We can cut mutavaults. It is a thing we can do.
We can play literally the exact same mana base as they do, if we wanted. Sure, glen is good, we could find room for those, but they;ve already got tarpit, and river isn't so great when you've got 3 colors, and isn't a difficult cut.
We can't use the same manabase as they run 22 lands. We can't run a full set of serum visions + a full set of thought scour like they do. Different deck, different approach, different needs, different resources, different manabase. That won't change, if you want to play grixis control, don't add faeries to it, you will have a worse Grixis and a worse faeries deck.
We could, however, cut 2 mutavaults, as is by far the weakest land, and 1 tar pit to play 3 colors with painless duals. But we should stay in the 24 land count, maybe 23 with a set of visions, but 4 scours 4 visions 22 lands is not happening any time soon in faeries.
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to be perfectly honest I didn't think of much grixis tech outside of terminate and kolaghan's command. for red to be included as a positive attempt at a third color It feels like kolaghan's command is the only real card that we benefit from, and even then, it only seems cute in comparison to how much we have to carve from our deck for it.
However whether we are keeping with the UB faeries plan or altering it to grixis (the manabase would need be developed first) I think rise // fall is still a card we can gain a lot of tempo and/or synergy value from. I think of rise as a conditional vapor snag with some more value for an extra B at sorcery speed. I think 2 might be fine for us actually, as it is a midgame-lategame card.
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Decks I have in my bag of tricks- Needless to say, someone who wants to play will probably have a deck UB/x Faeries UR Storm XURWB Affinity G Elves UW control
Have to strongly disagree that mutavault is the weakest land, or that it is cuttable. Mutavault is so important for mistbind clique and spellstutter that I can not imagine running fewer than 4. Cutting mutavaults for a third colour really does not seem worth it.
Still working out the kinks, and I am always looking for constructive criticism. In my local meta, I have seen many Splinter Twin decks still, and grixis delver, along with esper running Geist of Saint Traft, and a couple Polymorph not a lot of tron over here. just unfair Griselbrand and the like. This deck has served me well'ish but it is a long time pet deck that i have nurtured over the years.
Shuts Burn/elves down with a turn 2 Chalice and hurts boggles and infect with engineered on 1. found just trickbinding the cascade trigger and fetches stops a lot of decks. One card I really want off the banned list to make this deck better, would have to be Mental Misstep, I dream of the day I can misstep a turn 1 Serum Visions
I took this list to an RPTQ a couple of months ago. Basically a sort of merger of the grixis control lists and the faerie engine.
List originally had a couple of creeping tar pits(which became an additional island and fetch) in it, but I audibled to a list that could support blood moon at the last minute expecting a fair amount of tron and bloom titan in the room. Lost my win and in for top 8 but the deck felt great. Never really had an issue with only having two mutavaults. Mana felt solid. If I didn't feel like I needed blood moon in a given room I would happily put tar pits back in the deck. 3 color means I can't really afford any more mutavaults, but again I haven't really wanted more in the tournaments I've played so far with the deck. The leylines are currently a bit of an experiment as there's a lot of grixis control in our area and they put in a lot of work in that matchup.
The power of adding bolt, kolaghan's command, and terminate absolutely felt worth the splash to me. Only change I'm debating at the moment to the main deck is possibly trimming something for a 25th land.
I believe the correct direction is to focus on what this decks do good instead of mimicking what other popular decks are doing. Faeries at is core is a synergy deck built around the power and resiliency the card bitterblossom offers. It's the archetype of the strategy "aggro-control". When you dilute it with cantrips, excess number of discards, removal etc... you're also weakening it's aggressive nature. PV has some nice articles explaining that in depth, i encourage any newcomer to read them.
In old extended playing control with faeries was viable, the format being much slower and reliable decks much few. In modern we don't even have a good counter for control right now. Mana leak sucks vs aggro and is ineffective vs delve and ramp decks like tron. Aether Vial and Cavern darkens even more the picture.
Right now i want to play remand and be as much tribal as i can while playing 4 Cryptic. This means an old fashioned list like those back in lorwyn-alara std.
Sure, that worked in extended/standard, but especially in modern, bitterblossom is neither powerful nor resilient. There is tons of lingering souls hate that incidentally wrecks half of our deck, cards like abrupt decay, maelstrom pulse, damnation/verdict, lingering souls, jace AoT, etc etc are all mainboard cards that happen to be very good against bitterblossom.
Right now the major issues with faeries is this: 1, control is not very strong in modern. Even grixis control just has to stall you out long enough for its 2 or 3 4/5 or 5/5 to beat you down. Its not really control. 2, Faeries is not a very good aggro deck. Most of our creatures don't curve out well, since you have to wait to play them in response to things. On top of that, they aren't very strong for their costs. Without a turn 2 bitterblossom / turn 3 vendilion, we deal damage very slowly.
In theory, a cantrip to make that slightly more likely is very strong. In practice, draw your own conclusions, but its something to think about. The major reason we have to run so much removal is because our creatures are so outclassed. We often lose races to a single tarmogoyf. Thats just life sometimes. Sure, we can jam more faeries to get more damage in, but playing more removal/counters in hopes of getting more out of our creatures seems like the better plan. Right now, I've got all 8 manlands, and that helps a lot for closing out games. I have thought about playing more scions and even adding in conclaves, but I haven't gotten that desperate yet.
I'm still undecided about the spells I play. I like discard, obviously, and we don't have a lot of turn 1 plays, so I think they stay for now. As for removal, I've been hating murderous cut (since I don't run serum visions). I've got two dismembers, which have served me well, but they make burn that much harder sometimes. Tragic slip as a singleton has also done a ton of work. Lastly, smother feels like the best removal spell in that slot. It kills almost everything we want to, barring delve creatures, but dismember and slip often take care of those. Slaughter pact feels like a good option, but with so many mistbinds, I don't like to tap out on my upkeep. It also misses delve creatures.
As for counters, the lack of modern legal counterspells (that don't suck) does hurt. I like snare, I like pierce, I like negate/countersquall, but something a bit more open would be nice. I've got leaks, as much as I hate them, sometimes its just the best playable card. Remand always plays worse than it feels, but I may go back to them. I wish we just got a silumgar's scorn in faeries. Unified will almost feels like the perfect card when we have bitterblossom out, but if we don't, its so often dead.
There is really any number of ways to play grixis faeries, and I've been playing around with it for about two weeks, but I do have to agree, I have yet to make a deck that is any better than grixis control or regular faeries. Its not a lot worse, and in some metas it might be alright, but I'm dropping it for now.
That's the thing, I don't say we need to play 3 color Faeries, but if that's the route you're taking you need to start shaving lands in the form of Mutavault -> Creeping Tar Pit -> Secluded Glen -> Darkslick Shores. You need to reduce to a minimum the amounts of colorless sources and CIPT.
If I were to play grixis faeries I would go sith something like this:
Pretty much Grixis is way stronger against creature decks and affinity, which are our predators as Faeries wizards. It also increases our resistance and outs to BGx and Tron.
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I splashed with affinity, tron, infect, and elves (and to a less extent, other coco decks) in mind.
The manabase I played with (I did not use the new duals) was this:
For a total of 23 lands. I'm not sure how I would change it with the new duals (though I likely would, cutting glens and shocks for more basics and the new lands.)
I don't think Secluded Glen is right for a Grixis version of Fae. Personally I don't even play them in UB Fae (have 6 basics and 4 fetches to combat blood moon, but that's just me) but in Grixis they look way too unreliable. If we are to add both discard and lightning bolt then we need at least 1 blackcleave cliffs and a darslick shores. Also 4 tar pits is a no go, 4 aren't even played in straight UB lists, can't imagine how they would work in Grixis Fae. Without taking into consideration the new fetchlands I would suggest something like this:
I'm not of the mind we absolutely need to, but it is perfectly reasonable to have the manabase discussion for those that do. I am fairly conservative with my life total though so I have that reservation to consider matchup to matchup
Decks I have in my bag of tricks- Needless to say, someone who wants to play will probably have a deck UB/x Faeries UR Storm XURWB Affinity G Elves UW control
If you're willing to play sulfur falls, glen is almost the same (I have more red shocks, so I wanted a u/b painless land, and I like it more than river of tears or darkslick shores).
We all have different mana bases for fae, and if you don't play any fetchs (like me) then glen is a pretty good card (note I've also got 16 fae creatures + 4 blossom, so chances are high that it enters untapped, unless i draw it super late, where that matters less)
I play 4 tarpits in U/B too.
Most (atleast many) grixis control lists play 22-23 lands, including 4 tarpits. Since I don't have mutas in my grixis fae, tar pits are even more required. Sometimes they annoy me by coming in to play tapped. Not that often, but occasionally. I might change them. Who knows.
I have plenty of opportunities to cast t1 discard with that list. Sometimes it hurts, and I had considered changing the tarns for marshes before I dropped the list.
I rarely play bolt t1/t2, and thus did not opt for any fast lands.
Mutavaults are good. With three colors, not so much. I got messed up by them more than I got messed up by tarpits.
If you are/were playing cryptics (I was), I might rather have sunken ruins/cascade bluffs over the fastlands/glens/checklands/whatever else one might play. It depends on the manabase. I had plenty of blue, so I opted away from them. I perhaps went a bit overboard on cryptic fixing, but again, the manabase hurt a bit more than it maybe should have, but it worked very well.
Not having fetches and shocklands or whatever-you-call-the-new-ones makes you weaker to Blood Moon and will get you mana screwed in the sense that you are forced to topdeck the colors you need to cast your spells. Try to go that route against Merfolk (Spreading Seas, Sea's Claim), BGx/Grixis (Fulminator Mage) or Burn (Molten Rain) and see how far you can get.
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Anyone else noticing the price of Vendilion Clique inching its way down 20 cents at a time. Wonder if this has something to do with its playability or the fact that it dies to removal a lot. Any thoughts?
I don't see the point. I prefer having painless manabase against aggro and especially burn rather than worrying molten rain effects. You definitely don't want island against merfolk either.
completely agree about the painless manabase and merfolk comments, but apparently this deck needs something, so I'm trying to inch some more discussion.
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Decks I have in my bag of tricks- Needless to say, someone who wants to play will probably have a deck UB/x Faeries UR Storm XURWB Affinity G Elves UW control
I don't see the point. I prefer having painless manabase against aggro and especially burn rather than worrying molten rain effects. You definitely don't want island against merfolk either.
The point is not getting islands against merfolk, or be worried about a molten rain to the face! The point is, when they block you out of a color, fetchlands will grant you an instant out of the situation, whether you pay 1 or 3 life for it is a different thing subject to specific context. What I am trying to tell you is that if you face a land denial/destruction effect you will get blocked out of a color until you naturally draw a land that produces it. That is plain bad in a 3 color deck, which is where this discussion is coming from.
Burn is not a problem for faeries, at least it has never been a deck to beat in my experience with faeries. It actually falls under the easy category.
Now, aggro decks? I want to have double red/black whatever the cost for Anger of the Gods and Damnation post board. Stabilizing the board in your favor is more important than not paying life for lands, that has been proven all along magic history.
Maybe the tricolor deck is not the answer. I am not advocating to it, I just proposed a list if I were to play grixis Faeries. But that deck would be Grixis Faeries G1 against all the field, then keep being faeries against good matchups and become grixis value against the bad matchups (being zoo, affinity, and the alike). I am not suggesting you do this, I am not saying I will do this and I will love this. I am just illustrating that a 3 color manabse REQUIRES fetchlands and shocks/new-duals.
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In Lorwyn's brief evenings, the sun pauses at the horizon long enough for a certain species of violet to bloom with the fragrance of mischief.
I believe the correct direction is to focus on what this decks do good instead of mimicking what other popular decks are doing. Faeries at is core is a synergy deck built around the power and resiliency the card bitterblossom offers. It's the archetype of the strategy "aggro-control". When you dilute it with cantrips, excess number of discards, removal etc... you're also weakening it's aggressive nature. PV has some nice articles explaining that in depth, i encourage any newcomer to read them.
In old extended playing control with faeries was viable, the format being much slower and reliable decks much few. In modern we don't even have a good counter for control right now. Mana leak sucks vs aggro and is ineffective vs delve and ramp decks like tron. Aether Vial and Cavern darkens even more the picture.
Right now i want to play remand and be as much tribal as i can while playing 4 Cryptic. This means an old fashioned list like those back in lorwyn-alara std.
4 Creeping Tar pit
4 Darkslick Shores
4 River of Tears
4 Secluded Glenn
4 Mutavault
3 Tectonic Edge
3 Island
SB
1 Thoughtseize
2 Disfigure
1 Remand
3 Ratchet Bomb
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
3 Sower of Temptation
2 Glen Elendra Archmage
2 Jace Beleren
I've been playing a much more tempo-oriented faeries lately, with remands dropping tar pits for darkslick shores and cavern of souls (goes down to 24 lands) and plays more faeries (3 scion, 2+ mistbind, 4 spellstutter 3 Vclique). I still only play 2 cryptic, but I could see playing more due to just the fog effect. Dismember has been really nice for me, and the full 4 inquisitions make the painlessness more universal in the deck, I usually only take damage from the dismembers and bitterblossom.
Cavern of souls has just been incredible to make blue matchups (barring merfolk) almost actual byes rather than just 'good'. It can then shift into more controlling for bad matchups with lili's, better kill spells, sweepers, etc.
Osman, you should totally stream. I would very much like to watch you play the deck...pretty please?
Anyone else noticing the price of Vendilion Clique inching its way down 20 cents at a time. Wonder if this has something to do with its playability or the fact that it dies to removal a lot. Any thoughts?
Probably something to do with the fact that it is just a 1/2 of in legacy and some modern decks. It's basically used as a hand disruption spell when the deck doesn't want to run black.
I think people are worrying about the mainboard way too much. The mainboard itself is a pretty stable shell. If anything deciding on the Counter/Kill package is what's more important.
Do we pack wipes main?
Do we focus on 1 or 2 mana removal?
Broad hitting counters like Remand/Mana Leak or specifics like Spell Snare/Spell Pierce/Negate/Essence Scatter effects?
Do we run draw? Do we run filter maybe?
Red adds more removal but hurts us with the mass removal more than other decks.
Green adds resilience to counters and in the form of big dudes.
White gives us the option for life, Esper Faeries with Sorin anyone?
These questions should be answered with play tests though. I went to play the night before and got stomped because the meta game has changed in the last 2 weeks. It's no longer Twin/Grixis decks everywhere but super aggro and Living End, Ad Nauseum decks.
I wasn't prepared, I was still playing the Twin/Grixis and maybe Burn/Affinity/Elf sideboard.
There is nothing wrong with a painless mana base either. Blood Moon is a $60 card that sees play as a 2 of in about half the red decks. That is not something I care enough to change my lands around. I have 5 basics in decks without fetch and I usually see 1 or 2 of them. Even with a single Island I can still play the game just fine. Not to mention playing around Blood Moon and countering it is not difficult by any means.
We have 8 counters at minimum with another 5-8 hand disruption spells. Why are we scared of 2/60 cards that much? Especially when the only thing they can use to protect themselves against a counter efficiently is a Ricochet Trap?
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We can't use the same manabase as they run 22 lands. We can't run a full set of serum visions + a full set of thought scour like they do. Different deck, different approach, different needs, different resources, different manabase. That won't change, if you want to play grixis control, don't add faeries to it, you will have a worse Grixis and a worse faeries deck.
We could, however, cut 2 mutavaults, as is by far the weakest land, and 1 tar pit to play 3 colors with painless duals. But we should stay in the 24 land count, maybe 23 with a set of visions, but 4 scours 4 visions 22 lands is not happening any time soon in faeries.
However whether we are keeping with the UB faeries plan or altering it to grixis (the manabase would need be developed first) I think rise // fall is still a card we can gain a lot of tempo and/or synergy value from. I think of rise as a conditional vapor snag with some more value for an extra B at sorcery speed. I think 2 might be fine for us actually, as it is a midgame-lategame card.
UB/x Faeries
UR Storm
XURWB Affinity
G Elves
UW control
Shuts Burn/elves down with a turn 2 Chalice and hurts boggles and infect with engineered on 1. found just trickbinding the cascade trigger and fetches stops a lot of decks. One card I really want off the banned list to make this deck better, would have to be Mental Misstep, I dream of the day I can misstep a turn 1 Serum Visions
4x Island
4x Misty Rainforest
4x Mutavault
4x River of Tears
2x Tolaria West
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4x Watery Grave
Artifact
1x Batterskull
2x Chalice of the Void
2x Engineered Explosives
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
Instant
2x Cryptic Command
4x Delay
2x Dismember
1x Imp's Mischief
2x Sudden Death
4x Trickbind
2x Mistbind Clique
1x Sower of Temptation
4x Spellstutter Sprite
3x Vendilion Clique
1x Venser, Shaper Savant
Sorcery
2x Drown in Sorrow
Enchantment
4x Bitterblossom
1x Cranial Extraction
2x Damnation
2x Deathmark
2x Engineered Explosives
2x Grafdigger's Cage
2x Leyline of the Void
2x Pithing Needle
2x Spellskite
List originally had a couple of creeping tar pits(which became an additional island and fetch) in it, but I audibled to a list that could support blood moon at the last minute expecting a fair amount of tron and bloom titan in the room. Lost my win and in for top 8 but the deck felt great. Never really had an issue with only having two mutavaults. Mana felt solid. If I didn't feel like I needed blood moon in a given room I would happily put tar pits back in the deck. 3 color means I can't really afford any more mutavaults, but again I haven't really wanted more in the tournaments I've played so far with the deck. The leylines are currently a bit of an experiment as there's a lot of grixis control in our area and they put in a lot of work in that matchup.
The power of adding bolt, kolaghan's command, and terminate absolutely felt worth the splash to me. Only change I'm debating at the moment to the main deck is possibly trimming something for a 25th land.
4 spellstutter sprite
3 mistbind clique
3 vendilion clique
3 snapcaster mage
sorcery
4 inquisition of kozilek
1 rise // fall
enchantment
4 bitterblossom
instant
2 cryptic command
2 kolaghan's command
3 terminate
4 lightning bolt
3 mana leak
4 polluted delta
3 scalding tarn
2 bloodstained mire
2 mutavault
2 watery grave
2 steam vents
1 blood crypt
5 island
2 swamp
1 mountain
3 blood moon
3 leyline of the void
1 damnation
1 pyroclasm
1 go for the throat
1 rending volley
2 dispel
1 negate
1 duress
1 spellskite
Sure, that worked in extended/standard, but especially in modern, bitterblossom is neither powerful nor resilient. There is tons of lingering souls hate that incidentally wrecks half of our deck, cards like abrupt decay, maelstrom pulse, damnation/verdict, lingering souls, jace AoT, etc etc are all mainboard cards that happen to be very good against bitterblossom.
Right now the major issues with faeries is this: 1, control is not very strong in modern. Even grixis control just has to stall you out long enough for its 2 or 3 4/5 or 5/5 to beat you down. Its not really control. 2, Faeries is not a very good aggro deck. Most of our creatures don't curve out well, since you have to wait to play them in response to things. On top of that, they aren't very strong for their costs. Without a turn 2 bitterblossom / turn 3 vendilion, we deal damage very slowly.
In theory, a cantrip to make that slightly more likely is very strong. In practice, draw your own conclusions, but its something to think about. The major reason we have to run so much removal is because our creatures are so outclassed. We often lose races to a single tarmogoyf. Thats just life sometimes. Sure, we can jam more faeries to get more damage in, but playing more removal/counters in hopes of getting more out of our creatures seems like the better plan. Right now, I've got all 8 manlands, and that helps a lot for closing out games. I have thought about playing more scions and even adding in conclaves, but I haven't gotten that desperate yet.
I'm still undecided about the spells I play. I like discard, obviously, and we don't have a lot of turn 1 plays, so I think they stay for now. As for removal, I've been hating murderous cut (since I don't run serum visions). I've got two dismembers, which have served me well, but they make burn that much harder sometimes. Tragic slip as a singleton has also done a ton of work. Lastly, smother feels like the best removal spell in that slot. It kills almost everything we want to, barring delve creatures, but dismember and slip often take care of those. Slaughter pact feels like a good option, but with so many mistbinds, I don't like to tap out on my upkeep. It also misses delve creatures.
As for counters, the lack of modern legal counterspells (that don't suck) does hurt. I like snare, I like pierce, I like negate/countersquall, but something a bit more open would be nice. I've got leaks, as much as I hate them, sometimes its just the best playable card. Remand always plays worse than it feels, but I may go back to them. I wish we just got a silumgar's scorn in faeries. Unified will almost feels like the perfect card when we have bitterblossom out, but if we don't, its so often dead.
There is really any number of ways to play grixis faeries, and I've been playing around with it for about two weeks, but I do have to agree, I have yet to make a deck that is any better than grixis control or regular faeries. Its not a lot worse, and in some metas it might be alright, but I'm dropping it for now.
If I were to play grixis faeries I would go sith something like this:
4x Serum Visions
4x Lightning Bolt
2x Spell Snare
CMC2: 16
4x Bitterblossom
4x Spellstutter Sprite
3x Terminate
2x Snapcaster Mage
1x Go for the Throat
2x Rise // Fall
CMC3: 7
2x Kolaghan's Command
3x Vendilion Clique
2x Liliana of the Veil
CMC4: 4
2x Mistbind Clique
2x Cryptic Command
2x Mutavault
2x Creeping Tar Pit
4x Polluted Delta
4x Scalding Tarn
1x Steam Vents
1x Watery Grave
1x Sunken Hollow
1x Smoldering Marsh
1x Sulfur Falls
1x Drowned Catacomb
3x Island
1x Swamp
1x Mountain
1x Engineered Explosives
2x Vampiric Link
2x Dispel
1x Countersquall
1x Pyroclasm
1x Anger of the Gods
1x Izzet Staticaster
1x Kolaghan's Command
2x Liliana of the Veil
2x Damnation
1x Keranos, God of Storms
Pretty much Grixis is way stronger against creature decks and affinity, which are our predators as Faeries wizards. It also increases our resistance and outs to BGx and Tron.
The manabase I played with (I did not use the new duals) was this:
2 watery grave
2 steam vents
3 scalding tarn
4 creeping tar pit
1 mountain
2 swamp
For a total of 23 lands. I'm not sure how I would change it with the new duals (though I likely would, cutting glens and shocks for more basics and the new lands.)
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
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UB/x Faeries
UR Storm
XURWB Affinity
G Elves
UW control
We all have different mana bases for fae, and if you don't play any fetchs (like me) then glen is a pretty good card (note I've also got 16 fae creatures + 4 blossom, so chances are high that it enters untapped, unless i draw it super late, where that matters less)
I play 4 tarpits in U/B too.
Most (atleast many) grixis control lists play 22-23 lands, including 4 tarpits. Since I don't have mutas in my grixis fae, tar pits are even more required. Sometimes they annoy me by coming in to play tapped. Not that often, but occasionally. I might change them. Who knows.
I have plenty of opportunities to cast t1 discard with that list. Sometimes it hurts, and I had considered changing the tarns for marshes before I dropped the list.
I rarely play bolt t1/t2, and thus did not opt for any fast lands.
Mutavaults are good. With three colors, not so much. I got messed up by them more than I got messed up by tarpits.
If you are/were playing cryptics (I was), I might rather have sunken ruins/cascade bluffs over the fastlands/glens/checklands/whatever else one might play. It depends on the manabase. I had plenty of blue, so I opted away from them. I perhaps went a bit overboard on cryptic fixing, but again, the manabase hurt a bit more than it maybe should have, but it worked very well.
UB Faeries
U Taking Turns
BGW Abzan Midrange
EDH Decks
MonoU Sakashima the Impostor and the Clone Army
UG Rashmi, Eternities Crafter
Dralnu, Lich LordUBR Kess, Dissident Magecompletely agree about the painless manabase and merfolk comments, but apparently this deck needs something, so I'm trying to inch some more discussion.
UB/x Faeries
UR Storm
XURWB Affinity
G Elves
UW control
The point is not getting islands against merfolk, or be worried about a molten rain to the face! The point is, when they block you out of a color, fetchlands will grant you an instant out of the situation, whether you pay 1 or 3 life for it is a different thing subject to specific context. What I am trying to tell you is that if you face a land denial/destruction effect you will get blocked out of a color until you naturally draw a land that produces it. That is plain bad in a 3 color deck, which is where this discussion is coming from.
Burn is not a problem for faeries, at least it has never been a deck to beat in my experience with faeries. It actually falls under the easy category.
Now, aggro decks? I want to have double red/black whatever the cost for Anger of the Gods and Damnation post board. Stabilizing the board in your favor is more important than not paying life for lands, that has been proven all along magic history.
Maybe the tricolor deck is not the answer. I am not advocating to it, I just proposed a list if I were to play grixis Faeries. But that deck would be Grixis Faeries G1 against all the field, then keep being faeries against good matchups and become grixis value against the bad matchups (being zoo, affinity, and the alike). I am not suggesting you do this, I am not saying I will do this and I will love this. I am just illustrating that a 3 color manabse REQUIRES fetchlands and shocks/new-duals.
I've been playing a much more tempo-oriented faeries lately, with remands dropping tar pits for darkslick shores and cavern of souls (goes down to 24 lands) and plays more faeries (3 scion, 2+ mistbind, 4 spellstutter 3 Vclique). I still only play 2 cryptic, but I could see playing more due to just the fog effect. Dismember has been really nice for me, and the full 4 inquisitions make the painlessness more universal in the deck, I usually only take damage from the dismembers and bitterblossom.
Cavern of souls has just been incredible to make blue matchups (barring merfolk) almost actual byes rather than just 'good'. It can then shift into more controlling for bad matchups with lili's, better kill spells, sweepers, etc.
Osman, you should totally stream. I would very much like to watch you play the deck...pretty please?
Probably something to do with the fact that it is just a 1/2 of in legacy and some modern decks. It's basically used as a hand disruption spell when the deck doesn't want to run black.
I think people are worrying about the mainboard way too much. The mainboard itself is a pretty stable shell. If anything deciding on the Counter/Kill package is what's more important.
Do we pack wipes main?
Do we focus on 1 or 2 mana removal?
Broad hitting counters like Remand/Mana Leak or specifics like Spell Snare/Spell Pierce/Negate/Essence Scatter effects?
Do we run draw? Do we run filter maybe?
Red adds more removal but hurts us with the mass removal more than other decks.
Green adds resilience to counters and in the form of big dudes.
White gives us the option for life, Esper Faeries with Sorin anyone?
These questions should be answered with play tests though. I went to play the night before and got stomped because the meta game has changed in the last 2 weeks. It's no longer Twin/Grixis decks everywhere but super aggro and Living End, Ad Nauseum decks.
I wasn't prepared, I was still playing the Twin/Grixis and maybe Burn/Affinity/Elf sideboard.
There is nothing wrong with a painless mana base either. Blood Moon is a $60 card that sees play as a 2 of in about half the red decks. That is not something I care enough to change my lands around. I have 5 basics in decks without fetch and I usually see 1 or 2 of them. Even with a single Island I can still play the game just fine. Not to mention playing around Blood Moon and countering it is not difficult by any means.
We have 8 counters at minimum with another 5-8 hand disruption spells. Why are we scared of 2/60 cards that much? Especially when the only thing they can use to protect themselves against a counter efficiently is a Ricochet Trap?