Other than discard, value planeswalkers and bitterblossom itself, I always try to exclude sorcery options as much as possible. It is why in my view Serum Visions has no place in this deck, for example.
Somewhat rhetorically, why would someone ever play serum visions over Opt in this deck? Instant and scry before draw are way more powerful than sorcery and scry afterwards, regardless of the extra scried card.
Other than discard, value planeswalkers and bitterblossom itself, I always try to exclude sorcery options as much as possible. It is why in my view Serum Visions has no place in this deck, for example.
Somewhat rhetorically, why would someone ever play serum visions over Opt in this deck? Instant and scry before draw are way more powerful than sorcery and scry afterwards, regardless of the extra scried card.
I could be wrong, but my guess is that too many people compare Faeries with Control. But it is not. Indeed, your imposition neatly answers itself.
The "best build" is never a settled thing with Faeries, because the best build of Faeries is a gameplan, not just a list of card choices. The bad builds try to be reactive and play control against everything without having built-in forms of inevitability. The good builds deploy their threats proactively (Bitterblossom, V-Clique) and then press the attack when the opponent tries to play around your answers or punishes your opponent for not playing around them by tightening the noose even further.
Sideboards tend to be all over the place, and depend very heavily on what your maindeck looks like. I'll reproduce my most recent list from last month, and I'd also highly recommend Spellcheck's list from last week if you're familiar with using Liliana of the Veil effectively.
Some good benchmarks for when you're deckbuilding and playing:
All the successful lists tend to play 3 thoughtseize, 2 inquisition, and 3 collective brutality in the 75, with 5 of them main and the other 3 in the board. Maining 2 brutality is good if you want the hedge against burn, which is a hard matchup.
In the side you'll want a 2-4 ways to shut down big dude decks like Eldrazi or GW (Kalitas, damnation), 2-3 graveyard hate, some additional counters/removal to tweak maindeck numbers, and a few catch-all answers to obnoxious things your opponents can do (echoing truth is this for me). Don't go overboard on narrow answers to stuff, your gameplan is already powerful, so you just want to make sure that your answers line up correctly with their threats so you don't die first.
Your main threats are Bitterblossom and Vendilion Clique (on their end step, this lets you hold up (or bluff) a counter in case they play something that you absolutely need to answer right away). Both are a 7-turn clock, and should be attacking as often as possible. If you're flooding on snapcasters, a T2 snapcaster (their end step, no flashback) is also a respectable threat, since you should be attacking if you can.
In close matchups, the right play is often the more aggressive one that trades some damage for putting them into "blitz you to 0" range so long as you are safe from dying. This means know when you can race and when you need to stall first.
Don't be afraid to mulligan. I've found I'm more likely to lose games where I keep a bad 7 than games where I mull to 5 to find a decent hand. We also mulligan very well and have plenty of ways to play from down cards.
If you lose a game (which will happen a lot, especially when you're learning the deck), keep in the mindset that you are the captain of your fate with this deck. Sometimes bad beats happen and there wasn't anything you could do about it, but most of the time losses come from decisions that you (the pilot) make that don't pan out, either because they were a mistake or because you needed to make a decision and picked incorrectly. Also, commit to learning from your victories as well so you can re-create them in the next matchup.
Unfortunately, I can't recommend a list with Jace, the mind sculptor in it yet, as I haven't gotten a chance to test one yet. If you play Jace you'll probably want to be on 24 lands, play 7-8 shuffle effects, slightly fewer discard spells, and slightly more counters/removal, so that you have more live draws when you brainstorm.
Read this if you're honestly interested. I've made it with the help of the Faeries discord and it covers nearly (if not) everything in the deck, and has example decklists which include Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
Best of luck, if you have any questions/comments feel free to leave them on the docs page, as I try and update it as frequently as I can.
There's a couple reasons for catacombs. My list has an above-average number of islands (part of that's a hold-over from the vedalken shackles days), so they are untapped fairly consistently. The other reason is that my playstyle is much more comfortable playing a tapped land on turn 1 (esp. on the play) than on turn 4, so I really don't like darkslick shores in the list. I play a slightly more reactive early game (fewer early discard, holding opt) so losing the T1 mana doesn't cost me all that much, where a delayed cryptic can be game-ending. I think this holds even more true now that Jace is another 4-drop that we want to support.
Mostly, though, I've been very happy with the manabase and haven't encountered a reason to mess with it. Sometimes the best reason is just, "it's working for me."
May i ask why you playing drowned catacombs instead of darkslick shores ? im just curious about reasoning
I personally play only 1 Drowned Catacombs and 3 Darkslick Shores. There are a few lists on the guide that run the full 4 Darkslick, but I found myself commonly having issues with lands coming into play untapped in the late-game and wanted to avoid that if possible by throwing in a catacomb instead of the 4th darkslick. One thing to note, most of the other lists also run 5-6 island/swamps (including watery grave), while personally, my deck runs 8 (5 islands, 1 swamp, 2 watery graves). This means that my Drowned Catacombs is coming in untapped nearly every single time. I'm also a lot less black heavy on my casting costs. The link in my signature to my deck (in the visual view) gives you a nice idea of my curve and how blue heavy I am vs. how black heavy I am.
Edit: I realize now you were talking to FaeKeeler, but my comments still stand if you're interested why I use it too
He should have waited to cast two spells in a turn, specially against a mana screwed blue player. Had he played well, he'd have won the game, but analyzing the plays, who should be blamed in case of a defeat: the mulligan to 5, mana screw, losing the dice roll and the "bad luck", or the misplay of blocking with Vendilion Clique and giving the opponent an extra turn?
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Who is truer: you who are, or you who are to be?
Currently sleeved: WUR Copycat ft. Stoneforge Mystic
Personally, I'd blame the misplay, not the manabase. I think that's the point: that regardless of "unluck" or deckbuilding decisions, playing to your outs and minimizing your opponent's opportunities to close you out will pay off.
I'm taking a new version of Faeries to Modern Night today, and was looking for opinions. Its inspired by PVDDR's list on the mothership a week or so ago.
My only major worry with the deck is that I'm running 2 more Cryptic Command's than the standard now a days. That's probably a bad decision, but I'm not really into cutting them. I thought of cutting the Hero's Downfall to run another land, but I want to test this version to see if it will be a big issue. I do like the idea of playing a 'Jund-esque' style Faeries deck, so hopefully this works out pretty good today. I do suggest reading Paulo's article, as it's the sort of higher level visibility I think Faeries needed to get on the board in modern. I'm hoping that he may do a video on CFB soon with it or something.
So, I am thinking of buying into fairies. So I just wanted to ask everyone here what they think of my list, and for a bit of advice on it in general. I am 2 cards over 60, so I need to figure out what to cut, but I just am not sure. I also don't have a sideboard worked out, but I have a general idea of what I would be putting in it.
So, as you can see I am splashing white for MB Path to Exile, and it will lead to SB cards like Rest in peace etc. I am going for a bit of a grindy control feel for the deck. So, I am thinking that maybe 2-3 Mutavaults might be better served as Celestial Colonnade possibly, but it lowers the synergy for spellstutter sprite, making it slightly worse, and I don't have that much white spells MB.
As for my cuts in general to fit my list together, I am not too sure where to go. I feel like I am a little light on discard with only a 2/2 split of IOK and TS already, but I hope that my removal package and counterspell choices can help balance that out with Snap for the late game recasts. About the only things I can think of cutting would be 1 Cryptic Command and then maybe a Snapcaster Mage, but that feels bad to me. So I am looking to people with more experience to help out with this decision. If you think my deck needs a complete overhaul, by all means, don't be scared to hurt my feelings, I won't get butt hurt over anything here. Like I said, I am very inexperienced with Fairies, so any and all advice is welcome.
No one here plays scions. Its one of those cards that every so often someone goes "why is no one playing this?" And then they quickly figure out its just not that good.
White splashes are the same way. Its been brought up numerous times in the past 400 pages, but to my knowledge, no one has ever stayed on it. Its just not better than straight ub.
If you want to go for more of a control deck, then just play a control deck. Esper control is potentially very well positioned moving forward.
Faeries is still in the same old "its ok, I guess, but not really better than (insert other blue deck)."
So, I am thinking of buying into fairies. So I just wanted to ask everyone here what they think of my list, and for a bit of advice on it in general. I am 2 cards over 60, so I need to figure out what to cut, but I just am not sure. I also don't have a sideboard worked out, but I have a general idea of what I would be putting in it.
So, as you can see I am splashing white for MB Path to Exile, and it will lead to SB cards like Rest in peace etc. I am going for a bit of a grindy control feel for the deck. So, I am thinking that maybe 2-3 Mutavaults might be better served as Celestial Colonnade possibly, but it lowers the synergy for spellstutter sprite, making it slightly worse, and I don't have that much white spells MB.
As for my cuts in general to fit my list together, I am not too sure where to go. I feel like I am a little light on discard with only a 2/2 split of IOK and TS already, but I hope that my removal package and counterspell choices can help balance that out with Snap for the late game recasts. About the only things I can think of cutting would be 1 Cryptic Command and then maybe a Snapcaster Mage, but that feels bad to me. So I am looking to people with more experience to help out with this decision. If you think my deck needs a complete overhaul, by all means, don't be scared to hurt my feelings, I won't get butt hurt over anything here. Like I said, I am very inexperienced with Fairies, so any and all advice is welcome.
The first bit of advice is always to play the deck a lot and figure out what works for you. Faeries is extremely customizable for how you want to play it, so all our theorycrafting is to some extent limited by our own play styles. That said, here are my thoughts:
In terms of overall gameplan, I'd avoid playing too heavily toward the grindy midrange/control gamplan, because Faeries doesn't have a good source of card advantage to bury people with. Faeries is best at exploiting little openings, which makes the "core" faeries gameplan look a lot more like a slow delver deck than a grindy jund or esper control. One of the ways you can re-coup some of that card advantage is by playing a heavy creature-land suite (6+), because it makes it almost impossible to flood out. Another way to add a grindy dimension to the deck is 2 jace, the mind sculptor, which would replace 1 mistbind and 1 cryptic (giving you a 2/2/2 split). Just remember that, in general, be as aggressive as you can afford to be in-game, because faeries isn't well-suited to extremely long games like dedicated control decks are.
You seem to be a bit light on removal and a bit heavy on countermagic. I'd consider cutting 2-3 counters for an additional removal spell and maybe the extra discard. One piece of tech that I've found helps here is Collective brutality, because it can be a removal and a discard game 1 where the flexibility is more important (it's rare that removal and discard are good in the same matchups). Adding 2 collective brutality lets you cut 1 discard in addition to the 2-3 counters, which nets you at least one of the cuts you were looking for (and leaves you with an effective 5 discard and 8 removal, much better numbers without too much moving things around).
I'd also suggest mana leak over remand. Mana leak is more grindy because it's an answer to their threat. Remand is more combo-oriented because it just delays their threat, which means you still need to find a way to answer the threat later. (if the threat isn't worth answering, you probably shouldn't be spending time playing a counterspell on it. If it is worth answering, you want to answer it now instead of hoping to draw an answer for it) Spell snares are fine but not great, they overlap a lot with fatal push.
I'd also consider trimming into your creature base. Scion in particular is only really good if you're already ahead, and is extremely awkward when behind, so it's probably the weak link in your grindy plan. 4 snapcaster is also a lot without a ton of good ways to take advantage (removal, counters, and discard are only situational, and you have a lot of creatures compared to the "average" snapcaster deck). I'd consider trimming 1 snapcaster (you have plenty of other creatures that give value, unlike most other control strategies) and at least one scion for some copies of opt, it will helps smooth things out considerably and also give snapcaster something to target when you just want to deploy it.
I mentioned Jace above as a reason to trim a mistbind, but I think 3 mistbind is a bit too heavy regardless. I think 2 is generally the right number, because you draw it consistently enough, but it seldom clogs up your hand in awkward spots.
The manabase looks all right, but I'd consider trimming a darkslick shores for a Celestial colonnade instead of trimming mutavaults. You will want a good density of creature-lands (I'd recommend at least 7, especially since you'll have access to colonnade) for the late-game to help secure wins. You may have to compromise on the Godless shrine in order to make cryptic command cast more consistently (but test it, I'm not sure). Full disclosure, I really don't like darkslick shores in the faeries manabase, but I'm in the minority on that question, so I'm not going to be pushy about it.
In terms of the white splash as a whole, you'll need to take a hard look at what it gives you. Maindeck, it doesn't give much, because path is only a slight upgrade over things like murderous cut or go for the throat that you already have in black, and the cost of making the manabase support a third color is significant. My advice would be to take a hard look at the white cards you want to play and determine how many are just "upgrades of effects you already had access to in UB and how many of them are essential effects that you wouldn't get otherwise. RiP may be a "unique effect" on that definition, but path is certainly just an upgrade, as are things like celestial purge and disenchant (echoing truth works just as well much of the time). I'd love to see a sideboard plan to better see how essential this white splash is to you.
If faerie miscreant were a wizard, I could see a pretty big potential change, but as it is, I don't think so.
We're never going to have it be a counterspell on turn 2 (which defeats half the purpose) and faeries generally ends games fast enough that mana leak being a dead card late game isn't crippling.
Liking the the list. Very classic. Your creature base matches what I've found to be optimal for my style of play.
Field of ruin is a lot better than ghost quarter, because we can use it to fix our mana without putting us behind a land in spots where the LD effect doesn't matter. I'd also suggest cutting 1 swamp for the 3rd tar pit, the blue source matters and the extra creature-land makes finding one when you want it more consistent. Since you aren't playing Jace, I'd also consider adding a 25th land (extra fetchland, probably).
You may consider maining the thoughtseizes instead of the inquisitions, there's some decks (like tron or scapeshift) where inquisition might as well be blank. Even if you draw TS in a matchup where the life-loss is really bad, there's nothing preventing you from holding it or pitching it to a brutality.
I think you're a little heavy on counters and light on removal. At the very least, you want to main a couple answers to bigger things like smasher, tasigur, or primeval titan. I'd cut 2 counters (probably the spell snares, they conflict with your pushes a lot) for a murderous cut and a hero's downfall (this will free up some space in the sideboard too). If you add the 25th land, you'll want to cut one more counter (leaving 2 plus 3 cryptic plus 4 SSS).
Sideboard, I'm not sure what the 1 chalice is doing, so you may consider cutting it. I'd also upgrade the spell pierces to a mixture of negate (or countersquall) and dispel, the relic to nihil spellbomb (and add a second if you moved the removal to the main) and find a spot for an echoing truth (a great catch-all for when you have more stuff to board out than in). 3 ceremonious rejection seems a bit heavy, especially since Eldrazi tron usually chalices for 1 against us. If you still want that effect, I'd trim 1 for a Kalitas to help against more midrange and Burn while still being effective against E tron (the negates are almost just as good against G tron). If you take all of this advice (move 2 removal main, cut chalice and 1 rejection, add 1 spellbomb, 1 echoing truth, and 1 Kalitas) you'll have 1 slot left over for whatever effect you want. My suggestions would be 2nd Damnation or Glen Elendra Archmage. If you have a good reason for keeping chalice, you can keep it in this slot.
Liking the the list. Very classic. Your creature base matches what I've found to be optimal for my style of play.
Field of ruin is a lot better than ghost quarter, because we can use it to fix our mana without putting us behind a land in spots where the LD effect doesn't matter. I'd also suggest cutting 1 swamp for the 3rd tar pit, the blue source matters and the extra creature-land makes finding one when you want it more consistent. Since you aren't playing Jace, I'd also consider adding a 25th land (extra fetchland, probably).
You may consider maining the thoughtseizes instead of the inquisitions, there's some decks (like tron or scapeshift) where inquisition might as well be blank. Even if you draw TS in a matchup where the life-loss is really bad, there's nothing preventing you from holding it or pitching it to a brutality.
I think you're a little heavy on counters and light on removal. At the very least, you want to main a couple answers to bigger things like smasher, tasigur, or primeval titan. I'd cut 2 counters (probably the spell snares, they conflict with your pushes a lot) for a murderous cut and a hero's downfall (this will free up some space in the sideboard too). If you add the 25th land, you'll want to cut one more counter (leaving 2 plus 3 cryptic plus 4 SSS).
Sideboard, I'm not sure what the 1 chalice is doing, so you may consider cutting it. I'd also upgrade the spell pierces to a mixture of negate (or countersquall) and dispel, the relic to nihil spellbomb (and add a second if you moved the removal to the main) and find a spot for an echoing truth (a great catch-all for when you have more stuff to board out than in). 3 ceremonious rejection seems a bit heavy, especially since Eldrazi tron usually chalices for 1 against us. If you still want that effect, I'd trim 1 for a Kalitas to help against more midrange and Burn while still being effective against E tron (the negates are almost just as good against G tron). If you take all of this advice (move 2 removal main, cut chalice and 1 rejection, add 1 spellbomb, 1 echoing truth, and 1 Kalitas) you'll have 1 slot left over for whatever effect you want. My suggestions would be 2nd Damnation or Glen Elendra Archmage. If you have a good reason for keeping chalice, you can keep it in this slot.
Thanks for your advices, I thougt a bit, and I apply some oh them:
I realize that I didn't give you the advice that I try to give everyone asking for decklist thoughts. Here it is: At the end of the day, the Faeries shell is flexible enough to support a wide variety of different playstyles, so what I consider to be optimal based on my experience and playstyle may not be optimal for you based on your playstyle. There's a lot of room for customization, metagaming, and pet cards in Faeries, and I suspect that you're at the point where the personalization and experimentation process will become more important than the "peer review" process. That said, I'm going to reproduce my list here and talk about my own matchup thoughts and card choices, and you can use that information to supplement your own testing and matchup plans to settle on a list that you are most happy with.
If I weren't playing the jaces, I'd be playing a sunken hollow and a 3rd cryptic instead.
The cards I consider to be my "signature" on the decklist are the brutalities main with inquisitions side, and the echoing truth, Glen elendra archmage, and to the slaughter in the side as well. The Jaces are the closest things to flex slots in the maindeck, and the archmage, EE, To the slaughter, and 2nd Damnation are the most flexible slots in the sideboard. (I'm also considering nihil spellbombs over surgicals in the side, but I'll need to test before making a decision)
When I was learning the deck, there was a long time where I played without discard maindeck at all. Because of that experience, I'm still very comfortable playing with below-average numbers of discard spells, so long as I have access to them for matchups where they're important. For this reason, I tend to side out discard a lot and play very conservatively with my counterspells (unless I'm deliberately trying to create an "always has it" impression for later in the match).
The way I approach most matches is to treat BB and vendilion clique as my main threats, and the rest of the deck should support buying time to let them kill the opponent. I can present a surprising amount of "burst" damage with tar pits and additional flash threats, so oftentimes I can position myself to race against a lot of decks with boards that look solidly behind my opponents. That means that I'm planning to try and use my removal and counters to keep the board clear early, and then allow something inconsequential to "slip through the cracks" while I deploy my BB or clique. From there, I'm advantaged because every time they cast something I don't feel threatened by, I can just ignore it and keep pressuring them and every time they play something I do feel threatened by, I can spend my answer on it and keep pressuring them.
As far as sideboarding goes, I usually trim into mistbinds (either to lower my curve or to let me bring in archmage and/or Kalitas), discard (sometimes brutalities come out like against Gx Tron, sometimes thoughtseize comes out like against Company decks, usually for battlefield interaction or to massage the discard numbers if I want inquisitions instead of one of the others), or removal (usually for additional discard or counters, matchup dependent). Against decks where I really need to have a good density of interaction like burn, I also side out fields because the LD effect is meaningless and I usually can't afford to spend the time to try and convert it into another land. Mana leaks are also sometimes cut in matchups where I can't rely on them being impactful (against cavern of souls or aether vial specifically, usually these are matchups where damnation is good)
Kalitas and Damnation often come in together against beefy creature decks (Gx midrange, Eldrazi tron, etc.) because wiping their board and leaving a board of my own behind pretty good, and the cards are solid even if I only draw one of them. Against go-wide decks I also bring in EE because setting it on 1-2 usually kills a bunch of stuff.
Surgicals only come in against dredge, storm, and occasionally valakut where I'm targeting specific things to hinder the opposing gameplan and I can count on those things ending up in the graveyard at some point without much assistance from me.
The counters come in if I want to upgrade mana leak or I can't rely on my removal being live (spell-based decks). Inquisitions and brutality can come in for the same reasons. Archmage can also come in in these spots to present an interactive top-end, replacing a mistbind.
To the slaughter is for if I want an additional removal spell, I'm playing against walkers, or I'm expecting hexproof threats.
Echoing truth is my catch-all. It comes in against non-creature permanents that I need to answer cheaply (blood moon, ensnaring bridge, etc.), tokens (lingering souls in particular), and whenever I have an extra spot while sideboarding. There's been far more times where I've left it out and missed it G2 than where I've brought it in and regretted it, and I bring it in a lot.
As an example: here's my sideboard plan against burn.
Out:
-4 BB
-3 Thoughtseize
-2 Mistbind
-1 field of ruin
In:
+2 inquisition
+1 brutality
+2 countersquall
+1 dispel
+1 Kalitas
+1 archmage
+1 EE
+1 echoing truth
The plan: Cut the life loss cards, lower the curve as much as possible, and plan to trade my cards for their cards as aggressively as possible. I'll establish a clock along the way (SSS, snapcaster especially) and give priority to keeping my life total high. 1 field is still in because occasionally I can keep them off a white source.
Here's Eldrazi Tron:
Out:
-3 thoughtseize
-2 brutality
In:
+2 damnation
+1 kalitas
+1 echoing truth
+1 to the slaughter
The plan: Discard is bad (chalice for 1 is common because they expect ceremonious rejection, plus it's a significant diminishing return). High-impact removal and board effects are good. Field should trade with either cavern, temple (to set them back a mana), or to keep them off tron if necessary, and should usually be used in their draw step. I'm probably letting Matter reshapers resolve and planning to answer them later, but TKS, smasher, and ballista should be dealt with ASAP. They will probably have mana trouble at some point, either from flooding or drawing the wrong mix of lands and not being able to deploy threats smoothly. Find an opening to resolve a BB/v-clique, and then slow their board development down as much as possible.
Faeries seems like a really good deck for the meta right now but there's a few questions i have. Is there a way we can build it so there isn't so much air? Cantrips and 1 mana discard seems like bad draws mid to late game because mana is always in high demand since the deck seems clogged with four drops, essentially there are so many good four drops we can be playing how to do we figure out some good plays on curve? Are there any more high power creatures we could include or is something like vampire nighthawk viable? Could always go grixis and include earthquake too. I like the tempo aspect but it seems like once we get behind on board there are a lot of matchups where we don't have the big beaters to wall the board, and have to end up chump blocking till we lose.
Has anyone tested vedalken shackles? It is a super powerful card I feel is really underrated. How does everyone feel about delve threats, and if so, what are the merits of thought scour in this deck? Faeries is super close to being amazing but I think we are missing ways to gain life and ways to have more deadly threats. has anyone tried to make vault of the archangel or zealous persecution work? In WB tokens it is a huge tempo swing and can often win the game against certain decks. If we add white, esper charm? A card like esper charm is exactly what this deck needs in my opinion.
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Every successful deck has a 1-drop, and a way to gain life.
I don't play cantrips (I still play AVs when I play this deck) but discard is necessary, IMO.
Some people have played things like kalitas, tasigur, gifted aetherborn, looter scooter, batterskull, etc, in the past. Theres nothing wrong with them, but in my opinion, adding creatures like these isn't really improving the deck.
Faeries is not amazing from behind. As you mentioned, we don't have big bodies, nor do we have mainboard sweepers.
We do have chump + tarpit, which is moderately strong (and other evasive creatures) but as you mentioned, we can't fall too far behind early.
I've written posts on this in the past, but the answer then, is not to plan for worst-cast, its to not fall behind early.
We have bitterblossom, which on turn 2 is great. I play AV, which is also great early. Discard is also good for this reason, shreding their hand early gives us a good start.
Yes, these cards are bad if drawn late, but as you noticed, if we accomplish nothing in the first couple turns and fall very far behind, we're probably just losing anyways. Maximize your deck for average to best case, IMO.
People have played vedalken shackles / threads of disloyalty / sower of temptation in the past. (IMO, shackles is the worst as we dont have that many islands). We have entrancing melody now as well. They're fine, if you want to play some in the board, go ahead. I personally am a fan of sower, as it doesn't have restrictions, and we're mostly interested in this effect against things like eldrazi, which doesn't play too many removal spells in the first place.
People have also played thought scour here, but at that point you're just approaching grixis midrange/control, and probably better off dropping the faeries.
People have also tried white splashes. It gets brought up a ton. Search the thread for their results, but to my knowledge, no one who has tried it has stuck to it. It turns out that cutting a bunch of cards for the white splash doesn't make the deck better, just different. Yes vault of the archangel, sorin, and path to exile do solve some of our problems, but you introduce new ones by adding them.
IMO, the deck just needs another good faerie. A 1 drop with a relevant effect would be nice, or something else disruptive with flash, but another creature that deals damage and counts towards SSS/mistbind/scion/etc is probably the most important thing we could get. Don't hold your breath though.
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Somewhat rhetorically, why would someone ever play serum visions over Opt in this deck? Instant and scry before draw are way more powerful than sorcery and scry afterwards, regardless of the extra scried card.
I could be wrong, but my guess is that too many people compare Faeries with Control. But it is not. Indeed, your imposition neatly answers itself.
DECKS:
UB Faeries [Midrange/Tempo]
RWUGB Affinity[Aggro]
FAERIES TOO STRONK!!!1111
- Fae Prophecy, 201
5678The "general" plan generally looks like this:
Sideboards tend to be all over the place, and depend very heavily on what your maindeck looks like. I'll reproduce my most recent list from last month, and I'd also highly recommend Spellcheck's list from last week if you're familiar with using Liliana of the Veil effectively.
Some good benchmarks for when you're deckbuilding and playing:
My list:
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Vendilion Clique
2 Mistbind Clique
4 Bitterblossom
3 Cryptic Command
3 Fatal push
1 Dismember
1 Go for the throat
1 murderous cut
2 Collective Brutality
3 thoughtseize
3 opt
2 mana leak
4 mutavault
2 field of ruins
4 polluted delta
2 watery grave
1 sunken hollow
1 sunken ruins
1 swamp
5 island
2 drowned catacomb
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Collective Brutality
2 inquisition of Kozilek
2 Damnation
1 echoing truth
1 To the Slaughter
1 Engineered Explosives
1 dispel
2 Countersquall
1 surgical extraction
1 extirpate
Spellcheck's list:
3 Vendilion Clique
3 Mistbind Clique
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Opt
4 Fatal Push
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
2 Remand
3 Mana Leak
2 Cryptic Command
2 Liliana of the Veil
4 Polluted Delta
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Mutavault
3 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Secluded Glen
1 Field of Ruin
2 Watery Grave
3 Island
1 Swamp
3 Spreading Seas
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Collective Brutality
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Countersquall
1 Disdainful Stroke
1 Spell Snare
1 Ceremonious Rejection
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Batterskull
Unfortunately, I can't recommend a list with Jace, the mind sculptor in it yet, as I haven't gotten a chance to test one yet. If you play Jace you'll probably want to be on 24 lands, play 7-8 shuffle effects, slightly fewer discard spells, and slightly more counters/removal, so that you have more live draws when you brainstorm.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14PC7XEuvznIG4QyeADGe7wnOHeV27-5COhWp_5yPZkQ/edit?usp=sharing
Read this if you're honestly interested. I've made it with the help of the Faeries discord and it covers nearly (if not) everything in the deck, and has example decklists which include Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
Best of luck, if you have any questions/comments feel free to leave them on the docs page, as I try and update it as frequently as I can.
FULL TIME FAERIES
Mostly, though, I've been very happy with the manabase and haven't encountered a reason to mess with it. Sometimes the best reason is just, "it's working for me."
I personally play only 1 Drowned Catacombs and 3 Darkslick Shores. There are a few lists on the guide that run the full 4 Darkslick, but I found myself commonly having issues with lands coming into play untapped in the late-game and wanted to avoid that if possible by throwing in a catacomb instead of the 4th darkslick. One thing to note, most of the other lists also run 5-6 island/swamps (including watery grave), while personally, my deck runs 8 (5 islands, 1 swamp, 2 watery graves). This means that my Drowned Catacombs is coming in untapped nearly every single time. I'm also a lot less black heavy on my casting costs. The link in my signature to my deck (in the visual view) gives you a nice idea of my curve and how blue heavy I am vs. how black heavy I am.
Edit: I realize now you were talking to FaeKeeler, but my comments still stand if you're interested why I use it too
FULL TIME FAERIES
Currently sleeved:
WUR Copycat ft. Stoneforge Mystic
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Creature (10)
4 Spellstutter Sprite
2 Mistbind Clique
2 Snapcaster Mage
2 Vendilion Clique
Sorcery (5)
3 Thoughtseize
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Cryptic Command
4 Fatal Push
3 Opt
1 Hero's Downfall
Enchantment (4)
4 Bitterblossom
Land (24)
4 Island
4 Mutavault
4 Polluted Delta
2 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Darkslick Shores
2 Flooded Strand
2 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Secluded Glen
2 Ceremonious Rejection
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Collective Brutality
1 Ravenous Trap
1 The Scarab God
1 Damnation
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Dispel
1 Disdainful Stroke
1 Liliana's Defeat
My only major worry with the deck is that I'm running 2 more Cryptic Command's than the standard now a days. That's probably a bad decision, but I'm not really into cutting them. I thought of cutting the Hero's Downfall to run another land, but I want to test this version to see if it will be a big issue. I do like the idea of playing a 'Jund-esque' style Faeries deck, so hopefully this works out pretty good today. I do suggest reading Paulo's article, as it's the sort of higher level visibility I think Faeries needed to get on the board in modern. I'm hoping that he may do a video on CFB soon with it or something.
4x Spellstutter Sprite
3x Mistbind Clique
2x Vendillion Clique
2x Scion of Oona
4x Snapcaster Mage
INSTANTS (14)
3x Cryptic Command
3x Remand
2x Spell Snare
3x Fatal Push
3x Path to Exile
2x Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Thoughtseize
ENCHANTMENT (4)
4x Bitterblossom
LAND (25)
4x Polluted Delta
4x Flooded Strand
2x Watery Grave
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Godless Shrine
1x Plains
1x Swamp
3x Island
3x Mutavault
2x Creeping Tar Pit
3x Darkslick Shores
So, as you can see I am splashing white for MB Path to Exile, and it will lead to SB cards like Rest in peace etc. I am going for a bit of a grindy control feel for the deck. So, I am thinking that maybe 2-3 Mutavaults might be better served as Celestial Colonnade possibly, but it lowers the synergy for spellstutter sprite, making it slightly worse, and I don't have that much white spells MB.
As for my cuts in general to fit my list together, I am not too sure where to go. I feel like I am a little light on discard with only a 2/2 split of IOK and TS already, but I hope that my removal package and counterspell choices can help balance that out with Snap for the late game recasts. About the only things I can think of cutting would be 1 Cryptic Command and then maybe a Snapcaster Mage, but that feels bad to me. So I am looking to people with more experience to help out with this decision. If you think my deck needs a complete overhaul, by all means, don't be scared to hurt my feelings, I won't get butt hurt over anything here. Like I said, I am very inexperienced with Fairies, so any and all advice is welcome.
White splashes are the same way. Its been brought up numerous times in the past 400 pages, but to my knowledge, no one has ever stayed on it. Its just not better than straight ub.
If you want to go for more of a control deck, then just play a control deck. Esper control is potentially very well positioned moving forward.
Faeries is still in the same old "its ok, I guess, but not really better than (insert other blue deck)."
LANDS [24]
2 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Ghost Quarter (Or is it better Field of Ruin? orTectonic Edge?)
2 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Island
4 Mutavault
4 Polluted Delta
ENCHANTMENTS [4]
4 Bitterblossom
CREATURES [12]
2 Mistbind Clique
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Vendilion Clique
4 Spellstutter Sprite
SORCERIES [5]
2 Collective Brutality
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
ISTANTS [15]
2 Spell Snare
3 Cryptic Command
3 Mana Leak
3 Opt
4 Fatal Push
SIDEBOARD [15]
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Damnation
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Murderous Cut (maybe i chose Hero's Downfall)
3 Ceremonious Rejection
3 Spell Pierce
3 Thoughtseize
The first bit of advice is always to play the deck a lot and figure out what works for you. Faeries is extremely customizable for how you want to play it, so all our theorycrafting is to some extent limited by our own play styles. That said, here are my thoughts:
In terms of overall gameplan, I'd avoid playing too heavily toward the grindy midrange/control gamplan, because Faeries doesn't have a good source of card advantage to bury people with. Faeries is best at exploiting little openings, which makes the "core" faeries gameplan look a lot more like a slow delver deck than a grindy jund or esper control. One of the ways you can re-coup some of that card advantage is by playing a heavy creature-land suite (6+), because it makes it almost impossible to flood out. Another way to add a grindy dimension to the deck is 2 jace, the mind sculptor, which would replace 1 mistbind and 1 cryptic (giving you a 2/2/2 split). Just remember that, in general, be as aggressive as you can afford to be in-game, because faeries isn't well-suited to extremely long games like dedicated control decks are.
You seem to be a bit light on removal and a bit heavy on countermagic. I'd consider cutting 2-3 counters for an additional removal spell and maybe the extra discard. One piece of tech that I've found helps here is Collective brutality, because it can be a removal and a discard game 1 where the flexibility is more important (it's rare that removal and discard are good in the same matchups). Adding 2 collective brutality lets you cut 1 discard in addition to the 2-3 counters, which nets you at least one of the cuts you were looking for (and leaves you with an effective 5 discard and 8 removal, much better numbers without too much moving things around).
I'd also suggest mana leak over remand. Mana leak is more grindy because it's an answer to their threat. Remand is more combo-oriented because it just delays their threat, which means you still need to find a way to answer the threat later. (if the threat isn't worth answering, you probably shouldn't be spending time playing a counterspell on it. If it is worth answering, you want to answer it now instead of hoping to draw an answer for it) Spell snares are fine but not great, they overlap a lot with fatal push.
I'd also consider trimming into your creature base. Scion in particular is only really good if you're already ahead, and is extremely awkward when behind, so it's probably the weak link in your grindy plan. 4 snapcaster is also a lot without a ton of good ways to take advantage (removal, counters, and discard are only situational, and you have a lot of creatures compared to the "average" snapcaster deck). I'd consider trimming 1 snapcaster (you have plenty of other creatures that give value, unlike most other control strategies) and at least one scion for some copies of opt, it will helps smooth things out considerably and also give snapcaster something to target when you just want to deploy it.
I mentioned Jace above as a reason to trim a mistbind, but I think 3 mistbind is a bit too heavy regardless. I think 2 is generally the right number, because you draw it consistently enough, but it seldom clogs up your hand in awkward spots.
The manabase looks all right, but I'd consider trimming a darkslick shores for a Celestial colonnade instead of trimming mutavaults. You will want a good density of creature-lands (I'd recommend at least 7, especially since you'll have access to colonnade) for the late-game to help secure wins. You may have to compromise on the Godless shrine in order to make cryptic command cast more consistently (but test it, I'm not sure). Full disclosure, I really don't like darkslick shores in the faeries manabase, but I'm in the minority on that question, so I'm not going to be pushy about it.
In terms of the white splash as a whole, you'll need to take a hard look at what it gives you. Maindeck, it doesn't give much, because path is only a slight upgrade over things like murderous cut or go for the throat that you already have in black, and the cost of making the manabase support a third color is significant. My advice would be to take a hard look at the white cards you want to play and determine how many are just "upgrades of effects you already had access to in UB and how many of them are essential effects that you wouldn't get otherwise. RiP may be a "unique effect" on that definition, but path is certainly just an upgrade, as are things like celestial purge and disenchant (echoing truth works just as well much of the time). I'd love to see a sideboard plan to better see how essential this white splash is to you.
We're never going to have it be a counterspell on turn 2 (which defeats half the purpose) and faeries generally ends games fast enough that mana leak being a dead card late game isn't crippling.
Liking the the list. Very classic. Your creature base matches what I've found to be optimal for my style of play.
Field of ruin is a lot better than ghost quarter, because we can use it to fix our mana without putting us behind a land in spots where the LD effect doesn't matter. I'd also suggest cutting 1 swamp for the 3rd tar pit, the blue source matters and the extra creature-land makes finding one when you want it more consistent. Since you aren't playing Jace, I'd also consider adding a 25th land (extra fetchland, probably).
You may consider maining the thoughtseizes instead of the inquisitions, there's some decks (like tron or scapeshift) where inquisition might as well be blank. Even if you draw TS in a matchup where the life-loss is really bad, there's nothing preventing you from holding it or pitching it to a brutality.
I think you're a little heavy on counters and light on removal. At the very least, you want to main a couple answers to bigger things like smasher, tasigur, or primeval titan. I'd cut 2 counters (probably the spell snares, they conflict with your pushes a lot) for a murderous cut and a hero's downfall (this will free up some space in the sideboard too). If you add the 25th land, you'll want to cut one more counter (leaving 2 plus 3 cryptic plus 4 SSS).
Sideboard, I'm not sure what the 1 chalice is doing, so you may consider cutting it. I'd also upgrade the spell pierces to a mixture of negate (or countersquall) and dispel, the relic to nihil spellbomb (and add a second if you moved the removal to the main) and find a spot for an echoing truth (a great catch-all for when you have more stuff to board out than in). 3 ceremonious rejection seems a bit heavy, especially since Eldrazi tron usually chalices for 1 against us. If you still want that effect, I'd trim 1 for a Kalitas to help against more midrange and Burn while still being effective against E tron (the negates are almost just as good against G tron). If you take all of this advice (move 2 removal main, cut chalice and 1 rejection, add 1 spellbomb, 1 echoing truth, and 1 Kalitas) you'll have 1 slot left over for whatever effect you want. My suggestions would be 2nd Damnation or Glen Elendra Archmage. If you have a good reason for keeping chalice, you can keep it in this slot.
Thanks for your advices, I thougt a bit, and I apply some oh them:
LAND [24]
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Swamp
2 Field of Ruin
2 Watery Grave
3 Creeping Tar Pit
3 Darkslick Shores
4 Island
4 Mutavault
4 Polluted Delta
CREATURES [11]
2 Mistbind Clique
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Vendilion Clique
4 Spellstutter Sprite
ISTANTS [16]
1 Dismember
1 Murderous Cut
1 Remand
2 Mana Leak
2 Spell Snare
3 Cryptic Command
3 Fatal Push
3 Opt
SORCERIES [5]
1 Thoughtseize
2 Collective Brutality
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
SIDEBOARD [15]
1 Dispel
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Spell Pierce
2 Ceremonious Rejection
2 Damnation
2 Echoing Truth
2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
2 Negate
2 Relic of Progenitus
Tell me what you think;
Here's my current list:
4 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
2 Watery grave
5 Island
1 swamp
2 drowned catacomb
3 creeping Tar pit
4 Mutavault
2 field of ruin
Creatures (12)
4 Spellstutter Sprite
3 Vendilion clique
3 snapcaster mage
2 mistbind clique
4 Bitterblossom
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Cryptic Command
2 Mana leak
3 opt
3 fatal push
1 dismember
1 go for the throat
1 murderous cut
3 thoughtseize
2 collective brutality
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Glen elendra Archmage
2 Damnation
2 surgical extraction
1 echoing truth
1 Engineered explosives
2 countersquall
1 dispel
2 inquisition of Kozilek
1 collective brutality
1 To the Slaughter
If I weren't playing the jaces, I'd be playing a sunken hollow and a 3rd cryptic instead.
The cards I consider to be my "signature" on the decklist are the brutalities main with inquisitions side, and the echoing truth, Glen elendra archmage, and to the slaughter in the side as well. The Jaces are the closest things to flex slots in the maindeck, and the archmage, EE, To the slaughter, and 2nd Damnation are the most flexible slots in the sideboard. (I'm also considering nihil spellbombs over surgicals in the side, but I'll need to test before making a decision)
When I was learning the deck, there was a long time where I played without discard maindeck at all. Because of that experience, I'm still very comfortable playing with below-average numbers of discard spells, so long as I have access to them for matchups where they're important. For this reason, I tend to side out discard a lot and play very conservatively with my counterspells (unless I'm deliberately trying to create an "always has it" impression for later in the match).
The way I approach most matches is to treat BB and vendilion clique as my main threats, and the rest of the deck should support buying time to let them kill the opponent. I can present a surprising amount of "burst" damage with tar pits and additional flash threats, so oftentimes I can position myself to race against a lot of decks with boards that look solidly behind my opponents. That means that I'm planning to try and use my removal and counters to keep the board clear early, and then allow something inconsequential to "slip through the cracks" while I deploy my BB or clique. From there, I'm advantaged because every time they cast something I don't feel threatened by, I can just ignore it and keep pressuring them and every time they play something I do feel threatened by, I can spend my answer on it and keep pressuring them.
As far as sideboarding goes, I usually trim into mistbinds (either to lower my curve or to let me bring in archmage and/or Kalitas), discard (sometimes brutalities come out like against Gx Tron, sometimes thoughtseize comes out like against Company decks, usually for battlefield interaction or to massage the discard numbers if I want inquisitions instead of one of the others), or removal (usually for additional discard or counters, matchup dependent). Against decks where I really need to have a good density of interaction like burn, I also side out fields because the LD effect is meaningless and I usually can't afford to spend the time to try and convert it into another land. Mana leaks are also sometimes cut in matchups where I can't rely on them being impactful (against cavern of souls or aether vial specifically, usually these are matchups where damnation is good)
Kalitas and Damnation often come in together against beefy creature decks (Gx midrange, Eldrazi tron, etc.) because wiping their board and leaving a board of my own behind pretty good, and the cards are solid even if I only draw one of them. Against go-wide decks I also bring in EE because setting it on 1-2 usually kills a bunch of stuff.
Surgicals only come in against dredge, storm, and occasionally valakut where I'm targeting specific things to hinder the opposing gameplan and I can count on those things ending up in the graveyard at some point without much assistance from me.
The counters come in if I want to upgrade mana leak or I can't rely on my removal being live (spell-based decks). Inquisitions and brutality can come in for the same reasons. Archmage can also come in in these spots to present an interactive top-end, replacing a mistbind.
To the slaughter is for if I want an additional removal spell, I'm playing against walkers, or I'm expecting hexproof threats.
Echoing truth is my catch-all. It comes in against non-creature permanents that I need to answer cheaply (blood moon, ensnaring bridge, etc.), tokens (lingering souls in particular), and whenever I have an extra spot while sideboarding. There's been far more times where I've left it out and missed it G2 than where I've brought it in and regretted it, and I bring it in a lot.
As an example: here's my sideboard plan against burn.
Out:
-4 BB
-3 Thoughtseize
-2 Mistbind
-1 field of ruin
In:
+2 inquisition
+1 brutality
+2 countersquall
+1 dispel
+1 Kalitas
+1 archmage
+1 EE
+1 echoing truth
The plan: Cut the life loss cards, lower the curve as much as possible, and plan to trade my cards for their cards as aggressively as possible. I'll establish a clock along the way (SSS, snapcaster especially) and give priority to keeping my life total high. 1 field is still in because occasionally I can keep them off a white source.
Here's Eldrazi Tron:
Out:
-3 thoughtseize
-2 brutality
In:
+2 damnation
+1 kalitas
+1 echoing truth
+1 to the slaughter
The plan: Discard is bad (chalice for 1 is common because they expect ceremonious rejection, plus it's a significant diminishing return). High-impact removal and board effects are good. Field should trade with either cavern, temple (to set them back a mana), or to keep them off tron if necessary, and should usually be used in their draw step. I'm probably letting Matter reshapers resolve and planning to answer them later, but TKS, smasher, and ballista should be dealt with ASAP. They will probably have mana trouble at some point, either from flooding or drawing the wrong mix of lands and not being able to deploy threats smoothly. Find an opening to resolve a BB/v-clique, and then slow their board development down as much as possible.
I hope this helps.
Has anyone tested vedalken shackles? It is a super powerful card I feel is really underrated. How does everyone feel about delve threats, and if so, what are the merits of thought scour in this deck? Faeries is super close to being amazing but I think we are missing ways to gain life and ways to have more deadly threats. has anyone tried to make vault of the archangel or zealous persecution work? In WB tokens it is a huge tempo swing and can often win the game against certain decks. If we add white, esper charm? A card like esper charm is exactly what this deck needs in my opinion.
Some people have played things like kalitas, tasigur, gifted aetherborn, looter scooter, batterskull, etc, in the past. Theres nothing wrong with them, but in my opinion, adding creatures like these isn't really improving the deck.
Faeries is not amazing from behind. As you mentioned, we don't have big bodies, nor do we have mainboard sweepers.
We do have chump + tarpit, which is moderately strong (and other evasive creatures) but as you mentioned, we can't fall too far behind early.
I've written posts on this in the past, but the answer then, is not to plan for worst-cast, its to not fall behind early.
We have bitterblossom, which on turn 2 is great. I play AV, which is also great early. Discard is also good for this reason, shreding their hand early gives us a good start.
Yes, these cards are bad if drawn late, but as you noticed, if we accomplish nothing in the first couple turns and fall very far behind, we're probably just losing anyways. Maximize your deck for average to best case, IMO.
People have played vedalken shackles / threads of disloyalty / sower of temptation in the past. (IMO, shackles is the worst as we dont have that many islands). We have entrancing melody now as well. They're fine, if you want to play some in the board, go ahead. I personally am a fan of sower, as it doesn't have restrictions, and we're mostly interested in this effect against things like eldrazi, which doesn't play too many removal spells in the first place.
People have also played thought scour here, but at that point you're just approaching grixis midrange/control, and probably better off dropping the faeries.
People have also tried white splashes. It gets brought up a ton. Search the thread for their results, but to my knowledge, no one who has tried it has stuck to it. It turns out that cutting a bunch of cards for the white splash doesn't make the deck better, just different. Yes vault of the archangel, sorin, and path to exile do solve some of our problems, but you introduce new ones by adding them.
IMO, the deck just needs another good faerie. A 1 drop with a relevant effect would be nice, or something else disruptive with flash, but another creature that deals damage and counts towards SSS/mistbind/scion/etc is probably the most important thing we could get. Don't hold your breath though.