Alright, rather than explain each card in this deck with a brief description, I am going to focus more on one particular card, (hidden strings) and some of its obvious uses in this deck. Afterwords I will briefly mention other uses that card gains in decks that don't look like they should be running cipher.
Right, I just made an entire deck biased around hidden strings. Then I paired it up with a mana base that would have me saving my money for the next month. Why? Well lets look at our options.
First off, hidden strings can be played for free! Tap to lands to play it, untap two lands, cipher it on to something. When you deal damage, you can untap two more lands, or maybe even tap some of theirs. So on turn two, if you hit tormented souls, you can play it and something else, maybe another hidden strings again? Maybe blind obedience? Maybe invisible stalker? Essentially, this card lets you do stuff similar to the aggro combo's you have been seeing with burning tree emissary, but even more consistently. Hidden strings really opens up your second main phase to give some nasty board presence that really wasn't seen coming with these colors.
Second look at it, and we can start seeing new combos. I threw in the High Priest + murder combo with this card, just to prove a point. Its a nasty combo, a card that has already proved useful in tier one decks, and with hidden strings it happens again. Murder something, tap down the priest, swing, untap the priest, free up a mana, tap the priest again, get two 5/5 fliers to block with next turn. That's a bunch of work being done by a one drop.
Usually I don't spend this much time on a card, but let's look at something else. Now when what ever you need deals damage, you tap to attack, so you can conceivably attack with a vampire nighthawk and gain life from it. When hidden string triggers, you can then untap the vampire, this forces your opponent to swing into a death touch next turn, and you gain more life. Giving vampire nighthawk what is essentially vigilance, has been combo used on me, and occasionally by me, in other esper control decks that works out well. Usually the process is slow, and not worth it in tier one, but this build definitely gives you that option. When you start stacking these cards up on an unblockable, you start to make that card look like it has the feast part, of the famous equip, sword of feast and famine.
This opens you up into the realm of huge drops by turn four to six, making lavinia of the tenth, a more reasonable card to be running here. Lavinia of the tenth is my new favorite board wipe for this standard. It does everything you want it to do against the agro player, assuming you can drop her early enough.
I splashed in white, and chose esper to present hidden strings with, mainly because its the easiest color to run it with. It already has some proven cards in there, it definitely looks like a solid build even before any play testing, and esper already has some solid answers against aggro.
Some quick looks at other cards that this card works well with in standard, in no particular order are:
Chronic flooding, contaminated ground, axebane guardian, and grimgrin namely.
IT can also be played to undo countless numbers of enter tapped abilities. The list goes on, tapping is a very important process of the game.
I like the idea of using this card in a bant deck, namely for some early game mana ramp, and just some quick saves, yet I really haven't worked out a good build for it. Right now its on my white board were Idea's are born, but until I get to play test this particular card, and watch how it runs in games, I am working off an experimental thesis. Needless to say, it makes me excited.
Lastly, I will do a quick over view of this particular deck and why I would run it. So Esper Exalted Cipher, I have one... look it up if you want. That version is much more exalted than this one. I chose to go exalted on this build and add a bit of token spam simply because its a hard thing to compete with. Lingering souls offers up some really quick chumps against aggro, but not something that will usually get you some exalted buffs. TheCall of the nightwing will be more about the exalted. Simply because by the time you pull out Sublime angel, you wont have any more spirits on the field. Not true always, but that is a normal game for you. Lingering souls, vampire nighthawk, and skirsdag are in this deck because they are all proven world quality cards. The exalted part is usually a crucial aspect of my esper decks simply because it allows you to attack with one card that has the might of your entire army behind it. This keeps blockers open against aggro. Simple, sweet, tell me what you think?