My Esper Starter deck December 1, 2008
Posted by Norm in Learn to Play Magic: the Gathering, Shards of Alara.Tags: Esper, intro deck, Magic: The Gathering, Shards of Alara
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Another started deck. This time I made for my brother who just started playing magic when he went to college this year. He had about 6 booster packs worth of cards and a deck with an amazing amount of mythic rares, but his deck had no specific focus. So I built around Esper, here is a link to the deck list on essential magic.
I’ve been wanting to do something with this shard ever since I picked up the intro pack and was totally disappointed. What I did here was basically grab the best creatures in the shard (Tower Gargoyle, Tidehollow Sculler, and Sanctum Gargoyle) and give him enough consistency to win often.
My biggest decision came down to what were my 12 non creature spells going to be. I have some control in the Tidehollow Sculler and creature protection with Metallurgeon, but I wasn’t sure how much destruction/ control to add. Originally I had Cancel in vs Hindering Light but I really wanted to use Light because it gives a card and is one less to play. When I made the deck I only had three Oblivion Rings or else I would have bumped that to four. However after playing a few rounds with him I kind of think the Agony Warp/ Oblivion Ring ratio is pretty good. This deck beat me consistently with other casual decks.
I’m thinking that if we want to ramp this up a little we could add Sharuum the Hegemon and/or Sphinx Sovereign. Because Etherium Sculptor is almost unnecessary in this deck and we’d like to get a little more power in there.
Any thoughts? Here is the link in case you missed the deck list.
Casual Magic 
I think one of the purposes of the intro packs (and their predecessors, the theme decks) is to showcase a selection of cards. In particular, there are always a couple of rares in there. I think that’s one thing your decks are lacking – rares. Although an actual intro pack is only going to have 2 rares, which will limit consistency.
I agree no rares.
But one goal in making this deck was not to include something too complicated. I didn’t really feel the need to add rares right up front, so that is why I listed the mythic cards at the end. A lot of my casual decks end up with out a lot of rares anyway.