Excerpt from "Sunday Night Stories"

"It was the second game of round four of a Vintage Daily Event. Game one had been a quick and brutal affair, for I had guessed incorrectly as to what my opponent was playing. Early on, I took a stab in the dark with Cabal Therapy and failed miserably. Oath of Druids and Griselbrand ended the game in short order, but as game two began, I felt confident that my sideboard held the solution.

As the turns of game two ticked by, I had a premonition that something was coming. Call it a soul-read, or perhaps a lucky guess, but I put my opponent on Show and Tell and Griselbrand in their hand. I hoped to rip a Cabal Therapy, but instead I ended up drawing Cavern of Souls. As my opponent passed the turn yet again, I wondered if I could find an answer to stop Griselbrand from crashing my party. Then my next draw phase came and I found my answer. As I looked at my freshly-drawn Containment Priest I realized I now had my ticket to victory."

More Human Than Human

Lately I've had a lot of success playing Grixis Therapy, and to a lesser extent Grixis Delver (which is nearly the same deck anyway). I've won more matches against Workshops than I've lost with that deck, and I feel like it's one of the top decks in Vintage (that may be my own personal bias though).

I enjoyed playing with the Therapy decks so much that I decided to attempt to revive an old idea. I wondered if I could make basically the same deck with Monastery Mentor playing the role of Young Pyromancer. In the end, I came up with a deck that I think is a contender. I'm sure it could use further development, but the initial results suggest that this is a viable archetype.

I settled on three colors, Esper to be exact. Four colors are pushing it in an environment that is packed with a ton of mana-denial in the form of Wasteland and Chalice of the Void. I used similar numbers of all of the important cards, and switched some cards to different cards in other colors that were roughly analogous to their counterparts from Grixis Therapy.

Before I get too far into why I chose the cards that I did, let's take a look at the list that I managed to 3-1 with last Sunday night:

The heart and soul of this deck is much like its Grixis cousin. There are a ton of tricks we can pull with Cabal Therapy, Monastery Mentor, Snapcaster Mage, and all of our "free" spells like Mental Misstep, Gush, and Gitaxian Probe. This list trades some of the speed and mana efficiency for more power in the late game, and more sideboard options against Oath of Druids or Time Vault decks.

Now by more power in the late game, I mean more than just the potency of prowess itself. One example of something this deck can do that Grixis Therapy cannot, is to use an otherwise useless Cabal Therapy for an alpha-strike. It's happened more than once where I used a Cabal Therapy late in the game to pump my team, and then sacrificed the newly-created token to cast it again (whether my opponent had a hand or not). With a Young Pyromancer, you would only get a benefit if you cast the Cabal Therapy from your hand. The tokens are vanilla, there's no benefit from flashing back a Cabal Therapy when the opponent has no non-land cards in their hand. This may not seem like much, but it's all part of the incremental advantages that lead up to a victory.

Here's a few of the key changes I made to come up with Esper Therapy:

Becomes

Dack is the best planeswalker in Vintage right now. This deck isn't playing red, so I went with the best walker that fits the deck's colors, and that is big daddy Jace. I'm sure I don't have to tell you how powerful Jace is, and he's really helpful in this list. Being a creature deck, Esper Therapy has a weakness to Oath of Druids. Jace can save the day by bouncing a Griselbrand or Blightsteel Colossus.

Becomes

Swords is better than bolt at dealing with creatures, plain and simple. There is a substantial loss in utility though, as Swords can't kill planeswalkers or opponents the way a Lightning Bolt can. Still, not feeling helpless to dispatch a Blightsteel Colossus is a great selling point.

Becomes

Pyroblast has a lot of uses that Flusterstorm can't emulate. However, one popular use for Pyroblast is to win counter-wars. It's common to try to get a total blow-out by Blasting an opponent's Force of Will, and I feel like Flusterstorm is even better in that regard because it can't be countered by a Mental Misstep.

Sadly, this swap leaves the deck more vulnerable to Delver of Secrets, Dack Fayden, and Jace, the Mind Sculptor just to name a few. It's important to either not let such problematic blue permanents resolve, or to have another answer. Monastery Mentor allows Esper Therapy to make short work of a planeswalker, and even Snapcaster Mage can be played at the opponent's end-step to set up an attack on a planeswalker.

Becomes

I took a gamble and replaced one utility land that can't free-play a Gush with a different utility land that can't free-play a Gush. The thing is, Cavern of Souls has an amazing synergy with this deck, as only the two Kataki, War's Wage in the sideboard are not humans. Setting Cavern to "human" means that Monastery Mentor, Snapcaster Mage, and Containment Priest can be cast at will. The situation I referenced in my mock narrative intro section really happened, and it was really sweet to flash in that Priest knowing it couldn't be countered!

I've never won a match with a single elemental token from a Young Pyromancer. I have won several games with just one prowess monk though, because prowess is insane in Vintage. Casting a Young Pyromancer with a Cavern of Souls just to get one token before it eats a Lightning Bolt isn't really a strong enough play to offset the risks of running the Cavern in the first place. Monastery Mentor is a different story. If both players are at parity, or in a very close game state, casting an uncounterable Mentor and firing off one or two quick spells to generate value is a much stronger play. This is why you see Cavern of Souls in a Mentor deck, but never is a Pyromancer deck. Well, that and Cavern of Souls doesn't play well with Gush as I mentioned before.

I've been considering cutting the single Strip Mine from most of my decks for quite some time. It isn't because it's not good, the card is bonkers some times. The thing is, I don't get that much out of it. I think that the basic theory is that when it's good, it's great, and when it's bad it's not that bad. To elaborate further, let's question when it is that Strip Mine is really good.

It is nice to have an out to problematic lands like Library of Alexandria, but this deck already has ways of dealing with that land in my opinion. If you can force the opponent to have to play more than one spell, it becomes harder for them to stay at or around seven cards to use the Library each turn. It's also possible to Cabal Therapy away enough cards to turn off the card-draw effect. Also, one must remember that this plan equates to using one restricted card as an answer to another restricted card. How often is the Strip Mine going to be handy but also unavailable? How many times will you draw the Strip Mine and wish it was any other land in your deck? This basic idea also applies to Bazaar of Baghdad and Mishra's Workshop and man-lands. In those cases though, those lands are not restricted, so Strip Mine is only a temporary setback at best.

The other use for Strip Mine is when you're ahead in the game. Vintage is a format that is comparatively heavy in mana accelerants, so using up a land-drop to deny one to an opponent can be devastating. These factors contribute to the case for running Strip Mine in Grixis Therapy, as it is more of a tempo deck by nature, owing to its slightly more efficient creatures and planeswalker. Both Grixis and my Esper build are control decks, but I assert that Esper Therapy leans far more toward the direction of control than Grixis does. So, in my opinion, Cavern of Souls is a good fit in this list. It helps that there are so many good creatures that share the type of "human" too!

Tuning the Main Deck

Most of the rest of the main deck has the same numbers that are found in Grixis builds. I feel that the balance of spells in Grixis Therapy is the main reason for the deck's success, so I decided to follow those numbers closely.

I've never really built a deck by swapping out one color for another, and I don't know if it's a common thing to do. I initially tried it on a whim, but I kept winning the majority of my matches, so I stuck with it and worked on the list. There are some imperfections with my approach, for instance some of the cards I replaced have a higher converted mana cost than their Grixis counterparts. This stretches the mana base a little more, so I feel that the land/spell configuration might need some tuning in the future.

Jace costs more than Dack, and Mentor is also one more mana than Young Pyromancer. This tends to make Esper Therapy slower and less efficient. My initial method for improving the situation was to add Mana Crypt, but I decided that Mana Crypt wasn't going to be as good in this deck. Crypt is better in a deck that plays Tinker or a deck that can win fast with a combo. It's possible to lose too many coin flips and die as a result.

My current incarnation has Sol Ring as one of the nineteen mana sources, but I'm testing making changes to the deck's mana. You can sort of count moxen as lands, except that certain cards like Chalice of the Void can proactively blank your zero or one-drops. Early in the game, especially on the play, Sol Ring is a potent source of fast mana. Late in the game, it can be a drag to draw one. It's also vulnerable to Mental Misstep, but frankly I don't worry about that aspect much. I'd usually rather have my opponent be out of Missteps when I play Ancestral Recall or Cabal Therapy.

There are other cards that I've considered trying in the starting sixty, but so far the issue has been room. Gush doesn't play well with Mana Drain in my opinion, as the need to bounce lands can conflict with the need to keep up two blue mana at all times. It's possible to hard-cast a Gush with Mana Drain quite easily, and there are always uses for the mana if you can find it, but I don't think that this current build is the right fit for a Drain.

Demonic Tutor is the only tutor I'd consider using in a deck like this, because it really is a control deck. There are "combos" you can do, but they are really just spell chains. In the days of the questionable combos found scattered through the pages of Inquest, "combo" could mean all sorts of things that wouldn't have even a shred of a chance at winning the game. These days, we refer to "synergies" and "spell chains" when we talk about making ten tokens and flashing back a Time Walk. That is not a combo though, a combo is a dedicated set of cards that will end the game when used in conjunction.

The Sideboard (Mono-White Tech!)

These are two of the deck's anti-Shops cards. Both can be quite effective if played at the correct time. I wasn't always as high on Kataki, but my friend and clan-mate James "Niffiwan" Cady sold me on it. It has done its job for me and then some. While it isn't as hard to beat as some cards, it should slow my opponent down enough to allow me to cast Serenity or Disenchant if I need to. Plus, Kataki isn't affected by Thorn of Amethyst.

Serenity is as close to Pulverize as I can get in these colors, so that's what I chose. It isn't as easy to cast, but at least I'm not sacrificing any lands to use it.

While Balance has many uses, I bring it in against other Gush/Grow decks. These days, those decks all play either Young Pyromancer or Monastery Mentor, and Balance is the panic button if an opponent gets too far ahead of us. Balance will also kill un-targetable or indestructible creatures in some board states.

This would be Null Rod in other decks, but since I'm playing white, I went with a slightly harder-to-remove version. This is brought in against any deck that plays Time Vault, or any deck that relies heavily on artifact mana. Some Shops variants like Martello Shops or Affinity are hurt by this too.

Mainly Dredge and Oath hate, these cards can also be useful against other decks, from Storm (Cage) to Shops (Priest hurts Forgemaster).

This card was not in the deck at all until Josh Potuchek said that Containment Priest and Grafdigger's Cage alone were not enough to fight dredge by themselves. I've had a lot of luck against Dredge without Rest in Peace, but I decided to take his advice anyway. The only reason I don't like RIP is that it makes my Snapcaster Mage and Dig through Time worthless, but I figured that I could find a workaround if I only had one RIP in the sideboard. My plan is to use Priest and Cage early on, and if I need to, I can shut the door all the way with Rest in Peace.

This is a card that can be good against Shops or Oath, and if anyone has any funny business planned regarding Moat, well then I hope they packed their Spell Snares!

One of the only things I don't enjoy about Vintage is having to put basic lands in my sideboards. It is a necessary evil though, don't leave home without one.

The amount of time that I get to play isn't as much as I'd like, and I haven't played against the toughest match-up (Mishra's Workshop decks) enough to declare the sideboard as optimal. I have included the normal amount of anti-Shops cards, but that in and of itself simply is not enough to win. I've seen many decks that have been assumed to have a great Shops match-up "on paper" be quite the opposite in practice. You're not always going to be able to even cast a two-mana spell. Decks with access to Ingot Chewer can evoke away an artifact if they need some breathing room to play a Hurkyl's Recall or Pulverize. This Esper deck doesn't have that option.

So, the question remains: How will I resolve a Serenity? Ideally, I would be able to resolve a Kataki or something along the way to put pressure on my opponent. With the current sideboard, this looks to be the best-case scenario (barring some crazy Black Lotus draw).

Sunday Night Raw

Last Sunday night I ended up playing Esper Therapy in the Daily Event. I wasn't going to play, as I had to work the next day, but it occurred to me that this was the last Vintage Daily Event that I'd be able to play in that would pay out entirely in booster packs (which I consider a prize worth playing for). I'd had some requests to write an article about Esper Therapy, but I didn't want to bother with that unless the deck could perform well in a tournament. So, I entered Esper Therapy into the event and hoped for the best. In the end, it was a good thing that I did.

Round one saw me paired against a near-mirror. My opponent was on some sort of Esper Mentor deck, but where my deck had Cabal Therapy and Counterspells, the other deck had Tinker and all of its trappings (Vault, Key, Colossus). All of the Gush decks have a positive match-up with the Grixis Combo/Control decks, and this Mentor deck was essentially the same as one of those. In other words, my opponent was playing a deck that I designed my deck to destroy.

Game one, my opponent managed to resolve a Tinker into Blightsteel Colossus. I tried to dig as much as I could to find a Swords to Plowshares or Jace, the Mind Sculptor, but it didn't happen and I conceded.

Game two, my deck did its controlling and disrupting stuff, and eventually I cast Stony Silence and made his deck not function. I won soon after that.

In the third game, my opponent was on the play, and they got out a Monastery Mentor very early with a Mana Crypt. I tried to Force of Will it, but my opponent had two of them. The game was over shortly. In hindsight, I think that was a match that I'd normally win with my deck, but things didn't break that way.

Round two I played against an interesting home-brew by the same gentleman that brought us Blue Goblins from the previous week. I think his deck binned three Demigod of Revenge with Intuition and tried to combo-kill by playing the fourth. I'm not entirely sure though, as the match was over quickly.

Round three, I faced BUG Fish. This was actually the BUrG Fish deck that was popular online for a short time. Instead of Dark Confidants, this deck played Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time and also splashed red for Dack Fayden. This persons list was still rocking the Thought Scours that had been played in the past. Oddly enough, I actually cast a Mental Misstep on a Thought Scour in this round, which is something I'd normally never do. I had worn my opponent down until they were hellbent, and I was up several cards. I noticed that they had no cards when they cast Scour, so I figured that I'd play Misstep and leave them with an empty hand.

I won both games in short order, which felt pretty good. Game two my opponent lead off with a Tasigur, the Golden Fang, powered out by a fetch land and a Black Lotus. Luckily, Esper Therapy plays Swords to Plowshares, so I was all set.

Round four, I faced Oath of Druids (as I mentioned in the intro). This match was my favorite. Part of the reason I built this Esper Therapy deck was to improve the Oath match-up. It was pointed out to me that Grixis Therapy doesn't have much against Oath other than Grafdigger's Cage, so I hoped to remedy the situation by playing Containment Priest.

I lost game one, and won game two, but they were interesting games. Game three wasn't so interesting, as my opponent mulliganed to four. They did resolve a Time Walk and an Ancestral Recall against me, so they had almost the same number of cards as I did.

Here's the replay if you're interested:

That last game was fairly anticlimactic, but this isn't pro wrestling either. Sometimes, you just know that you're favored to take the game. I'd rather play a more exciting game, but I'll take the win. I hope you enjoyed watching the games as much as I enjoyed playing them. At least game two had some insane plays!

Probing the Future of Esper Therapy



I plan on playing this deck a lot in the near future, and I'll try to tune it as best I can. It's a beast at times, and I think that the underlying deck-building techniques are sound. I've discussed the areas where I think improvements can be made, but if anyone has any ideas, I'm open to discuss them. One thing is certain, playing with Grixis Therapy and Esper Therapy has given me a new outlook on one innocuous little sorcery: Gitaxian Probe.

Playing a deck with four Gitaxian Probe has its good points and bad. Four of any card is a big commitment, and trying to pack more Counterspells in your deck can be at odds with running a full boat of Probes. One of my favorite episodes of So Many Insane Plays discussed at length all of the issues surrounding Gitaxian Probe, such as the concept of "deck thinning" and the overall density of counter-magic found in a deck. I was never a fan of Probe in the past, I had always opted to cut them from my Legacy RUG Delver deck because I wanted more copies of Spell Pierce.

Since I've played Probe in these decks, the amount of synergy it has with cards in these decks has proven to make it worth including. In fact, I have thought about cutting a Probe to make room for other cards, and it seems like the wrong move with these builds.

The most obvious reason to keep four Probes in a deck like this is as a cantrip token generator. Then there is the synergy with Cabal Therapy which I've discussed several times. Further than that, Probe is just one more card that replaces itself and adds to the deck's ability to delve. Anyone with any experience playing Gush decks will tell you that the mirror matches often come down to who can cast the first Dig through Time or Treasure Cruise. The first player to cast the delve spell is more likely to have an answer for the opponent's delve spell, which of course puts the game even farther out of reach. If you've ever played a tight game of Magic, and had the last card in your hand be a Preordain while your opponent had Treasure Cruise as their last card you've experienced this phenomenon. My deck plays four Probes, three Preordain, and the restricted versions: Ancestral Recall, Ponder and Brainstorm. This means that this deck should be able to Dig or Cruise early and often, and generally that's the case.

Blind Therapy

Esper Therapy doesn't play as many blue Counterspells as some of the other Gush decks, but luckily there are three copies of Cabal Therapy to help us control the game. I like to think of "targeted" discard like a proactive counter. We don't get the added bonus of causing our opponent to waste their mana investment, but the card is cheap enough that it doesn't matter too much. Therapy also does not require mana to flash back which makes the initial one-mana investment seem even more irrelevant.

Playing Cabal Therapy blind in game one can be a risky proposition, especially if you don't know what deck your opponent it on. If my opponent has played a land other than something specific to a Shops deck, I'd be likely to choose Force of Will or Mental Misstep if I needed to choose a card in the dark. Those spells are four-ofs in most blue decks, so mathematically they have a higher probability of having at least one of those cards. If you miss with the first Therapy, it isn't the end of the world. I just try to use the information to make any future decisions and make the best of the situation.

If you do know what you're opponent is playing, one tactic I use for casting a blind Therapy is to name something that I just don't want them to have at that point. If you need to resolve a Monastery Mentor, you could name something that could counter it or kill it. If you then see that they don't have the card, you're in the clear. If your opponent decides to counter the Therapy, then chances are they've wasted a counter that could stop your plans for the turn.

If your opponent has around five or so cards in their graveyard, you can cast Cabal Therapy with the intention of choosing Dig through Time. They could possibly Dig in response, but that doesn't always help their cause anyway. Also, forcing someone to play a card on your terms makes the opponent have to take lines of play that are less than ideal. For instance, with this list I might cast Cabal Therapy while holding on to a Flusterstorm so that should my opponent cast Dig through Time in response, I could counter it. I'd likely chose something else Treasure Cruise would be a good choice as well if it hadn't been restricted, but it is and I rarely name a restricted card with Cabal Therapy without knowing that I will get a hit.

I don't have any final ramblings for you all today. I'd like to mention that there is a Vintage PRE that we're working on, and there should have been one already by the time you read this. Also, play points are now in effect, so go nuts I guess.

The other hot-button issue is that the MTGOCC, the Community Cup Challenge, has been announced. There's no nominating this year, a team was just picked. With a nomination, anyone who works really hard at producing content or just being a stand-up member of the community might feel like they have a chance at participating. This squashes that idea fast, and it doesn't feel right. This is the community cup, shouldn't the community get a say? Anyway, any interest in the subject that I once had has now waned. I haven't been back from my Magic hiatus for a full two years yet, but I've noticed that the overall opinions of the Community Cup have become more negative.

Speaking of "community", that is a word that gets thrown around in Magic circles more than even the word "mana". This is such a buzzword that it's almost lost all of its impact. The concept of us Magic players as a group is a wonderful and powerful thing. We are more than the sum of our parts when we get together. It's the people that make this game great, not the other way around. So, even though I'll never be popular enough to be chosen for this "community" cup, I'll keep doing that I do. I work to strengthen my community, the Vintage community. This is a group of people, all of which I have NEVER met in person, but have completely embraced me and the content I produce. In return, I've tried to make sure that I give people something to read each week. I give the unsung heroes their time in the spotlight, so that the people coming into this format from Magic Online might know the people that originally developed that Vintage deck they're playing. I'm active on social media, and I've even recently started a Facebook group for Vintage players as another outlet for people to discuss their favorite format. Anyone reading this can be added to the group, and I'll even answer your emails and personal messages. I enjoy it, and the amount of friend requests and personal messages I get is manageable, so I am happy to be able to include everyone.

I was raised to believe that doing good things is its own reward. That's where I find my motivation. So, I'll keep cranking these out as long as people are reading them.

That's all folks! Until next time, stay calm and keep trying to make Baby Jace a thing in Vintage Chubby Rain!

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