MTG Salvation

Hey guys, back from a short hiatus on UW Control, and I have a new list that reflects this. I'd like to thank PimpDonny for the idea and really the whole list, he's the one who convinced me to play Zenith.


Wondering if Thoughtseize is really worth it in the current meta, the only real combo deck is TitanShift (and sometimes Jeskai Nahiri/Saheeli), but Clique works just as well if not better against Shift. If I cut TS, it'd be for another Clique and possible a Ceremonious Rejection, what do you guys think about that? Thanks as always!

I just recently cut TS and Surgical, which opened up space for Clique, Stony Silence, and Rest In Peace. Overall I'm happy with the trade, as the discard/extraction package is best when combined, and you can't always depend on drawing both halves timely.

Quote from EsperShardmage »

I just recently cut TS and Surgical, which opened up space for Clique, Stony Silence, and Rest In Peace. Overall I'm happy with the trade, as the discard/extraction package is best when combined, and you can't always depend on drawing both halves timely.

I've always felt fine playing 2 Surgicals as stand-alones, since you can still combine them with countermagic vs Tron and Storm for example, but the 3rd has always been aimed straight at Dredge tbh. I like Clique and Stony, but I still firmly believe that this deck doesn't want Rest in Peace since it hoses us so bad. I think Surg, Nihil Spellbomb, or Relic of Progenitus.

I actually really like the sound of Grafdigger's Cage now that I think about it, since we could still delve to Logic Knot and it shuts off Chord and Company too. If I can't flasback TT or with Snapcaster, but can still Knot, I'm fine with that tradeoff.

I guess I'll post a list and update really quick, since I've been fairly quiet for a while:



So, I guess I should start with the obvious -- not much has changed! I've tried different lists in the meantime with Serum Visions, Secure the Wastes, more planeswalkers, and I've even jumped onto the UW train (Come on, a T1 control deck and I'm NOT going to try it? I don't think so. ) Anyways, I feel like the key to control in this meta is playing 4 Path, 4 Verdict, 2 Blessed Alliance, and five 2-mana counters main -- that's what any UWx control deck plays, and I've been leaning that way for a while. If you're not at least playing that in Esper, you're either tooling up against combo decks for meta reasons or you're doing something weird/wrong.

As for Esper, I like having a few extra removal spells, hence the 2 Push. I feel like UW might actually be better for the time being, since the Tron and Burn matchups feel MUCH better than on Esper, but going for the Charms gives you more game against control and combo decks (UW has a far worse Storm matchup), while Fatal Push makes the Merfolk/Company matchups better. UW has the edge against Burn (manabase reasons), hyper-aggro (due to having both Verdict AND Jace, and also Serum to find them), and Dredge (since it can EASILY support 3-4 RiP). Anyways, that's the breakdown. I'd love to get some questions on my list, and I can post my UW list if you guys want to see it (I know there's a forum for that, but it could be useful to compare).

Our MB is 1 card different - 3rd snap over 4th verdict for me!

SB are obviously different for different metas, but not significantly.

I also touched into UW just to see what the hype was about, but losing Charm and Push hurts too bad for me.

As for the thoughtseize debate: I still keep 2 in the board, and I bring them in for dead cards frequently. I honestly love discard post board because they are rarely expecting the control deck to board into them

I'm adamantly against Timely, I've never had it turn the tide like it did in metas past. When I first built Esper I played 2 in the board and was so excited to draw them against Burn, they're just waiting for you to cast it with Skullcrack/Atarka's Command at the ready

Quote from kodieyost »

Our MB is 1 card different - 3rd snap over 4th verdict for me!

SB are obviously different for different metas, but not significantly.

I also touched into UW just to see what the hype was about, but losing Charm and Push hurts too bad for me.

As for the thoughtseize debate: I still keep 2 in the board, and I bring them in for dead cards frequently. I honestly love discard post board because they are rarely expecting the control deck to board into them

I'm adamantly against Timely, I've never had it turn the tide like it did in metas past. When I first built Esper I played 2 in the board and was so excited to draw them against Burn, they're just waiting for you to cast it with Skullcrack/Atarka's Command at the ready

You don't cast Timely when they can just Skullcrack it haha. You wait on it until you have counter backup or they tap out (which you can bait/force with ECharm). If you have to cast Timely blind to stay alive and they have the Skullcrack, that's just good beats; but if not, then that's pretty good or you. It's also easier to leverage when you also have Alliance to make them use what they have at eot or make it obvious that they don't have it.

As for the sideboard, I always post what I would play in an open meta (Edit: unless it's a tourney/fnm report). I often don't pack Surgicals at my LGS at home since there's no Dredge locally, but in a totally random environment, I'd play Surgicals.

Quote from TheAnnihilator0798 »

So, I guess I should start with the obvious -- not much has changed!

Yea, I suspect thats exactly why there hasn't been a whole lot of discussion recently.
I've been playing other things recently, partially because I don't really feel like there's a whole lot of innovation (in terms of tweaking the current shell) to be had currently.

Anyways, I feel like the key to control in this meta is playing 4 Path, 4 Verdict, 2 Blessed Alliance, and five 2-mana counters main -- that's what any UWx control deck plays, and I've been leaning that way for a while. If you're not at least playing that in Esper, you're either tooling up against combo decks for meta reasons or you're doing something weird/wrong.

I don't totally agree here. I think 4 path, 2 (push or alliance) and 3main, 1+ side, or 4main, 0+side, wraths are very agreed on, and I think 3+ two cmc counters are very strong. The last 2 two cmc counters are a little more questionable though, because I feel that those slots can be occupied by a number of reasonable cards (snare, runed halo, leyline, more removal if hedging that way, another snapcaster, remand/shadow/moonlight, etc) that aren't necessarily wrong.

I feel like UW might actually be better for the time being, since the Tron and Burn matchups feel MUCH better than on Esper, but going for the Charms gives you more game against control and combo decks (UW has a far worse Storm matchup), while Fatal Push makes the Merfolk/Company matchups better. UW has the edge against Burn (manabase reasons), hyper-aggro (due to having both Verdict AND Jace, and also Serum to find them), and Dredge (since it can EASILY support 3-4 RiP). Anyways, that's the breakdown. I'd love to get some questions on my list, and I can post my UW list if you guys want to see it (I know there's a forum for that, but it could be useful to compare).

Again, I don't totally agree.
Disclaimer, I don't own a crucible, and have only occasionally borrowed one to play the deck, so many of my games have been crucible-less.
I think eldrazi tron is easier for esper. Possibly not a lot, but spreading seas have not helped me all that much in this matchup, and planeswalkers aside from 3cmc gideon and 6cmc elspeth are very mediocre, and do not make up for esper charm and the occasional thoughtseize.
Burn tends to feel a little better for UW, but not much. This is a bit more dubious, as my UW lists do like their logic knots, and tend to be a bit more painful than the normal lists, and I have been playing leyline main in esper (either side or not at all in UW).
UW is probably a little bit better again hyper aggro, but esper supports RiP almost as well if dredge is your concern.

I have played UW a little bit, but all in all, I don't think its better than esper on the whole.
I personally believe that UW is not nearly as good against shadow as a lot of people think (its favored but its very lose-able), and when more people (esp shadow players who become more experienced in the matchup) learn this, its popularity will plummet.

IMO, you feel a lot worse about RiP in the board than I do. I like the discard + extraction plan, but I've played clique + RiP before, and it costing more mana is the major reason I'm not playing it currently.
Against the decks that really care about their yards (dredge, living end, shadow, etc) RiP turning our snapcasters into ambush vipers, our think twices into reach through mists, and our knots into spell blasts is not really all that bad, given how crippling it can be.
Admittedly, it may not be worth boarding RiP in against traditional jund (I would say it is again abzan, varies against jund) but considering our matchup is already very fine against them, I feel thats very acceptable.

Timely has always felt really mediocre to me in this deck as well.
Like you, when I first started playing esper, I was really big on it, but its just let me down so many times. If I expected bushwhacker zoo/8whack kind of decks to be running rampant, I might start including them again, but otherwise, I'll pass.

Am definitely interested in your games against tron, annihilator, as you've always felt it was bad, and you've even added rejections to your board.
I tend to play with 0 stonys, 0 spreading seas, 0 crucibles, 0 rejections and I feel the matchup is fine.

Quote from Cody_X »

Yea, I suspect thats exactly why there hasn't been a whole lot of discussion recently.
I've been playing other things recently, partially because I don't really feel like there's a whole lot of innovation (in terms of tweaking the current shell) to be had currently.

Same. I feel like it's cheating on Esper, but Esper seems sortof "solved" for this meta, oddly enough. Easy matchups like Shadow, Storm, Affinity, and Eldrazi (in my experience at least) are boring, the matchups like Abzan Company are still complex but basically the same they used to be, while dredge and others are more or less predestined by dedicated sb space. I know it's oversimplified, but old knowledge is just as good as new in this case.

Anyways, I feel like the key to control in this meta is playing 4 Path, 4 Verdict, 2 Blessed Alliance, and five 2-mana counters main -- that's what any UWx control deck plays, and I've been leaning that way for a while. If you're not at least playing that in Esper, you're either tooling up against combo decks for meta reasons or you're doing something weird/wrong.

I don't totally agree here. I think 4 path, 2 (push or alliance) and 3main, 1+ side, or 4main, 0+side, wraths are very agreed on, and I think 3+ two cmc counters are very strong. The last 2 two cmc counters are a little more questionable though, because I feel that those slots can be occupied by a number of reasonable cards (snare, runed halo, leyline, more removal if hedging that way, another snapcaster, remand/shadow/moonlight, etc) that aren't necessarily wrong.

Yeah, I didn't mean for Esper but for control in general. You don't find things like mainboard Halos and Leylines in non-Esper builds, and more removal is more of a local meta choice than an overall metagame decision. Not that it's wrong or anything (it isn't wrong), but at least for me, 4 counters in the 75 is just a little under where I need them to be.

I feel like UW might actually be better for the time being, since the Tron and Burn matchups feel MUCH better than on Esper, but going for the Charms gives you more game against control and combo decks (UW has a far worse Storm matchup), while Fatal Push makes the Merfolk/Company matchups better. UW has the edge against Burn (manabase reasons), hyper-aggro (due to having both Verdict AND Jace, and also Serum to find them), and Dredge (since it can EASILY support 3-4 RiP). Anyways, that's the breakdown. I'd love to get some questions on my list, and I can post my UW list if you guys want to see it (I know there's a forum for that, but it could be useful to compare).

Again, I don't totally agree.
Disclaimer, I don't own a crucible, and have only occasionally borrowed one to play the deck, so many of my games have been crucible-less.
I think eldrazi tron is easier for esper. Possibly not a lot, but spreading seas have not helped me all that much in this matchup, and planeswalkers aside from 3cmc gideon and 6cmc elspeth are very mediocre, and do not make up for esper charm and the occasional thoughtseize.
Burn tends to feel a little better for UW, but not much. This is a bit more dubious, as my UW lists do like their logic knots, and tend to be a bit more painful than the normal lists, and I have been playing leyline main in esper (either side or not at all in UW).
UW is probably a little bit better again hyper aggro, but esper supports RiP almost as well if dredge is your concern.

I have played UW a little bit, but all in all, I don't think its better than esper on the whole.
I personally believe that UW is not nearly as good against shadow as a lot of people think (its favored but its very lose-able), and when more people (esp shadow players who become more experienced in the matchup) learn this, its popularity will plummet.

I actually play a list w/o Crucible. I agree that the Eldrazi matchup is easier with Esper (I haven't actually played it with UW but I can tell), but I don't think that it's a huge difference (I also seldom see ETron at my LGS). However, my early experiences against Burn are totally different -- a less painful manabase, more closing power, the damage sink of lil' Gideon, Quellers in the board... UW is miles ahead of Burn compared to my typical Esper list. UW has all of the same tools as Esper (other than ECharm, which is tricky to use favorably vs. Burn anyways). I also play 1 Knot 2 Leak 1 Negate in UW, so I lean much easier on basics in the matchup. As compared to my 3 Leak/2 Negate split in Esper, it's less painful by nature without factoring shocklands. Also, since I let my Esper lists lean on Snapcasters and Knots, I never can justify boarding RiP for such specific matchups as Dredge and Living End when Surg is just as good and comes in other matchups without blanking Snap/TT/Knot. UW simply does not care if RiP is in play. I don't think an overwhelmingly positive Grixis Shadow matchup is much better than a favorable one with UW, since I'm known to board plenty of Purges. If I start to miss it, I'll let you know tho.

IMO, you feel a lot worse about RiP in the board than I do. I like the discard + extraction plan, but I've played clique + RiP before, and it costing more mana is the major reason I'm not playing it currently.
Against the decks that really care about their yards (dredge, living end, shadow, etc) RiP turning our snapcasters into ambush vipers, our think twices into reach through mists, and our knots into spell blasts is not really all that bad, given how crippling it can be.
Admittedly, it may not be worth boarding RiP in against traditional jund (I would say it is again abzan, varies against jund) but considering our matchup is already very fine against them, I feel thats very acceptable.

See, I'm not a big fan of discard in the board (other than Duress -- too narrow -- and Collective Brutality, which is good) since every control matchup I ever face is URx, and they actively want me to shock myself with Thoughtseize. I much prefer to board extra counters, but I still play the Surges anyways.I would never board in RiP against Shadow or BGx, by the way, as they rely heavily on discarding away our Paths/Purges, and Snapcaster makes that unreliable. I rarely lose to Shadow, and I just out-answer them until a Baneslayer lands (in past iterations of my build) or until 2 Colonnade hits kills them before they kill me.

Timely has always felt really mediocre to me in this deck as well.
Like you, when I first started playing esper, I was really big on it, but its just let me down so many times. If I expected bushwhacker zoo/8whack kind of decks to be running rampant, I might start including them again, but otherwise, I'll pass.

I have admittedly been considering a 4th Alliance, but I felt like it would be uneccessary and the 6 life and clock from Timely is much more impactful than a simple 4th Alliance. Could be a Kitchen Finks, which I've also had success with more recently. I've also played a Baneslayer in that slot, which might be just as good, if not better.

Am definitely interested in your games against tron, annihilator, as you've always felt it was bad, and you've even added rejections to your board.
I tend to play with 0 stonys, 0 spreading seas, 0 crucibles, 0 rejections and I feel the matchup is fine.

Unrelated to UW and the added Rejections, I actually feel like our Tron matchup is a lot better than it used to be, like most of you, assuming you have a Knot or Negate in hand. Post-board, it took a pivot in willingness to mulligan (and the fact that I've upped my mainboard 2cmc counters to 5, a big reason for it) to make the matchup feel more manageable. I still don't think it's favorable, prolly closer to 45/55, but I've added Rejections to the board for Tron and Affinity mainly, with splash damage against Drazi (it's a nice perk tho), so I'm quite comfortable. UW just has traditional Tron on easymode with Spreading Seas, and I do love easymode matchups. My main intention now is beating Burn and tackling my weaknesses in that matchup (both decklist-wise and player-wise), and I feel like playing UW against it a few times will definitely give me some good help in that matchup -- then I'll dial up the difficulty with Esper (not like I haven't already jammed a million games agaisnt them with Esper tho).

Tons of solid discussion, my only insert atm:

Baneslayer Angel is a great SB card for the Eldrazi and Dredge MUs.

They have virtually zero ways to beat it, Eldrazi *might* keep the dismember in for Colonnade but that's so few and far between - you can just wait til t7 if you have to.

Every time I've ever beaten Dredge has been on the back of early disruption + t5 baneslayer angel to wipe up any board they try to reassemble.

It's first strike makes it formidable against the entire Eldrazi lineup, and flying means you can even land it against Affinity and have zero fear about losing that game.

I board 2 BSA now, I played 1 for three weeks (9 events) and bumped it up because it won me so many games.

Also for the people who run 2 copies of Ghost Quarter (including myself), why do you not run a TecEdge and a single GQ?

They don't keep all is dust very often - their primary threats are so big that they don't care about tokens. They have a 5/5 trample haste on t3, they aren't worried about our tokens because of how late they come down.

Go ahead and ask in the eTron thread if they keep it in. And eTron rarely plays Karn, even more rarely plays Ugin. They're trying to put dudes on the board, not walkers.

BSA singiehandedly stops their entire creature base from attacking, and their only "out" is locking it down with Endbringer.

@tlhunter07: I play 2 GQ because every once in awhile you run into someone playing MB Blood Moon, or Affinity that doesn't play 4 lands, or GDS which only runs 6 nonfetches - GQ is just fine in a deck that also packs 4 PtE, and sometimes acts as color fixing in a pinch.

Quote from tlhunter07 »

Also for the people who run 2 copies of Ghost Quarter (including myself), why do you not run a TecEdge and a single GQ?

It's way more important for GQ to have no activation restrictions -- the 4 lands in play clause AND the 1 mana to activate on Tectonic Edge are pretty annoying. The decks that play Tec Edge (cough UW cough) also pair it with other forms of land disruption (cough Spreading Seas cough) to make the loss of the land matter much more than the restrictions of Tec Edge. We just want the land to tap for mana most of the time but sometimes kill a manland, Cavern, or Sea Gate Wreckage (or sometimes one of our own lands for fixing, as mentioned by kodieyost), but when some of our opponents tax our mana use or never hit 4 lands, then we're stuck with a Wastes.

Cool trick with Tec Edges tho, from the knowledge of the golden days of UWR with 4 Tec Edges in Pod era: If your opponent has exactly 4 lands in play, you can activate a 2nd Tec Edge in response to a 1st Tec Edge activation and kill 2-of-4 lands in play, since Tec Edge only counts number of lands on activation, not on resolution.

Quote from kodieyost »

They don't keep all is dust very often - their primary threats are so big that they don't care about tokens. They have a 5/5 trample haste on t3, they aren't worried about our tokens because of how late they come down.

Go ahead and ask in the eTron thread if they keep it in.

Be careful about this line of logic! They will certainly keep in All is Dust if they suspect we have planeswalkers, which is reasonable, considering nobody keeps track of Esper. Especially if they see an Elspeth in previous games.

By the way, "only play 2 Karns" is NOT the same as "rarely plays Karn", since almost every online list is playing 2 according to MTGGoldfish.

They can also easily kill Baneslayer with a Ballista and Tron lands. Wurmcoil and Batterskull also go right through it, and Endbringer easily locks it down. That's 8 answers they should have, post board. I would definitely board them in if I had them in my sideboard, but that's more because it's a card that can just auto-win in a lot of scenarios. It's a pretty fragile gameplan, though.

10 mana for Ballista to kill a Baneslayer is harder than one would expect, batterskull doesn't go through it (wut?), wurmcoil is a singleton in the board and gets handled so easily with our deck

I'm not saying it's great, but taking out bad cards for cards that are capable of swinging the game? I'll take it

I think somebody raised this a few pages ago, but has GDS gotten to the point on the metagame where Liliana's Defeat is viable? Kills everything but Snapcaster and gives us game against their planeswalkers, which is traditionally our weakness.

Quote from EsperShardmage »

I think somebody raised this a few pages ago, but has GDS gotten to the point on the metagame where Liliana's Defeat is viable? Kills everything but Snapcaster and gives us game against their planeswalkers, which is traditionally our weakness.

I asked Donny about this on stream and his response was that the sorcery speed is the limiting factor. I'd probably go with Celestial Purge - still hits all of their threats, only costs a mana more, and you can cast it at instant speed.

I really like it, the speed is yuck but the flexibility in hitting a walker may make it viable. I'd consider a SB card if GDS was more of an issue for me but it's usually pretty easy

I think if it was instant it might be an option, but when celestial purge, which is more on color and exiles instead of destroys and is instant its not even close, the 3 life is meh when you factor in those other considerations, its like negate vs counter squall debate in our deck, 3 life is not worth the less flexibility.

Agreed.

I'm jamming some Esper in legacy tonight, nice change of pace from Spanish Inquisition 😬