One way or another, the number of snapcasters has been fairly controversial in the past.
Sometimes it really shines, sometimes it doesn't.
3-5 dollars a piece is still budget if you're playing them instead of 20$ deltas, 10$ watery graves and 20$ tarpits.
For the information, showing your opponents cards has some utility. You can let them play around certain cards, or try to focus their plays in certain ways.
Past that, if you show them a SSS (for example) every play they make, you know they're aware of the sprite, and choose to make that play anyways.
When showing people clique, they may more more likely to play their best card(s) quickly, which lets you ration your counterspells better.
You say that wanderwine hub has had problems in merfolk for you, but I've almost never had real problems with it. I used to play more spell heavy builds of fish (24-25 creatures sometimes) and even then, wanderwine hub has almost never entered tapped when I desperately needed it untapped.
While fae tends to play fewer actual faeries, a lot of my lists have 4 sprite, 3 vendilion, 3-4 mistbind, 4 bitterblossom, sometimes another faerie or two, meaning a good quarter of your deck is faeries. Theres a pretty good chance that its going to enter untapped as one of your first couple lands, and having a fourth untapped land for cryptic/mistbind is very important, IMO, which is why I like glen or river of tears more than darkslick shores. No matter how lucky/unlucky you are, darkslick shores on turn 4 will never cast mistbind or cryptic, or animate tarpit, etc. Its also a blue source for cryptic, a painless black source for discard/removal, etc.
Snapcaster is less useful the more creatures you have in your deck. The fact that 1/4 of your deck is faeries, and I run 10 including Snap and Kalitas, would show vastly different results.
Tarpit is 13-17, delta 10-13, and grave 7-9. Other than grave, you're heavily inflating the price of the lands. I pulled all of the prices from a quick tcgplayer search. I would much rather put 3-5 into a delta, which has application across many decks and formats. 3-5 isnt much by itself, but if its on a card that eventually sits in my binder, thats not money well spent imo.
I appreciate your insight on glen. It makes sense that you could trick your opponent into playing around a revealed card, and into another counter/removal. I dont know how often this would be relevant against someone familiar with the deck, though, or at a highly competitive tournament. I agree that a glen serves better than a darkslick shores on turn 4 in order to cast crypic, but depending on your build its going to be a dimir guildgate a lot of the time (10 faeries in my build)
I also rarely have issues playing wanderwine hub untapped in merfolk; but it does happen. My point was to say that even a deck with almost half of the deck as reveal-able creatures can still leave you without something to reveal. Merfolk only needs 4 mana to cast Master of Waves, so missing a 4th land or having it come in tapped isnt necessarily as game breaking (though it can be if you need Master of Waves to win) but Faeries is much more dependent on getting to 4 lands as fast as possible. Again, you wont lose every game you cant cast cryptic turn four, but my overall statement was to say there is more risk to playing glen in faeries (especially when you have 10 faeries).
Red should be burn, Goblins, Dragons, draw/discard, and Standard-unplayable 5CMC cards with insane, lengthy effects that take 10 minutes to figure out what they do and another 20 to actually make their effects work on the field.
I think I typically run 14 faeries and I like to run 3-4 Glens.
I also like to use Glen to play the psychological game with my opponents. Throw it out tapped to bluff I'm not holding a sprite. Or I've thrown it out tapped T1 to bluff no BB when I knew my opponent was running TS and IoK. And really sss is the only card I really hate revealing.
This guy ran 4 Glens, interesting. Also some spicy cards in Victim of Night and Ravenous Trap. He seems to go the full control route, with the faeries just as a flying win-con?
Presumably he just gives up game 1 against dredge, no point gimping your removal spells because of them.
This build is kind of what I normally played. That being said, mbc and crypt are both pretty weak right now, so its impressive this guy managed to do well.
I think I typically run 14 faeries and I like to run 3-4 Glens.
I also like to use Glen to play the psychological game with my opponents. Throw it out tapped to bluff I'm not holding a sprite. Or I've thrown it out tapped T1 to bluff no BB when I knew my opponent was running TS and IoK. And really sss is the only card I really hate revealing.
With 10 faeries you "want" to reveal (and 10 overall faeries in my list) you have a pretty poor chance of top decking a faerie if you need one to cast Glen untapped. It doesn't seem anyone currently running Glen is interested in dropping them; and that's fine. My intention was just to draw attention to fact that our faerie count is getting lower and lower, especially the more control lists. At what point is the mana fixing not worth the inevitability of Glen entering tapped?
I understand the fringe benefit of playing mind games with your opponent, but I really don't think this matters much to someone familiar with the deck. Bluffing mana is enough to signal to our opponent what we may be holding.
If you are playing an opponent who runs TS/inq, has it turn 1, and doesn't play it, I genuinely don't know what that person is doing. Not revealing something on Glen, again, won't make much difference to a good player familiar with faeries. They'll play around your threat whether they see it or not, if you have mana available.
They can't make the right choice everytime. I've sat there with 5 open mana and 4 cards in hand (3 of them were land, last was a useless something) and they've not wanted to play into counter magic. That's the problem with not having perfect knowledge. Even when they've Thoughtseized the turn before, I've drawn the one card they didn't expect.
It's all well and fine to say good players won't fall for a bluff, but it's just not true. Play a 2nd turn shock untapped and they're likely to believe you have something to interact with. Play a Glen tapped on T4 because you don't have a cryptic and don't wanna jam mistbind, only to have a SSS and spell snare in hand...
Glen rarely has been a problem with me. The difference between faeries and merfolk is merfolk want to get their creatures into play... I want 1 BB in play, all the SSS in my hand, V cliques often get played T3 so no harm revealing T3 or beyond. I usually don't mind showing MB either. Or quickling. Even showing a SSS is fine at times. So, my point is, I'm usually holding a faeries or two or three in my hand of some sort.
They can't make the right choice everytime. I've sat there with 5 open mana and 4 cards in hand (3 of them were land, last was a useless something) and they've not wanted to play into counter magic. That's the problem with not having perfect knowledge. Even when they've Thoughtseized the turn before, I've drawn the one card they didn't expect.
It's all well and fine to say good players won't fall for a bluff, but it's just not true. Play a 2nd turn shock untapped and they're likely to believe you have something to interact with. Play a Glen tapped on T4 because you don't have a cryptic and don't wanna jam mistbind, only to have a SSS and spell snare in hand...
Glen rarely has been a problem with me. The difference between faeries and merfolk is merfolk want to get their creatures into play... I want 1 BB in play, all the SSS in my hand, V cliques often get played T3 so no harm revealing T3 or beyond. I usually don't mind showing MB either. Or quickling. Even showing a SSS is fine at times. So, my point is, I'm usually holding a faeries or two or three in my hand of some sort.
Of course bluffing spells is a very real way to manipulate your opponent, and I never said otherwise. You've made excellent points of how untapped mana can influence your opponents decisions, but haven't addressed any benefit from revealing a creature. What I was trying to articulate is that, assuming your opponent is familiar with the cards we play in faeries (or in modern), you'd be hard pressed to trick your opponent into playing into mana leak by revealing SSS. If you have two mana up, they should be aware of leak, SSS, GftT, etc.
Playing a Glen turn 4 tapped isn't tricking your opponent, only verifying for them that Cryptic Command or MBind is not a threat this turn. Choosing not to reveal a faerie doesn't assure your opponent you don't have one, just that the information is more valuable than an untapped land.
A lot of the time we'll have another land to drop or a turn we can drop a tapped land without losing tempo, making this whole argument null. However, with 10 faeries in my deck total, 4 being SSS, I don't personally think Glen is worth running. I'd also be reluctant to reveal V-clique, since I feel it serves best as a surprise blocker. If your opponent knows you have it, they won't swing their creature into the chump.
Both of your examples of bluffing have nothing to do with revealing creatures. Also, wouldn't it be better to have Glen enter untapped to bluff cryptic, even though you don't have it (in the second example)? The fact that you wouldn't want to reveal a MBind and therefore allow Glen to enter tapped perfectly illustrates my point! You even say yourself "that's the problem with playing without perfect knowledge." Well, why give our opponent any knowledge? I really can't see the benefit!
Good points as well. I'm sure you've posted it somewhere, but what's your list? Specifically for mana. I do not like river anymore, more shocks doesn't appeal to me, so I'm not sure what other better choices are out there. Also, I reveal BB more than any other card for Glen. Also a great deal of decks either run discard or git probe, so that mitigates any harm revealing a known card.
On the topic of Secluded Glen, keep in mind that it's both very cheap (as in $) and it doesn't cost us life. If you move away from River of Tears and Glens, you automatically end up with a more painful manabase. Considering the fact that Burn is still a very bad matchup, I think Glens are still worth considering even if they do reveal information to the opponent. And don't forget the people building on a budget! This deck is very playable in a budget form.
Tar pit does always enter tapped, but has the trade-off of being a guaranteed body late game. As I've said before in another post, I consistently deal more damage with Tar pit than any other card in the deck, except maybe BB. Watery Grave is almost always being fetched end of the opponents turn to enter tapped, but still acts as "bluff" mana until then. Catacombs can be awkward in rare occasion, but I'd still argue it has an equal or better chance of entering untapped than Glen.
On the topic of Secluded Glen, keep in mind that it's both very cheap (as in $) and it doesn't cost us life. If you move away from River of Tears and Glens, you automatically end up with a more painful manabase. Considering the fact that Burn is still a very bad matchup, I think Glens are still worth considering even if they do reveal information to the opponent. And don't forget the people building on a budget! This deck is very playable in a budget form.
I posted my thoughts above on why I would advise a new/budget player away from Glens. $3-5 by itself is not as much as the other staple lands we run, but to spend 12-20 on a playset of Glens and then eventually have them sit unused in a binder seems unwise, when that same money could buy 1 or 2 polluted deltas, which are usable in many other blue decks and in other formats than modern. And besides, with the likelihood that Glen enters tapped and/or our ability to play with tapped lands, why not run Dismal Backwater and gain a life? Those run about $.15 and even help against burn. I had a pretty lengthy response a few pages back on how I approach the burn match up, and I honestly don't think it's too far from 50/50. Just my opinion, as always!
I don't think we ever want to look at what to do based around budget. This thread is for building the best UB/x fae deck. Consider budget options if you must (like no damnation or Liliana), but really, we need to look at best list, regardless of budget.
Edit: not directed at anyone in particular. I don't run Glen's bc they are cheap $
Just for anyone that wants to see a couple of my games. My LGS has a bad quality stream and I'm on there against UW Esperia SunTitan. I play them for the 4th round of swiss and then again in top 8 right after.
I'll reserve comments for later if anyone watches and has comments/questions. Sorry for the bad quality. The sound isn't filtered, so I doubt you can hear anything worthwhile. The video is "ok."
Definitely seems fun. I did Notion Thief in a standard with whispering madness and had lots of similar fun. I've kept one on my faeries tool box for a spicy random, but building around the effect seems fun. I almost want to do a rogue tribal with him. What I would do though is load up on 1 mana counters. Get Dispel for sure. If you do Notion Thief EOT and go for Days Undoing on your turn, you have 1-2 mana to stop them countering you or killing Notion Thief in response... so Dispel is going to be the MVP protection for the combo.
Just for anyone that wants to see a couple of my games. My LGS has a bad quality stream and I'm on there against UW Esperia SunTitan. I play them for the 4th round of swiss and then again in top 8 right after.
I'll reserve comments for later if anyone watches and has comments/questions. Sorry for the bad quality. The sound isn't filtered, so I doubt you can hear anything worthwhile. The video is "ok."
No V-Cique seems sac-religious
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
On mtgsalvation people don't want to discuss ideas, so I give people something else to discuss: my controversial opinions.
Yea I'm kinda surprised that spell pierce, pestermite, mana tithe, etc, made the cut over clique.
To be honest though, I think this kind of highlights the problem with splashes in fae.
You don't have a ton of deckspace to tinker with, and for all you add, you haven't really made any improvements, just changes.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Snapcaster is less useful the more creatures you have in your deck. The fact that 1/4 of your deck is faeries, and I run 10 including Snap and Kalitas, would show vastly different results.
Tarpit is 13-17, delta 10-13, and grave 7-9. Other than grave, you're heavily inflating the price of the lands. I pulled all of the prices from a quick tcgplayer search. I would much rather put 3-5 into a delta, which has application across many decks and formats. 3-5 isnt much by itself, but if its on a card that eventually sits in my binder, thats not money well spent imo.
I appreciate your insight on glen. It makes sense that you could trick your opponent into playing around a revealed card, and into another counter/removal. I dont know how often this would be relevant against someone familiar with the deck, though, or at a highly competitive tournament. I agree that a glen serves better than a darkslick shores on turn 4 in order to cast crypic, but depending on your build its going to be a dimir guildgate a lot of the time (10 faeries in my build)
I also rarely have issues playing wanderwine hub untapped in merfolk; but it does happen. My point was to say that even a deck with almost half of the deck as reveal-able creatures can still leave you without something to reveal. Merfolk only needs 4 mana to cast Master of Waves, so missing a 4th land or having it come in tapped isnt necessarily as game breaking (though it can be if you need Master of Waves to win) but Faeries is much more dependent on getting to 4 lands as fast as possible. Again, you wont lose every game you cant cast cryptic turn four, but my overall statement was to say there is more risk to playing glen in faeries (especially when you have 10 faeries).
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=110169
I think I typically run 14 faeries and I like to run 3-4 Glens.
I also like to use Glen to play the psychological game with my opponents. Throw it out tapped to bluff I'm not holding a sprite. Or I've thrown it out tapped T1 to bluff no BB when I knew my opponent was running TS and IoK. And really sss is the only card I really hate revealing.
This guy ran 4 Glens, interesting. Also some spicy cards in Victim of Night and Ravenous Trap. He seems to go the full control route, with the faeries just as a flying win-con?
UB Tezzerator
UBW Gifts
B 8Rack
Legacy
RB Goblins
This build is kind of what I normally played. That being said, mbc and crypt are both pretty weak right now, so its impressive this guy managed to do well.
With 10 faeries you "want" to reveal (and 10 overall faeries in my list) you have a pretty poor chance of top decking a faerie if you need one to cast Glen untapped. It doesn't seem anyone currently running Glen is interested in dropping them; and that's fine. My intention was just to draw attention to fact that our faerie count is getting lower and lower, especially the more control lists. At what point is the mana fixing not worth the inevitability of Glen entering tapped?
I understand the fringe benefit of playing mind games with your opponent, but I really don't think this matters much to someone familiar with the deck. Bluffing mana is enough to signal to our opponent what we may be holding.
If you are playing an opponent who runs TS/inq, has it turn 1, and doesn't play it, I genuinely don't know what that person is doing. Not revealing something on Glen, again, won't make much difference to a good player familiar with faeries. They'll play around your threat whether they see it or not, if you have mana available.
It's all well and fine to say good players won't fall for a bluff, but it's just not true. Play a 2nd turn shock untapped and they're likely to believe you have something to interact with. Play a Glen tapped on T4 because you don't have a cryptic and don't wanna jam mistbind, only to have a SSS and spell snare in hand...
Glen rarely has been a problem with me. The difference between faeries and merfolk is merfolk want to get their creatures into play... I want 1 BB in play, all the SSS in my hand, V cliques often get played T3 so no harm revealing T3 or beyond. I usually don't mind showing MB either. Or quickling. Even showing a SSS is fine at times. So, my point is, I'm usually holding a faeries or two or three in my hand of some sort.
Of course bluffing spells is a very real way to manipulate your opponent, and I never said otherwise. You've made excellent points of how untapped mana can influence your opponents decisions, but haven't addressed any benefit from revealing a creature. What I was trying to articulate is that, assuming your opponent is familiar with the cards we play in faeries (or in modern), you'd be hard pressed to trick your opponent into playing into mana leak by revealing SSS. If you have two mana up, they should be aware of leak, SSS, GftT, etc.
Playing a Glen turn 4 tapped isn't tricking your opponent, only verifying for them that Cryptic Command or MBind is not a threat this turn. Choosing not to reveal a faerie doesn't assure your opponent you don't have one, just that the information is more valuable than an untapped land.
A lot of the time we'll have another land to drop or a turn we can drop a tapped land without losing tempo, making this whole argument null. However, with 10 faeries in my deck total, 4 being SSS, I don't personally think Glen is worth running. I'd also be reluctant to reveal V-clique, since I feel it serves best as a surprise blocker. If your opponent knows you have it, they won't swing their creature into the chump.
Both of your examples of bluffing have nothing to do with revealing creatures. Also, wouldn't it be better to have Glen enter untapped to bluff cryptic, even though you don't have it (in the second example)? The fact that you wouldn't want to reveal a MBind and therefore allow Glen to enter tapped perfectly illustrates my point! You even say yourself "that's the problem with playing without perfect knowledge." Well, why give our opponent any knowledge? I really can't see the benefit!
I am wondering has anybody tryed a classic faerie shell with splash for white and spellqueller?
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/instant-deck-tech-u-b-sword-control-modern
This was discussed a few pages back. Someone had posted their list with spell queller and esper faeries, not sure if they're still running it or not.
I played esper most recently, Path is nice with dismember. But I don't really want to use spellqueller.
I went 6-0 with this list:
Esper Fae
Tar pit does always enter tapped, but has the trade-off of being a guaranteed body late game. As I've said before in another post, I consistently deal more damage with Tar pit than any other card in the deck, except maybe BB. Watery Grave is almost always being fetched end of the opponents turn to enter tapped, but still acts as "bluff" mana until then. Catacombs can be awkward in rare occasion, but I'd still argue it has an equal or better chance of entering untapped than Glen.
I posted my thoughts above on why I would advise a new/budget player away from Glens. $3-5 by itself is not as much as the other staple lands we run, but to spend 12-20 on a playset of Glens and then eventually have them sit unused in a binder seems unwise, when that same money could buy 1 or 2 polluted deltas, which are usable in many other blue decks and in other formats than modern. And besides, with the likelihood that Glen enters tapped and/or our ability to play with tapped lands, why not run Dismal Backwater and gain a life? Those run about $.15 and even help against burn. I had a pretty lengthy response a few pages back on how I approach the burn match up, and I honestly don't think it's too far from 50/50. Just my opinion, as always!
Edit: not directed at anyone in particular. I don't run Glen's bc they are cheap $
Here's the link: Twitch Stream
It should be queued up to my matches, but in case it's not, I start at 2:50
Here's the list I ran:
2x Celestial Colonnade
1x Darkslick Shores
2x Flooded Strand
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Godless Shrine
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Island
4x Mutavault
1x Mystic Gate
1x Plains
2x Polluted Delta
3x Seachrome Coast
3x Secluded Glen
1x Swamp
1x Watery Grave
Creature (9)
2x Mistbind Clique
1x Pestermite
1x Restoration Angel
1x Snapcaster Mage
4x Spellstutter Sprite
3x Ancestral Vision
Enchantment (4)
4x Bitterblossom
Planeswalker (2)
2x Sorin, Solemn Visitor
Instant (17)
2x Cryptic Command
2x Dismember
2x Mana Leak
2x Mana Tithe
2x Ojutai's Command
3x Path to Exile
1x Shadow of Doubt
1x Spell Pierce
2x Spell Snare
2x Ceremonious Rejection
1x Damnation
2x Engineered Explosives
3x Leyline of Sanctity
1x Leyline of the Void
3x Rest in Peace
1x Sphinx's Revelation
1x Supreme Verdict
1x Timely Reinforcements
I'll reserve comments for later if anyone watches and has comments/questions. Sorry for the bad quality. The sound isn't filtered, so I doubt you can hear anything worthwhile. The video is "ok."
No V-Cique seems sac-religious
Decks I'm playing in Modern right now:
URB Grixis Reveler (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-grixis-reveler/)
UB Faeries (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/ub-fae-2/)
UW Azorious Control (http://www.mtgvault.com/supast4r7/decks/modern-ojutai-control-2/)
To be honest though, I think this kind of highlights the problem with splashes in fae.
You don't have a ton of deckspace to tinker with, and for all you add, you haven't really made any improvements, just changes.