Quick and simple question: Is it possible/worth it right now?
The current meta can be broken down into three different types of decks. Devotion decks (red, blue, green and black), Esper, and Midrange (G/W or W/B).
I want to play control but white is my least favourite colour. However, I cannot see control being viable without white currently. Between the need for a sweeper against the devotion decks, with Supreme Verdict being the best available, just how good Detention Sphere is at being a cheap catch all answer to everything, and the card draw power in the ability to cantrip Azureus Charm and playing Sphinx's Revelation, it's hard to see any reason to play any other controls other than a U/W base.
But let's look at what options we do currently have;
G/B:
Green/Black has access to Gaze of Granite for a sweeper, Vraska the Unseen as a catch all and Underworld Connections and Read the Bones as a great draw engine. Desecration Demon and Reaper of the Wilds make great finishers that come down early enough, especially with some ramp, to end the game faster than a "draw-go" deck usually would. Deadbridge Chant and Bow of Nylea can also add in some good late game allowing you to recycle a Hero's Downfall over and over making sure you always have an answer in your hand, but without dedicating slots to ramp it's hard to tap out for that so late in the game.
The biggest downside to G/B is the lack of Scry Lands currently. Unless you get an early Underworld Connections you can run out of cards fairly quick, and paying life to draw can be dangerous right now against Red and Black devotion decks.
B/R:
If we replace green with red we gain access to burn spells which can provide a better plan against control, card advantage in Rakdos's Return and Sire of Insanity putting the pressure on our opponent to keep their hand stocked, rather than our own, and get access to Chandra, Pyromaster as a draw engine/finisher. Mizzium Mortars can provide a sweeper but is not really effective against the Green devotion decks and the deck could also run out of cards very fast with very few ways to refill the hand. Like B/G, a lack of Scry Lands also hurts. Overall i don't think its viable in the current meta unless I'm missing an obscure card.
Taking the best of any two of these combinations and running BUG, RUG or Grixis can also be done, which does add the ability to add some scry lands to each.
When it gets down to it though, do any of these combinations provide the consistency and utility of Esper to make them worth running over it? Sadly, I'm not sure they do. It has the best drawing ability, the best catch all, the best sweeper and some great utility and side board options.
It's very clear and evident to anyone that UW(b) is the best shell. There's no real reason not to run Verdict and Revelation of possible. But that's not to say that other colors can't compete or be viable in a metagame. In the end, it's all up to preference, and don't let the fact that better cards exist deter you from experimenting.
Oh, I thought he was talking about playing a spell that is countering a spell with counters on it as it comes into play, but I see you guys were just discussing whether he was flashing a creature with flash in order to flash a flashback or just flashing a creature with flash but not needing flash in order to flashback a spell without flash.
I feel Anger is better positioned than Verdict right now and Rev isn't all that much better than black's CA engines, even Opportunity, Jace, Steam Augury none of which require White. So while I still think White-based control decks have the most game right now, UWR or BWR (the red is important!), I wouldn't say it's a necessity.
It is actually the lack of detention sphere that is killing non white control.
Lost my games to gods or thier weapons.
Hammer sends golems your way.
Whip makes you kill everything twice.
Bident allows mono blue to match your CA.
Thassa perfects thier draw.
Heliod kills you with clerics.
Purphros burns you to death.
Erbos draws them cards.
Only G/B can deal with them.
Everyone else has to lean on thoughtsieze and counterspells
I am considering playing a playset of pithing needles is the side. I have only lost matches to gods weapons aetherling and turn three ashiok. Unfortunately for me they are everywhere.
If you're playing blue, just play a lot of counters, a couple of opportunities and a couple of Jaces (whichever one you want). Green has the bow, Ooze, and uh...(I guess it is weak) If you're playing red, a good burn spell or two, Chandra, and Anger of the Gods. If you're playing black, you have stupid amounts of removal (Thoughtseize, Duress, Ultimate Price, Doom Blade, Hero's Downfall, Lifebane Zombie etc.)
I run Grixis and while my decklist isn't necessarily optimal and I'm not an optimal player, I do believe that white is not mandatory for a good deck. The way I see it, a player can take one of two routes: 1) run white and play cards like D-Sphere, Sphinx's Rev, Supreme Verdict, and Elspeth, or 2) run other colors and deny your opponents the fruits of their white mana spells. Rakdos's Return shatters their hand and gives you card advantage, while Dreadbore and Hero's Downfall can destroy any walker that Esper, UWR, or other decks put onto the battlefield. And if you run blue, like Grixis or BUG, you can run nearly all the counterspells like Syncopate and Dissolve to deny your opponent their Revelations and D-Spheres. Plus you still get access to Aetherling.
So, all that plus Anger of the Gods and Ashiok = flexibility to play Magic without white.
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EDH/Commander
UBR Sedris RG Omnath, Locus of Rage UB The Scarab God RUG Maelstrom Wanderer WU Dragonlord Ojutai
I feel Anger is better positioned than Verdict right now and Rev isn't all that much better than black's CA engines, even Opportunity, Jace, Steam Augury none of which require White. So while I still think White-based control decks have the most game right now, UWR or BWR (the red is important!), I wouldn't say it's a necessity.
This statement is pretty questionable. Anger doesn't kill a huge amount of relevant, played creatures in the format. And currently no deck outside of a BTE god draw is killing you before verdict is live. Not to mention that Rev is significantly better than any other CA engine because unlike the black CA, it gains you life instead of costing it (important in a format with so much incidental damage) and the format is slow enough to be able to reliably Revelation for tons and chain them together. Read the bones and Underworld Connections are certainly good cards, but they're a faraway second tier to Jace and Rev.
Oh, I thought he was talking about playing a spell that is countering a spell with counters on it as it comes into play, but I see you guys were just discussing whether he was flashing a creature with flash in order to flash a flashback or just flashing a creature with flash but not needing flash in order to flashback a spell without flash.
In my experience with Grixis, the deck has a lot of one-for-one answers but can have trouble keeping up sometimes. I've packed a deck full of counterspells, doom blades and anger of the gods but stuff still manages to get through enough so I die before I put down my own threats. Granted, I could be taking the wrong approach and I'm just not good enough to build or pilot a Grixis deck. However, it seems to me that Esper has more versatile options and better mass removal than Grixis.
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Play history: Revised through Mirage, then M14 to present.
This statement is pretty questionable. Anger doesn't kill a huge amount of relevant, played creatures in the format. And currently no deck outside of a BTE god draw is killing you before verdict is live. Not to mention that Rev is significantly better than any other CA engine because unlike the black CA, it gains you life instead of costing it (important in a format with so much incidental damage) and the format is slow enough to be able to reliably Revelation for tons and chain them together. Read the bones and Underworld Connections are certainly good cards, but they're a faraway second tier to Jace and Rev.
Anger coming down a turn sooner potentially saves you a ton of life, more than a T6-ish Sphinx's Rev will gain you back that's for certain. It doesn't kill everything but that's not really its job, nor is it Verdict's. I mean sure, Verdict can trade 1-for-1 with Desecration Demon and Anger can't. Having the option is better than not but it isn't a major reason to run Verdict. Its primary job it to 2-for-1, 3-for-1 early swarms to preserve life. Anger does that for less. It also exiles, which shuts down Chandra's Phoenix, Voice of Resurgence, Xathrid Necromancer and the utilities of various other cards: DRS, Scooze, Varolz or anything with Scavenge, Dark Prophecy.
Rev is a good card but I just don't rate it as highly as most people seem to do. X-based draw spells have always been fairly niche cards and I'm not convinced putting a second color on it to tack on lifegain suddenly makes one eminently playable anymore than, say, Rakdos' Return is better than Blightning (because it isn't). It's more Standard having a relatively weak pool of CA engines, of which Rev is one of the best, than Rev being particularly good in a vacuum. But I could be wrong. *shrug*
Detention Sphere is pretty nice at least. Still, every color has a desirable card or two for any purpose one desires.
It's very clear and evident to anyone that UW(b) is the best shell. There's no real reason not to run Verdict and Revelation of possible. But that's not to say that other colors can't compete or be viable in a metagame. In the end, it's all up to preference, and don't let the fact that better cards exist deter you from experimenting.
Wraths are always a metagame call. Sweepers are not a mandatory element to control decks, and Supreme Verdict demands a signficant amount of white sources from your manabase. It's not exactly a "gimme" to play this card; there are a number of costs to it.
And when you look at the fact that Azorius Charm is basically a sorcery, Dsphere is an even pricier sorcery, and almost all of the other white removal is very situational and narrow, white doesn't look like it's pulling much weight as a support color for a more instant-based control deck.
Sure, Sphinx's Revelation is strong, but if that's the only reason to play white, there are other options available. This isn't a matter of preference, it's a matter of playing cards within your manabase's capabilities. If you're in 3 other colors because they deliver better answers against the threats of the metagame, then going into white for Revelation is probably worse than just playing Opportunity. I believe Revelation is better than Opportunity as a bomb draw spell on that part of the mana curve, but...well, generally speaking, it's better to actually be able to cast your spells.
So no, the UW spells are not "better" than other ones. They have downsides. They have costs. They have different functions. People are playing UW because the rotation is about a month old and UW is both the obvious choice as well as the familiar one. Everyone knows you can win games with Verdicts and Revelations, so people are going to play something that is proven. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't mean that's the best option; it's going to take a while for the other options to be explored.
Except nothing in any other color combination compares to the Uw ones, even considering the opportunity costs you're mentioning. Those sorts of things can be a factor in more powerful metagames (abrupt decay is better than a lot of other cards, but it costs 2 specific colors, doesn't pitch to force, and doesn't kill Jace, for instance) but in a Standard that's as low-powered as this, the alternatives just don't exist. Versatility means a lot more than people think. Yes, other colors offer specific scenarios where one card choice can outpace a single card choice in UWx, but it's not that simple. Let me break it down for everyone here, slot by slot.
Control in this format needs sweepers because an abundance of swarm aggro exists. To claim otherwise is simply ignorant. Not having a sweeper means you probably just lose to Mono u, Mono G or splash, GW or Gr aggro, White Weenie if anyone plays it, etc. So your two choices for a playable sweeper in this format are Anger and Verdict. They're both sorceries that cost double off-color mana. Anger is cheaper so that's ahead. They're functionally the same against small aggro, but Verdict is significantly better versus all types of Devotion decks, midrange, and control. Anger's upside is only relevant against two creatures, Voice and Phoenix (Necromancer is unplayable, as is Varolz and anything with Scavenge). Conveniently, White offers multiple exiling answers to those same cards. So I think clearly in any metagame that isn't 100% swarm aggro, Verdict wins out. So white pulls ahead here. Not to mention simply by choosing Verdict you get the "bonus prize" opportunity of maybe Elspeth or Merciless Eviction to supplement, whereas choosing Anger gives you "maybe I'll overload Mizzium Mortars someday."
On the removal front, Black offers excellent 1-for-1 removal in this format. Which is the primary (only) reason people play Esper over straight UW. Red removal is decent against aggro as usual but pretty poor otherwise, considering none of it deals with Gods, hexproof, indestructible, or anything over 4 toughness. That being said, Detention Sphere, Celestial Flare, and Last Breath between them can deal with all of the same things the Doom Blade/Shock variants can, while D Sphere offers potential X-for-1s, exiles, and hits noncreature permanents in exchange for sorcery speed. There are plenty of situations where instant speed one-for-one is relevant though, so I'll give the slight edge to Black.
As far as draw power goes, clearly Revelation is leagues ahead of everything else at instant speed. Opportunity gets you one more card but locks you in to a specific cost, while not gaining you any life or offering versatility. Inspiration is terrible outside of pure undiluted draw-go. Everything else is a cantrip (UW wins here, too, because of the versatility of Azorius Charm). At sorcery speed, all control variants have access to Divination, Jace, and other forms of card quality advantage like Thassa or Omenspeaker, though I don't recommend anything but Jace. Black would have an edge here with Read the Bones and Underworld Connections, so I'll call the downgrade of Rev->Opportunity and the upgrade of Divination->Read the Bones a wash.
As far as win conditions go, everyone has access to AEtherling and that's enough said. Though, again, UW gets the versatility points because its stabilizing cards like Elspeth and Rev basically can win the game on their own. Desecration Demon, Ashiok, Stormbreath Dragon (whatever UR would play) are all exceedingly fragile and do nothing to help you stabilize like an Elspeth would.
All U variants have access to the same countermagic, except UR gets Counterflux, UB gets Psychic Strike, and UW gets Render Silent. Of those, only Counterflux is playable and it's rarely better than Dissolve so it's a wash again. Black offers discard as disruption, but discard becomes quickly outclassed in this metagame. Given that our only win conditions are slow to come online, we give our opponents time to draw out of whatever advantage we got through early discard. Combine that with the fact that Thoughtseize's life loss and comparative lack of utility versus aggro after they dump their hand, and this means that a)no deck can rely on discard as its primary disruption without a fast clock, and b) no one advises running full sets of discard spells. So UB doesn't have a significant advantage here either.
To address the final argument that "playing white forces you to play more at sorcery speed," this is 100% true. All of our win conditions, and sweepers, plus half of the card advantage and removal, are sorcery speed. But I would always rather be able to play a sorcery removal, tapping mana on my turn and losing the opportunity cost of instants, than sit there with a hand of instants that can't answer the current situation. Multiple tokens, Planeswalkers, Enchantment threats like Whip, Assemble, and Underworld Connections are all things UW can answer that other colors have a hard time doing, and sorcery speed is the price we pay for that power. In general the metagame is favorable to a more tapout control deck right now, since outside of AEtherling there is not a single card that is must-counter independent of board state.
All of this points to the fact that while each color can shine in its own way, none of them even come close to offering a compelling reason to drop White. If anything this argument just gives more legitimacy to Esper as the top dog. But straight UW has the consistency and versatility to answer everything the other colors are good at and more. It all depends on the build and the answers you have access to, and UW has access to the most.
Oh, I thought he was talking about playing a spell that is countering a spell with counters on it as it comes into play, but I see you guys were just discussing whether he was flashing a creature with flash in order to flash a flashback or just flashing a creature with flash but not needing flash in order to flashback a spell without flash.
With that said, the more I watch the tournaments happen the more I feel like this is a great standard season in that the difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2 decks is fairly small. In Seattle Jund Monsters took 15th and in Milwaukee Boros aggro, B/W/R Midrange (whipzidazy?) and G/W aggro all managed to get into top 8, with Junk, B/R Control (called B/R midrange) and another Jund deck in the top 16.
Its quite obvious how strong Mono-U, Esper, Mono-B and G/R Devo are right now, and are pretty easy to call the best decks in the format, but there seems to be quite a few decks that can keep up outside of that.
The current meta can be broken down into three different types of decks. Devotion decks (red, blue, green and black), Esper, and Midrange (G/W or W/B).
I want to play control but white is my least favourite colour. However, I cannot see control being viable without white currently. Between the need for a sweeper against the devotion decks, with Supreme Verdict being the best available, just how good Detention Sphere is at being a cheap catch all answer to everything, and the card draw power in the ability to cantrip Azureus Charm and playing Sphinx's Revelation, it's hard to see any reason to play any other controls other than a U/W base.
But let's look at what options we do currently have;
G/B:
Green/Black has access to Gaze of Granite for a sweeper, Vraska the Unseen as a catch all and Underworld Connections and Read the Bones as a great draw engine. Desecration Demon and Reaper of the Wilds make great finishers that come down early enough, especially with some ramp, to end the game faster than a "draw-go" deck usually would. Deadbridge Chant and Bow of Nylea can also add in some good late game allowing you to recycle a Hero's Downfall over and over making sure you always have an answer in your hand, but without dedicating slots to ramp it's hard to tap out for that so late in the game.
The biggest downside to G/B is the lack of Scry Lands currently. Unless you get an early Underworld Connections you can run out of cards fairly quick, and paying life to draw can be dangerous right now against Red and Black devotion decks.
B/R:
If we replace green with red we gain access to burn spells which can provide a better plan against control, card advantage in Rakdos's Return and Sire of Insanity putting the pressure on our opponent to keep their hand stocked, rather than our own, and get access to Chandra, Pyromaster as a draw engine/finisher. Mizzium Mortars can provide a sweeper but is not really effective against the Green devotion decks and the deck could also run out of cards very fast with very few ways to refill the hand. Like B/G, a lack of Scry Lands also hurts. Overall i don't think its viable in the current meta unless I'm missing an obscure card.
U/B:
Between Goblin Eletromancer, Steam Augury and Ral Zarek Izzet can provide some pretty insane card and mana advantage early on. Opportunity also becomes very playable because of this being able to be cast much earlier while still leaving counter and burn mana up. Like B/R you also get access to Chandra, Pyromaster but just like it you also only get Mizzium Mortars as a sweeper, luckily you can cast it earlier. This can also be run as a combo deck with Young Pyromancer and Purphoros, God of the Forge
Taking the best of any two of these combinations and running BUG, RUG or Grixis can also be done, which does add the ability to add some scry lands to each.
When it gets down to it though, do any of these combinations provide the consistency and utility of Esper to make them worth running over it? Sadly, I'm not sure they do. It has the best drawing ability, the best catch all, the best sweeper and some great utility and side board options.
What do you think?
You are correct! I totally forgot Anger exists. Gives a bit more power to the red based options.
-regarding Snapcaster Mage.
It is actually the lack of detention sphere that is killing non white control.
Lost my games to gods or thier weapons.
Hammer sends golems your way.
Whip makes you kill everything twice.
Bident allows mono blue to match your CA.
Thassa perfects thier draw.
Heliod kills you with clerics.
Purphros burns you to death.
Erbos draws them cards.
Only G/B can deal with them.
Everyone else has to lean on thoughtsieze and counterspells
I am considering playing a playset of pithing needles is the side. I have only lost matches to gods weapons aetherling and turn three ashiok. Unfortunately for me they are everywhere.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
There's plenty of options
Ratchet Bomb
Pithing Needle
G/B
Putrefy
Abrupt Decay
Golgari Charm
R/B
Dreadbore
UB:
Far/Away
Ashiok
UR:
Izzet Charm
Ral Zarek
If you're playing blue, just play a lot of counters, a couple of opportunities and a couple of Jaces (whichever one you want). Green has the bow, Ooze, and uh...(I guess it is weak) If you're playing red, a good burn spell or two, Chandra, and Anger of the Gods. If you're playing black, you have stupid amounts of removal (Thoughtseize, Duress, Ultimate Price, Doom Blade, Hero's Downfall, Lifebane Zombie etc.)
Sure, Verdict and Revelation are reason enough to play white...
But D-Sphere is the best reason to go w/ a UW shell at the moment, I think.
Elspeth and Blood Baron also make convincing arguments.
So, all that plus Anger of the Gods and Ashiok = flexibility to play Magic without white.
UBR Sedris
RG Omnath, Locus of Rage
UB The Scarab God
RUG Maelstrom Wanderer
WU Dragonlord Ojutai
This statement is pretty questionable. Anger doesn't kill a huge amount of relevant, played creatures in the format. And currently no deck outside of a BTE god draw is killing you before verdict is live. Not to mention that Rev is significantly better than any other CA engine because unlike the black CA, it gains you life instead of costing it (important in a format with so much incidental damage) and the format is slow enough to be able to reliably Revelation for tons and chain them together. Read the bones and Underworld Connections are certainly good cards, but they're a faraway second tier to Jace and Rev.
-regarding Snapcaster Mage.
Anger coming down a turn sooner potentially saves you a ton of life, more than a T6-ish Sphinx's Rev will gain you back that's for certain. It doesn't kill everything but that's not really its job, nor is it Verdict's. I mean sure, Verdict can trade 1-for-1 with Desecration Demon and Anger can't. Having the option is better than not but it isn't a major reason to run Verdict. Its primary job it to 2-for-1, 3-for-1 early swarms to preserve life. Anger does that for less. It also exiles, which shuts down Chandra's Phoenix, Voice of Resurgence, Xathrid Necromancer and the utilities of various other cards: DRS, Scooze, Varolz or anything with Scavenge, Dark Prophecy.
Rev is a good card but I just don't rate it as highly as most people seem to do. X-based draw spells have always been fairly niche cards and I'm not convinced putting a second color on it to tack on lifegain suddenly makes one eminently playable anymore than, say, Rakdos' Return is better than Blightning (because it isn't). It's more Standard having a relatively weak pool of CA engines, of which Rev is one of the best, than Rev being particularly good in a vacuum. But I could be wrong. *shrug*
Detention Sphere is pretty nice at least. Still, every color has a desirable card or two for any purpose one desires.
Wraths are always a metagame call. Sweepers are not a mandatory element to control decks, and Supreme Verdict demands a signficant amount of white sources from your manabase. It's not exactly a "gimme" to play this card; there are a number of costs to it.
And when you look at the fact that Azorius Charm is basically a sorcery, Dsphere is an even pricier sorcery, and almost all of the other white removal is very situational and narrow, white doesn't look like it's pulling much weight as a support color for a more instant-based control deck.
Sure, Sphinx's Revelation is strong, but if that's the only reason to play white, there are other options available. This isn't a matter of preference, it's a matter of playing cards within your manabase's capabilities. If you're in 3 other colors because they deliver better answers against the threats of the metagame, then going into white for Revelation is probably worse than just playing Opportunity. I believe Revelation is better than Opportunity as a bomb draw spell on that part of the mana curve, but...well, generally speaking, it's better to actually be able to cast your spells.
So no, the UW spells are not "better" than other ones. They have downsides. They have costs. They have different functions. People are playing UW because the rotation is about a month old and UW is both the obvious choice as well as the familiar one. Everyone knows you can win games with Verdicts and Revelations, so people are going to play something that is proven. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't mean that's the best option; it's going to take a while for the other options to be explored.
Control in this format needs sweepers because an abundance of swarm aggro exists. To claim otherwise is simply ignorant. Not having a sweeper means you probably just lose to Mono u, Mono G or splash, GW or Gr aggro, White Weenie if anyone plays it, etc. So your two choices for a playable sweeper in this format are Anger and Verdict. They're both sorceries that cost double off-color mana. Anger is cheaper so that's ahead. They're functionally the same against small aggro, but Verdict is significantly better versus all types of Devotion decks, midrange, and control. Anger's upside is only relevant against two creatures, Voice and Phoenix (Necromancer is unplayable, as is Varolz and anything with Scavenge). Conveniently, White offers multiple exiling answers to those same cards. So I think clearly in any metagame that isn't 100% swarm aggro, Verdict wins out. So white pulls ahead here. Not to mention simply by choosing Verdict you get the "bonus prize" opportunity of maybe Elspeth or Merciless Eviction to supplement, whereas choosing Anger gives you "maybe I'll overload Mizzium Mortars someday."
On the removal front, Black offers excellent 1-for-1 removal in this format. Which is the primary (only) reason people play Esper over straight UW. Red removal is decent against aggro as usual but pretty poor otherwise, considering none of it deals with Gods, hexproof, indestructible, or anything over 4 toughness. That being said, Detention Sphere, Celestial Flare, and Last Breath between them can deal with all of the same things the Doom Blade/Shock variants can, while D Sphere offers potential X-for-1s, exiles, and hits noncreature permanents in exchange for sorcery speed. There are plenty of situations where instant speed one-for-one is relevant though, so I'll give the slight edge to Black.
As far as draw power goes, clearly Revelation is leagues ahead of everything else at instant speed. Opportunity gets you one more card but locks you in to a specific cost, while not gaining you any life or offering versatility. Inspiration is terrible outside of pure undiluted draw-go. Everything else is a cantrip (UW wins here, too, because of the versatility of Azorius Charm). At sorcery speed, all control variants have access to Divination, Jace, and other forms of card quality advantage like Thassa or Omenspeaker, though I don't recommend anything but Jace. Black would have an edge here with Read the Bones and Underworld Connections, so I'll call the downgrade of Rev->Opportunity and the upgrade of Divination->Read the Bones a wash.
As far as win conditions go, everyone has access to AEtherling and that's enough said. Though, again, UW gets the versatility points because its stabilizing cards like Elspeth and Rev basically can win the game on their own. Desecration Demon, Ashiok, Stormbreath Dragon (whatever UR would play) are all exceedingly fragile and do nothing to help you stabilize like an Elspeth would.
All U variants have access to the same countermagic, except UR gets Counterflux, UB gets Psychic Strike, and UW gets Render Silent. Of those, only Counterflux is playable and it's rarely better than Dissolve so it's a wash again. Black offers discard as disruption, but discard becomes quickly outclassed in this metagame. Given that our only win conditions are slow to come online, we give our opponents time to draw out of whatever advantage we got through early discard. Combine that with the fact that Thoughtseize's life loss and comparative lack of utility versus aggro after they dump their hand, and this means that a)no deck can rely on discard as its primary disruption without a fast clock, and b) no one advises running full sets of discard spells. So UB doesn't have a significant advantage here either.
To address the final argument that "playing white forces you to play more at sorcery speed," this is 100% true. All of our win conditions, and sweepers, plus half of the card advantage and removal, are sorcery speed. But I would always rather be able to play a sorcery removal, tapping mana on my turn and losing the opportunity cost of instants, than sit there with a hand of instants that can't answer the current situation. Multiple tokens, Planeswalkers, Enchantment threats like Whip, Assemble, and Underworld Connections are all things UW can answer that other colors have a hard time doing, and sorcery speed is the price we pay for that power. In general the metagame is favorable to a more tapout control deck right now, since outside of AEtherling there is not a single card that is must-counter independent of board state.
All of this points to the fact that while each color can shine in its own way, none of them even come close to offering a compelling reason to drop White. If anything this argument just gives more legitimacy to Esper as the top dog. But straight UW has the consistency and versatility to answer everything the other colors are good at and more. It all depends on the build and the answers you have access to, and UW has access to the most.
-regarding Snapcaster Mage.
With that said, the more I watch the tournaments happen the more I feel like this is a great standard season in that the difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2 decks is fairly small. In Seattle Jund Monsters took 15th and in Milwaukee Boros aggro, B/W/R Midrange (whipzidazy?) and G/W aggro all managed to get into top 8, with Junk, B/R Control (called B/R midrange) and another Jund deck in the top 16.
Its quite obvious how strong Mono-U, Esper, Mono-B and G/R Devo are right now, and are pretty easy to call the best decks in the format, but there seems to be quite a few decks that can keep up outside of that.
I like where this thread is going, lot's of discussion! I think I will be trying out a G/B Control list with Polukranos, World Eater, Desecration Demon and Reaper of the Wilds (2/2/2 maybe?) as finishers, Deadbridge Chant / Bow of Nylea as a late game engine, and a sideboard full of Dreg Mangler and Mistcutter Hydra to become more aggressive when needed.
Mind you there is also 3(?) Esper lists in the top 8. So it's dominance still shows.
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=60178 for the list
http://www.starcitygames.com/events/coverage/deck_tech_naya_control_with_br.html for the deck tech