Making Magic in the Arena – Esper Control

Since the Elusive Target didn’t take anywhere near as long as I anticipated, I opted to stream some Magic Arena for another hour or so.

So what better time than now to play what appears to be the best deck in Standard: Esper Control.

The deck can be found here.

Versions of this deck have been around ever since Domanaria, thanks to Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. That card is the backbone of the deck, and the win condition. The end goal is to play him, and eventually get to his -8 ultimate. From there, his -3 can shuffle himself back into the deck so that his owner will never deck out, as the opponent slowly withers away while their permanents and lands get exiled.

Thanks to War of the Spark, the new Liliana can be played as a 1-of to offer another possible path to victory. And aside from that the rest of the deck exists either to deal with threats, maintain the player’s life total, and draw through the deck to gain the resources to play and protect it’s big win conditions.

It’s a very effective deck. While I will always love my big, evil dragon Nicol Bolas, one can’t deny that this deck does work, getting the job done.