I believe I have finally found a version that match my tempo/control-ish playstyle.
That friend against whom I played the final sat close to me while I was playing a for fun game during a break, and watched what I was doing. After a couple of turns he told me: "so you are playing the opposite way of how Bant does". This wraps up what Esper Spirits is.
how did tithe taker perform? did it contribute positively to your record?
Also, i'm going to experiment with a list that - heresy!- lacks noble hierarch, but in bant colors. Small splash for coco, it should play like UW does-.
since i just swapped noble hierarchs for rattlechains, i'll be watching closely if any hand could have developed better with the mana dork
I have been asking myself for a long time now if such a built might work. My only concern is that losing Hierarchs this list gets back to the 8x 1cmc drops, which is not enough. Also 4x canopies would induce me to crack often, so I'm not sure how many times I'd be pacient with the 4th mana source, my plan would be to have 3x companies and probably 2 more cards to be played on turn 1, whatever they are.
Havent tested detention Steve yet, but my impression is that it can really hit the state of the board when it's not answered. I believe cutting one path down to 3x would be my first change.
I’ve been playing UW Spirits for a few months now. I understand adding a green splash would make the deck more powerful, but because of financial reasons, being pigheaded, and wanting to do something different I want to splash black for Orzhov Enforcer, Lingering Souls, and Fatal Push. Should I forget the whole idea and just splash green to be more competitive?
Just yesterday I have given Esper Spirits a second chance, the first attempt has been last summer before Supreme Phantom was printed and I was trying to fill the 2cmc slot with collective brutality.
It ended up 2-3 due to some mistakes in the building of the mana base and a couple of silly games where I just flooded to death, so I've got only partial informations out of my test. Some of these are crystal clear though: fatal push is a heck of a removal against a vast majority of the field, having the creature removed without giving them a land as PtE does sets you up for some precious tempo advantage (e.g.: remove a 2cmc or 3cmc creature by spending one mana. this can pseudo timewalk your opponent when they have spent a turn casting that thing and you have a vial ticking up).
A second thing to say is that in absence of multiple copies of drawing engines( card advantage providers), the need for a tool to manipulate the top of your deck like serum visions does, or to convert dead cards in your hand into value is utterly relevant to give your deck the chance to play at the power level of tier two deck at the very least. Just think of what looting is doing for red decks, this tribe isn't much different in terms of needing to find the right cards to pull off its plan. I have been suggested wrongly and gave a shot to 2x Countersquall mainboard: it's definitely a sideboard card. Brutality should be your maindeck choice instead.
Lingering souls are really good when they are good, but they aren't either flashable nor vialable. Through the whole tournament I felt 3x is the appropriate number, two are too few, 4 are too clunky. Against UW control you can heavily rely on this 2 damage a turn clock still keeping the flashback option in your graveyard, haven't felt this much value in a long time. It might occasionally be in your hand along with brutality for some appealing synergy.
Sideboard options are also convincing, overall, but one thing me and some friends who have been watching me playing my UW versions for so long now noticed, is that it's not as easy as it might seem to justify the black splash in front of the consistency of the bi-coloured version. painless manabase, 4x utility lands, colour consistency are factors you inevitably lose moving to the three colour version, so there must be something real there to make the change reasonable, and if you want to hear my opinion, the reason to splash black isn't much clear to my eyes. Sure I have to test way longer, but if I had to say why Esper and why not, I'd tell you yes for Push, and no because you are losing one of the best mana bases in modern.
Speaking of sideboard, I like to take the core of my side in UW and splash it for more powerful options. I think one thing when have to keep in mind when we write it down is: which matchups/cards are we suffering the most, and pretty much focus on those.
Esper needs a way to deal with big creatures more than UW does, I felt like 3x PtE or 2pte+2 Nebelgast heralds are necessary in the 75, or you're taking the risk of losing straight away in front of those damn 5/5 angels UW control plays post side.
Countersquall is an overpowered type of Negate, those two life are way more impactful than it seems. This along with Brutality grants this version an unexpected form of reach that you would expect from a red deck instead.
Unmoored Ego is a slow card that can end the game pretty much on the spot. It removed all of the Terminus from the UW opponent on turn 6 or 7, and that was enough. To be honest I was already winning, the fact if that the turn after he got Egoed he played a Jace TMS that was nowhere close to being the threat we use to know.UW can't beat Spirits with no terminus, Ego is match winner against them. And so is against Scapeshift when you name Valakut, it's also true that they may play one copy in the first turns and so you have to chose what's the best target left at that moment of the game. Ego is a card that requires you to know what you are doing.
And let me speculate a bit more on utility lands: as much as I love them and I see them as one of the best way to sink mana when you flood, they are really unaffordable in 3 colour versions, you can maybe run one as your 21th land and that's it. Curving out is of paramount importance, but having few to none utility lands exposes you to flooding. This is why cards to filter/convert are a must-have in the mainboard.
One final note on discard spells: this is not the right deck. you must build board presence, or, you have to keep up with your opponent developing his plan at the very least. Discard spells are tempo negative, you tap to take a card, they haven't tapped any mana instead. This is a tempo deck so IoK are a trap, Seize is powerful but same issue as IoK and the 2 life loss make it a mediocre sideboard card at best(tested it) and brutality itself should be primarily used to remove a piece AND convert one dead card into drain or discard. I was lacking this notion last year when I tested Esper, and that costed me games.
I'll post my UW and ESPER(work in progress) lists for reference.
Dimir Cutpurse might be Athreos, God of Passage. The former works against combo and control, the latter against midrange and non terminus control decks. I guess I might pick the god now that KCi is no longer a problem.
Bant is the most aggro and no brainer version of the deck you can have, not that it's easy to pilot, but I have seen many players new to the deck having success because Collected Company is so powerful when coupled with hexproof and Spell Queller. You might want to start from here.
UW plays more of a tempo game and Esper plays an even slower and more skilled game.
Happy to see our work didn't evaporate because of this crazy BS caused by european laws. That would have ended my permanence on this site.
Hoping for the mods to restore at least my very last post where I'm talking about a couple experiments I'm about to run with the Jeskai and Grixis version of the tribe.
I'm starting my playtests in a couple of weeks from now, and I'll gladly get back to my word document to write about these and expand the primer once I'll have enough to say about how these splashes work.
Esper is also very appealing, not just because of discard spells and lingering, but because of Unmoored Ego being printed giving those colors an additional weapon to fight combo decks, big mana strategies and blow out spells like terminus. My brain dreams about a world where UW control is left to fight with no terminus, or a place where KCI goes on playing with no KCI in the deck, Scapeshift with no Valakut, and my heart says it's worth trying.
As for the current meta, I believe the red and white eidolons are really good positioned and those are the cards to list. I have seen bant spirits lists from pros boarding the white Eidolon, which is something never happened so far.
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.
The one thing I see in your list is the number of 3 cmc drops, they are 12 + 2 commands, it's exposing you to the risk of opening clunky hands.
Bigone bishop is worse than than Curious Obsession: I can see how obsession is much better in a Vial shell, because you have multiple interactions available and you better exploit the mana advantage, which is fueled by the enchantment, but still it's a good card that wins me games even when I don't have the vial. I find it very important against combo to dig you deck.
I also think Countersquall is one of the best counterspells in modern, in particular in a deck like ours trying to race the opponent. You'll be surprised to see how those two lifes mattered at the end of the race. People love Negate, this is a Negate with upsides.
Your blue sources are fine, also good luck with shambling vents. I haven't tried it yet, but I have paid attention at the games whre I have drawn tar pit and pretended that to be a SV, and I still believe Tar Pit is the kind of land we need. It ignores blockers and races incredibly well, I think it's the kind of utility we want and need in this version.
Persecution in a card I like, once in a while you wipe out your opponent's silly elves and you feel like a bos;, my issue with that is it's no longer a good metagame for it. Mardu pyromancer is gone, and other decks just partially care about that -1 -1 effect, I believe now it's more important to have a coulpe Detention Steves, even more because KCI has transformed into 4c Prison, which is disgusting and demands an answer to their permanents. Looking at your 75s I see no answers to Ensnaring Bridge once it has resolved. This is a bug in your list in my opinion.
As a final suggestion, I'd consider one favourable winds in your mainboard, probably in replacement of one remorseful cleric. You have no vial, which is the best play against control. FW lets you commit less creatures, it encreases your clock by spending less resources, it's hard to remove, and if they do, they are spending a D Sphere to take that away, which lets you respond since it comes at sorcery speed and is also tempo negative for them at the very least.
I dont' know your meta, but let me stress the power of collective brutality (very skill intensive spell to be honest) to keep up with the early developement of the board, or to better interact with your opponent's hand.
Let me know your results.
I believe that is actually the right approach to Esper. The kit of early removals and the power of lingering souls as a top deck are something UW misses. I believe UW sits in between a version trying to hit the gas pedal (Bant), and a version that is good at taking the control role (Esper). But it misses something, there's no real reason to stay in between beside the manabase. It misses another card advantage engine, it's forced to play striclty a tempo game (Thalia isn't part of the successful lists just by chance), but when that tempo-plan fails it's over. It's a worse version at playing both an aggro and a control strategy, given the pool of cards we have right now.
I've been playing UW for two years and now I've splashed my version with black I can see such big upsides that I'm not getting back.
"Once you go black..." they say, you know.
I think I've read about one guy here playing with it having his plan centered on defending the enchanted spirit, which makes a lot of sense, but still I'm not sure about this kind of plan.
I can also see a list with the full playset of rattlechains, or an esper list with additional creatures (lingering souls) being a good shell for the single copy of that enchantment to force control to respond and extend into your answers.
Not yet, just jumped on this configuration of the deck. Some choiches are all but intuitive too, like that of keeping lingering souls mb against midrange when you also want RiP to shut down their clock. They re both very good cards against them but the conflict between the two is real.
Well, we'd need some more details here, however: as a general rule I do not overextend my resources into a field threatened by wraths once my clock is at least 3 damages per turn and I'm winning the race. I actually like to hold back spell queller against Anger of the Gods decks because you never know.
Things that might change my mind are the absence of a clock , a faster clock from my opponent that demnds presence on the board, the presnce of a selfless spirit on the battlefield, or abundance of resources in my hand ( a second spell queller or counterspells).
It just doesn't sinergize (thalia + Company is a nonbo), it would have been a crazy engine otherwise. This is why I think it will require the structure of the deck to be coherent with the effect of the card.
My fear is to exile two 3cmc creatures, so the curve of the deck will involve some statistics to minimize that possibility and the timing will be relevant as well.
Other than that, I like the idea of jeskai spirits playing aggressively trying to end the game the soonest with some burn . For this reason I'd pick Light, because drawing two cards has never been any cheaper.
As for the questions on the mana base:
- the difference between Tar Pit and Shambling is the unblockable and the extra point of damage. This means that they either have a removal or they will lose those 3 life. You mentioned the burn matchup where shambling is obviously more useful, but since we fall into the aggro category, there's a way higher number of matchups where you simply want to race the opponent and you lose when you fail at it. Tar Pit is excellent at pushing your race.
Do not expect it to stay in play for long against control, you need to keep it in your hand if a field is down. let them hit a shock land and then play it. Yesterday, I was able to use it just once while UW was tapped out, and still that Spell Queller and tar pit hitting for 5 made a world of a difference compared to spell Queller attacking alone. needless to say I couldn't care less about gaining life in that situation.
In your case, since you are vial-less and 22 lands list , I'd use two animables.
Test the Vents and let us know.
- 8 fetches with 7 targets feel great, I occasionally run out of targets when I'm playing UW where I have 7 fetchlands and 5 targets. I'm siding out one when I'm against control on the draw everytime, so there's a lot depending on how educated your choices are when it comes to siding against the different archetypes; the act of siding requires you to make changes in the mana base too.
- Darkslick vs courtyard is an important topic: when I build a mana base I always start from the concepts explained in these two articles, https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/frank-analysis-how-many-colored-mana-sources-do-you-need-to-consistently-cast-your-spells/ , https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/how-many-lands-do-you-need-to-consistently-hit-your-land-drops/ .
Despite many lists sticking up to the 14 sources of blue, I do not feel comfortable at all with a 90% chance of hitting my blue source in a random 7 cards hand, I find it too low and I want more consistency. The fact is that being able to play Wanderer when I have it in my hand is simply too important to gamble with a 10% rate of statistical failures. I believe that's too high in theory and I know that the practise includes hands I have to mull because the non land cards aren't good enough, so I want to be able to draw the next 6 with confidence. This is the reason why my list features 17 untapped blue sources + one tar Pit.
You may also want to note that PtE is the poorest 1cmc card you might ever play on turn one, I actually consider it a card that should be played from turn 3 at least. This to say that I want to grant myself enough black to be able to push on turn one if vials or wanderers are not in my hand. Here my mana base is actually struggling because I have 13 untapped black sources and cavern of souls doesn't count, while tar pit enters tapped. Fact is that white is also a colour I want to hit on turn two because of rest in peace and stony in my side, but again, blue is not the colour on which I intend to make any gamble.
This all comes from my experience with playing the tribe, articles are very important guide lines, but then there's the play test and the tourneys where you get to play a lot of games, and there you need the highest possible chances to have a consistent access to your primary colour: blue.
Let me finish this answer with an example about the importance of having the most blue sources as possible: yesterday I started my g3 in the finals against UW control with one single land in my hand, Tar Pit. If you look up for the post I made last week about Esper, you'll see Tar Pit has took the place of the Moorland Haunt I was running as my single utility land in the beginning. Had it sill been a moorland haunt, I would have had to go down to 4 or to start the game with no blue and 3 creatures with U in their casting cost.
This might be one single case, sure, but that's going to happen over the course of 7 or more games, and what... if it happens when you are on a mull to 5 in the very last match that separates you from the title?
I have made a couple of adjustments in the manabase and now everything seems to fall in the right place. 21 lands are necessary as much as the single Tar Pit in place of the Moorland Haunt, Tar Pit fixes colours and takes away big chunks of your opponent's life total: the 3 attack power is really what you need to cut your opponent off a turn each time it connects.
This said, the version I'm playing with now feels like the best version of a spirit deck I've had in my hands since I've jumped into modern two years ago. It's got ways to control the early game preventing the opponent from developing his board, it's got disruption, it's got ways to sink mana later in the game (read: powerful Lingering Souls topdecks). Everything in the mainboard seem to be coherent with the rest of the cards.
So I have been winning one 14 people FNM and one Local 30 people Tourney on Friday and Sunday.
The first was the FNM:
T1 Revolt Zoo: 2-0. Fatal Push and collective brutality removed two creatures and a bolt giving him none of the lands PtE would have provided if I was on UW. This is one of the two biggest features of the deck: the mana base is a bit more painful than the bicoloured version, but the black spells excel at rewarding that initial life points investment. This is something I didn't even imagine before the playtest.
T2 Izzet Phoenix: 2-0. G1 was a tight one, which I won because curious obsession on a wanderer drew me 3 cards . G2 he managed to have a phoenix in play on turn two, but rest in peace shut his lootings down and allowed me to stabilize. We played two more games for fun where he managed to do his degenerate stuff, like triple phoenix on turn 3, so I still believe the matchup is really really close.
T3 Bant Company: 1-1. G1 and G3 I just out-raced him as I am meant to do. G2 he went hierarch into Detention Steve removing my Vial, then he played a couple threats and that was too much for me to come back. Deputy looks convincing, especially when it hits some minor permanent so the opponent struggles to spend a removal spell on the 1/3, letting other threatening creatures stay on the board.
It ended up in a draw because the picked a Worship off the top before the extra time started. I decided not to play around his top deck and spent my spell queller to exile his one and have lethal on the following attack phase. Those times where no wraths or blowouts will show up you'd better play around the biggest threat left.
T4 Bant Spirits: 2-1. This game was against Ketoglutarato, it's been cool to test the two versions of the tribe with him. I have been lucky to have my brutality early in my hand in two games at least, and the -2 -2 ability has been so powerful to remove a Drogskol captain in the presence of a selfless spirit on the board. It's also true that a later brutality might have been ineffective and would have ended up in a less useful life drain.
Lingering Souls are an amazing card in the mirror and Creeping Tar Pit with the finest form of evasion made me think that's a natural mainboard answer to the board stalling the times it happens, and does help you turn the corner and race back the aggro deck.
I brought in Athreos, God of Passage , but that actually didn't work that well. He was at 14 life or more, so he accepted the 3 life loss a couple times not to give me my spirits back. Definitely not worth the spot in the mirror. I've also found out the games where I might want Athreos are the games where I also want RiP ( against midrange for example).
After this match I came to the conclusion that you either want to fight bant being bant yourself , or you'd better be on a configuration that allows you to fully play the control role from the beginning, which esper is much better at doing than UW.
That night I've got back home with a friend and we tested Esper against his Kiki Chord for long getting to convince ourselves that: the black spells slow the value plan down enough to let me maintain the aggro role even when they start with mana dork on the play. Lingering souls is an unmanageable threat for them.
After sideboard blood moons/magus of the moon are really scary and they are what you should play around for the first 4 turns, then you've got to watch out from the combo and some scary creatures like Cataclysmic Gearhulk and Lyra .
The deck looked so solid that I gave up UW to attend the 30 people tourney with Esper, along with a couple adjustments in the side to deal with ensnaring bridges and such permanents, so I registered two Deputy of Detention and one Unified Will.
T1 GW value. 2-0. It looked like a bye, nothing really to say, that deck wasn't interacting with me.
T2 Mono Red Ponza. 2-0. This one was trying to hit my lands with Boom/Bust targeting his own darksteel citadel, followed by stonerain effects and threats. Countersquall into Collective Brutality prevented his plan from taking off.
T3 Boros Burn. 2-0. Here the black spells shined the most proving how damn useful is to remove a creature without ramping his mana. He's kept a one lander one of the two games, and push helped stabilizing while keeping his mana chocked. Then he played eidolon and I escalated a collective Brutality on it Turning lands into value.
Burn was an important test for me to see how good this version is at dealing against the most aggro strategies. The match is still very close.
T4. ID to grant me the top 8.
T5. UW control. 2-1. I decided to play this to take the chance to be ranked first and start every match in the top8. This tourney is also part of a league and I wanted both the points and the experience.
Lingering souls again proved to be the most relevant card in the match. You cast it once and chip away their life. You'll be waiting to flash it back until the first two tokens are removed. It's what UW was missing and what bant has in the form of Collected Company. I'm not saying they do the same things, nor that they get played the same way, but they both provide you the form of advantage that the UW version can't rely on.
Baneslayers and Lyra are still a serious problem that has to be dealt with by having in 4x heterogeneous answers to their presence.
QUARTERFINALS. Burn. 2-0. Nothing really different from the previous match against burn. Brutality lets me turn garbage into value, they can't turn their lands into anything useful instead. Sometimes you find yourself where it's too late for a selfless spirit to be cast, so you just discard the creature escalating and keeping up with them.
SEMIFINALS. UW control. 2-1.
FINALS. UW control. 2-1. G3 i was on the draw, he mulled to 6 and I mulled to 5. I thought I was lost when I had to let him resolve one hieroglyphic illumination, I was on 3 cards, he started his next main phase with 6. it took me to play knowing that I would have won by hitting maybe a couple important spells with my spell quellers, but the truth is that two lingering souls is 3 turns drained him a negate, one cryptic command and one Snapcaster mage, still letting me recur to one last flashback in the presence of favorable winds on the floor, which I consider a card of paramount importance against deck that sweep the table. It's been an intense game where he attacked me down to one life with colonnade and Snapcaster, then I untapped finally drawing a lord, attacked for 6 with those two tokens pumped by Drogskol and favourable winds, and drained the last two points with a collective brutality which spent 6 to 8 turns in my hand waiting for a spot to be relevant.
Brutality is phenomenal against control, but it takes you to know when to use it. I'm not sure myself: some obvious situations induce you to discard a land and check their hands, so it's possible that you want to play stuff in their turn to force to tap out, some other times you have to use it as a bait to force a counterspell and then play the creature that you need to resolve.
So the results have been convincing so far, and I would fix a couple things in the sideboard only. One of these is to switch Dimir Cutpurse with Jace TMS, because the latter gives you so much more value for one more mana. Cutpurse felt like it can generate some huge card advantage but it comes one turn too late and really needs to be flashed in in their end step.
This is my updated Esper List
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Selfless Spirit
4 Rattlechains
4 Supreme Phantom
4 Spell Queller
4 Drogskol Captain
Spells: 15
4 Aether Vial
1 Curious Obsession
3 Fatal Push
2 Path to Exile
2 Collective Brutality
3 Lingering Souls
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted delta
2 Hallowed Fountain
1 Watery Grave
1 godless shrine
2 Seachrome coast
2 Darkslick shore
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Stony Silence
2 Rest In Peace
2 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Echoing Truth
2 Countersquall
1 Unified Will
1 Favorable winds
2 Deputy of Detention
1 Nebelgast Herald
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
One final word on Lingering Souls: they really give sense to the low utility land count mana base (which was my biggest issue with leaving UW for a splah), along with Brutality. Souls may come early and build board presence, or come very late when you are flooding and impact the board with 4 tokens at one time, re-establishing a presence and giving those 5 lands a reason to be there . At that point one naked lord is turned into a very powerful topdeck too: I have played enough UW to know what it feels to have no gas in the tank left and be hoping to draw some spirit followed by a lord to rebuild you clock. Lingering Souls in the deck offer a solution to that problem by itself. 3x is the number I want for now, 4 are too clunky.
I've thought about the new Dovin too, but there's no reason not to play Jace TMS for one more mana, once again.
I believe I have finally found a version that match my tempo/control-ish playstyle.
That friend against whom I played the final sat close to me while I was playing a for fun game during a break, and watched what I was doing. After a couple of turns he told me: "so you are playing the opposite way of how Bant does". This wraps up what Esper Spirits is.
I have been asking myself for a long time now if such a built might work. My only concern is that losing Hierarchs this list gets back to the 8x 1cmc drops, which is not enough. Also 4x canopies would induce me to crack often, so I'm not sure how many times I'd be pacient with the 4th mana source, my plan would be to have 3x companies and probably 2 more cards to be played on turn 1, whatever they are.
Just yesterday I have given Esper Spirits a second chance, the first attempt has been last summer before Supreme Phantom was printed and I was trying to fill the 2cmc slot with collective brutality.
It ended up 2-3 due to some mistakes in the building of the mana base and a couple of silly games where I just flooded to death, so I've got only partial informations out of my test. Some of these are crystal clear though: fatal push is a heck of a removal against a vast majority of the field, having the creature removed without giving them a land as PtE does sets you up for some precious tempo advantage (e.g.: remove a 2cmc or 3cmc creature by spending one mana. this can pseudo timewalk your opponent when they have spent a turn casting that thing and you have a vial ticking up).
A second thing to say is that in absence of multiple copies of drawing engines( card advantage providers), the need for a tool to manipulate the top of your deck like serum visions does, or to convert dead cards in your hand into value is utterly relevant to give your deck the chance to play at the power level of tier two deck at the very least. Just think of what looting is doing for red decks, this tribe isn't much different in terms of needing to find the right cards to pull off its plan. I have been suggested wrongly and gave a shot to 2x Countersquall mainboard: it's definitely a sideboard card. Brutality should be your maindeck choice instead.
Lingering souls are really good when they are good, but they aren't either flashable nor vialable. Through the whole tournament I felt 3x is the appropriate number, two are too few, 4 are too clunky. Against UW control you can heavily rely on this 2 damage a turn clock still keeping the flashback option in your graveyard, haven't felt this much value in a long time. It might occasionally be in your hand along with brutality for some appealing synergy.
Sideboard options are also convincing, overall, but one thing me and some friends who have been watching me playing my UW versions for so long now noticed, is that it's not as easy as it might seem to justify the black splash in front of the consistency of the bi-coloured version. painless manabase, 4x utility lands, colour consistency are factors you inevitably lose moving to the three colour version, so there must be something real there to make the change reasonable, and if you want to hear my opinion, the reason to splash black isn't much clear to my eyes. Sure I have to test way longer, but if I had to say why Esper and why not, I'd tell you yes for Push, and no because you are losing one of the best mana bases in modern.
Speaking of sideboard, I like to take the core of my side in UW and splash it for more powerful options. I think one thing when have to keep in mind when we write it down is: which matchups/cards are we suffering the most, and pretty much focus on those.
Esper needs a way to deal with big creatures more than UW does, I felt like 3x PtE or 2pte+2 Nebelgast heralds are necessary in the 75, or you're taking the risk of losing straight away in front of those damn 5/5 angels UW control plays post side.
Countersquall is an overpowered type of Negate, those two life are way more impactful than it seems. This along with Brutality grants this version an unexpected form of reach that you would expect from a red deck instead.
Unmoored Ego is a slow card that can end the game pretty much on the spot. It removed all of the Terminus from the UW opponent on turn 6 or 7, and that was enough. To be honest I was already winning, the fact if that the turn after he got Egoed he played a Jace TMS that was nowhere close to being the threat we use to know.UW can't beat Spirits with no terminus, Ego is match winner against them. And so is against Scapeshift when you name Valakut, it's also true that they may play one copy in the first turns and so you have to chose what's the best target left at that moment of the game. Ego is a card that requires you to know what you are doing.
And let me speculate a bit more on utility lands: as much as I love them and I see them as one of the best way to sink mana when you flood, they are really unaffordable in 3 colour versions, you can maybe run one as your 21th land and that's it. Curving out is of paramount importance, but having few to none utility lands exposes you to flooding. This is why cards to filter/convert are a must-have in the mainboard.
One final note on discard spells: this is not the right deck. you must build board presence, or, you have to keep up with your opponent developing his plan at the very least. Discard spells are tempo negative, you tap to take a card, they haven't tapped any mana instead. This is a tempo deck so IoK are a trap, Seize is powerful but same issue as IoK and the 2 life loss make it a mediocre sideboard card at best(tested it) and brutality itself should be primarily used to remove a piece AND convert one dead card into drain or discard. I was lacking this notion last year when I tested Esper, and that costed me games.
I'll post my UW and ESPER(work in progress) lists for reference.
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 Tarpit
2 Stony Silence
2 Rest In Peace
2 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Echoing Truth
2 Countersquall
1 Favourable winds
2 Unmoored Ego
1 Dimir Cutpurse
1 Nebelgast Herald
1 Worship
Dimir Cutpurse might be Athreos, God of Passage. The former works against combo and control, the latter against midrange and non terminus control decks. I guess I might pick the god now that KCi is no longer a problem.
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Selfless Spirit
4 Rattlechains
4 Supreme Phantom
4 Spell Queller
4 Drogskol Captain
2 Eidolon of Rhetoric
Spells: 13
4 Aether Vial
3 Serum Visions
2 Curious Obsession
4 Path to Exile
4 Flooded Strand
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Hallowed Fountain
4 Seachrome Coast
3 Island
1 Plains
1 Moorland Haunt
3 Mutavault
1 Cavern of Souls
2 Stony Silence
2 Rest In Peace
2 Nebelgast Herald
1 Declaration in Stone
1 Worship
1 Favourable Winds
1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
1 Echoing Truth
3 Deprive
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Bant is the most aggro and no brainer version of the deck you can have, not that it's easy to pilot, but I have seen many players new to the deck having success because Collected Company is so powerful when coupled with hexproof and Spell Queller. You might want to start from here.
UW plays more of a tempo game and Esper plays an even slower and more skilled game.
Hoping for the mods to restore at least my very last post where I'm talking about a couple experiments I'm about to run with the Jeskai and Grixis version of the tribe.
I'm starting my playtests in a couple of weeks from now, and I'll gladly get back to my word document to write about these and expand the primer once I'll have enough to say about how these splashes work.
Esper is also very appealing, not just because of discard spells and lingering, but because of Unmoored Ego being printed giving those colors an additional weapon to fight combo decks, big mana strategies and blow out spells like terminus. My brain dreams about a world where UW control is left to fight with no terminus, or a place where KCI goes on playing with no KCI in the deck, Scapeshift with no Valakut, and my heart says it's worth trying.
As for the current meta, I believe the red and white eidolons are really good positioned and those are the cards to list. I have seen bant spirits lists from pros boarding the white Eidolon, which is something never happened so far.