I figure I should try to show some Standard decks other than Mono-Blue Devotion for those of you who aren’t interested in playing that deck as much as I am, so today I’ll be trying out an Esper Humans deck based on Shota Takao’s deck from Grand Prix Shizuoka. I’ve changed a couple cards, but the basic idea is very similar. I still don’t really think the mana in Standard works for a deck like this, but aside from that I like the spells it’s playing and how flexible the deck is.
I’m playing:
Creatures (25)
- 4 Lyev Skyknight
- 3 Desecration Demon
- 3 Obzedat, Ghost Council
- 3 Daring Skyjek
- 2 Cartel Aristocrat
- 2 Imposing Sovereign
- 4 Xathrid Necromancer
- 4 Soldier of the Pantheon
Lands (25)
Spells (10)
Mana was definitely a serious issue there—I didn’t have blue in a reasonably timely fashion in either game, and it really cost me, especially in the second game. Also, it’s worth thinking about Golgari Charm more than I did when sideboarding against decks that can cast it given how many one-toughness creatures are in this deck.
That went much better, but that second game was still pretty scary. Desecration Demon is impressive. It’s interesting how much the mechanics of Innistrad were holding that card back. It felt like the card was generally weak since it was bad against so many different things, but really it’s just that Innistrad had undying coupled with an unusually high number of token generators on top of other things it matched up badly against like Thragtusk and Unburial Rites.
Game 1 stayed small—he didn’t do anything extremely powerful, so I won. Game 2 he had an explosive draw with Nykthos. In game 3, I’m pretty sure my opponent was supposed to mulligan. That many Chained to the Rocks is way too risky; he just needs to keep hands that are putting permanents into play. Too many of his cards are too weak without other permanents.
That was very unexpected. Clearly my opponent lost game two because of a misclick, but I figured I might as well record the rest of the match anyway just to let you see the deck play some more and managed to win the third game.