Rhox Faithmender might be useful, and I would take out a Cyclonic Rift for a Thrull Parasite, because a turn 1 extorter is great.

+1

@ Chubbub -- I like the Cyclonic Rift/Thrull Parasite swap, and have made it. Rhox Faithmender could be interesting, but what would you suggest removing for it?

Thanks for the +1!

I would take out 1 Shadow Slice and 1 Tormented Soul, 2 Rhox should be enough.

I will playtest with that change and let you know how it works out! Thanks for the suggestion!

Didn't notice the Necropolis Regent/Invisible Stalker combo, DEFINITELY makes me like this deck about 10 times better. +1!

! Nox.LD -- Thanks for the upvote! and yea, what's worse than Invisible Stalker? A bigger one!

Your welcome, if you get the chance, check out my deck, A Superfriendly Walk on Esper.

I will check it tomorrow (crossing my fingers for no school)!

Hey great deck! Looks fun to play! Wouldnt change a thing.Check out my simmilar U/B deck Mill for the kill

+1! Great job.

ChewEmUp33

@ ChewEmUp33 -- Thanks! I will check out your deck. If you're interested, you can check out my devoted mill deck, Perfection of Milling. I will check out your deck in a bit a well.

I actually built a very similar deck a few weeks ago, that eventually morphed into Pulpit Police. I found that it was very hard to make the extort mechanic work fast enough for viability. Usually I just died before I had a chance to do more than a few cipher / extort procs. I probably just needed more control, who knows. I hope this works out for you, I know I really wanted it to work. : /

On a side note, Stolen Identity on an invisible stalker is usually a win condition by itself. Gee, let's just copy the enemy Thragtusk like five times. / Troll face.

I would run 4x Watery Grave and 4x Godless Shrine if you have Crypt Ghast.

I'm surprised there is no Underworld Connections, given a wincon based on casting spells.

I imagine you found Kingpin's Pet's +1/+0 worth W more than Basilica Screecher? My reaction was that it's a mistake to move even 1 mana out on the curve for an extort mechanic build. Can you explain?

I wonder if Paranoid Delusions and Nephalia Drownyard are a possible cipher improvement (replacing Shadow Slice)? I would say no--don't muddle a mill wincon and an extort wincon--but I'd look at it.

Finally, it seems to me that an extort win--late game, grindy--would pair very well with Liliana of the Veil and her ability to near guarantee a transition to mid-late play.

Just read the Mentor of the Meek suggestion.

Perhaps Mentor of the Meek, Lingering Souls, and Liliana of the Veil? With sideboard Rootborn Defensesagainst control?

Final suggestion, if you have trouble against hyperactive decks, consider verdict and rootborn. Verdict alone hopefully to stabilize on t4, and the combo if drawn late game. I know I know. We're talking a major change to the concept of this deck, cause you would need tokens (lingering souls, maybe sorin, maybe Doomed Traveler, Skirsdag High Priest) to make rootborn fully worthwhile.

Don't shoot the messenger, just brainstorming, and feel free to pour cold water on all humble suggestions.

Anyway, nice deck, keep us posted on how it all works out! +1 for sho.

Thanks for the comments everyone! And don't forget to +1 if you haven't already!

@ Dakeefers -- I tried a mill/extort combo deck that eventually morphed into a devoted mill deck. This is the other side of that creation, and I believe the key to a 3 color (Esper in particular) extort deck is a balance between control and extort. I have Stolen Identity sideboarded because it is relatively useless against control builds, and some aggro builds. I'd much rather have a lower costing spell.

@ hawgdriver -- Please note that this is a budget deck. I do not want the cost to exceed $50.00. Right off the bat, that eliminates shocklands, Supreme Verdict and Liliana of the Veil.

Underworld Connections isn't in here because I usually have enough cards to cast, and the cipher mechanic feeds extort when I don't have anything to cast. This deck originally lacked a lot of offensive power, which led to the choice of Kingpin's Pet over Basilica Screecher. Now with the addition of Necropolis Regent, that may not be necessary. I am also against adding mill to this deck. I have found, through testing my other budget deck, that mill is best, and almost only usable in a devoted-mill deck.

Lingering Souls and Mentor of the Meek is a good option to explore -- what changes would you recommend making to accommodate them for playtesting? It would require a massive overhaul as you noted, and I'm not sure if I'm willing to diverge from the current strategy that much.

I love this deck, extort may just be my favorite mechanic, well, ever. I have a couple suggestions: consider dropping 1 Crypt Ghast for a 4th Invisible Stalker. The Ghast is an awesome card, no doubt about it, but I would rather see another stalker than another ghast in this deck given that you want another low-cost drop as the game goes on, and without running shocks or more swamps, Crypt Ghast is really only a 4-drop extort creature.

You may want to consider adding some guildgates for some budget-friendly mana fixing. no more than 2 of each of the relevant gates, maybe not even that many.

I would second the suggestion for Lingering Souls, not only is it a great card that you will never be sorry to see, each one provides 2 potential extort triggers and at the worst gives you evasive creatures to cipher on to.

Also, you may want to sideboard Mental Vapors to help against control matchups. Consider Undercity Plague to help as a win-con, probably only as a 1-of since its costly mana-wise.

If you have a second, take a look at my attempt at an extort combo deck using R instead of U. Extortionists with Sniper Rifles. Thanks and +1

Forgot to say, I don't think Mentor of the Meek is a good fit here as it will be eating mana you want to use for extort triggers. Late-game it may be of some use but there isn't anything I would suggest parting with in favor of adding it.

In my version of this deck i am running Realmwright to make everything swamps, making Crypt Ghast better and allow my islands to be used for extort.

I might also consider running a couple of copies of the Dimir Charm to help against sorcery board removal or control game flow with library manipulation, all without sacrificing the weenie removal (removing 1 Azorius Charm, 1 Orzhov Charm).

I second the removal of Crypt Ghast. Perhaps replace with 4 Basilica Screecher, 1 Invisible Stalker, and -1 Kingpin's Pet?

Also, why not run Smite? It's a great extort target at (W), and fits with a more patient deck like this.

Mentor of the Meek is hard to cast with extort, and in advance of other creatures, who you often want as chump blockers. Perhaps heartless summoning can help? Well, if it wasn't for the stalker it might be viable. But no way you want to run less that 4 of him. So heartless is out of the question.

If you did run mentor, you'd really want to make all your other creatures, besides regent, 2 drops or less. Because to get value from him, you'll want to be able to cast a creature, pay 1 for the draw, and pay 2+ for the extort. You are already up to 5 mana, and you probably also want to leave 2 mana open for an instant. So that's 7 mana just to make him fairly useful. Were it me, I'd want to run 25+ lands with him, sculpt the creature curve below 2cmc (except regent--great fit), and at least consider a copy of a draw engine like underworld connections. I would also add a copy or two of Moorland Haunt for instant-speed, eot activation of his ability (note the Dimir Charm 3d option helps here). I would not run more than 1 copy of mentor--2 copies in opening hand seems like a lost game.

Come to think of it, 21 lands seems kinda low when you really want to see more and more land each turn, to max out the extort.

I would think the ideal first 14 cards would be:

6-7 lands (thus a 24-26 land build)

4-5 creatures - 2x thrull, 1x screecher, 1x stalker, 1x (mentor/regent/souls)

3-4 instant/sorcery: 1 cipher, 2-3 removal/counter, or blind obedience

The ideal sequence on the play would be

1: swamp, thrull

2: plains, --- screecher, or smite plus extort

3: island, --- smite + 2 extort or stalker + 1 extort

4: swamp, --- hands of binding + 2 extort (2 cards in hand at eot)

5: removal/counter + 3 extort total (including cipher'ed binding)

turns 6-10: extort the daylights out of everything and draw, draw, draw, and maybe drop a regent if you get one.

At this point, I still see troubles because you want both a lot of land to use extort, but need to run into spells to cast, especially without cipher or if it's been removed. Against aggro, you need to extort faster than they can deal it out. At 3 per turn and one copy of binding, it just seems to slow. My reaction to this is: add more Smite and maybe Agoraphobia for the recursive casting?

Anyway, I've probably "overhelped," but hopefully there is something useful in there. Can't wait to hear the results.

Also, there seems a strong need for dual mana sources--you want nearly every land to be extort capable, but don't want to have issues with your many multicolor spells. so however you can make that happen

...Realmwright is not a terrible add, in terms of mana fixing and extort-compatibility, but brings little else to the fight. Great synergy with Crypt Ghast, but it seems a fragile and impractical combo at first blush--(one of each on the field is nearly as likely as two of one type). Perhaps it works better in reality.

I think whatever you can find that's cheap and recursive--cipher being the best example, but also flashback--will help this deck. Especially if it's removal.

OK. Windbag out.

Looks like I have a bunch of comments to respond to.. I'l try to respond to everything, but please speak up if I miss something! Nevertheless, thank you for commenting, and don't forget to +1!

@ thecrimsonchin8 --

1. I will playtest the deck only running 3 Crypt Ghasts, but I'm not sure about the addition of another Invisible Stalker. 3 has been working well for this deck, and another might be unnecessary.
2. Guildgates are good, but slow down the deck, and take a Swamp's place, making Crypt Ghast less effective.
3. I want to try to add Lingering Souls, but what to remove?
4. I will add Mental Vapors to the sideboard, and mainboard 1 Undercity Plague in place of a Shadow Slice.
5. I will check out your deck later, and please remind me tomorrow if I forget!

@ hawgdriver --

1. I agree -- Realmwright seems very fragile, but again I'll have to see how it works in practice.
2. Dimir Charm and Smite are two more cards I'll have to test out. Please share your advice of what to remove.
3. I will most likely drop Crypt Ghast to a 3-of, but would like to try to keep it in the deck

Again, thank you for the advice everyone!

As far as Lingering Souls goes, you could probably get away with having them in your SB, as I'm honestly stumped as to what to cut for them.

Instead of a 4th Invisible Stalker, consider adding a 4th of one of your other extort creatures (or a 3rd Blind Obedience). I would also advocate changing the Kingpin's Pet to Basilica Screecher as its lower cost allows for more extort triggers when dropping it later in the game. Also, if you make that change, you could consider SB'ing Immortal Servitude since you'll have a bunch of stuff at 2 mana.

Thanks for taking a look at my deck when you have time, I'd really appreciate some feedback on it.