Well, if aggro is on the play and gets a good curve, it ought to be able to beat any deck. If it can't, who would play it? It's true that this deck folds hard against counterspell control, though.

I've played more games with this deck and it's strong. I like it. Some impressions though:

1) I think the Never // Return suggestion is a good one. It's not so much the ability to kill planeswalkers (it does come up however) as it is the Return half of the card. I played one grindy game against an opponent with two Never // Returns and his 2/2 zombies actually caused a lot of problems.
2) Liliana, Death's Majesty has not been performing well for me. Problem with the +1 mode is that it can mill you of important cards. Against aggro it's not a big deal but against other control decks, if you lose your planeswalkers you will have trouble. Plus you get closer to decking. Meanwhile the ultimate is irrelevant, too. At best it can use the minus to bring back a gearhulk - but there are only two of them.
3) Heart of Kiran is very clever, I would not have thought of it.

Next time I play the deck I would try something like -Liliana +Avacyn (or Kalitas). Gideon of the Trials might also be possible since you are running six sweepers after all. The -Thalia + Gisela suggestion is reasonable, too, if the mana can support it.

The deck shows 26 lands

2 x Plains
3 x Swamp
2 x Mountain
2 x Needle Spires
2 x Shambling Vent
2 x Smoldering Marsh
2 x Clifftop Retreat
2 x Isolated Chapel
2 x Dragonskull Summit
3 x Aether Hub
4 x Evolving Wilds


without counting the hubs:

14 sources
15 sources
14 sources

You need 12 sources by T2 for a 1 color requirement and 19 sources by T3 for a 2 color requirement (T4 = 18 and T5=16 for 2 color). Mana's never perfect but this is getting pretty close to playing the percentages by using the hubs for on curve casting. I think you're suggestion of cutting hubs and adding one of each basic might hurt more than help especially when trying to stabilize through the first 4-5 turns.

edit: Don't get me wrong, there will be a fair amount of tap lands and therefore slower/off curve plays and adding all the double costed cards adds to the difficultly of casting on time but I'm saying this is probably close to what the deck needs to 'try' and support it.

On a separate note, I'm not sold on Liliana, Death's Majesty in the list. I'll try it but I have my reservations.


elk

Have you considered Cast Out instead of, say, Anguished Unmaking? It costs one mana more but doesn't have life loss, and you can cycle it against decks in which it has no good target. The main problem I've found while running that card is that it turns on your opponent's enchantment removal, and if that happens the consequences are dire e.g. Nahiri exiling a Cast Out that exiled Sorin is probably gg.

PS: elk I've actually run into a lot of mill decks recently. I don't know if it's because I'm still only rank ~15 on the Steam ladder or what, but it's one of the more common archetypes I've encountered.

The reasoning behind including Aether Hubs is the ability to keep more hands at a lesser risk of being manascrewed.
Suppose your opening hand is Aether Hub, Plains, Mountain, Dragonskull Summit, Liliana, Gideon, Fatal Push. You will agree it's an easy keep; you have access to all of your colours, early interaction and two threats out of which you are guaranteed to be ablehnen to cast one early and have a good chance to cast the other as well.
As soon as you replace the Hub with any Basic, the hand gets substantially more risky to keep (worst-case being Mountain). You're much more likely to draw the second White OR Black source than to draw either one.

Aether Hub, without Energy support, is still a Tendo Ice Bridge. Think about it this way rather than "I can't refill it, so it sucks".

By the way, if your Hubs in your Energy decks swallow more Energy than they produce you should look into these deck's manabases or not let the game auto-tap the lands for you (Or both).

The deck is at best tier 3

Using these numbers we are a bit short of all sources concerning all the 2 color requirements, maybe we should use some tap lands instead of the 3 extra basics? How would you count the hubs if we include them in the calculations?

Alright guys you convinced me about always using hubs because it seems everyone here is pretty much in agreement about it

Just remember the hubs are meant for early game, getting out key cards on time. That's their reason to be.


Also, I don't think i'm getting enough love from the OP for bumping this initially, and my presence in a thread, as everyone knows, brings all the boys to the yard. This is the best reception to a members first posted decklist and i think the correlation with an early Barney post is not something to scoff at.

That being said, I'm printing this list (and hoping Vert is wrong about Tier 3) and will give it a spin. Thanks for sharing! Sounds like people are right about Liliana, at the very least, but I'm going to try it as posted.

Oh and this should go in Barney's thread on how to win early. Barney says stuff like this on chat and they just leave.

elk

Barney: appreciate the positive feedback in lieu of my earlier misunderstanding. Glad you're going to try out the deck. I'm sure you'll wield it's power correctly.

As far as Never / Return, i havent tested it yet but i like the mana flexibility on UD and view the 3 damage as a bonus if I have heart, filigree or a hulk out. I like being able to zap a walker but usually I just kill their blockers and smash with a manland, or use an anguished in making, which I almost always hold on to for such a threat.

The hubs! Sooo clutch. They're only there for early fixing and have been so key to faster starts. If they entered tapped I'd not use them but going tap land tap land hub into a 3 drop is very often how my matches start. They help cast the double color walkers on curve and after that if like to think my mana has evened out. I used to run lightnings but Cut is so much better in this build.

Fatal push is garbage in this format and I used to run blessed alliance but felt it usually underperformed when I needed it. I also used to run all 4 angels, but felt I needed more stabilizing aspects than win cons, after I dropped them the deck started playing out very close to the same every match. Consistent as f.

I agree with big Lily being meh. I will never choose her over baby Lily and when that happens it's awkward for sure. I might slot her out for Avacyn and see how that works.

You are correct that this deck folds half the time against counter control with a bad pilot, but if you see a counter heavy meta, let me know because I haven't seen it. 3 colors, 26 lands, multiple enchantment hate cards, I lol@tutelage visions. Boggles is pretty hard to overcome, but aggro is never really an issue. I like to keep at least radiant flames in my opener every game if possible and aggro scoops to a lot of my turn 3 and 4 plays.

Lastly, 26 lands is where we need to be. We need to hit every land every turn until turn 6 or we're behind.

Thanks for all the input guys! I'll start testing Never tonight.

You should know better after lurking the forums!

37-2 is honestly super impressive, especially given that the 2 losses were easily attributable to bad mulligans (my own Achilles' heel as well).

Watch me lose my first match with it on ladder and tear up the deck immediately.


I gotta test out a cool deck by Timh first anyway. But hopefully i'll get around to this tonight.

I also should be twitching tonight with sleephumper hopefully.

Are you guys on steam or xbone? If you're on xb feel free to add me - joe voigt

An additional comment; this deck is very much dependent on its pilot making the right decisions. Holding up certain spells, allowing your opponent to open up to a 4 for 1 sweeper instead of jamming one asap, playing filigree familiar over Thalia on 3 against removal based decks etc... all factor in to my stellar record with the deck. I've been on this archetype for 3 seasons now so I'm probably a little more adept at the decisions that go along with playing it.

Good tips. I think slamming planes walkers will help open up the opponent to be tempted to go wide, giving your sweepers better value.

Really good point on familiar before thalia. Thats a tough one to actually execute. Thalia COMMANDS getting played

Imagine: the 37-2 record deck piloted by Joe and declared as tier 3 by Vert in the left corner versus a selection of decks (not only esper) by Vert piloted by Vert in the right corner. I would watch it.

If I put this through like 6 random decks of mine, including some that have a clear weakness to PW.dek and id expect this deck to go around 2-4, maybe 3-3 if cards fell right.

Most midrange decks have good game against it, counter control destroys it, reanimator or other recursion strategies would blank most of the removal, etc.

This deck would punish aggro and little else. It's very all in on aggro hate

I agree with Vert on this one. Mill, counter control, ramp or goodstuff midrange seem to be either bad or unwinnable matchup. even against more midrangey versions of vehicles this seems iffy. Blue's consistency is too important for fully reactive decks and 4 read the bones is not enough

I'm not saying that the deck looks good, i don't like this kind of control in mardu colors and i have doubts about some cards. But Joe seems confident and i'm an agent of chaos

How would you build a planeswalker deck? This seems about right, maybe it could try bad gideon over small chandra to steamline the mana, but it doesn't seem that easy to overcome with midrange.
4 exiling removal+ nahiri might be decent to stop reanimator from bringing back the best cards more than once, I'm not totally sure about what people want to reanimate these days however.