Adam Haggerty's Esper Mystic Mill NRG 01/11/19
 
Type: Deck Idea
Format (invalid) staStandard
Approx. Value:
$291.68

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Avg. CMC 2.93
Card Color Breakdown
Card Type Breakdown

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Main Deck - 60 cards, 27 distinct
Columns
Name  Edition $ Type Cost
Rarity Color
Instant (34)
1 Abrupt Decay
$1.37 Instant
4 Archive Trap
$4.85 Instant - Trap
2 Archmage's Charm
$1.94 Instant
2 Assassin's Trophy
$2.52 Instant
4 Cryptic Command
$8.36 Instant
4 Drown in the Loch
$1.15 Instant
3 Esper Charm
$0.38 Instant
1 Into the Story
$0.18 Instant
2 Kaya's Guile
$0.73 Instant
2 Mystical Dispute
$0.30 Instant
3 Path to Exile
$0.89 Instant
2 Surgical Extraction
$2.65 Instant
4 Thought Scour
$0.31 Instant
Sorcery (1)
1 Supreme Verdict
$1.97 Sorcery
Land (25)
1 Breeding Pool
$15.83 Land - Forest Island
1 Celestial Colonnade
$1.06 Land
1 Creeping Tar Pit
$0.79 Land
2 Field of Ruin
$0.20 Land
4 Flooded Strand
$10.38 Land
2 Hallowed Fountain
$8.65 Land - Plains Island
3 Mystic Sanctuary
$1.29 Land - Island
4 Polluted Delta
$13.21 Land
1 Scalding Tarn
$24.34 Land
2 Snow-Covered Island
$1.63 Basic Snow Land - Island
1 Snow-Covered Plains
$0.72 Basic Snow Land - Plains
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
$1.00 Basic Snow Land - Swamp
2 Watery Grave
$13.65 Land - Island Swamp
Sideboard - 15 cards, 8 distinct
Name  Edition $ Type Cost
Rarity Color
Instant (12)
3 Dispel
$0.21 Instant
2 Dovin's Veto
$2.59 Instant
2 Fatal Push
$1.86 Instant
2 Kaya's Guile
$0.73 Instant
1 Mystical Dispute
$0.30 Instant
2 Surgical Extraction
$2.65 Instant
Sorcery (1)
1 Supreme Verdict
$1.97 Sorcery
Enchantment (2)
2 Porphyry Nodes
$0.30 Enchantment

Notes
 
Some checklist items-

*Simic Whirza gameplan
*Planeswalker and nonland permanent game.
*Have plan for field of the dead and lotus field.
*Don't die to blood moon.
*Graveyard hate in spades.
*Figure out how to be the best counterspell deck in the room.

So I've done some metagame analysis and the results are interesting. Out of what I am anticipating there seems to be some clear roles in the matches for me to play in Control/Graveyard Control/Burn plan, Surgeon/advanced procedure (+control), Control Mirror, and Jund Grind. All strategies require me to answer card for card, generate x-1's, dominate the stack, and have true inevitability. Some edges this deck has over others occupying similar space is never tapping out proactively creating less windows and increased mana advantage, a variety of modal options, and Archive trap being a true inevitability engine against every played deck in the format and some times even a proactive clock. I need to pick my spots, line my answers up to their threats, and eventually turn the corner by burying them in card advantage.

It seems like most decks fall into control/operation in the current meta, which probably means I should be playing some amount of surgical main again. Without surgical it is just control, grinding down their resources and countering only the spells that matter. With surgical I can play a proactive game plan of a sort, using mill cards and interaction to expose the relevant card to hit with surgical and then functionally neutering my opponents deck. I think the number of key cards should dictate how I sideboard, mulligan, and play. I want to do a leveling system where the bottom tier are decks dismantled with 1-2 surgicals, the top tier 3 or more surgicals. I think the 3 or more also dictates I have some functional duplicates to help offset, like pithing needle or unmoored ego, available in the side. Once my opponent is neutered they will likely concede. If they do not, I believe I am incentivized to try to close the game to be able to win a potential best of 3, as a short G3 in any match up is probably unwinnable from my end. Control is the baseline "treatment" in our medical metaphor, as I need to answer my opponents threats as I maneuver for the procedure. A deck with 1-2 relevant cards should be fairly easy to operate on as they little to be controled outside of the cards I care about anyway. Decks with 3 or more will require correctly prioritizing the threats that matter sequentially and having ubiquitous catch up answers for the ones that slip past the surgical. There are a few "advanced procedure decks" that will fold to surgical but require a specific approach to their ancillary affects and threats.

The other most common mode is control/Graveyard control/Burn plan. I do not need to wax poetic about these strategies as they are more straightforward and mostly employed against generic creature matchups. Effectively managing low velocity decks full of creatures is not the most difficult, although each deck has a few wrinkles to be planned around. Decks like dredge and crabvine also require that i have mastery of the graveyard, something I'm hoping the combination of guile and surgical allow me. Guile also helps mitigate the creeping chill/conflagarate issue with lifegain. Burn is always present and needs a dedicated plan, which my current is excellent.

There are two unique matchups that require a completely different strategy.

Jund seems to be about card quality and who is 2-1 whom. It seems like most play patterns entail both decks getting in top deck mode. I am trying to position myself to answer my opponents threats and then top deck card advantage to pull ahead. It will be neccessary to also control their graveyard, as wrenn and others offer x-0 for zero's out the yard. Having my own sticky threats help with this endeavor, but can put me behind if I need to tap out for it.

I have to decide how I want to act in the control mirror. What is clear is tapping out sucks, baby teferi is a big pain in the ass, and resolved planeswalkers dictate the pace of game a good percentage of the time. The same is true for jund.

I did some great work yesterday, but now I need to go a little deeper. For the angle I am trying to interact on I need 6 counterspells in the sideboard, 3-4 of them are dispel, and I need two mystical dispute in the main. This is how I am going to be the alpha counterspell deck. I need to think about what then need be sacrificed to accomplish this. My solution has been to cut the two censor's for mystical dispute. Censor really overperforms, and those added two cards of velocity do make a significant difference and are correct in a more open meta, but with such a high likelihood of getting paired up against a blue deck, the ceiling of mystical dispute is just so much higher, and cement us the dominating counterspell deck. Mystical dispute also acts as a bad 3 mana counter, so it isn't dead in other matchups. Also, with the reduction in attrition matchups where the discard mode really shines on esper charm, a split of 2-2 archmage's charm seems worthwile, adding two more hard counters and a more fuctional tertiary mode while still maintaining the 4 draw 2's. The mana is fine for this as well as esper charm and archmage's differ in the mana base only slightly, and archmage's might be easier to cast at times and vice versa. This brings us up to twelve maindeck counterspells.

My sideboard seems pretty set but I still have to slice off four cards. There's several fields that I am trying to align. My list is below for reference. Abrupt Decay is excellent in the current meta, and two seems right. They might need to be main or split, and we might need to shave 1. So that positioning needs to be figured out, and really we need to decide why it isn't main (who are we not bringing it in against, what is it upgrading?). Surgical and kaya's guile are locked as our anti graveyard tech, our proactive control, our silver bullets, and our burn plan. Almost everything in the rest of the deck cost one as G2 and G3 the best thing our sideboard can do is make our deck less mana intensive as we will likely need to double spell. Fatal push and porphyry nodes do an excellent job of cleaning up aggressive starts out of our opponent. I have to decide if I want a second supreme verdict to clean up fast creature starts. Specifically, I need to figure out to beat prowess if they void me as that shuts out the cryptic lock. Also, two verdicts is very appealing against death's shadow and jund specifically who setting up and maintaining the cryptic lock can be difficult against. Verdict also corrects the cavern of souls problem. I've now figured out a combo that allows 12 counters main which ensures I've got the biggest stack around G1. 6 Counterspells out the side maintains this dominance, as the heaviest reactive decks are bringing in 3/3 dispute veil. As my new counterspells are for fighting instant reactions of all kinds, I have no doubt that 4 dispel is correct as Instants are what I care about G2. The other two being some combination of veto and dispute make sense to me as they play a similar role, but can also be used to 1-1 threats. Dispel is great in that is going to sit in my hand until I need to win a fight on the stack, which will assuredly come up. I think knowing the rough sideboard plans of given matchups, I need to do some elephants to help determine my excess. I remember be too heavy against aggro decks, which paid off, but I often had excellent cards for a matchup in the sideboard do to over abundance, this is a waste of premiuim side board slots. In the formula below I need to operate the specific deck's I'm targeting to define X. For example, Sultai oko is the oko deck I think I want to target, so elephanting for that will define the total number of cards sideboarded, and thus what spots are needed/extra. Anti-aggro I'm going to go either burn or prowess, and then also factor in wide with something like humans. The multi purpose spots either need to be croos applicable for the aformentioned matchups (and needed) and/or have application for the other listed three matchups. Titan I think will be covered out of this configuration, and there's enough flexibility for game in about every matchup.
2 Surgical
2 Kaya's Guile
2 Fatal push
2 Porphyry nodes
1 supreme verdict
2 Dovin's Veto
2 Mystical Dispute
4 Dispel
2 Abrupt Decay

A potential formula:
2 Surgical
2 Kaya's Guile
6 Counterspells
X Anti-Aggro cards
X Multi purpose slots (Helping cover Jund, Etron, and Death's Shadow)
*Surgical+Counterspells+X Multi= Oko/control matchups

Recap
What can I say about my 1-2-2 finish? Well I'll take pride in the fact i nailed my 75. I forced my opponent off an oko on their T2 which dictated the pace of the game. I stole A goose to undo all my opponents damage and make my guile a live removal spell.I ignored emry at my own peril being buried in card advantage, but was able to correct for this with verdicts. My uncounterable spells pulled a lot of weight. I beat my opponent the turn they were going to ultimate their jace handily. I dimantled two oko decks and a simic titan deck. I made three misplays with my mana that cost me a lot of tempo. I misunderstood the need of guile over surgical against control to hedge against snapcasters but still have graveyard control. My sideboard plans were robust and powerful. I got to double trap surgical on turn 2.

My key takeaways were there are interactions I missed because of a lack of testing. I know the deck inside and out, but you got to play the matchups to see what your not seeing. I think dedicating at least two FNM's before a tournament is absolutely neccessary, and trying to get a monthly gauntlet thing with Fredo is also neccessary. All my games went to time, which I should have anticipated and planned around more. I lost to some well time top decks, nothing to learn from that. Two matches were stolen by this, which is unfortunate. My opponents were surprised as well. My plan to force through traps needs a little more work, because paying full price into counterspells is unviable. Also, when you get a time extension, note it on the lifepad. I lost a game because I went for the win in turns, instead holding back with the cryptic lock for the 8 cards left in their library. Ouch. I also died to blood moon one time. The writing was on the wall. That was my fault. My tournament prep and theory crafting were excellent though. Especially how I figured out how to conceptualize sideboard guides with elephanting and my continued dead eye read of metagames. My preboarding decisions were also quite good, and I think I got a better handle on tuning a list to a given meta this time. All in all I learned a lot, enjoyed my games, felt in the drivers seat, and think I'm catching my stride in this regard.
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