Yes, you can definitely still control in a midrange.

I use some midrange threats but my deck doesn't have goyf or such and most of my creatures are utility.

I've seen it and it looks sweet. I agree that you don't 'need' Goyf just because it's one of the best cards, especially if your list isn't designed to maximize its effectiveness.

If you actually look at my game winning "threats" I have 2 Tas 1 Tombstalker 2 kalitas 2 and 3 Liliana the Last Hope. I would consider 7 creature threats and 3 walkers a control amount of threats.

My brother and I just put your Esper Narset deck up against his Esper Dragons deck. We were going to do a best out of three, but the first game went to turn 34. Ugin, the Spirit Dragon was able to wreck your formidable board state, but multiple Timely Reinforcements kept you in play long enough to finally kill the Dragons deck with the Colonnades.

+1 for the great matchup and nice build! I'm sure my brother would appreciate a +1 if you are a fan of his apparently quite effective budget Dragons deck.

Happy brewing!

I upvoted his very interesting deck! Thanks for testing it! What did you like most? Least? Did you notice how many options and interactions you have?

I'm also considering 2 Oath of Gideon. The card certainly has good application here. Narset would start out at 7 loyalty and be bumped to 8 upon resolution. 2 turn clock.

would oath be better or worse in this deck than lingering souls?

be an interesting card to test for your walker heavy deck that is for sure bud :)

Neo7hinker -- The deck's early game disruption you are running is definitely effective. I wasn't sure that Esp. Dragons was going to be able to recover, but all of those Temples were actually able to scry me into ideal responses. Elspeth, Sun's Champion and Gideon Jura are able to do some serious work together against a control deck. I needed sweepers and sacrifice and lifegain effects from Crux of Fate and Foul-Tongue Invocation just to stay alive. Once Narset hit the board on top of Elspeth and Gideon, it became clear how effective the superfriends combo really is. Lucky for me, I topdecked and Ugin after dropping my eighth land.

Path to Exile worked really well against the Dragons, but Lingering Souls was surprisingly underwhelming without Intangible Virtue or any other oaths. I failed to hit Sorin, obviously, which probably would have been a different story. I think it would be interesting to run your Esper deck against my B/W Tokens deck for a fun, grindy game. Maybe something to consider if you have time.

Here's my Esper Spirits list I'm working with right now. Still testing it out and making changes with. Very much in flux. Just added Aether Vials, had serum vision in before. http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/26-10-16-esper-spirits/

I wonder how you classify your own deck as "competitive".

Competitive as in it performs well vs Tiered decks, not that it's a Tier 1 deck. Competitive as in it can simply compete and isn't designed solely for kitchen table and FNM play. It was developed with the meta in mind. I intend to take this to a GP.

You should wait for the results of the GP then to know if it's competitive or not.

You're misconstruing it, bud. If someone shared a quality list that had a focused design, consistent gameplan, and was relevant against the top decks, I'd consider it a competitive deck, regardless of how it performs at X event. There are great decks that don't always put up the same performances at events due to variance, match ups, etc. For instance, Ali won a GP with GR Tron last year, then went to GP Charlotte and opened up 0-3 (I believe) vs Burn/aggressive decks. That result didn't make the deck any less competitive. That's all I mean by the reference.

luke1 a deck does not need to be known to be competitive. Remember eldrazi winter? That deck was an idea by a few people it was competitive and was new. Just because someone makes a new thing does not make it any less competitive. Last year Zac Elsick came up with Lantern Control was that a deck yet? No but it was competitive. All Neo7hinker is trying to tell you is that someone's rogue deck can be competitive without being a known tier deck.

Exactly, Apakakuta. Thank you.

Of the decks that write competitive in the title only 1 in a hundred (maybe) is actually competitive.

A lot of people don't tag their decks properly doesn't mean you need that is always true. If one apple in the Orchard is rotten is the entire orchard bad?

What do Apples have to do with the subject at hand?

hunkers It is an anology a metaphor. Way of explaining by using something most people should know.

Justmessing

Hey Neo, +1

I will try out The Esper Charms as well as the 2 of Blessed Alliance. Your arguments are valid, If you have the luxury of rebounding a charm it gets insane. I took out Cryptic Commands for it. Whats your position on Cryptic? Once I had a Planeswalker out and cryptic up i felt almost invulnerable, 3 cryptics were all the counters i ran.

This is what i'm currently on http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/08-11-16-Rhq-esper-control/

Absolutely love Negates, having them mainboard is never bad, every deck plays relevant non creature spells worthy of countering. My thinking Cryptic over Negates: Negates usually become relevant T4+ which would allow you to keep up cryptic. However Negate lends itself to playing something up to cmc 2 and keeping up negate (with 4 mana up)I will definitely try them out and report how they're working out.

Even though you said the collective brutality is low impact, i will keep playing them for a bit. They fit so well in the deck. If manage to play relevant lines with the card I'll let you know.

luke1 tiers do not reflect competitiveness, just the amount of metashare the deck has (although those correlate with each other).

luke1 tiers do not reflect competitiveness, just the amount of metashare the deck has (although those correlate with each other).

I might recommend Extirpate over Surgical Extraction, since paying a mana only really stops you from going turn 2 Extraction into Snapcaster Extraction; I imagine split second would be relevant much more often. Deck looks amazing, planeswalkers galore!