I love Declaration in Stone, but I don't want to rely on it as a primary removal spell. I like having the one-of as kind of a bullet to keep my opponent honest, but I think that the drawback of giving your opponent Clue tokens is real, especially in games that go long. We're control; we go long. Funny enough, there's enough Investigate support that I almost said screw it and just played ways to Investigate rather than dedicated card draw, but that's just crazy, right?
We have talked about Declaration in Stone in some good detail a few pages back. The thing is, that Esper plays a really strong long game, and the decks that are fast - you need answers for, and they do not really have time or resources to be activating Clue tokens without losing efficiency against you. The card is incredibly deceptive and people should really let go of the Investigate clause. I have never, in over 100 games and 6-7 group members, felt that the Clue token has ever been a draw back.
In addition to not wanting too many copies of Declaration (I'm almost guaranteed to play some number in the board as well, if for nothing but an efficient token-hoser), I felt the inclusion of Silkwrap justified because of Delirium alone. Although I'm only running a couple To the Slaughter here, I think the payoff is worth it. In addition, I plan on running some number of Invasive Surgery in the sideboard.
Silkwrap is WAY more narrow, too narrow to justify it over given them a token they have to invest resources in... Delirium is easy to get in Esper, you don't need enchantments to make it any easier. You also do not want to be trying to rush into Delirium for To the Slaughters that are just not effective. You should be using this card to hit man lands, or take advantage of a stable board to keep you way ahead if they make a hail mary come back play.
I really like new Jace, and may end up playing him instead, but I do like that Ob Nixilis straight up kills things, and I like the fact that Ob Nixilis is a win condition. Otherwise, the PW uniqueness rule is an issue, as you mentioned. But eh, this is all subject to change. I just realized I need to move a couple of things around anyway because I forgot to put in my Ojutai's Commands.
Bouncing 2 creatures in a row is better than killing one. Scrying, then drawing a card and not losing life, is better than drawing a card and losing a life. Ob Nixilis is way worse than the new Jace... by a very long mile. What I also mentioned was that the PW uniqueness rule is not really an issue. I also think Ojutai's Command is horrible, and you are probably way better off running Silumgar's Command. Idk. Take it with a grain of salt I guess.
I am not sure why you would ever really want Ob Nixilis Reignited over Jace, Unraveler of Secrets outside of the situations where you have Jace, Telepath Unbound in play and don't want to bin it for Jace, Unraveler of Secrets. I have found myself in this situation a few times, and I honestly do not mind having to hold a Jace back or give one up for any of the other's effects. Beaing able to -2 and be at 3 counters the turn the walker enters play, is actually a really big deal.
Confirm Suspicions is a really interesting card. I have been thinking of trying it out, but 5 mana for a counter spell is a lot for this deck. I am curious to see how it works though, because the upside in the mid and late game is pretty substantial.
I was wondering how you deal with Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. I haven't played any since RtZ as my meta was so saturated with that [insert string of curse words] that I ended up running a 2 / 2 split of Infinite Obliteration. Unless I resolved that before they resolved him on like turn 5-7, it was usually a game over as they'd start chaining him and destroy my land base. I understand that having more exile effects will help, but the land destruction was brutal for me. Getting knocked off a color and then getting taken down to 4ish lands was just too much to recover from.
You just have to battle through it. It is not easy, but I have uploaded a Cockatrice replay for you to watch if you want. It is not really a game where Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger was played, but it was a game where my opponent had me under World Breaker recursion. He cast 8 World Breakers on me in the game, and 3 Chandra, Flamecaller while he was ahead. I still won the game, and I was even hampered on the amount of B mana I had at some rather inconvenient times - but in fairness, I also was drawing them at very convenient times.
A few things to note.
The Eldrazi Package
This package does not always consist of 3 or 4 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Often times, the real back breaking card is World Breaker. He can drop earlier and start wreaking havoc on your 3 color mana base (as displayed in the replay). Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger is something you can leverage with. He is slow, and if you can cut off the ramp he is even slower. This allows you to build your mana base up and start getting threats out. Your ideal goal is to give them something else to target other than your land. If they have to exile Jace, Unraveler of Secrets, or Sorin, Grim Nemesis instead of 2 lands, you are still very much in the game. In the replay, you will see that I was aggressive with trying to flip Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. If you have the spells to work on a low curve, get aggressive with your planeswalkers. Whether or not the land matters or if your threat matters, is something you need to gauge. If you can get the threat out under the land destruction, then the land destruction hurts a lot less. If you cannot get the threat out under it, you need to focus on stalling it as long as possible. Anything above 6 lands is fluff and you can lose them to triggers without being out of the game. The Eldrazi package does not always run Reality Smasher either. It caught me off guard in the replay, but you can work around it.
Playing for the Long Game
The GR Elzrazi Ramp has a really solid late game, but something to keep in mind is that a good portion of their deck is devoted to getting their late game into play much earlier, so when the late game arrives, they draw a lot of those fuel cards that are not really doing anything. Always play for the long game here, and the longer game you play for, the better your chances of making optimal plays are because you have more live cards to keep a top deck war in your favor.
Diverting Their Plan of Attack
Discard spells are pretty enticing, as they can do a lot of work. You can use these to help you force them to focus on another line of play, but it is not entirely necessary. It will make your game a lot smoother, but consider what you are giving up for those spells. I personally like Pick the Brain over Infinite Obliteration. Both cost 3 mana, and one will hit everything without the need for Delirium, but the effect is not always necessary and the trade off is that if you have Delirium, you can take all their Chandra, Flamecallers as well. I like this because it become applicable in a Control vs Control match. Really though, forcing them to change their line of play is how you are going to nickle and dime them in the best possible way and you can do this by forcing them to exile a threat, or your lands. Use this as leverage.
Here is the download link to the Cockatrice Replay. You can place it in your replay folder or open it with Cockatrice to watch.
RDW has a lot going against it during the opening format - particularly the fact that Reflector Mage and Sylvan Advocate are popular cards and also incredibly powerful cards. I think the mere existence of these cards is going to let the format open up in a fairly midrange slugfest fashion.
I don't think everyone else was talking of getting out of blue. Blue does offer it's own edge, I merely stated the BW was doing much better in our test group - and it is a completely different deck, and not because it does not have blue in it. Unfortunately I have been asked not to share the BW list by my group and I have to respect that. But here is my current Esper build for those interested.
Honestly, this deck sees a LOT of cards. If the match is against Control or Midrange, it can come pretty close to decking itself. Some games I end with 5-15 cards left if they are grindy games. A lot of this is because Jace, Unraveler of Secrets and Soring, Grim Nemesis are pretty hard to kill with creature damage, and the deck is good at keeping a board down and under control. Their abilities that work towards ultimate, are drawing you cards and if you have both out for 2-3 turns you are seeing 6-9 cards not including the ones you were seeing while you had just one of them stuck. I think between the walkers and Anticipate, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy looting, and Epiphany at the Drownyard, Esper's drawing capabilities are actually in a great place. Maybe it is because I am a rather tight player, but I have not really changed this list at all, except maybe a few SB cards.
If I were going to make changes, I would likely stick in a single reshuffle option again, but probably more like Learn from the Past. Being low on threats makes sure I have to play tight with the deck and sometimes you do lose both your Sorin and have to use a Jace emblem from either to finish game 1. This means you sometimes get pretty dangerously low on deck size.
The other option is to try and fit in 1-2 more win conditions, but I am not really a fan of Dragons right now and I do not want a 3rd Sorin, Grim Nemesis. Linvala, the Preserver maybe something to slot in, but for those long games she is a pretty brutal creature to have to rely on sometimes.
Have you ever actually played Mindrwack Demon in the deck? I can count on 1 hand the number of times he has not hit his own Delirium, and I can still use that hand to eat my dinner...
I think everyone is majorly downplaying the life loss from Anguished Unmaking I really do not think you will want to run more than 2 without multiple life gain avenues.
No, they are downplaying the life loss on their draw spells.
The point is not to race to a state of Delirium, it is to aggressively play threats and utility so that you can enter Delirium in the mid game. If you have never played a Rock deck or a classic Junk deck, I think you are being a little critical of what you think they should be doing as opposed to what htey actually are doing.
W White Weenie GR Atarka Red BW Orzhov Midrange GR Eldrazi Ramp RB Rakdos Dragons RB Vampire Madness GB Delirium UWG Collected Company BWG Collected Company GWR Naya Walkers WUB Esper Control
Each member is working with 2 decks and we rotate best of 5's in testing and do about 3-4 hour sessions. There is also the spotty testing I do for a bit on Cockatrice every day, but a lot of those games right now are really diverse, and I am the only person playing on Cockatrice lobby games. Right now, we are mainly trading feedback on the color pie and having SCD's. We do not have all of the set spoiled, so we really cannot gauge everything with 100% accuracy. But we know 4/5 sets that will make up the Standard card pool and that is still a lot of information to go on.
White
White has been a really strong color in testing. Most of us have agreed that W offers you some of the best midrange support of any colors. There is a ton of removal options in these colors and most of them are completely playable. There are also a ton of cards that add to a midrange top end, well priced, premium threats. This color seems to be a very solid backbone of the format.
Blue
Blue is a color we are pretty sure is the worst color to be dabbling in right now. There is not a whole lot of card selection, the draw options are almost all bad, and the finishers are practically worthless. The only real benefit to being in blue right now is that the format seems like it could be pretty slow. With W and B being the strongest colors in testing, blue counter spells may have a chance - and make the color marginally playable. You do not really get any solid payouts when playing with blue, and the only cards that are really worth anything are Reflector Mage and Dragonlord Ojutai. Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is pretty volatile, and either has a really high ceiling or a really deep bottom.
Black
Most of us have agreed that black is far and away the best color to be in right now. All of the decks running black have been doing well in testing, and the color offers a lot of aggressive options as well as a lot of grindy options for midrange strategies. What sets W and B so far ahead of all the other colors, is that they have a lot of playability to them where the other colors are much more linear.
Red
Red is a color we have not entirely been impressed with. The red aggro decks have been doing well, but they have some glaring issues and feel pretty close to a glass cannon. The color seems to want to play mindrange, but is kind of stuck being an aggro deck. The color has been ranked above blue, so I guess that is something. Personally, I feel like red has a lot of unexplored space and the brewer in me suspects that the general consensus among our group is inaccurate - but most everyone seems to think it is pretty bad right now.
Green
Green is rank 3 in our group. The color offers a lot of strong approaches, from ramping hard, to rolling out a solid midrange game plan that is durable. Most of our thoughts are based on Collected Company, but even the GB Delirium deck in our group has been putting up surprising results. Sylvan Advocate is a really solid option, and I suspect it is the reason G is a favorable color among our group.
As it Pertains to Esper
We backed out of the Dragons shell for the most part. The problem we had was that Dragonlord Ojutai was getting aced by a lot of cards. To the Slaughter, Anguished Unmaking, World Breaker, Transgress the Mind, Declaration in Stone, and Archangel Avacyn. Decks going wide mean you have to have a sweeper, and gone are the days when you could hold out Crux of Fate to keep an Ojutai out. It ended up being clunky and easier to remove than a well placed planeswalker would be, and it was pretty unanimous that the only real benefit to risking your dragons was so that you could have Foul-Tongue Invocation, which was rather lackluster. We have had better results with the non dragon list - but even it is having some pretty glaring issues.
When the set is fully spoiled, we will be shortlisting our gauntlet and moving on from there. If I had to guess what we will be short listing, it is as follows:
GR Atarka Red BW Orzhov Midrange GR Eldrazi Ramp UWG Collected Company GWR Naya Walkers
Is it possible to know for sure? Of course not. But if that is our short list, I probably will not even bother touching Esper Dragons.
Would you happen to be willing to share your Orzhov Midrange deck? I like the concept and I will be playing in SCG Baltimore the Saturday after the set releases and I'd really like to hone my list so I can be sure to preorder everything I need for the event. Thanks!
I can get the list. I am not the one handling it for the gauntlet, so I do not know what the exact 75 is. But we do talk about the cards we like and the cards we dislike, so I know what it kind of consists of and rough numbers. I will get the full 60 for you though.
I'm really torn between Oath of Nissa and the newly spoiled Vessel of Nascency. The Vessel digs deeper, fuels delirium easier, but requires more work to get the effect from it.
I'm also not a big fan of Soul Swallower. It's underwhelming without Delirium, and even with it, you still need to wait a whole turn to get it going. The Gitrog Monster is big right away and can be a CA engine, especially when used in conjunction with lands like Drownyard Temple.
I'm brewing a G/B version for now, but so far it's lacking in a good instant spell to go with To the Slaughter. To anyone playing three colors, perhaps a one-of Pilgrim's Eye can be useful, serving various purposes.
Vessel is pretty slow, but it is better at fueling. Honestly, I would still pass on Vessel. You want to be fast with threats, not necessarily Delirium itself.
Not a fan of The Gitrog Monster. It may be a 6/6 for 5, but having to sac a land each turn to keep him in play is brutal. I would say it is not that much of an issue, if tokens were not prevalent - for them not to matter, he needs actual evasion and not pseudo evasion. Traverse the Ulvenwald is nutty good, in fact it is kind of what makes the deck so sick imo.
The real gem today is 3/3 Ooze for 2G. This thing turns into a mini GHero of Bladehold kind of dude.
There are still over 100 cards to be spoiled, any one of which could drastically change the direction of this whole thread. That's why the list I created has such a random removal package, myself and everyone else just doesn't know yet, what we'll be facing. I can say though, I do believe sweepers will trump spot removal.
Historically, the last portion of final spoilers is not super impact to the point it really changes things so much that 90% of the known cards shift in power level. Most of that drastic change is simply from letting the cookie crumble as it may. Things will inevitable be changed, and I am not claiming to have a solved meta, but we have a good amount of information that there is a foundation for the first week or two and that should be where your target is, not trying to break the meta open.
I tried brewing an Orzhov control deck, just for the sake of argument... it's too hard without blue. Your card draw is too painful. You're pretty much dependent on Read the Bones and Ob Nixilis, Reignited's +1. Added in the life cost of Anguished Unmaking, you got a problem. I tried to find some high utility life gain that fits in the shell but was unsuccessful. There's tons of spot removal available in those colors but the card draw is tough.. you'll pretty much be praying you survive long enough to get Sorin, Grim Nemesis on the board. I'm not convinced that cutting blue AND still playing control will be viable.
We have not had too many issues with it. These colors have a lot of built in card advantage that your card draw is not the main source of it. There also is a good amount of lifelink in these colors for stabilizing as well. In fact, we have even used Anguished Unmaking retty aggressively in our group just to see where the line is for how much life you can give up and still stay in control of the pace of the game. Orzhov has probably been the best deck in our gauntlet, and is leagues better all around than Esper so far. Take it as you will, I suppose.
I think we have to see, how good the mana really works out or if two colors are better than good old Esper. UW, UB and WB all have some nice options, so has Esper.
Shard set ups have deceptively good mana, wedge mana is pretty shoddy though. Our group is actually up in the air if we prefer fetches or the new mana, but that is really hard to weigh when you have mechanics like Delve in the format, where fetching is more than just a smooth mana base, but also a reusable resource. I think people will be hesitant about the mana for a bit, but it is actually really good if you are in Shards. I am confidant that it is actually easier to do WUB with the new mana base, than it was with fetches - which was actually not insanely difficult to do if you paid attention to your mana cost on spells.
Virulent plague was the only thing that the black decks were playing as flaying tendrils exiles their own creatures and that doesnt exactly let them have the graveyard play that they want. Other possible options were rising miasma but at 4 mana with a low curve to the deck already i dont really see the decks wanting to take a turn off to play that and do nothing else.
You can even go look at the decks Chpin and others have been posting on star city or tcgplayer. Most are trying to just go wider than things that produce tokens. Something we dont exactly have the luxury of doing.
Your black decks are apparently very different than ours. Languish saves all your high end threats, and why you would be in Mono black is beyond me. Orzhov has cards like Linvala, the Preserver and planeswalkers - which don't care about your sweepers. White also gives you access to Declaration in Stone which hampers the hell out of token strategies and leaves your entire board intact. RB has red sweepers that leave your threats like Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, or Thunderbreak Reagent, perfectly intact and gives your more mileage than Flaying Tendrils. I think you are grotesquely underestimating how good To the Slaughter is, especially if you are wanting to compare it to Foul-Tongue Invocation, which is a totally different card.
I don't think the issue is To the Slaughter, it is deck construction.
On the Topic of Declaration in Stone
This card is nuts. You may be giving your opponent a Clue token, but you have to think about what that token actually means, and a majority of our test games, it is time. Instead of them casting cards on their turn, they spend 2 to draw a card. I am okay with that. Instead of spending 2 on their turn, they do nothing with that 2 and pop the clue on my turn. I am okay with that, better than a 2 mana creature that represents damage. It is also something that sometimes has to be severely delayed, meaning they are not getting the card right away - I am perfectly fine with that. Some of my favorite text in the game comes straight from Wall of Denial, because it points out the foundation for every control deck - time.
Is giving them a clue optimal? Not really. But neither was giving them 5 life or a basic land. Sure, this spell is not 1 white mana and instant speed, but this is also very different from those formats and can do something that those spells did not - hit multiple creatures at ones without having to pay X. There is premium value in this card that is not written on the card.
W White Weenie GR Atarka Red BW Orzhov Midrange GR Eldrazi Ramp RB Rakdos Dragons RB Vampire Madness GB Delirium UWG Collected Company BWG Collected Company GWR Naya Walkers WUB Esper Control
Each member is working with 2 decks and we rotate best of 5's in testing and do about 3-4 hour sessions. There is also the spotty testing I do for a bit on Cockatrice every day, but a lot of those games right now are really diverse, and I am the only person playing on Cockatrice lobby games. Right now, we are mainly trading feedback on the color pie and having SCD's. We do not have all of the set spoiled, so we really cannot gauge everything with 100% accuracy. But we know 4/5 sets that will make up the Standard card pool and that is still a lot of information to go on.
White
White has been a really strong color in testing. Most of us have agreed that W offers you some of the best midrange support of any colors. There is a ton of removal options in these colors and most of them are completely playable. There are also a ton of cards that add to a midrange top end, well priced, premium threats. This color seems to be a very solid backbone of the format.
Blue
Blue is a color we are pretty sure is the worst color to be dabbling in right now. There is not a whole lot of card selection, the draw options are almost all bad, and the finishers are practically worthless. The only real benefit to being in blue right now is that the format seems like it could be pretty slow. With W and B being the strongest colors in testing, blue counter spells may have a chance - and make the color marginally playable. You do not really get any solid payouts when playing with blue, and the only cards that are really worth anything are Reflector Mage and Dragonlord Ojutai. Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is pretty volatile, and either has a really high ceiling or a really deep bottom.
Black
Most of us have agreed that black is far and away the best color to be in right now. All of the decks running black have been doing well in testing, and the color offers a lot of aggressive options as well as a lot of grindy options for midrange strategies. What sets W and B so far ahead of all the other colors, is that they have a lot of playability to them where the other colors are much more linear.
Red
Red is a color we have not entirely been impressed with. The red aggro decks have been doing well, but they have some glaring issues and feel pretty close to a glass cannon. The color seems to want to play mindrange, but is kind of stuck being an aggro deck. The color has been ranked above blue, so I guess that is something. Personally, I feel like red has a lot of unexplored space and the brewer in me suspects that the general consensus among our group is inaccurate - but most everyone seems to think it is pretty bad right now.
Green
Green is rank 3 in our group. The color offers a lot of strong approaches, from ramping hard, to rolling out a solid midrange game plan that is durable. Most of our thoughts are based on Collected Company, but even the GB Delirium deck in our group has been putting up surprising results. Sylvan Advocate is a really solid option, and I suspect it is the reason G is a favorable color among our group.
As it Pertains to Esper
We backed out of the Dragons shell for the most part. The problem we had was that Dragonlord Ojutai was getting aced by a lot of cards. To the Slaughter, Anguished Unmaking, World Breaker, Transgress the Mind, Declaration in Stone, and Archangel Avacyn. Decks going wide mean you have to have a sweeper, and gone are the days when you could hold out Crux of Fate to keep an Ojutai out. It ended up being clunky and easier to remove than a well placed planeswalker would be, and it was pretty unanimous that the only real benefit to risking your dragons was so that you could have Foul-Tongue Invocation, which was rather lackluster. We have had better results with the non dragon list - but even it is having some pretty glaring issues.
When the set is fully spoiled, we will be shortlisting our gauntlet and moving on from there. If I had to guess what we will be short listing, it is as follows:
GR Atarka Red BW Orzhov Midrange GR Eldrazi Ramp UWG Collected Company GWR Naya Walkers
Is it possible to know for sure? Of course not. But if that is our short list, I probably will not even bother touching Esper Dragons.
We have talked about Declaration in Stone in some good detail a few pages back. The thing is, that Esper plays a really strong long game, and the decks that are fast - you need answers for, and they do not really have time or resources to be activating Clue tokens without losing efficiency against you. The card is incredibly deceptive and people should really let go of the Investigate clause. I have never, in over 100 games and 6-7 group members, felt that the Clue token has ever been a draw back.
Silkwrap is WAY more narrow, too narrow to justify it over given them a token they have to invest resources in... Delirium is easy to get in Esper, you don't need enchantments to make it any easier. You also do not want to be trying to rush into Delirium for To the Slaughters that are just not effective. You should be using this card to hit man lands, or take advantage of a stable board to keep you way ahead if they make a hail mary come back play.
Bouncing 2 creatures in a row is better than killing one. Scrying, then drawing a card and not losing life, is better than drawing a card and losing a life. Ob Nixilis is way worse than the new Jace... by a very long mile. What I also mentioned was that the PW uniqueness rule is not really an issue. I also think Ojutai's Command is horrible, and you are probably way better off running Silumgar's Command. Idk. Take it with a grain of salt I guess.
I also think Declaration in Stone is far better than Silkwrap.
Confirm Suspicions is a really interesting card. I have been thinking of trying it out, but 5 mana for a counter spell is a lot for this deck. I am curious to see how it works though, because the upside in the mid and late game is pretty substantial.
You just have to battle through it. It is not easy, but I have uploaded a Cockatrice replay for you to watch if you want. It is not really a game where Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger was played, but it was a game where my opponent had me under World Breaker recursion. He cast 8 World Breakers on me in the game, and 3 Chandra, Flamecaller while he was ahead. I still won the game, and I was even hampered on the amount of B mana I had at some rather inconvenient times - but in fairness, I also was drawing them at very convenient times.
A few things to note.
The Eldrazi Package
This package does not always consist of 3 or 4 Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Often times, the real back breaking card is World Breaker. He can drop earlier and start wreaking havoc on your 3 color mana base (as displayed in the replay). Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger is something you can leverage with. He is slow, and if you can cut off the ramp he is even slower. This allows you to build your mana base up and start getting threats out. Your ideal goal is to give them something else to target other than your land. If they have to exile Jace, Unraveler of Secrets, or Sorin, Grim Nemesis instead of 2 lands, you are still very much in the game. In the replay, you will see that I was aggressive with trying to flip Jace, Vryn's Prodigy. If you have the spells to work on a low curve, get aggressive with your planeswalkers. Whether or not the land matters or if your threat matters, is something you need to gauge. If you can get the threat out under the land destruction, then the land destruction hurts a lot less. If you cannot get the threat out under it, you need to focus on stalling it as long as possible. Anything above 6 lands is fluff and you can lose them to triggers without being out of the game. The Eldrazi package does not always run Reality Smasher either. It caught me off guard in the replay, but you can work around it.
Playing for the Long Game
The GR Elzrazi Ramp has a really solid late game, but something to keep in mind is that a good portion of their deck is devoted to getting their late game into play much earlier, so when the late game arrives, they draw a lot of those fuel cards that are not really doing anything. Always play for the long game here, and the longer game you play for, the better your chances of making optimal plays are because you have more live cards to keep a top deck war in your favor.
Diverting Their Plan of Attack
Discard spells are pretty enticing, as they can do a lot of work. You can use these to help you force them to focus on another line of play, but it is not entirely necessary. It will make your game a lot smoother, but consider what you are giving up for those spells. I personally like Pick the Brain over Infinite Obliteration. Both cost 3 mana, and one will hit everything without the need for Delirium, but the effect is not always necessary and the trade off is that if you have Delirium, you can take all their Chandra, Flamecallers as well. I like this because it become applicable in a Control vs Control match. Really though, forcing them to change their line of play is how you are going to nickle and dime them in the best possible way and you can do this by forcing them to exile a threat, or your lands. Use this as leverage.
Here is the download link to the Cockatrice Replay. You can place it in your replay folder or open it with Cockatrice to watch.
EDIT
I have been playing Engulf the Shore over Languish today, and I am loving it.
4 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Planeswalker
3 Jace, Unraveler of Secrets
1 Narset Transcendent
2 Sorin, Grim Nemesis
Removal
3 To the Slaughter
4 Languish
3 Anguished Unmaking
Disruption
3 Clash of Wills
2 Scatter to the Winds
Other
4 Anticipate
2 Epiphany at the Drownyard
3 Declaration in Stone
4 Sunken Hollow
4 Prairie Stream
3 Evolving Wilds
2 Swamp
2 Plains
2 Island
2 Caves of Koilos
2 Blighted Cataract
1 Shambling Vent
2 Choked Estuary
2 Port Town
3 Negate
2 Virulent Plague
1 Declaration in Stone
2 Startled Awake
2 Pick the Brain
2 Surge of Righteousness
2 Flaying Tendrils
1 Linvala, the Preserver
Honestly, this deck sees a LOT of cards. If the match is against Control or Midrange, it can come pretty close to decking itself. Some games I end with 5-15 cards left if they are grindy games. A lot of this is because Jace, Unraveler of Secrets and Soring, Grim Nemesis are pretty hard to kill with creature damage, and the deck is good at keeping a board down and under control. Their abilities that work towards ultimate, are drawing you cards and if you have both out for 2-3 turns you are seeing 6-9 cards not including the ones you were seeing while you had just one of them stuck. I think between the walkers and Anticipate, Jace, Vryn's Prodigy looting, and Epiphany at the Drownyard, Esper's drawing capabilities are actually in a great place. Maybe it is because I am a rather tight player, but I have not really changed this list at all, except maybe a few SB cards.
If I were going to make changes, I would likely stick in a single reshuffle option again, but probably more like Learn from the Past. Being low on threats makes sure I have to play tight with the deck and sometimes you do lose both your Sorin and have to use a Jace emblem from either to finish game 1. This means you sometimes get pretty dangerously low on deck size.
The other option is to try and fit in 1-2 more win conditions, but I am not really a fan of Dragons right now and I do not want a 3rd Sorin, Grim Nemesis. Linvala, the Preserver maybe something to slot in, but for those long games she is a pretty brutal creature to have to rely on sometimes.
Did you paste it before the </cards> tag at the bottom?
No, they are downplaying the life loss on their draw spells.
I can get the list. I am not the one handling it for the gauntlet, so I do not know what the exact 75 is. But we do talk about the cards we like and the cards we dislike, so I know what it kind of consists of and rough numbers. I will get the full 60 for you though.
Vessel is pretty slow, but it is better at fueling. Honestly, I would still pass on Vessel. You want to be fast with threats, not necessarily Delirium itself.
Not a fan of The Gitrog Monster. It may be a 6/6 for 5, but having to sac a land each turn to keep him in play is brutal. I would say it is not that much of an issue, if tokens were not prevalent - for them not to matter, he needs actual evasion and not pseudo evasion. Traverse the Ulvenwald is nutty good, in fact it is kind of what makes the deck so sick imo.
The real gem today is 3/3 Ooze for 2G. This thing turns into a mini G Hero of Bladehold kind of dude.
Historically, the last portion of final spoilers is not super impact to the point it really changes things so much that 90% of the known cards shift in power level. Most of that drastic change is simply from letting the cookie crumble as it may. Things will inevitable be changed, and I am not claiming to have a solved meta, but we have a good amount of information that there is a foundation for the first week or two and that should be where your target is, not trying to break the meta open.
We have not had too many issues with it. These colors have a lot of built in card advantage that your card draw is not the main source of it. There also is a good amount of lifelink in these colors for stabilizing as well. In fact, we have even used Anguished Unmaking retty aggressively in our group just to see where the line is for how much life you can give up and still stay in control of the pace of the game. Orzhov has probably been the best deck in our gauntlet, and is leagues better all around than Esper so far. Take it as you will, I suppose.
Shard set ups have deceptively good mana, wedge mana is pretty shoddy though. Our group is actually up in the air if we prefer fetches or the new mana, but that is really hard to weigh when you have mechanics like Delve in the format, where fetching is more than just a smooth mana base, but also a reusable resource. I think people will be hesitant about the mana for a bit, but it is actually really good if you are in Shards. I am confidant that it is actually easier to do WUB
Your black decks are apparently very different than ours. Languish saves all your high end threats, and why you would be in Mono black is beyond me. Orzhov has cards like Linvala, the Preserver and planeswalkers - which don't care about your sweepers. White also gives you access to Declaration in Stone which hampers the hell out of token strategies and leaves your entire board intact. RB has red sweepers that leave your threats like Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, or Thunderbreak Reagent, perfectly intact and gives your more mileage than Flaying Tendrils. I think you are grotesquely underestimating how good To the Slaughter is, especially if you are wanting to compare it to Foul-Tongue Invocation, which is a totally different card.
I don't think the issue is To the Slaughter, it is deck construction.
On the Topic of Declaration in Stone
This card is nuts. You may be giving your opponent a Clue token, but you have to think about what that token actually means, and a majority of our test games, it is time. Instead of them casting cards on their turn, they spend 2 to draw a card. I am okay with that. Instead of spending 2 on their turn, they do nothing with that 2 and pop the clue on my turn. I am okay with that, better than a 2 mana creature that represents damage. It is also something that sometimes has to be severely delayed, meaning they are not getting the card right away - I am perfectly fine with that. Some of my favorite text in the game comes straight from Wall of Denial, because it points out the foundation for every control deck - time.
Is giving them a clue optimal? Not really. But neither was giving them 5 life or a basic land. Sure, this spell is not 1 white mana and instant speed, but this is also very different from those formats and can do something that those spells did not - hit multiple creatures at ones without having to pay X. There is premium value in this card that is not written on the card.
W White Weenie
GR Atarka Red
BW Orzhov Midrange
GR Eldrazi Ramp
RB Rakdos Dragons
RB Vampire Madness
GB Delirium
UWG Collected Company
BWG Collected Company
GWR Naya Walkers
WUB Esper Control
Each member is working with 2 decks and we rotate best of 5's in testing and do about 3-4 hour sessions. There is also the spotty testing I do for a bit on Cockatrice every day, but a lot of those games right now are really diverse, and I am the only person playing on Cockatrice lobby games. Right now, we are mainly trading feedback on the color pie and having SCD's. We do not have all of the set spoiled, so we really cannot gauge everything with 100% accuracy. But we know 4/5 sets that will make up the Standard card pool and that is still a lot of information to go on.
White
White has been a really strong color in testing. Most of us have agreed that W offers you some of the best midrange support of any colors. There is a ton of removal options in these colors and most of them are completely playable. There are also a ton of cards that add to a midrange top end, well priced, premium threats. This color seems to be a very solid backbone of the format.
Blue
Blue is a color we are pretty sure is the worst color to be dabbling in right now. There is not a whole lot of card selection, the draw options are almost all bad, and the finishers are practically worthless. The only real benefit to being in blue right now is that the format seems like it could be pretty slow. With W and B being the strongest colors in testing, blue counter spells may have a chance - and make the color marginally playable. You do not really get any solid payouts when playing with blue, and the only cards that are really worth anything are Reflector Mage and Dragonlord Ojutai. Jace, Vryn's Prodigy is pretty volatile, and either has a really high ceiling or a really deep bottom.
Black
Most of us have agreed that black is far and away the best color to be in right now. All of the decks running black have been doing well in testing, and the color offers a lot of aggressive options as well as a lot of grindy options for midrange strategies. What sets W and B so far ahead of all the other colors, is that they have a lot of playability to them where the other colors are much more linear.
Red
Red is a color we have not entirely been impressed with. The red aggro decks have been doing well, but they have some glaring issues and feel pretty close to a glass cannon. The color seems to want to play mindrange, but is kind of stuck being an aggro deck. The color has been ranked above blue, so I guess that is something. Personally, I feel like red has a lot of unexplored space and the brewer in me suspects that the general consensus among our group is inaccurate - but most everyone seems to think it is pretty bad right now.
Green
Green is rank 3 in our group. The color offers a lot of strong approaches, from ramping hard, to rolling out a solid midrange game plan that is durable. Most of our thoughts are based on Collected Company, but even the GB Delirium deck in our group has been putting up surprising results. Sylvan Advocate is a really solid option, and I suspect it is the reason G is a favorable color among our group.
As it Pertains to Esper
We backed out of the Dragons shell for the most part. The problem we had was that Dragonlord Ojutai was getting aced by a lot of cards. To the Slaughter, Anguished Unmaking, World Breaker, Transgress the Mind, Declaration in Stone, and Archangel Avacyn. Decks going wide mean you have to have a sweeper, and gone are the days when you could hold out Crux of Fate to keep an Ojutai out. It ended up being clunky and easier to remove than a well placed planeswalker would be, and it was pretty unanimous that the only real benefit to risking your dragons was so that you could have Foul-Tongue Invocation, which was rather lackluster. We have had better results with the non dragon list - but even it is having some pretty glaring issues.
When the set is fully spoiled, we will be shortlisting our gauntlet and moving on from there. If I had to guess what we will be short listing, it is as follows:
GR Atarka Red
BW Orzhov Midrange
GR Eldrazi Ramp
UWG Collected Company
GWR Naya Walkers
Is it possible to know for sure? Of course not. But if that is our short list, I probably will not even bother touching Esper Dragons.