In a field full of Bant Company and green-based Delirium and Emerge decks, two men vowed to make a stand. Or, you know, they are both too stubborn to play anything other than Esper-colored tapout control decks. Personally I prefer the latter; it makes for a better story.
Shaheen Soorani and Joe Lossett brought an innovative Esper Control deck to #SCGINVI last weekend and put up a record that is impressive to say the least.
14-1-1 in Standard between the two of them. Oh, and that loss was when Shaheen beat Joe in the mirror. So let’s amend that to 13-0-1. A 96.4% win rate. In one of the toughest tournaments on the SCG Tour®.
The list is classic Soorani: plenty of removal and a smattering of the best planeswalkers in the format as the primary sources of card advantage. Building in this way provides a subtle advantage, since your opponent is never sure of which planeswalker to attack or whether to ignore all of them and go for the throat. And every misstep means more activations and more cards for you.
On top of that, Liliana, the Last Hope; Narset Transcendent; and Sorin, Grim Nemesis start on high enough loyalty that attacking them is very difficult. So you will likely be able to untap with them, clear your opponent’s battlefield with your removal and sweepers, and put yourself in a commanding position.
Shaheen and Joe paired these planeswalkers with four copies of Oath of Jace, which does two of things for this list. One, it serves as a card quality engine, letting you tear through your deck with the initial trigger and the later scrys. That along with Dark Petition enable the toolbox of powerful but narrow cards like Descend Upon the Sinful and Silumgar’s Command.
Second, as an enchantment it gives you a much needed added card type to enable Emrakul, the Promised End, easily the most powerful finisher in Standard. Emrakul is the ultimate catch-up card that can win games from nearly any position while also ending the game in one or two turns. Having that effect in a reactive control deck is incredible, and allows you to play more passively, knowing you have a trump card up your sleeve.*
* Disclaimer: Don’t literally keep your Emrakul, the Promised End in your sleeve.
Most control decks opt for something like Read the Bones to gain actual card advantage, but with the planeswalkers taking care of that, Oath of Jace is much more appropriate for this deck.
Obviously if you want to play this list you will have to customize your tools for the expected metagame. Maybe some weeks you will want a Summary Dismissal. On others you will want more discard. That is a constantly ongoing process. But the core of planeswalkers and Oath of Jace appears to be an underlooked player in this Standard format.
Creatures (5)
Planeswalkers (6)
Lands (26)
Spells (23)
