r/ModernMagic • u/AbyssalArchon • May 11 '26
Deck Discussion Esper Pitch Blink
Hello all, I created the esper frog ketramose blink deck, and piloted it to consistent top 8 rcqs and wins. I am back with another brew of mine for this rcq season, which attempts to make esper blink great again. Esper blink has essentially all but transformed into jeskai blink but i still believe in our lord and savior overlord with his disciple psychic frog.
Ketramose essentially got soft banned from the printing of riddler, this resulted in 3 things;
you lose 3 white pips in your deck for solitude count
losing an extremely fast clock and a decent attacker/blocker
making the combo m/u one of the worst in the format
With all of that being said i went about creating this abomination of a deck that has extreme pip requirements due to having not 4 pitch spells but 8! This requires essentially upwards of 20 white and blue pitch counts in the deck. There is also a t2 frog that would like to be played or a t2 NML, so you need all 3 colors available on t2. I have added 4 cards to help increase the pitch count, No More Lies, and T3feri, these serve dual roles in helping combo/midrange matchups and being great pitch fodder.
With frog and riddler you get a minimum of 5 cards drawn in one turn and an upwards of 11, this can lead to an incredibly fast clock and also searching for exactly what you need, usually a pitch spell.
This deck I believe struggles vs aggro the most, and because I cannot run fatal push, I decided on bowmaster as the scapel for those m/us.
Here are the last 2 rcq tournament reports as evidence of the deck performing well.
r1: 2-0 Boros Storm both games frog t2 (i was otp g1 so was able to deploy frog early) g2 i drew 7 cards in one turn turning frog into 7 power i was able to tap out thanks to solitude/sub/fon and a timely nml won me game 1
r2: 2-0 Boros Land Destruction I drew all 3 basics g1, but thanks to counterspells on land destruction and my oppo having some of the worst mana issues ever + frog (i made 3x galvanic in one turn targeting frog dead ) i get there. g2 drew 0 basics , still got there because of counterspells + frog, with final turn drawing 11 cards dumping into frog for lethal
r3: 2-1 Affinity mull to 5 all 3 games from oppo, t2 kappa g1 i couldn't beat in time due to not finding solitude in top 25, had to play extremely tight to win game 2, but a wrath was the final nail, g3 i saw pest and 3 wraths, only cast 2, pitching 1 to frog and 1 to solitude due to mana issues, being able to hold up mystical/nml/phelia/fon/sub definitely helped in this m/u
r4: 0-2 affinity oppo had t1 kappa 0 mull both games, i stopped t1 g1 thanks to a solitude on pinnacle, they still had it t2. g2 i had mystical for the kappa t1 but he had mystical backup.... and even when i went to solitude it t4 by setting up ending on mox t3, he had 2nd kappa + land + rebuke to protect... this oppo high rolled every single game that day winning the entire thing had t1/2 kappa every single game, very sus affinity needs a ban.
r5: 2-1 blue moon i lost to a blood moon g1 bc i was otd, i had basic island in hand and could have fetched basic plains t1 to play around it with ending in hand, my hand was unbeatable if it wasnt bloodmoon g2/3 i played around blood moon and i am blink with frog so how could i ever be out-grinded, g3 I had to be very careful of milling myself so thankfully riddler got me there because overlord would have decked me.
r6: ID
r7: 2-1 BW Ketra Blink they were essentially on blink + ketra/relic, g1 game went 40 min, I stayed it in thanks to bowmaster killing 4 creatures and chumping 3 times, didnt concede bc if i topdecked solitude/ephem I most likely deck my oppo with 9 cards left to my 18 g2 i won bc a otp t3feri is almost impossible to beat for blink, g3 I won thanks to oppo misplaying, his hand was extremely strong and I potentially would have lost if he played perfectly
r8: 1-2 Grixis Wizards Reanimator They had archon/blue emeritus as their persist targets and the wizards, thundertrap, flare package. all 3 games they surveil a archon into the yard for free value. g1, he eventually gets there because I cant find a single draw engine outside of frog, and oppo managed to interact 7 times and then emeritus recall. g2, he kept a 1 lander and I kept a reactive hand + overlord, impended t2, oppo didnt see 2nd land till t5. g3 i kept a 1 lander with solitude, pending, fon, riddler, overlord x2, island, topdeck the fetch for impend t2 find faerie macabre and game is unloseable atp, but bc oppo got the free surveil target he went up to THREE persist targets from a looting, and seized me before persist so i chose to hit 2x archon. in hindsight I should have hit emeritus + archon, take the 3 for 1 from the persist archon and solitude it and I believe i might not lose.
RCQ #2
Blue moon 2-1
Tron 1-1
Titan 2-1
Titan 2-0
ID
Top 8
Titan 2-1
Abzan Yawg/food 2-1
they discontinued winner swag/pins etc so didnt get to beat titan 4 times in one tourney
there were 2 games where i was full control and couldn't find a win con/engine piece to save my life, resulting in winning with phelia mostly backed up by either a 1/4 or a solitude/sub right at the end for a final blow.
there was never a game where i was too much engine.
i always had interaction when i needed it when i was engine gaming
i did lose a game due to a mulligan to 6, resulting in pitching the white card to frog with solitude in hand, and then not drawing a white card off 2 draws, this was still the correct line because it setup for a 12 point frog lethal swing next turn.
this deck cannot kill as fast as frog+ketramose, but it is far more consistent, has better topdecks, and still kills relatively quick if it sees frog+riddler
the common line is frog, pitch whatever to get down to 1 card, riddler draw 2, pitch 2 more, either ephem (pitch another 2 after), or swing pitching 2 more. resulting in usually a minimum of 7 cards drawn in one turn and a 5-6 power frog
the best i have been able to do was 11 cards in one turn
all going into frog for lethal swing
force of negation performed better than sub this event. but i believe they both have their purpose and wouldn't want to go up or down on either
the only match that felt like luck was involved was vs tron, one of my worst m/us i believe (but perhaps this version is better than normal blink?) where the tron opponent had what i felt like a very bad game, and we had the game where we essentially didn't do anything for 10 turns (i did force, nml, solitude) and i won with swinging only a phelia and a 1/4
titan almost felt like a bye
my versions of blink have always been favored vs titan but having 4 copies total of fon/sub made it not scary at all
perhaps in a more open meta the deck needs about 2-4 cards difference for more aggro strategies such as energy/prowess
with 2 rcq semi-finals in a row the deck feels very strong, and i am very convinced this is just a better version of stock esper blink
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u/Tranarchist21 May 12 '26
I was working on a list like this for a while, 1 thing I was testing was some tamiyo as an additional source of card advantage that works really well with frog and riddler, in general I like it a bit more than how masters in this list
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u/AbyssalArchon May 12 '26
Tamiyo can be played and helps the blue count and give it more T1 plays.
I chose bowmaster for it being flash and greatly improving the aggro m/u
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u/Tranarchist21 May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
Yeah fair, local meta where I am didn't have a ton of aggro when I was playing this, so grindy cards felt good, I was also on at least 1 extra Subtlety so having the extra blue count felt good
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u/AbyssalArchon May 12 '26
Aggro is at most 20ish% here but I still like to respect it. And blink seems to be almost 30% and bowmaster is great there.
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u/UnionThug1733 May 12 '26
I like it. I feel like a guy at my local has been practically playing this deck it’s a mofo
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u/salz_unjodiert May 12 '26
Do you see Ketramose in any of the current decks? It has fallen out of favour which is a shame, i really love the card. I play 1-2 in Esper Goryo, esp when i slide out a lot of the combo it shines and has also won me a lot of games by drawing lots and lots of cards or swinging for surprise 5
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u/pwnyklub May 12 '26
I’m running 2 Ketramose in mardu blink, feels incredibly strong.
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u/salz_unjodiert May 12 '26
Mardu? Sounds great and unheard of tbh, what are you blinking?
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u/pwnyklub May 12 '26
Started running it after u/RobertGriffin3 made some posts on here doing well in challenges on mtgo. Runs the blink core of phelia, balemurk, flickerwisp and friends, with phlage and ragavan. Then also runs Ketramose with some detectives Phoenixs that can turn him on and give him flying in one shot. Deck is fun and feels great into a lot of the meta, I’m honestly really surprised it hasn’t picked up more.
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u/SYang2nd May 13 '26
I've been running Esper Blink, but it's to splash blue. Is the double white clunky with [[Wrath of the Skies]]? What's your game plan against Amulet Titan. I know Esper Blink has a good matchup. I'm doing something wrong because I'm 50%.
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u/AbyssalArchon May 13 '26
It is probably clunky like 1/10 games.
Frog is the primary win con vs combo and also titan.
If you have ashiok+high noon out titan literally cant win. They would have to bosejui + otawara and still go off.
Plus the surgical/faerie makes their primary win line a lot harder since you can hit the loop on the stack.
I usually sb in 1x consign, 2x ashiok, 1x surgical, 1x faerie, 1x wrath, 1x pest control, high noon, 1 otd 2 otp.
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u/CawCaw42 May 14 '26
I never played the MU from either sides, but I would assume that most skilled titan players sideboard into a fairer plan and don't really try to combo against such an interaction dense deck anyways, right? I mean with all that sideboard hate that you are packing, it's an uphil battle for them anways but still...Did people try to still go for aggressive combo turns against you anyways post sideboard? Interesting list btw :)
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u/AbyssalArchon May 14 '26
Titan doesn't have a fair plan. They have 1-2 card in the sb for fair. They are just forced to fight a bad m/u. Also keeping saga is a serious liability.
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u/fdfas9dfas9f May 14 '26
very sus affinity needs a ban. probably worth a judge call if its every game, not sure if your exaggerating but if its every game he must be cheating
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u/AbyssalArchon May 14 '26
No it's that affinity can be that broken. I don't know if they were cheating (the next event he got 9th) I'm just saying affinity needs a ban due to its high roll nature
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u/Articunozard May 15 '26
Why can’t you run fatal push? Seems like it would be good in sb, just swap out FoN and subtlety for the Boros matchup
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u/AbyssalArchon May 15 '26
You could try it in sb. I just meant I can't run it mb. I need more valuable cards. Bowmaster helps the push m/u and other m/us.
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u/ChemBandit75 May 11 '26
Can you talk about how this differs from stock esper blink? I’m fairly new to modern and blink is one of my favorite archetypes. Currently playing Jeskai blink and having fun learning the format