Trying out this deck with minor changes at fnm. I'll let you know how it went

My first impression is that this looks great. You've definitely built a great control shell. I like that Seismic Rupture is your three-drop sweeper off the sideboard. Anger of the Gods would kill your Icefall Regent.

JakeHarlow

Yea, and other than the lands, this deck is completely post-rotation. : )

You tinkered with it since I last looked but I had on main board, ugin and 2 x dig through time. Now deck is pretty identical. I have monastery siege and shaman of the great hunt on sideboard. Headed out now to try it out

Interested in FNM matchups & results. I'm not splashing blue enough, so I'm staying away from Icefall & Silumgar's (for now) ;-)

I got smoked by esper dragons. Put up a decent fight against red deck wins. And had the worst mana luck against G/W manifest. I look to put in some caryatids or runeclaw Mystics

Yeah I'd also love to hear tourney matchups and results too!

I dig it. +1

I meant to ask you if you had actually taken this deck for a spin at your local FNM?

DonkeyPunch

No, not yet, but I've been doing well online. I'm almost done on paper, just 10 or so cards short. Almost ready. : )

Rasta_Viking29?

Courser of Kruphix, Keranos, prophet of kruphix, are all great cards. The beauty of U/G control is that it is able to do 2 things a turn way before other colors due to the flash and untap from prophet.

I keep looking at the list and I think I'm just going to have to copy the deck to fully understand and dissect it lol. Looks like you have 50 non-land cards.

Rasta_Viking29

50? Maybe it's because some of my costum categories have cards that overlap. You can change it manually if you want.

I really like the idea of this deck and tried it out for myself. The major issue I saw was opponents flooding the board with 4 health creatures/sticky creatures and having a lot of trouble removing them. The Icefall Regents really help, but 5 takes a while to get to. What about replacing a copy of Anticipate and Wild Slash for two copies of Reality Shift. It's helped me a lot with the early monsters decks (Abzan aggro and Temur aggro).

LuLuj

Hm, that's actually not a bad idea! I'll give it a shot, and can you inform me which decks you had trouble with? Abzan? Dragons?

I took it to an FNM and just played in testing. I had no trouble with the midrange Mardu dragons deck, where they were just too slow, and their early cards were easily dealt with by a Wild Slash or a Draconic Roar. I ran into a temur aggro and was always just a turn or two late to stabilizing. Savage Knuckleblade was the biggest problem, the only answer this deck could have is probably just countering it. That or I had to wait for him to tap out and just Roast it, but at sorcery speed it's kind of tough.

I had a lot of trouble against Abzan Aggro too. Which seems strange because I feel like abzan should be an easy matchup, but Abzan just had too many threats. Rakshasa Deathdealer was near impossible to get rid of and running only two Roasts in the 75, gives the deck a limited number of answers and it's hard to draw them all. I will say the Anticipates definitely help find the right answer, but I really like the Reality Shifts mainboard or even two more sideboarded Roasts.

The matchup against mono-red was actually rather simple too. Instead of the four Savage Knuckleblades I tried sideboarding two and two Hornet Nests. With all of the cheap kill spells and board wipes, then holding late game counterspells for their topdecked burn spells, I had no trouble.

I didn't think I would love the four mainboard copies of Icefall Regent but everytime I drew it, it was astounding! I was really surprised by the effectiveness of that card. It was honestly my best draw every game against Bant heroic, which I thought would be a tough matchup as well, but I actually just went 3-0 against it. Between the sideboarded Hornet Nest all of the early burn and Icefall Regent bant heroic gave me no trouble at all.

Depending on the meta at wherever you play you may decide to go down to 2-3 Icefall Regent mainboard but I really suggest keeping at least 2 in the main. It's kind of a dead card against the really quick aggro (Mono/Atarka Red and mono black humans), but I have no idea how to value it against control. It can trade one for one against a Dragonlord Ojutai and it costs two more to target for the opponent to kill it, but they could just use a Foul-Tongue Invocation so I still don't know how to value it versus control.

More testing needed! Overall I'm really happy and having so much fun with this deck though! So I'm really appreciative of your base model! :D

LuLuj

Thanks!

How does cutting 1 Wild Slash and 1 Icefall Regent then for 2 Reality Shift? They hit Rakshasa Deathdealers, so that can be good.

And Crater's Claws is sweet.

OK, you talk about being ready for the next standard, but 10 of your lands are rotating out...

@Vergil_Redgrail

When they rotate out, I will replace them with whatever comes in from Zendikar, and if that doesn't work, gainlands. : )

Hey Scorprix. Thanks for up-voting my Esper Frustration deck. I feel like it is just the Esper version of this deck but I also feel like there is a lot in my deck that can directly correlate into this deck as well as a few ideas I had for my deck that aren't very viable in the build but with your build I feel like they could be an outstanding twist.

The main issue I see with your deck as it sits it that as a control deck I feel like you need a bit more card advantage. You could definitely justify running at least 1 more Anticipate and I feel like a fourth isn't unreasonable either seeing as it will give you a much higher chance of pulling the answers you need and sifting through all your excess lands. I do love the use of Stubborn Denial, I may need to look at that in my deck. One creature you have in here that I am not a huge fan of is Surrak, the Hunt Caller. I can see the appeal but once your fatties hit I don't really think there is a need for haste. He also is in range of the 2 most popular wraths at the moment, Crux of Fate and Languish. Aside from that he is the only "slow" green in your deck and I feel like he confuses your turn 4-5 a bit. I would much rather hit a Thunderbreak Regent than him or just pass turn with mana open for counters and answering other threats. I would also alter your land base just a bit. I would run the maximum fetch lands because they are great if you hit a land pocket or something you don't like then you can just shuffle out of it. I also like the interaction with scry.

Onto my idea for true shenanigans that my deck simply can't facilitate that your deck can and in my opinion should just to be awesome! If you were to run 4x Haven of the Spirit Dragon and 1x Crucible of the Spirit Dragon along with your Sarkhan Unbroken you could justify more dragons. I am not talking about more Temur dragons either. I mean run 1x Dragonlord Kolaghan and 1x Dragonlord Silumgar and 1x Silumgar, the Drifting Death and as a control player maybe 2x Dragonlord Ojutai. I know you would probably have to trim some fluff(maybe the Surrak's and 1 or 2 of your existing dragons) but I feel like an unholy dragonlord alliance is something of a hidden gem and would give your deck answers to every match. It is just a crazy idea I have been tinkering with and Esper is just too damn good with the 5 dragons I have to justify my running all of these other ones but as your deck sits I feel like there is room and no reason it couldn't work. That being said I won't pretend to know how good your deck is because I obviously haven't played with it as much as you and I do come up with a lot of insane ideas and sometimes they don't work out as I hope they would. Let me know your thoughts!

+1 from me and keep up the epic work!

@XTechNinjaX

Thank you! Wow, that's a lot of stuff! Ok, so I do agree with the surrak idea. He has been pretty lackluster, so I will promptly replace him for more Anticipates.

Next, although Ojutai would probably be the best, I don't own any, but I have a foil kolaghan, and I could buy a silumgar (which do you think is better?). Just throw in 1 Bloodstained Mire or 2, a few B/U fetches (I don't remember what they're called!), and add another Haven. Good ideas! :D

With the fetches I was honestly only thinking 1 more Wooded Foothills. You don't really want fetches that can only hit 1 color because if you have both mountains in play a Bloodstained Mire is a dead land and you don't want that. I love the Anticipate swap. Should give you a lot more dig. I would probably put Dragonlord Kolaghan in the main and then side for Silumgar, the Drifting Death against turbo white tokens and goblins. If you could find room for a Dragonlord Silumgar in the main that would be pretty cool as well just because it would give you answers to massive creatures and walkers. It kind of depends if you can find room because I don't know where you will make the cuts to fit these other dragons. I would also make Haven of the Spirit Dragon a 4 of to make sure these extra dragons aren't dead draws and give you more recycle potential.

XTechNinjaX & Rasta_Viking29:

Just added white, and Dromoka, the Eternal is great. Sure he's worse than Ojutai, but I don't own ojutai. I was wondering I there is any help I could get from you guys on the clunky mana-base. I will keep working on that for now.