Welcome Magic lovers!
This weekend, the final Standard Regional Championship before rotation is happening, capping what became the longest-running Standard season that Magic: the Gathering has ever seen, with a total of thirteen legal sets (not counting March of the Machine: Aftermath and The Big Score) and three-thousand, three-hundred and forty cards! With only one, last tournament on the horizon, it seems current Standard in its final form has mostly settled around five tier 1 archetypes: Esper Raffine, Domain Ramp, Temur Analyst, Azorius Control and Boros Convoke. Among these, however, it has been the Azorius Control deck that's been putting up the most consistent tournament results, placing 2nd at Pro Tour Seattle, then taking down the Regional Championship in Montreal a week later, while also flooding the Magic Arena ranked ladder, much to the dismay of players who aren't interested in slogging through a fifty-minute match on their phones.
While Azorius does have the best overall matchup spread against the other tier 1 decks, some players opted to turn to the dark side and sleeve up Dimir Control instead. The main draw to swapping plains for swamps is new sweeper, Deadly Cover-up, a card which can singlehandedly turn game one versus the dreaded Temur Analyst decks into a bye for Dimir by allowing the control player to strip Worldsoul's Rage, and therefore all the win conditions, out of an opposing Temur library. In fact, a Dimir Control list built to prey on Temur cruised into the top four of RC Montreal by doing just that.
That said, giving up crucial early-game sweeper Temporary Lockdown really stings, though Path of Peril helps alleviate that somewhat. In the Azorius version, March of Otherworldly Light and Get Lost do an excellent job at managing non-creature permanents that control decks typically struggle against. Switching to Dimir sometimes feels like one is leaving oneself vulnerable to all sorts of threats that can't be removed with a Go for the Throat, from Urabrask's Forge to Wedding Announcement or Skrelv's Hive.
As the Azorius and Dimir control decks each have their distinct advantages and weaknesses, being forced to choose between them was frustrating, until last weekend when two enterprising players on Magic Online asked, why not both? One ended up taking down the ninety-five player Magic Online Challenge while the other landed in ninth, and thus, Esper Control was born again.
Let's take a look at my latest list:
Essentially taking the Azorius control shell and jamming in a playset of Deadly-Cover Up and a few cheap, black spot removal spells, this deck looks to have its cake and eat it too. Giving the control deck access to the best removal spells in the format, such as Cut Down, Go for the Throat and Long Goodbye, goes a long way toward shoring up the early game, especially alongside the ubiquitous No More Lies. Temporary Lockdown still makes an appearance here, but only two copies are present in the main deck, with two more lurking in the sideboard.
Noticeably absent are March of Otherworldly Light and Get Lost, however its easy to not even notice they're gone, as the incredible Tishana's Tidebinder does a fantastic job of filling that void, basically acting as a non-creature removal/counter spell that also attacks and blocks. This beautiful merfolk wizard really does it all, from turning off planeswalkers in additiona to a long list of the insanely powerful creatures present in current Standard, to stifling enter-the-battlefield triggers, channel lands, or even opposing Field of Ruin activations. Tidebinder is so good, in fact, that there are two more copies in the sideboard that are utilized very often.
Retaining the excellent counter magic suite of Azorius Control lets this Esper version handle any curveballs the opponent may throw its way. No More Lies is one of the best counterspells we've seen in Standard in many years and picking up Three Steps ahead in Outlaws of Thunder Junction was an incredible gift. It's versatility and power in a control shell like this can';t be understated, and its quickly becoming a staple in all of my blue decks.
Moving up the curve we see several of the usual suspects that can be found in traditional Azorius Control, such as a trio of Wandering Emperor, as well as a playset of both Memory Deluge and Three Steps Ahead to keep the gas flowing. One won't find Sunfall in this seventy-five, however, as Deadly Cover-Up takes that slot, giving the deck a fantastic way to strip opposing strategies of their finishers. While this is most potent against the aforementioned Temur Analyst decks, any slow, late-game deck, such as Domain Ramp, can also be taken down by resolving two or three Deadly Cover-Up. Stripping all of their Archangel of Wrath and Atraxa, Grand Unifier is usually enough to cruise to victory, as the only other threat they can kill with is Herd Migration, which can be conveniently countered, as it can';t be cast using Cavern of Souls. A final catch-all, Farewell, rounds out the six-sweeper package that the deck uses to keep the creature-based decks in check.
The mana base tells the story of just how tricky it is to perform this sort of color transplant in a sixty-card deck, as we find a total of twenty-eight lands purring under the hood. This is necessary to meet our minimum color requirements of a full fifteen black sources in order to reliably cast Deadly Cover-Up on time. With nineteen white and eighteen blue sources respectively, one can quickly see that, at its core, this Esper deck is simply an Azorius Control shell with a heavy black splash. There is room for only one Field of Ruin here, and with five basic lands, the deck shouldn't run much risk of running out against Azorius opponents packing a playset of the colorless land destruction piece.
The sideboard has all of our bases covered, with a pair of Duress and Negate, as well as Outrageous Robbery and a second Jace, the Perfected Mind that all come in against control decks. Temporary Lockdown numbers three and four help shore up the match against aggressive decks, while Destroy Evil, Get Lost and Chrome Host Seedshark help crush the midrange decks. Graveyard-hate is covered by Kutzi's Flanker which, despite being less powerful than Rest in Peace, has the noticeable benefit of not hitting our own Memory Deluge, while also playing nicely with our instant-speed counter spells, card draw and planewalker.
Is the Esper Control deck truly the best of both worlds, or are we flying too close to the sun by trying to do it all in one seventy-five card list? Sleeve up or import this sweet Esper Control list and find out for yourself!
