There are many flavors of control in this Standard format: Esper Dragons, the Soulfire Grand Master builds of Jeskai Black, even builds of Bring to Light and Abzan that go bigger than the midrange decks. Through it all, Reid Duke has stuck to one particular build of Esper, and for good reason. Let’s take a look at his build of Mage-Ring Network Esper:

Mage-Ring Esper ? Battle for Zendikar Standard | reiderrabbit, 3-1 Standard Daily Event

• Creatures (4)
• 4 Jace, Vryn's Prodigy

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
• 1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon

• Spells (27)
• 2 Hallowed Moonlight
• 2 Murderous Cut
• 2 Negate
• 2 Ultimate Price
• 2 Utter End
• 3 Clash of Wills
• 3 Ojutai's Command
• 4 Dig Through Time
• 1 Ruinous Path
• 1 Treasure Cruise
• 2 Duress
• 3 Languish

• Lands (27)
• 1 Plains
• 2 Swamp
• 3 Island
• 1 Mage-Ring Network
• 1 Windswept Heath
• 2 Bloodstained Mire
• 3 Prairie Stream
• 3 Shambling Vent
• 3 Sunken Hollow
• 4 Flooded Strand
• 4 Polluted Delta

• Sideboard (15)
• 1 Duress
• 1 Negate
• 4 Arashin Cleric
• 1 Dispel
• 2 Dragonlord Silumgar
• 2 Infinite Obliteration
• 1 Monastery Mentor
• 1 Narset Transcendent
• 2 Surge of Righteousness

Buy This Deck

There are a number of interesting things about this particular build of Esper. We’ll start with the three copies of Languish, a card few control decks are really stocking up on. This card kills an awful lot of the threats you care about in this Standard format. From Hordeling Outburst and Monastery Swiftspear to Dragonlord Ojutai and Anafenza, the Foremost, there are very few creatures outside of Eldrazi and Siege Rhino that Languish doesn’t manage to kill.

Additionally, Reid is playing two main deck copies of Hallowed Moonlight. This is an important card because it shores up a typically weak matchup against Rally the Ancestors. It’s generally not hard to make games go long against Rally decks, but they tend to reach a place where a resolved Rally just kills you. This puts enormous stress on your counterspells and consequently gives you fewer opportunities to tap out and actually win the game. Hallowed Moonlight allows you to neuter opposing graveyards, protecting yourself from current and future Rallys.

Finally, there’s the namesake card, Mage-Ring Network. This may not seem like much, particularly as a singleton, but games with this card are completely different than games without it. This card gives you the ability to absolutely dominate control mirrors with an overwhelming mana advantage. It also gives you a way to play multiple spells on critical turns in midrange matchups, and helps keep Clash of Wills relevant going long.

These small edges add up over the course of longer games, and this deck excels at making sure the games drag out long enough to take advantage of them. Longer games give you the opportunity to leverage the powerful one- and two-ofs in the deck and dismantle all manner of opposing strategies.