Some may know it as an Esper Teachings deck. This plays like a draw/go control deck, almost every spell is an instant/flash. The deck has a solid mix of board control, card advantage/quality, and permission. It revolves around Mystical Teachings - which, while slow, is quite powerful, tutoring almost any spell in the deck. Many of the cards play more than one role (Cryptic Command, for example, is more than simple permission), with that in mind, please recognize that I'm categorizing cards by their usual role, but not their only role.

Here is a list:

// Lands - 25
4 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Godless Shrine
2 Watery Grave
2 Hallowed Fountain
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Marsh Flats
4 Arcane Sanctum
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Celestial Colonnade

// Card Quality/Quantity - 9
4 Mystical Teachings
4 Esper Charm
1 Blue Sun's Zenith

// Permission - 9
4 Mana Leak
4 Cryptic Command
1 Spell Burst

// Board Control - 10
4 Path to Exile
3 Go for the Throat
1 Geth's Verdict
1 Consume the Meek
1 Pulse of the Fields

// Disruptive/Stalling Wincons - 7
3 Vedalken Shackles
1 Venser, Shaper Savant
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Aven Mindcensor
1 White Sun's Zenith

// Sideboard
SB: 1 Vendilion Clique
SB: 1 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
SB: 1 Mindbreak Trap
SB: 1 Disenchant
SB: 1 Surgical Extraction
SB: 2 Bribery
SB: 2 Pithing Needle
SB: 3 Spell Pierce
SB: 3 Meddling Mage

As I said, many of these cards can play multiple roles. For example, sometimes it is better to pressure your opponent's hand with Esper charm than draw your own (and once in a while you'll be blowing up enchantments with it).

This particular build has a solid amount of redundancy in each category, so you can reliably see the effects when you need them, but it also sports 9-singleton tutor targets, at least one in each category which scales very nicely with your manabase and are usually reusable. Cards like Spell Burst and Pulse of the Fields can setup softlocks, but are situational enough that you prefer to tutor them rather than have them in multiples, unlike something as generically useful as Vedalken Shackles.

Many versions of this deck sport Teferi main and non-flash creatures (which can be tutored after Teferi is in play). In my experience, the deck evolves away from such a strategy. Teferi is a good card in some matchups, but relatively dead in others. I've relegated it to the SB, and the non-flash creatures have disappeared (Shackles has been much better).

Lastly, I'd like to add that Mystical Teachings allows this deck to run a silver-bullet strategy in both the main and sideboard. It lends versatility to the deck - it is something akin to Cunning Wish with flashback on it.

Hopefully this can get us started.



peace,
4eak