MTG Salvation

Quote from Cody_X »

For the record, 4 lists placed at scg states, so thats gotta say something.
I think the meta is a bit strange at the moment, people are overreacting on the thopter/visions decks, and decks like jund/scapeshift prey on those that do. However, jund and scapeshift aren't always enough of a good matchup for control to win with, more or less kicking us out.
I don't think we're completely out in the cold here though.
As I (and others) have said before, faeries and be tweaked to beat anything, just not everything. But with such a narrow target (aggro and midrange) as the two big dogs, then we've got a couple of options.
1, preboard for aggro (disfigure, agony warp, tons of removal. Maybe kalitas too) More mistbind cliques, less cryptics. Sideboard cards like ashiok or AV for the midrange matchups.
2, preboard for midrange (lots of cryptics, play slow control game one, trying to just beat everything they throw out, then turn up the heat. Liliana, lots of discard, etc.
3, try to do a split, and have pre-boarded game against everything. Interestingly, I suspect this means mainboard cards like damanation and tasigur, with lots of answers/AV. Discard would likely end up sideboarded to make room.

In the meta, the only things that really concern me are:

1. Resurgence of Tron
2. Zooicide, 8Whack appearing, Small/Gruul zoo.

Jund and Scapeshift should be very doable right now. Especially now we have AV for the former due to AV and include Cavern of Souls for the the latter. Thopter is much better than I originally thought. Problematic are decks that play a dual control-combo deck, but the dedicated Tezzeret/Gifts deck are relatively easy to beat.

Although Company is a beating, I see less and less voices in their maindeck. This should favour us.
I dont know about you guys, but I alwaysoften managed to outtempo Pod decks.
I often feel disheartened by people who play only 2 Mistbind cliques ....

Quote from Metillon »

In the meta, the only things that really concern me are:

1. Resurgence of Tron
2. Zooicide, 8Whack appearing, Small/Gruul zoo.

Jund and Scapeshift should be very doable right now. Especially now we have AV for the former due to AV and include Cavern of Souls for the the latter. Thopter is much better than I originally thought. Problematic are decks that play a dual control-combo deck, but the dedicated Tezzeret/Gifts deck are relatively easy to beat.

Although Company is a beating, I see less and less voices in their maindeck. This should favour us.
I dont know about you guys, but I alwaysoften managed to outtempo Pod decks.
I often feel disheartened by people who play only 2 Mistbind cliques Frown ....

I agree, I think that jund and scapeshift are likely to work themselves out. However beating aggro game 1 will really force us to skew our mainboard, which is unfortunate.
I think that thopter + gifts decks are going to fizzle out, because there isn't enough room to also play control in that shell, just another to stall/defend the combo for a little while. Decks that only play one or the other are potentially powerful (I'm likely to play esper gifts this week...)

As for mistbind, I feel you. In my opinion, mistbind clique is the most powerful thing this deck can be doing, in a general sense. I've been playing 4, and I don't see that changing in the future.

As for finding room for stuff, yea, its hard. I want to mainboard countersquall against jund/tron/scapeshift, but that leaves aggro a bit weak.

For what its worth, I think that counterspells + discard + liliana is pulling in too many directions, and I would honestly not play liliana in faeries right now. Liliana is mediocre vs tron (she's decent against their gameplan, but weaker than everything they have and require us to tap out on a critical turn), mediocre vs jund (she can potentially do some work, but they play her under the assumption that they'll topdeck better than the other guy, and this is still true), and also lackluster against aggro (being a fog/edict).

All that said, for a list pushed at the emerging meta, I'd propose something like this:

My comment is something I have been saying time and again in this thread (also in others but mainly here) and I have been doing with my Fae lists to a good success. Include a sweeper mainboard. We are a control deck, there is absolutely no reason not to include a 1-of sweeper in the main. At worst it will be an expensive removal and at best it gives us game against aggro game one. Just try and put this 1 Damnation mainboard and it might give you a slight edge in G1 against aggro. I almost always include 1 damnation in both my Faeries lists as well as my grixis lists (even grixis midrange) unless I am 100% certain there will be no aggro at my local store that night (which is not often).

Quote from Ym1r »

My comment is something I have been saying time and again in this thread (also in others but mainly here) and I have been doing with my Fae lists to a good success. Include a sweeper mainboard. We are a control deck, there is absolutely no reason not to include a 1-of sweeper in the main. At worst it will be an expensive removal and at best it gives us game against aggro game one. Just try and put this 1 Damnation mainboard and it might give you a slight edge in G1 against aggro. I almost always include 1 damnation in both my Faeries lists as well as my grixis lists (even grixis midrange) unless I am 100% certain there will be no aggro at my local store that night (which is not often).

I am at your store. I laugh at your Damnation.

^^.

I think playing AV mainboard right now is a bad idea. If you wanted room for them side, thats probably fine, but against burn, zoo, infect, etc, you're gonna be pretty dissapointed. These decks are thriving because they beat AV decks. Becoming an AV deck doesn't help us win.
I disagree about mistbind (obviously) you can straight up lock people out of turns, and a 4/4 beats a majority of aggro's creatures. Its possibly the best card to play against them.

I realized I forgot spell snares in my list.
-1 cryptic -1 disfigure, +2 spell snare likely.

Quote from Cody_X »

I think playing AV mainboard right now is a bad idea. If you wanted room for them side, thats probably fine, but against burn, zoo, infect, etc, you're gonna be pretty dissapointed. These decks are thriving because they beat AV decks. Becoming an AV deck doesn't help us win.
I disagree about mistbind (obviously) you can straight up lock people out of turns, and a 4/4 beats a majority of aggro's creatures. Its possibly the best card to play against them.

While I agree with you,I do not believe that 4x of your 4cmc cards is a great idea especially when one is highly conditional and slightly easily disrupted

Quote from Ivenl »

No av and 8 4drops, that list looks horrible to me.
It looks like a lorwin block faeries list and doesn't reflect the new unbans at all.
Such a list was to slow last year and is even worse now that the meta became even faster.

About Mistbind: for me it's the weakest card in the deck. Looking @ the scg top32 it's only good against tron.
Casting mistbind is bad vs coco and chord and hardly possible against jund.

Wait, whaaaat.....

Having certain cards in the main or side is up to you and your playstyle. However, sharing your findings on what works is how this deck gets better. I'm not sure saying that a list is wrong will help us get anywhere.

Thought exercise:

You mulligan to 5 on the play against an unknown opponent to the following:

Watery Grave
Bitterblossom
Ancestral Vision
Creeping Tar Pit
Creeping Tar Pit

What is the best play?
1. Suspend vision on T1 with the watery grave?
2. Play a tar pit to guarantee the T2 blossom?

I'm guessing #2 since that is the best chance at surviving, even though this delays visions resolving until T7+?

Quote from Jrmunch »

Thought exercise:

You mulligan to 5 on the play against an unknown opponent to the following:

Watery Grave
Bitterblossom
Ancestral Vision
Creeping Tar Pit
Creeping Tar Pit

What is the best play?
1. Suspend vision on T1 with the watery grave?
2. Play a tar pit to guarantee the T2 blossom?

I'm guessing #2 since that is the best chance at surviving, even though this delays visions resolving until T7+?

In this scenario, are we on the play or the draw, and what did we see on top with the mulligain scry?

Quote from Devil"s Advocate »

Quote from Jrmunch »

Thought exercise:

You mulligan to 5 on the play against an unknown opponent to the following:

Watery Grave
Bitterblossom
Ancestral Vision
Creeping Tar Pit
Creeping Tar Pit

What is the best play?
1. Suspend vision on T1 with the watery grave?
2. Play a tar pit to guarantee the T2 blossom?

I'm guessing #2 since that is the best chance at surviving, even though this delays visions resolving until T7+?

In this scenario, are we on the play or the draw, and what did we see on top with the mulligain scry?

On the play, and let's assume you had to ship the scry for whatever reason

Quote from Jrmunch »

Quote from Devil"s Advocate »

Quote from Jrmunch »

Thought exercise:

You mulligan to 5 on the play against an unknown opponent to the following:

Watery Grave
Bitterblossom
Ancestral Vision
Creeping Tar Pit
Creeping Tar Pit

What is the best play?
1. Suspend vision on T1 with the watery grave?
2. Play a tar pit to guarantee the T2 blossom?

I'm guessing #2 since that is the best chance at surviving, even though this delays visions resolving until T7+?

In this scenario, are we on the play or the draw, and what did we see on top with the mulligain scry?

On the play, and let's assume you had to ship the scry for whatever reason

So something like a third Tar Pit or a second AV. Yeah, I would open with a Tar Pit in that case. That way not only can you guarantee T2 blossom if you need it, but you've still got the option to suspend AV T2 and Blossom T3 if you get signals that your opponent is playing a slower deck or burn.

so my perspective experience on the matter is limited, but I am going to assume that the card you had to scry to the bottom was not an interactive card, but nevertheless Id probably have to go with tar pit tapped to see what their turn 1 play is into most likely bitterblossom if the deck doesnt look like burn personally. I dont value vision that highly but if I have an insight into the deck being burn I suspend vision turn 2 (but I dont md them myself)

I honestly dont believe there is a best play, but having access to 2 mana on turn 2 is important

Quote from Jrmunch »

Thought exercise:

You mulligan to 5 on the play against an unknown opponent to the following:

Watery Grave
Bitterblossom
Ancestral Vision
Creeping Tar Pit
Creeping Tar Pit

What is the best play?
1. Suspend vision on T1 with the watery grave?
2. Play a tar pit to guarantee the T2 blossom?

I'm guessing #2 since that is the best chance at surviving, even though this delays visions resolving until T7+?

Heavily dependent on what's flipped over from the mulligan scry.

In a blind, Creeping Tar Pit turn 1 since being able to Bitterblossom on curve is super important (also the tapped land hurts less on turn 1 than it does, say, turn 4), but if there's an untapped land coming in from the draw step then I'm down with getting as greedy as necessary to set up the AV->BB early pressure since you can't just ignore AV into BB.

Well play testing Vendetta went well. I left a disfigure in the sideboard, just in case. Game 1 was against Jund. It misses too much in that matchup, so I pulled it out. Disfigure didn't seem good either. I feel like my list isn't as strong against jund as others are, no snapcasters and all. Dropping from 4 to 3 AVs before the Tournament stunk. Round 2 against Infect, Vendetta is so much better than disfigure here; however seeing as life points are virtually irrelevant in this matchup there was little to be learned. Round 3 against more Infect. Round 4 against mono black jankyness.

I still can't decide on it. One mana removal that has better range than disfigure is nice, but I still don't know what the life loss is like.

You yourself went to find inspiration from esper draw-go some time ago. That deck tends to play 7-8 4+ cmc spells, not including wrath of gods (this is under the assumption that you don't cast rev/white suns for x=0). With wraths, that number is >10.
Faeries isn't a tempo deck. We simply do not have the tools to be so in modern. We're comparable to the jeskai flash decks that used to be popular. We play control while getting creatures out when possible.

I think AV is a fantastic card, especially in this deck. I sideboard it because I don't want to lose to aggressive decks with an AV still in exile.
I can very well sideboard in 8+ cards against slower/control decks. It depends on the list, but if I have a lot of spells to cut (which I clearly do) then thats a totally fine place to be.

Your second to last paragraph is thoroughly confusing me. If we don't play AV, faeries didn't get better in a vacuum, sure. If we play AV in a meta full of aggro we actually got worse compared to meta.

Quote from Jrmunch »

Thought exercise:

You mulligan to 5 on the play against an unknown opponent to the following:

Watery Grave
Bitterblossom
Ancestral Vision
Creeping Tar Pit
Creeping Tar Pit

What is the best play?
1. Suspend vision on T1 with the watery grave?
2. Play a tar pit to guarantee the T2 blossom?

I'm guessing #2 since that is the best chance at surviving, even though this delays visions resolving until T7+?

I'd lead with Ancestral Vision on turn one. A mulligan to five makes it tough to win, so we'll need our draws to go our way. This gives you the outs of drawing a discard spell or untapped land for turn two and you get to make an impersonation of an average draw.

hey superadb a few quick questions on your recent list, for when you have time; how did the 1 jace vryn's prodigy treat you?
And what made you decide to play Ancestral Visions in your sb? I ask because these are similar decisions I have been mulling over

1-of Jace felt ok to me. There are some awkward times when you want to flashback Cryptic Command in your opponent's turn for example and you can't. But generally it's ok. You can flashback your removals and even cryptic command on your turn, given the flexibility of that card. The +2 also helps against some aggro matchups.

I'll redirect the abrupt from my Clique to your Lili, seems good. Divert probably wouldn't hit abrupt, or bolt, or path. Nearly ever