Standard

A Fearsome Awakening

It is no secret, to those that know me, that I love control decks. Nothing makes me happier than designing, tweaking, and playing control. I qualified for the Pro Tour by playing control, and if control was even remotely viable, I would have played it in Modern. Hopefully, by now it isn’t a surprise that I have come here to advocate for a control deck. One of the best positioned decks in Standard is Esper Dragons.

The Basics
Fearsome-Awakening-Fate-Reforged-MtG-Art

Esper Dragons is a control deck designed to leverage the power of [card]Dragonlord Ojutai[/card] and [card]Dragonlord Silumgar[/card] to quickly close games. In addition to ending the game these dragonlords act as a catalyst for the closest thing Standard has to [card]Counterspell[/card] in Standard, [card]Silumgar’s Scorn[/card]. The deck plays a traditional suite of removal and counterspells along with [card]Dig Through Time[/card], making it almost indistinguishable from traditional control decks, until a dragonlord arrives. Unlike other control decks Esper Dragons is able to gain immense value from its sweeper, [card]Crux of Fate[/card], as it will leave behind all of your fatties while clearing out the board.

Why Esper Dragons over Other Control Decks?
ld32_ponderSplash

There are two main reasons that Esper Dragons is favorable to other control decks at the moment. The first is that you get to play with the multiple cards that synergize with dragons: [card]Silumgar’s Scorn[/card], [card]Foul-Tongue Invocation[/card], and [card]Crux of Fate[/card] are not fair cards when backed by your Dragonlords. In metagames more punishing to the Dragonlords it is possible to run multiple [card]Haven of the Spirit Dragon[/card], turning your lands into must answer threats in the late game. The current creature lands only wish they could do this.

The second reason is that there isn’t a comparable win condition in control to [card]Dragonlord Ojutai[/card]. [card]Chandra, Flamecaller[/card] does her best [card]Elspeth, Sun’s Champion[/card] impression, but it is just not the same. I know that you’re worried about [card]Crackling Doom[/card] coming down to put an end to our parade. Believe me, I hate allowing my opponent to use their removal, so much so that in the era of Jeskai Black’s super dominance I didn’t run [card]Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy[/card] in Esper Dragons. However, [card]Crackling Doom[/card] is at a low since the [card]Collected Company[/card] decks mostly ignore it, and they are the most popular decks in Standard at the moment. Once you’ve made the concession to run creatures as your win conditions, I see no reason to run anything short of the best.

Esper Dragons vs. The Metagame
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So why is Esper Dragons well-positioned? It didn’t gain a bunch of shiny new tools and the matchup against ramp actually went from good to terrible with the new set. This is where the key to being able to read a metagame can sometimes pay off more than raw power in deck selection. Standard right now is hostile to decks on the extreme ends of the speed spectrum. Atarka and Ramp are not stable enough to carry through their game plans from beginning to end when compared to other decks that, not only curve out perfectly, but do it with disruption. Most of the creatures in Standard are insane at all stages of the game to the point where it makes no sense to run synergistic cards together, when you can just make 4-color good stuff decks. Why play [card]World Breaker[/card] when [card]Sylvan Advocate[/card] is almost as big, does something on turn 2, and is 1/4 the mana?

This is where Esper Dragons comes in. Control feasts on all of these midrange decks and the dreaded Rally deck. So why hasn’t it been putting up win after win? This is because the metagame clock has just shifted to where people are done playing Atarka and Ramp. We are only starting to see players move from those strategies to the various midrange decks. Now is the window for those of you who enjoy playing a well-metagamed deck rather than the 55%-45% midrange wars. This is the best time for me to make a run at another big tournament with my archetype of choice. Below is my current decklist.

[deck]
[Lands]
4 Flooded Strand
1 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
4 Island
1 Plains
4 Polluted Delta
2 Prairie Stream
3 Shambling Vent
4 Sunken Hollow
3 Swamp
[/Lands]
[Spells]
2 Crux of Fate
4 Dig Through Time
3 Duress
2 Foul-Tongue Invocation
3 Grasp of Darkness
1 Murderous Cut
1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
4 Silumgar’s Scorn
2 Ultimate Price
2 Utter End
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
4 Dragonlord Ojutai
2 Dragonlord Silumgar
4 Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy
[/Creatures]
[Sideboard]
3 Infinite Obliteration
2 Dispel
3 Arashin Cleric
3 Monastery Mentor
3 Flaying Tendrils
1 Blighted Fen
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

The decklist hasn’t changed much since I finished tweaking it a while back. [card]Grasp of Darkness[/card] and [card]Flaying Tendrils[/card] are the only additions from the new set. Both have performed amazingly well.

Matchups
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Unfavorable: May as well get the bad news out of the way first. Even with an ample sideboard Atarka aggro decks and some Ramp variants will be the nightmare matchups. The absolute worst matchup is a Ramp deck that packs itself with a multitude of difficult to answer threats.

Even: Depending on how they’re built, other control variants are close matchups. I’ve played against some variations that couldn’t possibly beat a fair deck to save their life, but they demolished me with 10+ counterspells and some discard. On the other hand, I’ve destroyed builds of control that lean too heavily towards beating fair decks. There are some Eldrazi variants that can pose a problem since I’m only running 4 counterspells and 2 maindeck board sweepers against [card]Thought-Knot Seer[/card] and [card]Reality Smasher[/card]. The good news is that the standard Eldrazi deck is inconsistent enough that you’ll win more than you lose. However, it is certainly a scary matchup when they draw well. As a side note, the Eldrazi deck is the only deck that makes me wish I wasn’t playing dragons and was instead on a more disruption-heavy control build.

Favorable: Everything else is pretty much a favorable matchup. That doesn’t mean you’ll win 100% of the time, and there are certainly some builds more suitable to taking down Esper Dragons than others. If you expect a lot of 4-color midrange, random [card]Collected Company[/card], and Rally decks then sleeve up some sweet Esper Dragons and that should be that.

Recent Results
Esper Dragons used to be everywhere, so much so that it was deemed the boogeyman of the format. So where are the results now? As I said, the metagame has only recently moved to a place where the deck is good again. I have managed to top 4, then top 8 back to back Game Days while also picking up a 5-0 in a Magic Online Oath of the Gatewatch Standard Championship qualifier. They just happen to be the biggest Standard tournaments that I’ve played in recently. Additionally Soohwang Yeem managed to get on (back on?) the Pro Tour by top 4ing an RPTQ with Esper Dragons. If I’m correct, this is only the beginning. Expect to see more Esper Dragons at a top table near you.

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