Esper Tempo (Frontier)

The five Alara Shards are just the best mana bases you can build in Frontier, so I've been looking at what type of decks you can build from them. I have also been playing with an Azorius tempo deck for a while now. I have found that the deck has performed well, however it was missing a little something. The two options, as I see it, are to go Bant Coco (which I play sometimes, the deck has many of the same pieces) or to add black. Adding black opened up room to the a few fun looking cards.

The Positives: it is really hard for the opponent to gain a foot-hold if they are playing a creature based deck. This deck just has so many tempo creatures that disrupt the opponent that things are difficult for them no matter what you draw. There is also a nice balance of ways to draw cards and protect your creatures.

The negatives: There are a lot of dead cards in the main deck against control. Most of the sideboard was chosen with the matchup in mind. The biggest truth of the deck is that if you were playing a competitive tournament you would play Gideon in the main, but I'm just tired of playing Gideon in so many decks since his release.

Card Choices:

1) The auto includes are:
Archangel Avacyn, Reflector Mage, Spell Queller, Selfless Spirit, Fatal Push. I don't feel they warrant much discussion.

2) The surprise edition to the deck is Hostage Taker. A fun card to replace the real 4 drop, Gideon. My playgroup is loaded with aggressive midrange decks (Abzan, now Dino's,...) so this include is not as crazy as it looks for my situation.

3) Kitesail Freebooter is just a solid two drop in a Tempo deck. It fly's, so there is that. The main purpose is providing hand disruption on a body. The secondary purpose is it lets us have a peek at the opponents hand to line up our turn sequences. If anything this may need a few more copies in the deck.

4) Jace over Copter. The Copter may be the right play for the offence, but although we are tempo we are a slower tempo build. The Jace is unconditional card draw and is worth a test at least.

5) Siren over Inspector. Inspector has a great resume, however he benefited from being the best choice in standard's where artifacts mattered and a quality white one drop was essential and the pickings were slim. Siren protects Spell Queller and Hostage Taker. Job done. And it fly's.

6) Settle the Wreckage, main board. It's broken. I will play it main whenever possible. Perfect vs aggro, perfect for a tempo deck.

7) Chart a course is the best card draw n/c spell available. 2 for 2 almost every time. Can live with sorcery speed for the upside. I considered playing Champion of Wits pretty hard, but it clogged up the 3cc slot pretty hard.

8) Sorin, yeah Sorin. I play him in my Abzan deck and he just swings games. He is the perfect one of. Without Gideon we need a little pump and the deck could use a little life gain.