Modulo - Honestly I find it really hard to know whether I have the right amount of land when it comes to deckbuilding. But I think it is somewhere around 26 or 27.

I played 12 games with the two horribly awry, and I decided it isn't the card for me. I don't even want to splash it as a single copy.
I went 7-5 playing on Steam against mostly ranks 30-40. The biggest single factor in my losses? Not drawing celestial flare.

Win vs garbage - I had a crap hand with no counters and only one blue mana, but ob nix and a board wipe. I wipe turn 5. He puts Jace in Bondage - you like that Jace don't you, you kinky anime-haired ****?

Didn't draw awry but bounce would have been useful vs bonds.

Win vs werewolves - On the draw, I accept a 4 land hand with decent mana and outburst. He drops turn 2 Kessig Forgemaster turn 3 Lambholt Pacifist and I am lacking in answers so I go for main phase anguished unmaking on the forgemaster in order to keep the pacifist... pacified. Unfortunately he responds with howlpack resurgence and his pacifist is soon attacking me as a 4/4, then flips into a 5/5. I have only 5 life by the time I drop my fifth land.

Fortunately Jace turns the tides by bouncing his only creature and drawing me cards. My opponent is stuck on 4-5 land for most of the game and drops his threats one at a time. Awry performed very well here, it hit some targets that reproach would not have.

I sure wish I had Awry in my opening hand! But I didn't.

Loss vs midrange - I start with a three land hand and shortly draw into 4 counters and ob nixilis. His turn 2 Sylvan Advocate goes completely uncontested and does serious damage to me. I miss 4 land drops and discard down to hand size twice. I finally take out the advocate with anguished unmaking which takes me down to 3 life. My opponent kills me with touch of the void. Sad face.

Awry would have done nothing here.

Win vs Vampires - On the draw, my opponent resolved olivia, mobilized for war and she beats me for a few turns while I counter his next 3 vampires. Finally I reproach her. Ob Nix kills his last vampire and dies to burn, Gideon also eats two burn spells but basically I have the game locked down and eventually win.

Spot removal is better than awry in this matchup since vampires always have low toughness.

Loss v devoid aggro. My opponent opens with two reaver drone and flayer drone. I have the mana to counter the flayer drone but I fumble and fail to pause, instead I hit it with unmaking. Fortunately this doesn't matter because I have a board wipe. Unfortunately Thought-Knot Seer exiles my languish and I am truly screwed. Unmaking was the only board interaction spell I drew the entire game.

Spot removal is better than awry in this matchup since devoid dudes have low toughness.

Win vs Vampires - my opponent gets an incredibly slow start but because my deck is slow it matters relatively little. I also had to mulligan down to 6 on the draw just to get 2 lands. My opponent just plays mountains the first 3 turns and no spells, I assume he is going for some sort of big red style burn deck. He eventually starts to discard down to hand size so he can start madnessing vampires out. He gave me a ton of time to set up so it is easy for me to stop his trickle of threats, Ob nix seals the deal.

Spot removal is better than awry in this matchup since vampires have low toughness.

Win vs tempo - This is the FIRST game where I get awry in my opening hand! And perfect mana. I counter his first 3 spells, then wait for him to commit 3 spells to the board before I wipe. After this I am in control and he resigns when he sees Sorin.

H.A. is awesome in the opening hand, I would have had to deal with duskwatch recruiter flipping and ruining my day.


Loss vs ramp - I foolishly accept a 2 mana hand but luckily telling time finds me the mana I need. My opponent just durdles and ramps. Unfortunately for me, he ramps into Gaea's Revenge. I try to deploy Gideon to create an endless stream of chump blockers. Unfortunately for me, my opponent also has Altered Ego. I concede immediately.

HA would be bad in this matchup in general, but it especially hurts that one of my HAs would have been flare in an earlier build.

Win vs aggro/midrange - my opponent passes turn 2 without casting anything so I assume he is a ramp deck or something, I put a board wipe on the bottom of my deck with telling time. Doh. Due to his slow start I easily keep things under control and drop Ob Nix. In retrospect this was a mistake, my opponent resolves Gideon and proceeds to destroy my Ob Nix. I cast my own Gideon to slow the bleeding but he is slain as well. Fortunately my opponent makes a mistake, he does Gideon's -4 and leaves him exposed to my soldier token. Phew! He deploys avacyn but bounce helps me to put her back in his hand so I can counter her. I gradually outdraw him and Sorin ultimates with ~9 cards left in my library, although technically my manland would have killed him in the same turn. I never awakened my lands due to the declarations he was certainly holding on to.

HA would be OK here, but not amazing. Gideon was the biggest danger by far and I won due to my opponent's incompetence.

Loss vs aggro - Good deck, good player. I was on the draw with 2x reproach in hand, but it wasn't enough. He curved out perfectly with one drops and two drops. My mistake on turn 4 was to tap out and counter his renown bear guy when he had 1 card left in hand, because I didn't want him to flip his hanweir militia captain. Unfortunately that last card was Thalia's Lieutenant who prompty ran over me together with his/her friends.

HA would have been useful, I do recall on one turn I had 4 mana and I could have reproached and HAed but instead I had a 3 mana counter. HA is meaningfully better than a 3 mana counter on turns 2 and 4. I didn't draw them, but they wouldn't have made a difference.

Loss vs tempo - opening hand: 3 land and 4 counters. There is a bit of back and forth but his curve isn't aggressive enough to endanger me. Until he drops lumbering falls. That's all she wrote folks. His land bends me over.

Lets analyze my losses:
Loss vs midrange I needed spot removal OR HA in my opening hand
Loss v devoid aggro I needed spot removal OR HA in my opening hand
Loss vs ramp needs more celestial flare
Loss vs aggro - god hand unwinnable without board wipe, but in general spot removal helps
Loss vs tempo needs more celestial flare

12 games is a small sample size. The revenge/lumbering falls show up less frequently than in this sample, and I face more decks with tokens / small creatures. If you take away the not enough flare losses I lost 3 games to early creatures.

I think I won every game where the board was clear around my 5th land drop. I only had one game where mana was a problem because I was stuck at 4 lands too long, but it really wasn't the mana that killed me. I only came close to losing lockdown in one of my games, vs. Gideon (great flare target).

I think HA is pushing the counterspell angle too far. 11 is already so many that I frequently get hands with 3+ counters. It has a slight edge in certain areas but overall I want spot removal in those spots (hah).

I think my deck's performance in the late game is good enough and I do want to focus on spells that serve as spot removal and/or are cheap.

So I will drop both Horribly Awry and add 1 Celestial Flare and... something else. I am really tempted to slot in suppression bonds but I think I should focus on aggro by adding a singleton Grasp of Darkness.

@HenWen

Try 1x Dazzling Reflection. It's good against combat effects, burn effects, Westvale Abbey, early creatures, and man-lands.

No thank you Gemini.

I haven't had time to play, but I had an Inspiration when I woke up this morning. A card I have never even considered for more than half a second before.

When I started my posts with a big list of cards I was concerned about having a resilient win condition, in order to win the long game. But after two weeks of playtime I decided that four planeswalkers were enough, and they are very flexible because they provide more than a win condition. The reason is I never encountered other control decks.

This got me to thinking about win conditions vs. control. What I really want is something uncounterable and untargetable - Lumbering Falls would be ideal. We can't use that, but we do have access to Westvale Abbey.

The abbey does 3 things:
1) It is a land
2) It can provide a 1/1 for one life
3) It can transform into Ormendahl, Profane Prince

The transform is not terribly important here. I think the real utility is being able to generate a "free" blocker to kill small threats like sylvan ranger and being able to generate "free," uncounterable threats for the control mirror match. We don't want to spend 2-4 life and then wipe the board, so I will probably just create one or two tokens at a time for pressure and blockers. I know that life loss is not ideal in a control deck, but hey, in those matchups where we can't afford the life it just will function as land #27.

In a way, other than the life loss, this deck is ideally placed to benefit from the Abbey. The Abbey is horribly inefficient in terms of mana, but this deck can really slow the game down. Moreover, life is really not our most important resource in some matchups.

I think lands basically provide a diminishing marginal degree of usefulness. The consensus is towards 26 lands but I think having a 27th colorless utility land is a reasonable compromise.

I am very pressed for time but I am curious if anyone wants to test this. I don't have time to repost my whole decklist, but here are the recent changes:
-1 land, -1 bounce
+2 awry
-2 awry
+1 celestial flare, +1 [c]westvale abbey{/c].

I'd run Ulamog before the Abbey. Lifeloss is already a borderline issue.. and tapping 5 mana to kill a Sylvan Ranger, and watching the opponent resolve something in the second main phase makes me cringe. Hell.. I'd run a singleton Tutelage before the Abbey.

Don't worry mega, you'll still activate the Abbey in your end step so you'll have your blocker the turn after. We are playing Esper Control after all Fair point about the lifeloss though.

The Abbey indeed counts as a 27th land in many match-ups, but in the match-ups where it doesn't, it creates value. Imagine an Esper Control mirror, but one side gets a 1/1 every turn. Or your opponent has run out of gas, your counterspells don't have a target - now you have a card to take at least some advantage of the 6 mana you have open. Again, this doesn't work in any match-up, but in the ones it does it's pretty amazing.

I'm not sure if mana consistency allows to cut a second land for a second copy, but running one as the 27th land should definitely be fine I think. I'd love to hear how it works out for you.

Btw, I'll definitely add a third Flare as well, that card has definitely overperformed for me. It being double-white may seem like a stretch, but then again, I'm running Knight of the White Orchid

The problem with Westvale Abbey is that I think the mana base is too necessary and the card slots are too tight for it. I'd love to run it, but I don't have space for it.

Alrighty, time to post my list after doing some testing

Esper Denial

Creatures
None! Who runs creatures?

Instants
3x Gideon's Reproach
2x Celestial Flare
3x Compelling Deterrence
3x Telling Time
2x Scatter to the Winds
3x Broken Concentration
2x Spell Shrivel
2x Anguished Unmaking
2x Comparative Analysis
1x Bone to Ash
2x Confirm Suspicions

Sorceries
2x Languish
2x Planar Outburst
1x Necromantic Summons

Planeswalkers
1x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1x Jace, Unraveler of Secrets
1x Ob Nixilis Reignited
1x Sorin, Grim Nemesis

Lands
3x Plains
6x Island
2x Swamp
2x Shambling Vent
2x Sunken Hollow
2x Prairie Stream
2x Drowned Catacomb
2x Isolated Chapel
2x Glacial Fortress
3x Evolving Wilds

I'll post the results of my test games in a bit, but I'm curious what others think of the build. I have been messing around with some of the other lists I've seen on here, but I wanted to give this one (with 1 more threat than usual) a go.

There is no way that Necromantic Summons is better than Avacyn. Both put a creature on board, but Necromantic Summons is conditional and sorcery speed, while Avacyn is a game-ending body, a combat trick, and a removal spell all in one. Both spells turn on the other side's counter magic, but EOT Avacyn makes her safe from sorcery speed removal.

And why no Declaration in Stone?

@darth-

Basically you are running my list with a few modifications:
You cut:
1 x celestial flare
1 x spell shrivel
1 x westvale abbey
1 x evolving wilds

You added:
2 x compelling deterrence
1 x necromantic summons
1 x island


What do I think? The cuts are reasonable, but I don't like the cards you added. I ran 2 bounce spells for a very long time... that is the maximum I would run. You never want to draw both of them in a short time. Necro summons is a particularly bad win condition, I would agree with divinevert that Avacyn is best, but Rise from the Tides, or whatever would also be nice.

I think he is asking why you do not run declaration. I have already expressed myself on this topic, I do not like it in this particular archetype but I am very much in the minority. I am curious as to your reasoning here as well.

Re: Westvale. I have wanted to test a wincon that is a silver bullet vs. control for a long time, and this card is so perfect. It is kind of specialized but I figure killing sylvan rangers and having a blocker to protect planeswalkers from haste creatures/manlands is worth a card slot. The floor is relatively high since it is a land. I agree with divine that I would not cut a colored mana source, but I think it is fine as land #27.

Mega the life loss is indeed relevant in certain matchups, but I am looking at all the matchups here.
Just looking at the "pay 5 mana and 1 life for a 1/1" ability alone, it is barely useful in 50% of matchups, somewhat useful in 25% of matchups, very good in 15% of matchups, and OMGWTFBBQ awesome in 10% of matchups. This ability alone isn't worth a card.
But its still a mana source. The floor for an extra mana source is high enough that I don't mind that it is a specialized card that is only good in certain matchups. But I think an uncounterable card that is immune to removal is good enough to at least be worth testing for the control mirror.

Yup, after looking into the manabase, we really need the other 26 sources to be coloured sources. The 27th land can be the Abbey though, and I like the idea.

I've added it as well as the third Flare over the Knights for now - I didn't want to cut them but they seeemed like the cards to fit our game plan the least.
If Abbey doesn't work out for me, replacement will likely be Baby Jace.

I'll discuss the points in order:

The bounce has saved me more than once with this deck. Having the ability to bounce one of the few threats in this deck (Gideon, Sorin) is valuable enough in the meta I've been playing in to validate the choice. I also agree I would never run more than 2 since I have been stuck with both in hand and it sucks.

I agree about Necromantic Summons...I just didn't have Avacyn until just today. She is replacing Necro summons as I type this. I honestly didn't consider rise from the Tides, but that was an obvious mistake...ah well what can you do.

I choose not to run declaration in stone for 2 reasons:
The meta I have been playing in does not run enough indestructible decks or tricks to validate having 4 anti-indestructible (6 if you count Compelling Deterrence+counterspell) cards. Make that 1 more because of Jace...
The only situations where I've run into where I needed more removal than I already have (very few by the way) could have been dealt with just as easily with an additional Flare. I am considering dropping a reproach for another flare...but I haven't decided yet.

I now realize something about your post there HenWen...I made an error in my decklist...should be -1 Compelling Deterrence +1 Celestial Flare. However, I have since made a couple changes anyway and I figure I'll go ahead and post the actual decklist in its entirety...

Esper Denial v0.2

Creatures
1 x Archangel Avacyn


Instants
3 x Gideon's Reproach
3 x Celestial Flare
2 x Compelling Deterrence
3 x Telling Time
2 x Scatter to the Winds
3 x Broken Concentration
2 x Spell Shrivel
2 x Anguished Unmaking
2 x Comparative Analysis
1 x Bone to Ash
2 x Confirm Suspicions


Sorceries
2 x Languish
2 x Planar Outburst


Planeswalkers
1 x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
1 x Jace, Unraveler of Secrets
1 x Ob Nixilis Reignited
1 x Sorin, Grim Nemesis


Land
4 x Plains
5 x Island
2 x Swamp
2 x Shambling Vent
2 x Sunken Hollow
2 x Prairie Stream
2 x Drowned Catacomb
2 x Isolated Chapel
2 x Glacial Fortress
3 x Evolving Wilds


There are a few changes I am still considering, however the only reasonable cut I can see at this point is Bone to Ash and even that is a solid card to have in this list...

Celestial flare saved my butt in the tourney tonight

Yup, Flare is really good even if it doesn't look that way at first glance.

deathmask: I think you definitely want the fourth Evolving Wilds (over a Plains), helps you with the sometimes ugly Mana costs of the deck (mainly double blue t3).

I don't know...if there is one thing I don't think I've ever had a problem with it's having on turn 3...My problem with Evolving Wilds is that it tends to lead to a tapped land when I need it most (i.e. t4 for a Languish or t5 for an Outburst). The only time I ever feel comfortable playing an Evolving Wilds is either t1 (when I won't be doing anything anyway) or after t6 (when I already have enough mana to do just about anything in the deck). Any time in between I feel like I would be letting my opponent get away with something important.

I might give it a try though...the extra wilds would definitely help thin the deck and push for getting a wincon.

Divine - congratulations. I am rooting for you (and Witty).

Celestial Flare is not the removal we need, but it is the removal we deserve.

Darth I think Modulo is right about the lands. Also keep in mind that getting the correct type of land from wilds will help your checklands come into play untapped.

You need to plan several turns ahead when it comes to land drops. I see 4c PW decks stumble on mana all the time. Once you get to 3 mana it should be easy to hold your mana open for counters. Control can generally cope with tapped lands better than a deck that wants to curve out, in my opinion.

Zombie in a jar

Instant
2 x anguished unmaking
3 x Comparative analysis
3 x Compelling deterrence
2 x Scatter to the winds
3 x Telling time

Sorcery
3 x Anchor to the aether
2 x Declaration in stone
2 x Languish
2 x Planar outburst
3 x Rise from the tides
2 x Tragic arrogance

Creature
1 x Jace, vryn's prodigy
2 x Thing in the ice

Artifact
2 x Brain in a jar

Planeswalker
1 x Jace, unraveler of secrets
1 x Ob nixilis reignited
1 x Sorin, grim nemesis

Land
2 x Drowned catacomb
4 x Evolving wilds
2 x Glacial fortress
2 x Isolated chapel
2 x Prairie stream
2 x Shambling vent
2 x Sunken hollow
6 x Island
2 x Plain
1 x Swamp

This deck is full of instant/sorcery board removal control, bounce spell
Win condition cast rise from the tides for many many zombie if combo with brain in a jar you can cast it as instant
Other win condition planeswalker & thing in the ice transform

Plus you are okay with Evolving Wilds late because it knocks out two lands from your deck when you need late steam

Yeah, that aspect of Evolving Wilds was what I had mentioned earlier as having some attraction and I'm still doing testing on it. Didn't get a chance to play at all last night, so I'll try to get some in today.

Opinions on running +2 Reprisal -2 Gideon's Reproach given that I am seeing more and more fatty/ramp decks?

EDIT: Reprisal would also help with countering the extreme amounts of Woodland Wanderer I've been running into.

I know Grasp of Darkness has a somewhat prohibitive cost (which is assisted by Evolving Wilds) but it's better removal than either of those. Your counter wall should stop fatties.