[Deck] UWb Esperblade

Thinking about running this in a tournament over the weekend. Definitely more UBw than UWb, but probably fits in this thread nonetheless.

4 Dark Confidant
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Stoneforge Mystic

1 Batterskull
1 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Brainstorm
2 Counterspell
2 Spell Snare
2 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Liliana of the Veil

2 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Hymn to Tourach

4 Underground Sea
4 Scrubland
4 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
2 Wasteland
1 Swamp
1 Plains
1 Island

Sideboard TBA

Probably should be a Tundra or two over a Scrubland, to accommodate Counterspell and Jace, if the only double colored was Hymn might be less needed. Personally I'd put another Spell Snare in over a 1cc discard spell as well, mostly due to prevalence of 2cc bombs and synergy with Snapcaster. Otherwise looks like a good list.

Aside, have you tried Unearth at all? I know this was hyped early on, but don't know if it proved good or unnecessary.

I've played Unearth and it's pretty sick. I could see making cuts for it somewhere in the list, but I don't know where. Maybe cut a couple planeswalkers since they have the least synergy and are definitely "good stuff" inclusions, but it feels wrong to not have those powerful cards in there.

yeah, looks like a good list. Is it hard to reliably do the whole hymn/stoneforge thing though, along with brainstorm?

What I found with unearth is that IT was the win more card and didn't really feel that necessary especially if you had riptide lab in the deck as well.
Yeah, you can do some cool things with it, but I never seemed to get lucky enough for those to happen.

4 dark confidant
4 stoneforge mystic
4 snapcaster mage
4 delver of secrets
1 batterskull
1 sword of feast and famine
1 umezawa's jitte

4 swords to plowshares
4 brainstorm
3 spell snare
3 spell pierce
1 inquisition of kozilek
1 duress
1 thoughtseize
1 unearth
1 darkblast

3 tundra
4 underground sea
1 scrubland
4 polluted delta
4 flooded strand
1 island
1 swamp
1 plains
1 riptide laboratory
1 volrath's stronghold
1 creeping tar pit

Delver of secrets has been a beast for me and I think it deserves to be tested.

3 artifacts with stoneforge works really well with the 16 creatures in the deck.

Darkblast is really good right now (delver, lavamancer, mom, etc) and I switched it from my sb to the main.

I used to run wastelands but found them pretty lackluster, so I went with utility lands instead (which are great so far).

I opted not to use hymn since that destroyed the manabase and made you even more vulnerable to wasteland/stifle by not being able to fetch basics.

Thoughts?

Delver could be good for you, but typically the way someone would want to use delver would be have less creatures in the deck so as to not dillute the deck's ability to flip the wizard easily
For instance in the RUG deck, it runs 12 creatures, 18 land, making 50% of the deck able to flip him.
In your build you have 19 creature/other 22 land, meaning 32% chance of flipping.
I don't particularly like those odds, but it would change positively due to brainstorm, fetches, etc, though so would the RUGs deck probibility.
If you like it though, keep it

I thought about this deck as well. My first thinking was: So many insane cc2 creatures, let's play Chrome Mox. But to drop a Snapcaster Turn 1 is pretty awful ;) Chrome Mox for 8 creatures are not enough. With 4 Hymns it would be good.

17 Lands + 3 Moxen for example.
To remove a Card with Mox weakens our hand, but playing 3 Mox Diamonds would force us to play too many lands.
So I came up with the following list:

4 Dark Confidant
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Stoneforge Mystic
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
4 Brainstorm
1/2 Counterspell
4 Spell Snare
3/4 Force of Will
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Liliana of the Veil
2 Thoughtseize
4 Hymn to Tourach
3 Chrome Mox
4 Underground Sea
1 Tundra
3 Scrubland
3 Marsh Flats
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Riptide Laboratory

Mabye we could cut a land for another counterspell.

The problem about Counterspell is, that it is the only spell, which requires UU (by the time you play Force of Will, you should have the UU anyway).

Cutting a land and one land, would give the possibility to run 2 Ponder/2 Tops to give more Cardadvantage (Ponder gives us cardadvantage with Snapcaste, top constant CQ).
Lilliana is pretty awesome. But cutting Lilliana for Explosives and adding a Academy Ruins insteand.

The sideboard could look like the following:
3 Engineered Plague /because it's good in my metagame ;)
2 Submerge
2 Mind Harness
3 Perish
3 Spell Pierce
2 Inquisition of Kosilek

You could look at Edgar's 13th place Vegas deck as inspiration to build upon utilizing a deck with chrome mox.
If I were to build a deck like that one, I think I would cut the bitterblossoms.

Half of the deck are 2-offs....No way that I take that as inspiration ;P

The 2 Cliques are ok, I thought about the same, but cutting 1 Stoneforge and another card.
I would cut Forces or Daze. You have to stick Confidant or SFM to take advantage of the Mox. Daze and FOrce are the best ways to keep them on the battlefield.

Okay well take my build for example,
4 Stoneforge Mystic
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Dark Confidant
2 Vendilion Clique
1 Batterskull
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
2 Jace the Mind Sculptor
4 Force of Will
3 Spell Snare
4 Brainstorm
2 Thoughtseize
2 Inquistion of Kozelik
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Dismember
1 Vindicate
4 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
2 Scrubland
3 Polluted Delta
4 Marsh Flats
1 Flooded Strand
1 Swamp
1 Island
1 Plains
3-4 Wasteland
0-1 Riptide Labratory
If I were to put in say 2 Chrome Mox, the first places I would look to cut would be 2 the Jace most likely. They make dark condfidant a higher risk, take up some of the most resources initially cost wise.
The other option would be to cut a discard spell like inquisition and a removal like vindicate to make room for them too. Lastly would be to cut 2 land like 2 wastelands. I would like to still have 2 wasteland and a riptide lab, so it would be cutting 1 land and a spell listed above.

I'd be lying if I didn't say that I've tested Fae' builds like BFS's list. The synergy of bitterblossom and SFM is an easy sell - and so many builds are already using VClique anyway...it's a pretty short jump to run Mutavault and Spellstutter. I haven't had the success that BFS has had in testing though...the deck is far to reactive for my play style.

I like Eli's list, but Eli...well, he'd top 8 that even with a deck running 54 basics. However, I think there is a lot to be learned from Eli's list. No force, + bob, just 4 cantrips....there are a lot of things going on here that other people simply aren't doing.

What I like about the deck is the card advantage considerations. I hate FoW (the card dis-advantage hurts a lot in this deck and it doesn't pair well with bob), and every creature performs a card advantage function. This, IMHO, is textbook Fish - CA, CA, CA - then finish with powerful spells. It's just a solid list.

That being said, what makes the list significantly stronger is the meta. Stifle/Daze/wasteland (mana-denial, TA-esque package) is very good in a meta that is packed with very greedy mana bases. Similarly, the lack of Hymn allows the mana base to be much less greedy than it's team america counterpart - basically allowing to fetch basics early while not worrying about being able to cast Hymn. Additionally, the decks that aren't utilizing greedy mana bases (mostly tribal) are all but obsolete because of recurring Swords and Equipment. Lastly, Stifle is a house right now and I think it's highly underplayed ATM - considering the volume of answers it provides.

I have minor things I'd change (for playstyle more than anything), but if I were playing esper right now my list would look very close to Eli's.

I play Bitterblossom (3) instead of Confi in this deck because it is more difficult to deal with it once it is resolved .
IMO it makes the deck less fragile to play BB and even though Confi is definitively one of the best cards in legacy - the impact of a Bitterblossom is not that bad either...

Now that I have some, I like the idea of dark confidant as it acts as a card that has to be dealt with fairly quickly.
If your plan then is to stick a mystic and get batterskull down, he does a great job of getting this done, as you either:
take over with confidant
or let it die and take over with batterskull.
either way you are in pretty good shape.
I could see bitterblossom being a good alternative too

What you just said about Dark Confidant, as far as I am concerned, is the strongest argument for esper-blade over UW blade. It lets you play like a fish deck against control, since you have another must kill creature, which lets you play both it (bob) and stoneforge far more aggressively. Also, against combo, if you land a bob you can draw so many answers that if they don't go off right away that you will reach the threshold which they can't fight through your disruption any more. Finally, having another dude to wear swords rocks.

Also, in my opinion, the argument for mishra's factory over wasteland in this deck is greatly strengthened by running bob, since if you are then you have 8 guys (including snapcaster) that, along iwth a factory can put on a fairly fast clock against control and combo. This pushes you over the threshold from control to aggro-control, as you don't have to both land and protect SFM to put be aggressive and put on a good clock, but have a number of other ways in which you can do this as well. V-Clique contributes to this as well, obviously.

Bob, snapcaster, and V-Clique are complemented by mishra's factory in a similar way to how stifle and daze complement wasteland - they are pushed over from merely card-advantage generating critters who can EVENTUALLY win, to, when you have a factory, a fairly fast clock when you have cleared the way of blockers.

Instead of running factory, you could probably make a case for mutavault and with a little tweaking get some pretty good synergy from the deck too.
4 stoneforge mystic
4 snapcaster mage
3 dark confidant
1 spellstutter sprite
2 vendilion clique
1 batterskull
1 sword of feast and famine
4 force of will
3 spell snare
4 brainstorm
1 ponder
3 swords to plowshares
1 dismember
3 bitterblossom
2 jace the mindsculptor
4 underground sea
2 tundra
2 scrubland
3 mutavault
1 riptide labratory
1 plains
1 swamp
1 island
8 fetches
for the side, you throw in some discard cards, more removal, spell pierces, graveyard hate, and you're good to go
You get a lot of faerie power from this deck in a configuration, but don't potentially gain even more card disadvantage running daze, chrome mox, and force of will like edgar's deck could have been.
Also you could then change the sword to jitte to get better synergy with the tokens you are making too. That I'm not sure about

I like that list in some ways, but my objection to the mutavault/bitterblossom/spellstutter thing in a deck that already runs Stoneforge, Snapcaster, AND bob is that you simply have way too many 2-drops. If you ran 3 chrome mox, you would have less of a chance of running into problems with this, but otherwise it will be clunky. I think that you can afford to run either chrome mox or force of will in a deck like this becuase you already have so much card advantage that losing a little to get your threats out a lot faster (mox) or make sure that they resolve (force) is worth it. I wouldn't run both but running one seems essential.

Also, I would never downgrade to mutavault from factory simply for a single spellstutter sprite. I would run 2-4 spellstutters and mutavault or none at all, and factory. The difference in power-level between factory and mutavault is significant - one can block and kill kird apes, trade with nactl's, etc., the other cannot. a factory can block and kill a factory and live, a mutavault trades - etc.

Finally, I would run 4 swords to plowshares, and maybe THEN add a dismember. Swords is simply better, especially when you already have bob and bitterblossom, which bring a lot of life-loss.

Atm i'm testing this.
The idea has come out initially to be a good deck vs Maverick and threshold.

// Lands
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
3 [R] Underground Sea
1 [ROE] Swamp (4)
1 [BRB] Plains (9)
3 [ON] Flooded Strand
1 [B] Scrubland
2 [LRW] Island (1)
3 [R] Tundra
3 [JGC] Mishra's Factory

// Creatures
4 [LRW] Spellstutter Sprite
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant
3 [WWK] Stoneforge Mystic

// Spells
4 [MOR] Bitterblossom
2 [MR] Chrome Mox
3 [AL] Force of Will
2 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
4 [MM] Brainstorm
4 [OD] Standstill
4 [CFX] Path to Exile
4 [DIS] Spell Snare
1 [NPH] Batterskull

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [DS] Sword of Fire and Ice
SB: 3 [6E] Perish
SB: 2 [INN] Snapcaster Mage
SB: 1 [AT] Swords to Plowshares
SB: 2 [PLC] Extirpate
SB: 3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
SB: 3 [CS] Counterbalance

my meta is filled with 1-2drops and without any s&ts. A riptide laboratory/Vendilion clique couple may be worth trying but i'd like to be less wastable possible.

This loses to ant md quite a bit, even with 11 cspells. You do need those cbalances in the side.

If the meta is filled, just play darkblast in the side.. You can kill really much with it, even x/2's if you play it before draw and dredge and play it again :)

I would never play confi in esperblade because confi is so easy to kill, but he needs to be killed that's true also.
If you got a bitterblossom into play, that's another situation because those things are very hard to get rid off. It provides you blockers and if you play 4 spellstutter then you can counter like everything to...

I have a question:
Would elspeth be to hard to play (because of double white) in this deck?
And also, is 3 vendillion Clique to much or not?
I really don't know it so I thought let's ask it.