6Teach
Namesake
Esper -- Derived from Extrasensory Perception; commonly referred to as a 6th sense. The deck's namesake is, of course,
Mystical Teachings
, and thus: 6Teach.
6Teach is my variant of Esper Teachings, which is all about Meta. In fact, it almost entirely focuses on the meta, which makes it one of the most difficult decks to build and play.
Manlands
Creeping Tar Pits is a pretty nice card in this deck, and will often act as your finisher. A land, it can produce mana when you need it, and also swing when you're sure that your opponent can't remove it.
Creatures
Creatures take up a large portion of this deck's resources. The point of Esper Teachings, unlike many other Control-based decks, is not to control the board until you get your finisher out, and then bash your opponent for massive amounts of damage. Rather, you're meant to control the game while slowly swinging for damage, and dwindling your opponent's life down to 0. Using creatures with Flash like Restoration Angel allow you to expand upon your
Mystical Teachings
options. Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir can help expand your options for Mystical Teachings, as well. A common theme with creatures, as you may have noticed, is to use creatures that aren't just beatsticks. The more use you get out of a finisher, the more it will do for you. Every creature in this deck needs to add some sort of benefit to the overall performance.
The exception to this, in the sideboard, is Wurmcoil Engine. In my meta, there are a few sligh decks, including an RDW deck. The lifegain from Wurmcoil could make the difference between a win and a loss.
Restoration Angel gives you the most you possibly can get out of your Snapcaster Mage as well as making it that much easier to protect your creatures.
Control Shell
Now, this is a Control-based deck, so it couldn't possibly function without some removal and some counters. Cryptic Command is overall one of the best blue cards in the format, as it's just so versatile. You will also have cards like Sphinx's Revelation which can be fetched at the end of your opponent's turn and then cast at the end of your opponent's next turn, which is generally a pretty efficient way of doing things. No more than one rev is included, simply because if you really need another, you can just Snapcaster Mage it back.
Gifts Package
There also can be some degree of a combo deck in this. The combo is as follows: use any method to get Iona, Shield of Emeria into the graveyard, and use Unburial Rites to put it directly onto the battlefield. The most common way of doing this is to use Gifts Ungiven to fetch both of them, with no other cards, and then the opponent has to choose those two cards to go to the graveyard, from where you can flashback Rites.
I am, however, thinking of removing this part of the deck. The 2 card slots it takes up are not insignificant, but the real issue is playing around it. When drawn into, Iona causes real problems with this deck. You don't want to be paying 9 mana to cast a creature; so you have to find a way to discard it since you can no longer fetch for it with Gifts. Since Unburial Rites is not an instant, you cannot fetch it with Teachings. Therefore, the easiest way to waste 4 mana on a Gifts for just Unburial alone, and somehow either draw more than 7 so you can discard Iona and play it the next turn, or use Esper Charm to discard Iona.
It gets to be too complicated, and you end up trying to focus on monitoring what you're doing rather than what your opponent is doing. In addition, with the spare slots and a few more reforms, I could add disruption, such as Inquisition of Kozilek or Thoughtseize.
Advice!
Advice and suggestions would be appreciated.
