It just makes a lot more sense to curve out with Blazing Bomb, Sahagin, The Emperor, Ultros and Shantotto, THEN start chaining together copies of Retrieve the Esper, rather than trying to play noncreature spells the whole game
Maybe thats because Im not reading all the lore or whatever, but a lot of the cards in Magic tend to blend together so it can be hard to disambiguate where something is situated in the multiverse of the game
Obviously I still advocate for playing cards like Aetherize, especially if you are in mono-blue, but unless youre playing hard control a spell like Raise the Palisade is going to come in very handy
When it comes to noncreature spells, Blitzball Stadium rewards you for moving different types of counters to creatures by letting you keep your hand full, and Protection Magic helps you protect your most important creatures for a very low cost
The beauty of this sweeper is that it exiles attacking creatures and doesnt target them