Almost no one still plays true draw-go.
Jace unbanning + teferi printing + azcanta printing has changed how control decks are built to a large degree.
The most successful esper list in the dominaria up to modern horizons has been Zach Allen's SCG second place list.
The shard has seen a spike in popularity of lists based off of his, though its not really a draw-go list.
Most of us who've played the original list have been playing various in-between lists, some closer to the old ones and some to the new ones.
Horizons has shaken up the format a good deal, and the only thing I'm confident saying is that anyone saying confident things about control deck construction is unlikely to have the necessary data to back up that confidence.
So its definitely a flex time.
Jace and teferi, plus all the new WAR walkers are still popular and still powerful, but they definitely skew towards tapout control.
Archamge's charm and FoF out of horizons are two very decent options for maintaining value in a full draw-go deck though.
Definitely an interesting time to be a modern control player.
I'm not sure what your collection looks like, but if you have the budget, you might just try to pick any and all staples you've missed so you'll have to option to play whatever turns out to be best. If you don't, you'll probably want to wait atleast another few weeks to see the MC meta + the fallout, then jump in after that.
Growth spiral incentives you to cut your cantrips for real lands, which is sometimes a worthy tradeoff, but not always. You aren't playing asttrolabe, but for those who are, you can't just cut it for more lands.
Trying to cast 5 drops in a 24 land deck with 4 canopies seems heavy IMO.
I'd probably cap out on 2 / 24.
I think starting to trim off color fetchlands is reasonable.
4 tarn
3 steam vents
4 canal
2 islet
3 island
1 mountain
1 vista (if you want 18 lands)
seems like a good place to start.
I suspect that I don't want more than 2 islets, maybe only 1.
Whether or not vista is better than a misty is up for debate I think, but getting either color painlessly is kinda nice.
Yea thats fair. I do worry about how often you're able to hit land drops with only 22 (I only count 21 in the decklist of 59 cards so i assume the missing one is a land) especially into teferi. You have a fair amount of cantrips, but still.
Its been a couple months, so I haven't tried with any of the new walkers (not sure I want any main)
but it wasn't horribly clunky. You have 6ish removal spells at 1 cmc, snares, negates, knots at 1-2, 4 opts plus maybe spellbombs.
4 charms, 2ish snaps, 4ish walkers, 3ish cryptics, option d sphere isn't too stressful compared to UW. If anything, charm is more likely to get you to your 4/5 drops than a narset or baby tef would be.
Some of the clunkiness is also balanced out by wrathing them on turn 2 or 3 as well.
Is into the north too wild?
Its a sorcery over growth spiral's instant speed, but it never whiffs. It does not draw a card either unfortunately, but it is easier to cast, and it does find the snow duals.
Traditionally speaking, the deck has never wanted mainboard discard because you're trying to get to turn 20 before winning with rev > zenith.
Things are a little bit different these days, but fundamentally, you are still trying to play a long game.
The nature of playing a pile of lands over everyone else in the format means you need to draw that many more cards in order to balance out on interaction for their threats.
The more cards you add that neither draw cards nor (reliably) answer something, the more you stress the card advantage you already have.
The nature of planeswalkers means that discard is probably better now than its ever been, but you are still fundamentally trying to play a long game, which discard doesn't work well with, not to mention the fact that thoughtseize causes lifeloss (while iok/duress miss a lot of important things we're scared of), discard doesnt require them to spend mana, and lets them spend their turn still deploying a threat, and of course the fact that a lot of the format is simply not that weak to discard, especially discard thats not on turn 1/2.
Its better in the board because its functional (but not great) in a lot of matchups (shadow, tron, etc) where some of our interaction is very bad (cryptic command, supreme verdict) so making the swap lets us keep the same amount of interaction post board.
a lot of us have moved onto discord (https://discord.gg/EHBJy3)
the mtgs mods said in the reddit thread that they'd be trying to create some sort of successor, news in a few months.
The matchup hinges immensely on planeswalkers. The more answers to resolved walkers that you have (pithing needle, o ring, hex parasite, etc), the better.
The more noncreature wincons you have (gideon aoz, dawn of hope, crucible, misc planeswalkers etc), the better.
Playing more thraben inspectors helps a lot, as does trying to attack their mana in the case of esper. Don't overextend in to sweepers, but make sure you don't just flop it they untap and slam a walker because your board is too small.
Walking ballista is also pretty decent, so finding room for a copy can help a lot.
The mulligan rule seems ok at the moment, but I am worried that we'll still see a serum powder/gemstone cavern deck that we haven't seen yet.
The other thing I'm worried about is that I think the combination of open decklists + new mulligan is greater than the sum of its parts.
The mulligan likely does benefit proactive, synergistic decks more than others, and open deck lists likely benefits reactive "goodstuff" decks more than others.
If we keep the mulligan rule, but most lgses won't play with decklists, then theres a nonzero chance that the format suffers.
I'd suggest searching the thread, esper charm usage has been brought up many times in past.
Otherwise, its generally about creating a plan for the following turns.
Some matchups (tron, valakut, amulet) have important that are best interacted with in the hand (ulamog, valakut, tolaria west). Forcing them to discard, maybe after bouncing something with cryptic, can be very important.
Mind rot works best if you know you're getting something good (maybe they transmuted or pacted for something, maybe they triggered sanctum of ugin, maybe they cast a breach with 2 or fewer cards in hand, maybe they bounced a cavern to their hand off a bounceland, maybe you already saw their hand earlier, etc)
Generally speaking, you don't want to make them discard cards unless you're going to be able to empty their hand within a turn cycle or two (though there are plenty of exceptions.)
One such exception would be a deck like burn, which relies on a critical mass of cards, especially ones that are difficult for us to interact with efficiently, is a great target to mind rot. Spending 3 mana to hope to draw counterspells, that will trade inefficiently with burn spells is obviously worse than just mind rotting them. Casting it turn 3 on their end step is a pretty reasonable time to pick a fight, as they likely won't be able to empty their hand just yet, and you're likely to get a relevant card or two out of their hand before getting to untap.
Generally speaking, you need cards to play the game, lands + spells, and you need more lands than your opponent, so its rarely worth trying to mind rot them if you need to keep drawing cards yourself. Even if you have a teferi in play, if your hand is empty of relevant cards, you can't always rely on 2 draw steps per turn to outdraw your opponent. Its probably statistically likely for it to pay off, but if your opponent drawing really well for several turns is how you lose the game, then charming them should matter much less than just drawing more. Playing it safe should be the default.
uncounterable is still decent vs decks like amulet, grixis shadow, ad naus, phoenix, etc.
But either way, we still play it. Its almost always going to be better than negate given its not significantly harder to cast, and does have potential upside. Getting new cards is exciting, even if the cards themselves aren't.
Jace unbanning + teferi printing + azcanta printing has changed how control decks are built to a large degree.
The most successful esper list in the dominaria up to modern horizons has been Zach Allen's SCG second place list.
The shard has seen a spike in popularity of lists based off of his, though its not really a draw-go list.
Most of us who've played the original list have been playing various in-between lists, some closer to the old ones and some to the new ones.
Horizons has shaken up the format a good deal, and the only thing I'm confident saying is that anyone saying confident things about control deck construction is unlikely to have the necessary data to back up that confidence.
So its definitely a flex time.
Jace and teferi, plus all the new WAR walkers are still popular and still powerful, but they definitely skew towards tapout control.
Archamge's charm and FoF out of horizons are two very decent options for maintaining value in a full draw-go deck though.
Definitely an interesting time to be a modern control player.
I'm not sure what your collection looks like, but if you have the budget, you might just try to pick any and all staples you've missed so you'll have to option to play whatever turns out to be best. If you don't, you'll probably want to wait atleast another few weeks to see the MC meta + the fallout, then jump in after that.
Growth spiral incentives you to cut your cantrips for real lands, which is sometimes a worthy tradeoff, but not always. You aren't playing asttrolabe, but for those who are, you can't just cut it for more lands.
Trying to cast 5 drops in a 24 land deck with 4 canopies seems heavy IMO.
I'd probably cap out on 2 / 24.
4 tarn
3 steam vents
4 canal
2 islet
3 island
1 mountain
1 vista (if you want 18 lands)
seems like a good place to start.
I suspect that I don't want more than 2 islets, maybe only 1.
Whether or not vista is better than a misty is up for debate I think, but getting either color painlessly is kinda nice.
but it wasn't horribly clunky. You have 6ish removal spells at 1 cmc, snares, negates, knots at 1-2, 4 opts plus maybe spellbombs.
4 charms, 2ish snaps, 4ish walkers, 3ish cryptics, option d sphere isn't too stressful compared to UW. If anything, charm is more likely to get you to your 4/5 drops than a narset or baby tef would be.
Some of the clunkiness is also balanced out by wrathing them on turn 2 or 3 as well.
Its unlikely that this will be reliable in the future.
Its a sorcery over growth spiral's instant speed, but it never whiffs. It does not draw a card either unfortunately, but it is easier to cast, and it does find the snow duals.
Things are a little bit different these days, but fundamentally, you are still trying to play a long game.
The nature of playing a pile of lands over everyone else in the format means you need to draw that many more cards in order to balance out on interaction for their threats.
The more cards you add that neither draw cards nor (reliably) answer something, the more you stress the card advantage you already have.
The nature of planeswalkers means that discard is probably better now than its ever been, but you are still fundamentally trying to play a long game, which discard doesn't work well with, not to mention the fact that thoughtseize causes lifeloss (while iok/duress miss a lot of important things we're scared of), discard doesnt require them to spend mana, and lets them spend their turn still deploying a threat, and of course the fact that a lot of the format is simply not that weak to discard, especially discard thats not on turn 1/2.
Its better in the board because its functional (but not great) in a lot of matchups (shadow, tron, etc) where some of our interaction is very bad (cryptic command, supreme verdict) so making the swap lets us keep the same amount of interaction post board.
the mtgs mods said in the reddit thread that they'd be trying to create some sort of successor, news in a few months.
The more noncreature wincons you have (gideon aoz, dawn of hope, crucible, misc planeswalkers etc), the better.
Playing more thraben inspectors helps a lot, as does trying to attack their mana in the case of esper. Don't overextend in to sweepers, but make sure you don't just flop it they untap and slam a walker because your board is too small.
Walking ballista is also pretty decent, so finding room for a copy can help a lot.
The other thing I'm worried about is that I think the combination of open decklists + new mulligan is greater than the sum of its parts.
The mulligan likely does benefit proactive, synergistic decks more than others, and open deck lists likely benefits reactive "goodstuff" decks more than others.
If we keep the mulligan rule, but most lgses won't play with decklists, then theres a nonzero chance that the format suffers.
Otherwise, its generally about creating a plan for the following turns.
Some matchups (tron, valakut, amulet) have important that are best interacted with in the hand (ulamog, valakut, tolaria west). Forcing them to discard, maybe after bouncing something with cryptic, can be very important.
Mind rot works best if you know you're getting something good (maybe they transmuted or pacted for something, maybe they triggered sanctum of ugin, maybe they cast a breach with 2 or fewer cards in hand, maybe they bounced a cavern to their hand off a bounceland, maybe you already saw their hand earlier, etc)
Generally speaking, you don't want to make them discard cards unless you're going to be able to empty their hand within a turn cycle or two (though there are plenty of exceptions.)
One such exception would be a deck like burn, which relies on a critical mass of cards, especially ones that are difficult for us to interact with efficiently, is a great target to mind rot. Spending 3 mana to hope to draw counterspells, that will trade inefficiently with burn spells is obviously worse than just mind rotting them. Casting it turn 3 on their end step is a pretty reasonable time to pick a fight, as they likely won't be able to empty their hand just yet, and you're likely to get a relevant card or two out of their hand before getting to untap.
Generally speaking, you need cards to play the game, lands + spells, and you need more lands than your opponent, so its rarely worth trying to mind rot them if you need to keep drawing cards yourself. Even if you have a teferi in play, if your hand is empty of relevant cards, you can't always rely on 2 draw steps per turn to outdraw your opponent. Its probably statistically likely for it to pay off, but if your opponent drawing really well for several turns is how you lose the game, then charming them should matter much less than just drawing more. Playing it safe should be the default.
But either way, we still play it. Its almost always going to be better than negate given its not significantly harder to cast, and does have potential upside. Getting new cards is exciting, even if the cards themselves aren't.