Introduction

Hello everybody!

Image Copyright: Magic: the Gathering Play

Pro Tour Edge of Eternities, was Modern, and the most played deck of the tournament was Esper Goryo’s. It was also the deck of choice for most of Team Handshake, because it seemed like a well balanced, fundamentally strong deck with few exploitable flaws, and has lots of play in every matchup. Jonny Guttman even got to the top 8 of the tournament with our version of the deck.

Hopefully this guide will help you find success with it too!

The Deck

Esper Goryo’s by Matti Kuisma – Pro Tour Edge of Eternities

The most exciting and powerful part of the deck is of course animating an 《Atraxa, Grand Unifier》 with 《Goryo’s Vengeance》, blinking it with 《Ephemerate》 to make it stick, getting a ton of cards from the 《Atraxa》 triggers and then disrupting the opponent with free interaction spells like 《Solitude》 and 《Force of Negation》. This core of the deck has existed for a long time now, but wasn’t really a dominant strategy until this summer.

The introduction of 《Quantum Riddler》 from Edge of Eternities gave the Goryo’s deck exactly what it needed: consistency and resilience. It’s really a perfect fit for the deck. Goryo’s was playing 《Ephemerate》 already anyway, which combines well with the 《Quantum Riddler》, and with the additional targets the 《Ephemerate》 are now much more reliably useful than before as they are less likely to get stranded in your hand without any targets.

One of the biggest problems with the deck used to be drawing mismatched synergy pieces that didn’t do anything by themselves, and while 《Quantum Riddler》 doesn’t make that issue disappear completely, it definitely goes a long way towards mitigating that problem.

Another weak link in the deck used to be 《Fallaji Archaeologist》, and getting to replace that with the 《Quantum Riddler》 increases the raw card quality of the deck by a massive margin. And since the Goryo’s deck is already playing pitch spells like 《Solitude》 and 《Force of Negation》 and mulliganing aggressively into powerful synergies, the 《Quantum Riddler》 is extra valuable here since you can often use it to draw multiple cards.

Last and certainly not the least, 《Quantum Riddler》 combines beautifully with 《Psychic Frog》. The Frog gives you control over the number of cards in your hand, so you can often dig really deep into your deck with multiple 《Quantum Riddler》 triggers on the same turn to make the 《Psychic Frog》 huge, and then draw a couple more when the Frog connects too.

And because the 《Psychic Frog》 and the 《Quantum Riddler》 are powerful threats that don’t care about the graveyard at all, the deck has become highly resilient against hate cards. The fair plan and the reanimation plan complement each other in a manner that I can only describe as elegant and beautiful. In many of the matchups one plan is clearly better than the other, so during sideboarding you can lean more on the part that is better in that specific matchup.

While our list is not too far from the lists that other teams have been playing, I want to highlight the main deck copies of 《Spell Pierce》 and 《Consign to Memory》 that we found to be very useful. One mana instants are exceptionally convenient in this deck, since you want to hold up a fetch land very naturally on their turn anyway. Because fetching for surveil lands is so valuable for 《Goryo’s Vengeance》, the opponent has no way of knowing whether you’re doing just that or actually holding up the cheap interaction spells.

Most versions of the deck are reliant on 《Force of Negation》 to counter non-creature spells, which makes them much more exploitable by instants in particular. In the mirror match, for example, it’s very common to get a 《Goryo’s Vengeance》 to resolve on your opponent’s turn, since it’s so hard for them to counter it, but 《Spell Pierce》 can punish them for doing that. 《Kozilek’s Command》 is another great example of a problematic card that 《Spell Pierce》 helps a lot against.

In addition, playing the 《Consign to Memory》 specifically in the main deck helps a great deal in some of the matchups that are hardest for you in game 1, like Mono Blue Charbelcher and Eldrazi Tron. It can also serve as a backup 《Ephemerate》 to make your reanimation target stay in play by countering the delayed trigger from 《Goryo’s Vengeance》 at the end of turn, or it can counter an opposing 《Atraxa, Grand Unifier》’s card draw trigger when it enters the battlefield, which often renders it harmless.

Lastly, the matchups where it doesn’t have good applications as a disruption spell against the opponent tend to be some of your better game 1 matchups anyway, such as Boros Energy and Izzet Prowess.

I was very happy with the list that we played at the Pro Tour, and I wouldn’t change a single card from it afterwards, which is very rare for me.

Matchup Guide

Boros Energy

vs. Boros Energy

Out

In

Boros Energy is one of your better matchups, unless they play a lot of hate cards for you. In the sideboarded games you’re a little less focused on the combo and more focused on the control plan, where the sweepers from the sideboard help you a lot.

The card that I tend to lose to more often than any other is 《Blood Moon》, which is why I like keeping in all 3 《Force of Negation》, and I try to save them for the 《Blood Moon》 whenever I reasonably can. 《Blood Moon》 also makes you want to fetch basic lands if possible, especially since having a 《Plains》 and another basic lets you cast a 《Prismatic Ending》 on it.

Some Boros opponents will also have 《Surgical Extraction》 in their sideboard, so in the postboard games you often want to cast your 《Goryo’s Vengeance》 on their turn in order to protect it from 《Surgical Extraction》 with 《Force of Negation》.

Goryo’s Mirror

vs. Goryo’s Mirror

Out

In

Game 1 of the mirror match is usually decided by whoever resolves the card 《Goryo’s Vengeance》 first, but the postboard dynamic is much slower and grindier and the games can take really long. The conclusion that our team came to was that we wanted to be less vulnerable against graveyard hate in the postboard games and instead went for a more midrangey plan, which we haven’t seen other people do.

In the presence of counterspells, discard spells and graveyard hate it is hard to assemble the pieces for and push through a 《Goryo’s Vengeance》, and easy to have multiple copies of them stuck in your hand while losing to 《Psychic Frog》, 《Quantum Riddler》, 《Teferi, Time Raveler》 and hardcast 《Atraxa, Grand Unifier》. In fact, hardcasting 《Atraxa》 comes up a lot in the postboard games.

The grindiness of the games also made 《Faithful Mending》 worse, since it’s card disadvantage by default, and in the postboard games you can’t reliably resolve a 《Quantum Riddler》 to recoup the lost cards. Shaving on the 《Faithful Mending》 during sideboarding in turn made the 《Goryo’s Vengeance》’s plan less reliable.

This is also the reason why we played a 《Tainted Indulgence》 over the 4th 《Faithful Mending》 in the main deck, as it let us play the grindy postboard games better in multiple matchups.

Mono Blue Charbelcher

vs. Mono Blue Charbelcher

Out

In

Game 1 can be rough, since their combo tends to be stronger than yours, and you don’t have quite enough disruption to stop them. Postboard, however, it feels like Goryo’s is ahead, since you get to replace mediocre cards with a big bunch of efficient disruption.

Most of the time 《Prismatic Ending》 is just for getting rid of 《Goblin Charbelcher》 before they get to untap with one. Note that you need to use one of your blue fetched to get a 《Breeding Pool》 in order to cast the 《Prismatic Ending》 for 4. If you see a 《Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student》, then you want to leave in all 3 copies of the 《Prismatic Ending》.

Cutting 《Ephemerate》 is fine in the postboard games, since you don’t necessarily need to make 《Atraxa, Grand Unifier》 stick, and you can just win the game by hitting them for 7 once and drawing 4 good cards off of it. Also, when you go up to 4 《Consign to Memory》, a lot of the time you can use one of them to make the 《Atraxa》 stay in play with those, even if it’s worse than Ephemerating.

Regarding the 《Consign to Memory》, one important thing to note is that after the third and final time counter is removed from a suspended 《Lotus Bloom》, you can counter the cast trigger from the suspend ability rather than the spell itself, so that the 《Lotus Bloom》 stays in exile and cannot be returned from the graveyard with 《Tameshi, Reality Architect》.

Eldrazi Tron

vs. Eldrazi Tron

Out

In

This can be a tough matchup, as they have lots of good cards against you. Particularly scary ones are 《Kozilek’s Command》 and 《Ugin, Eye of the Storms》, so whenever you can, try to save your 《Consign to Memory》 and 《Spell Pierce》 for those instead of trying to fight them on mana by countering 《Expedition Map》 and Talismans.

Postboard is significantly easier than preboard once you get access to the full set of 《Consign to Memory》, as it lets you outgrind them in long games. Their deck doesn’t have all that much action in it, so as is typical against ramp decks, they often run out of cards and flood out if you can counter their first few payoffs.

That said, the games are very high variance, and sometimes they just draw too many good cards and you feel like you didn’t stand a chance.

Izzet Affinity

vs. Izzet Affinity

Out

In

Against Affinity you can forget about being a Goryo’s combo deck and instead just morph into an Esper Control deck. This is especially valuable against the newer versions that have multiple 《Tormod’s Crypt》, as the switch lets you dodge all the graveyard hate completely. Your game plan is to just stop them doing their thing, and then eventually win with 《Psychic Frog》, 《Quantum Riddler》 and 《Solitude》.

Their scariest cards are 《Kappa Cannoneer》 and sideboard 《Blood Moon》, so do whatever you can to stop them. One of the best uses for 《Consign to Memory》 in this matchup is countering the Ward trigger on 《Kappa Cannoneer》.

It’s very convenient that if you’re using an evoked 《Solitude》 to get rid of the 《Kappa Cannoneer》, you can use the replicate on 《Consign to Memory》 to counter the 《Solitude》’s Evoke trigger in addition to the 《Kappa Cannoneer》’s Ward trigger so that the 《Solitude》 stays in play.

As a cherry on top, you can also do this all when they move to their main phase and have their 《Urza’s Saga》 triggers on the stack too, so that you can replicate for more and counter those as well. That is how I beat my Affinity opponent at the Pro Tour!

《Wrath of the Skies》 is probably your most powerful card, so try to maneuver the game in a way where you can force it through a 《Metallic Rebuke》 with 《Mystical Dispute》, 《Spell Pierce》 or 《Thoughtseize》.

Conclusion

Esper Goryo’s is one of the best decks in Modern and will likely stay that way for a long time, as it has strong proactive game plans and access to many of the best sideboard cards in the format that let it adapt to any metagame. The 《Quantum Riddler》 + 《Psychic Frog》 package makes it very resilient to graveyard hate, so other decks can’t just choose to add a couple more cards to their sideboards to hate it out either.

Modern is a very diverse format right now, and the games are highly dynamic and skill-testing. If you’ve liked similar decks in the past, I recommend trying out Goryo’s too. You can’t really go wrong with it, and it has less polarized matchups than most other decks, so you almost always get good games of Magic when you play it.

One last piece of advice that I got from my teammates is that you should mulligan as if the deck was broken. What that means is that you don’t need to keep hands that have something like 4 lands and 3 spells just because you can cast the spells, if the hand can’t actually do anything powerful.

The deck mulligans very well, and your best draws are really powerful and often don’t care about hand size. 《Goryo’s Vengeance》, 《Quantum Riddler》 and 《Psychic Frog》 can easily let you catch back up on cards. In other words, quality is more important than quantity.

Good luck and have fun!

Matti Kuisma (X)