Esper and Dimir self-bounce shells have become a force to be reckoned with in Standard. By returning enchantments to your hand with potent enters-the-battlefield triggers, it’s easy to generate an absurd amount of value.
Recently, though, we’ve started seeing similar ideas pop up in Pioneer. In fact, a unique take on Esper bounce managed to win a Magic Online Pioneer Challenge, showcasing the deck’s strengths.
The usual This Town Ain’t Big Enough package makes an appearance, but there are a handful of enchantments this deck utilizes that haven’t seen competitive play in quite some time. Let’s see what all the buzz is about.
Traditional Elements
- Mana Value: B
- Rarity: Common
- Card Type: Enchantment
- MTG Sets: Wilds of Eldraine
- Card Text: When Hopeless Nightmare enters the battlefield, each opponent discards a card and loses 2 life. When Hopeless Nightmare is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, scry 2. 2B: Sacrifice Hopeless Nightmare.
As is typically the case with these Esper shells, Stormchaser’s Talent and Hopeless Nightmare play pivotal roles in the deck’s ability to put pressure on the opponent. Stormchaser’s Talent by itself isn’t too scary, but following up with This Town Ain’t Big Enough, Fear of Isolation, or Nurturing Pixie acts as a great tempo play that allows you to recast Stormchaser’s Talent and create another token.
Hopeless Nightmare does a good job dwindling your opponent’s resources while simultaneously pressuring their life total. While this deck is primarily designed to out-value the opponent, any draws involving these two enchantments can put the opponent on the backfoot quickly.
Things get even more scary when you factor in Optimistic Scavenger. Optimistic Scavenger is an incredible tool to have access to. If it goes unchecked, you’re free to continue growing your Pixies and Fears by playing all of your value-oriented enchantments.
From there, you can keep your opponent off-balance with cards like Nowhere to Run. Against Prowess shells, bouncing and replaying Nowhere to Run is a solid path to victory. Fatal Push and Vanishing Verse can then clean up any threats that outgrow Nowhere to Run.
Long Forgotten Ideas
- Mana Value: 2B
- Rarity: Rare
- Card Type: Enchantment
- MTG Sets: Theros Beyond Death
- Card Text: When Treacherous Blessing enters the battlefield, draw three cards. Whenever you cast a spell, you lose 1 life. When Treacherous Blessing becomes the target of a spell or ability, sacrifice it.
Where things get really interesting, though, is with the inclusion of a couple unusual enchantments. The first of those is Legion’s Landing. Legion’s Landing is a card that hasn’t made much noise in Pioneer in years, simply because it’s been outclassed. Even in a deck with tons of cheap attackers, a 1/1 with Lifelink is simply too weak on its own for most decks to want to utilize the card.
This deck turns that narrative on its head. Sure, a single 1/1 isn’t that intriguing, but replay it enough times and your opponent will feel overwhelmed. It’s no Stormchaser’s Talent, but this deck needs plenty of redundancy when it comes to efficient enchantments to play in order to make Pixie, Fear, and This Town Ain’t Big Enough as scary as possible.
Not to mention, Optimistic Scavenger has the potential to make each token a scary threat in its own right. Many decks simply won’t be able to contend with the value all the cards in this deck provide as the game goes longer, especially when Yorion, Sky Nomad is factored into the equation. So, they’re best bet is to try to race and close the game before you get your engines online. Well, one big body or a slew of bodies with Lifelink can buy you the time needed to turn the corner.
The second enchantment that’s worth discussing is Treacherous Blessing. Treacherous Blessing was a staple of Doom Foretold decks in the past. Once again, though, this card has suffered from the rise in power creep. It’s too costly for most decks to play a three-drop at sorcery speed that doesn’t impact the board at all, let alone one that decreases your life total when you cast spells in the future.
This deck sidesteps that issue by surrounding Treacherous Blessing with a flurry of cheap interactive plays. Being able to reliably target Treacherous Blessing means you aren’t locked into the problematic life loss clause for the rest of the game.
Obviously, there are matchups where Treacherous Blessing is weak. It’s totally fine to sideboard Treacherous Blessing out against aggressive decks in favor of Beza, the Bounding Spring or Path of Peril. Treacherous Blessing is quite strong against the non-aggressive strategies, however, and the rest of your deck is well set up to handle the onslaught from Gruul Prowess.
Tough to Gameplan Against
- Mana Value: U
- Rarity: Rare
- Card Type: Enchantment – Class
- MTG Sets: Bloomburrow
- Card Text: (Gain the next level as a sorcery to add its ability.)
When Stormchaser’s Talent enters, create a 1/1 blue and red Otter creature token with prowess.
3U: Level 2 | When this Class becomes level 2, return target instant or sorcery card from your graveyard to your hand.
5U: Level 3 | Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, create a 1/1 blue and red Otter creature token with prowess.
This versatility is part of what makes this deck so difficult to face. If you try to simply pressure your opponent’s life total without interacting, Optimistic Scavenger can run away with the game in conjunction with some removal spells.
At the same time, if you’re prepared to answer Stormchaser’s Talent tokens and Optimistic Scavenger in a one-for-one fashion, chances are you’re giving your Esper opponent more opportunity to abuse Treacherous Blessing and cast Yorion.
With access to such a strong early and late game, this deck is well set up to beat red aggro and Rakdos midrange decks alike. This begs the question: how can players adjust to this newly designed powerhouse?
The first is to go way over the top of this strategy’s incremental advantages. Decks like Niv to Light can keep pace on the card advantage front thanks to Up the Beanstalk and Niv-Mizzet Reborn. Enigmatic Incarnation is immune to Vanishing Verse and is the type of card that can take over games by itself.
You can also try and test your hand at decks like Quintorius combo or Lotus combo that are built to ignore Esper’s value generation. This may be a bit tougher, though, since these decks aren’t the strongest against red Prowess shells, which are everywhere in Pioneer at the moment.
As long as red decks remain this dominant in Pioneer, Esper self-bounce is a fantastic metagame decision. Expect to see more of the archetype in the coming days as players do their best to adjust to the metagame evolutions at hand.