By Asha Mills Emmett - @ashame_mtg

Updated May 7th 2024

Introduction

it is i

Hello! My name is Asha, I’m a Toronto player who’s been playing for 9 years. I recently made the finals of the Montreal Cycle 6 Regional Championship with Esper Midrange. I’m sharing my thoughts here because I’ve had a few requests to do so; I also just love talking about something I’ve put a lot of thought into. I’ve been playing Esper in standard for about 6 months and this is the culmination of that experience. I am of course open to being wrong and having my mind changed on any of these points. Feel free to DM me with any questions. The content here is entirely free to use and redistribute, but if you find this helpful and are feeling generous, feel free to leave me a tip. :))

Should I Play Esper?

It depends on what you’re looking for in the format. I don’t believe that Esper is the best choice for a deck to pick up one time after very few reps. I think there are other decks in this format where you can wield raw power with less of an intense learning curve. I think Esper is a deck that sincerely rewards extensive format knowledge and severely punishes the lack thereof.

Part of the beauty of Esper is its access to a large pool of competitive card options. There is regular debate on flex slots and card choices with this deck. I don’t believe there is a “solved” version of Esper. It just has so many options, so it can adequately adapt to become whatever you believe is the most relevant in the current metagame.

Game Plan

who up schemin

I view Esper as a tempo deck. The goal is to apply pressure while also interacting with your opponent. You want to be as efficient as possible while making your opponent’s draws as awkward as possible. In your low-curve deck, you benefit immensely from forcing your opponents into situations where they have to make clunky plays.

You’ll find that efficiency is a major theme with this deck. Where possible, you want to set up plays which spend mana as efficiently as possible, often even when it means you might be making yourself more vulnerable to certain cards.

An example of being efficient - choosing to cast Raffine on turn three instead of casting the Deep-Cavern Bat you just topdecked. Although the bat might protect Raffine from potential removal spells and/or protect you from what your opponent plays next turn, the threat of Raffine’s presence might cause your opponent to rethink their next turn. It also opens up a nice window for you to play the bat on turn four and hold up No More Lies.

An example of forcing awkward situations for your opponent - noticing that your opponent has passed turn two with two mana open. In this spot it might be better to pass the turn holding up a flash creature instead of playing your sorcery-speed creature. This allows you to spend your mana well on your turn cycle, while your opponent was forced to waste their turn two.

Strengths

• Esper is one of the “good cards” decks, so there isn’t really a perfect hate piece for the deck. It is equipped to fight through anything. It is resilient.
• The colours of Esper offer a very generous selection of efficient tools to tackle most strategies in the meta.
• Esper has a strong card selection engine in the form of Raffine. When you get Raffine going, it’s very reasonable to expect that you will draw exactly what you need and perfectly sculpt your hand after a few attacks.

Weaknesses

• Esper lacks the inevitability that you see in decks such as lands, domain or control. If you don’t kill your opponent in a reasonable timeframe, you’re not the best equipped to win in topdeck wars.
• Esper is not the most powerful deck. Instead of having game-winning slam-dunk cards, it leans on cards which support your tempo game plan but are not very strong individually. The cards support each other well to create awkward moments for your opponents. Note that I’m not saying Esper’s cards aren’t good, I’m just saying that most of them don’t warp the whole game by themselves.
• Esper can have very critical decision points. Although this is true for all Magic decks, it is particularly difficult in Esper because you have to continuously balance applying pressure with protecting yourself from your opponent’s threats. Sometimes you can’t afford to play around everything. Sometimes if you hold up counterspells forever, your clock is too slow so you give your opponent too many draw steps, increasing the likelihood of them drawing the card you’re hoping to counter. Sometimes missing a window to push damage can lead to your opponent stabilizing at one life.

Card Choices

Core Cards

These are cards that I believe every version of this deck should be playing, usually in large quantities. Though it’s not impossible to be successful without them, I think they work together extremely well for executing the deck’s gameplan.

Expand the dropdowns to read more about each.