Affinity is not a bad matchup. You should be heavily favored games 2 and 3 against them.
Would you agree that Affinity is a bad MU for our maindeck? What do you find are the key sideboard cards that change that?
It's really not unless they explode on you and you have a below-average hand. The entire matchup game 1 is knowing what threats you have to care about and how the matchup in general plays. Postboard you should utterly wreck them. You get to side out cards that while not amazing are a bit subpar for more Spell Snares, Ratchet Bomb/EE, Batterskull, Hurkyl's, Drown In Sorrow, etc.
Affinity is not a bad matchup. You should be heavily favored games 2 and 3 against them.
Would you agree that Affinity is a bad MU for our maindeck? What do you find are the key sideboard cards that change that?
It's really not unless they explode on you and you have a below-average hand. The entire matchup game 1 is knowing what threats you have to care about and how the matchup in general plays. Postboard you should utterly wreck them. You get to side out cards that while not amazing are a bit subpar for more Spell Snares, Ratchet Bomb/EE, Batterskull, Hurkyl's, Drown In Sorrow, etc.
You didn't find batterskull to be too slow? I was playing about 9-10 affinity match ups today against two of my friends and I found that I'd actually side it out more often than not because it never got there.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
There is no reason being friendly and being competitive can't be synonymous.
Batterskull Definitely felt slow to me. But I dont play jace beleren in my 75, so my ability to guarantee lands is a bit lower than those who do. I would say the success of one hinges on the other, but I don't view jace very highly so batterskull doesnt get to resolve on turn 5 when youd need it to. This is just my thinking of course
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Decks I have in my bag of tricks- Needless to say, someone who wants to play will probably have a deck UB/x Faeries UR Storm XURWB Affinity G Elves UW control
This thread has no direction whatsoever. Chaos rules. For those who would like to actually create a good deck:
I'm going to make my own Faeries thread. With blackjack and hookers.
What would direction look like? Where I think we are is agreed on the control deck list with as few lands as possible. With SoFaF. Leaving about two cards undecided.
This thread has no direction whatsoever. Chaos rules. For those who would like to actually create a good deck:
I'm going to make my own Faeries thread. With blackjack and hookers.
What would direction look like? Where I think we are is agreed on the control deck list with as few lands as possible. With SoFaF. Leaving about two cards undecided.
No, we haven't. People like me are just not yet sold on using Swords. The main problem, however, is that other people are bringing up thousands of ideas and cardchoices at a time, making them basically worthless. The foucs should be on commonly testing one single card a week or so and then discussing our results with it, not testing like 10 cards at once.
I will keep that in mind, but first Id like to see other faeries players come and agree with your statement that they are not sold on swords; because I do have something to say on sword usage myself but felt it would take away from the Melira Pod discussion which I feel is a bigger deal...and hasnt been fully explored either. http://www.mtgdecks.net/decks/viewByArchetype/1408 And as this could show you...faeries has a few variations, so in my experience it becomes a personal journey with the deck; and other people may be farther along than others, so instead of getting out of shape over people just ask to help you focus on a point you need help with. If you arent sold on swords then ask people about them in detail and compare your experience.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Decks I have in my bag of tricks- Needless to say, someone who wants to play will probably have a deck UB/x Faeries UR Storm XURWB Affinity G Elves UW control
This thread has no direction whatsoever. Chaos rules. For those who would like to actually create a good deck:
I'm going to make my own Faeries thread. With blackjack and hookers.
What would direction look like? Where I think we are is agreed on the control deck list with as few lands as possible. With SoFaF. Leaving about two cards undecided.
No, we haven't. People like me are just not yet sold on using Swords. The main problem, however, is that other people are bringing up thousands of ideas and cardchoices at a time, making them basically worthless. The foucs should be on commonly testing one single card a week or so and then discussing our results with it, not testing like 10 cards at once.
You will never ever get everyone to agree on a 75 let alone a 60. There is no point in trying. I dont see why you are complaining right now since we were actually having a relevant discussion on how to make our pod matchup better, and how to streamline SBs and what cards have been used to success from others. It seems like you are getting nothing out of this thread because its either your way or its wrong. For example I play a single sword of feast and famine to great success, I haven never done worse than X-1 with my list and I went X-1 only once. Every other week I go X-0. So go ahead and make your own thread where you will be talking to yourself. I like brainstorming, and I think it will get us a lot farther and faster than ALL of us testing the same list and tweaking one card at a time. Thats just so inefficient. But then again I play a sword, so Im probably wrong.
I think TYSO is one of those that takes a serious attempt at getting Faeries competitvely. I follow his posts with great interest. More posts like his are required turn this into a succes.
@ThatStoryTeller: Exactly. We do not need posts like "use swords or not". We need more posts like, "how to deal with threat X?" and "can card Y help in matches like deck Z?
I will keep that in mind, but first Id like to see other faeries players come and agree with your statement that they are not sold on swords; because I do have something to say on sword usage myself but felt it would take away from the Melira Pod discussion which I feel is a bigger deal...and hasnt been fully explored either. http://www.mtgdecks.net/decks/viewByArchetype/1408 And as this could show you...faeries has a few variations, so in my experience it becomes a personal journey with the deck; and other people may be farther along than others, so instead of getting out of shape over people just ask to help you focus on a point you need help with. If you arent sold on swords then ask people about them in detail and compare your experience.
Very interesting. Someone who went the Scion route with no V. Cliques in the main and only 1 in the side got second recently. That is EXTREMELY surprising to me.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
There is no reason being friendly and being competitive can't be synonymous.
People like me are just not yet sold on using Swords. The main problem, however, is that other people are bringing up thousands of ideas and cardchoices at a time, making them basically worthless. The foucs should be on commonly testing one single card a week or so and then discussing our results with it, not testing like 10 cards at once.
My feelings are similar to ThatStoryTeller120, TakeYourShoesOff and Metillon. I also kind of agree with you that we should be working on a shared deck list (or at most a very small number of variants). And my understanding of successful Faeries is that it includes
9-12 CREATURES
3 Mistbind CliqueI have played and read play reports of every number of these from none to four, and three is solid. It is weak against decks with instant removal and is sideboarded out against those.
0-2 Snapcaster MageI don't feel certain that Snapcaster works well in Faeries. I think you need a lot of 1cmc targets, preferably instants, and Faeries doesn't play quite enough of them to get full value.
4 Spellstutter SpriteThe interaction between SSS and 'blossom is basic to the deck.
2-3 Vendilion CliqueVendilion is strong enough to always maindeck and to play up to three-of, but it is never a four-of. It is weak against decks with high card fungibility.
22-25 SPELLS
5 spot removal, drawn from Dismember, Doom Blade, Go for the Throat, Smother, and Tragic Slip. There are other candidates, but these are the main contenders. I believe Tragic Slip is better than it looks due to the favourable interaction with Pod, i.e. 'bolt the bird': preventing T2 pod.
5 hand disruption, being usually 2x Inquisition of Kozilek and 3x Thoughtseize. We need this much hand disruption in order to be likely to play one before T3. And that fits well into our mana-curve. Vendilion adds to this hand disruption.
8-9 counterspells, being usually 3x Cryptic Command, 3x Mana Leak, and more recently 2x Spell Snare. I think Spell Snare exists in the maindeck over Spell Pierce because Snare is typically better in game one.
4 BitterblossomThis card is why we are here.
0-2 Sword of Feast and Famine or other victory condition. Early Faeries reports repeatedly emphasised a need to put more pressure on our opponents. So I think we need 8 or more victory conditions to succeed. SoFaF is good in Faeries because it steps up the hand disruption, and makes it more practical to swing with Creeping Tar Pit. We benefit strongly from ending our turn with our lands untapped. Protection from green works well in a meta containing Tarmogoyf. Earlier decks looked at Sword of Light and Shadow which I believe does more to fix perceived problems with Faeries - like life loss - than get us onto a progressive plan.
0-2 PLANESWALKERS
0-2 Liliana of the Veil OR Jace BelerenMany Faeries pilots have reported liking Jace, but being slightly underwhelmed. They talk about him as a sideboard card rather than maindeck. I like Liliana, but many fear that discarding cards hurts us more than many of our opponents. Some have suggested Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, but I think we feel Ashiok is too random and offers no special synergy.
23-25 LANDSExperience and reports of play have told us that we need to keep our land count tight in order to have enough action. 26 lands produces comfort, but not success.
2-3 Creeping Tar PitWe need black and blue mana, and we like upping our creature count. Tar Pit is expensive to activate in a deck that prefers to tap its lands in opponent's turn. So we don't want too many of them.
3-5 IslandsWe need more blue mana than black, and some number of islands makes us resilient against Blood Moon.
4 MutavaultThis is a four-of due to the interaction with Mistbind and Spellstutter.
3-4 River of TearsThe reason for playing fewer than four is that they don't give us black for instant removal in our opponent's turn. But they do give us black in T1 for hand disruption.
3-4 Secluded GlenWe have enough faeries to make these work. Secluded Glen showing Bitterblossom, into Bitterblossom, being the standard play.
0-2 Sunken RuinsExperience suggests that we don't want to go over six colourless lands. I think Sunken Ruins or not depends on if your deck list needs BB as well as UU. If not, drawing an Island feeds Cryptic just as well as drawing Ruins does.
1-2 SwampsMirror point to islands.
Other lands under discussion have included Cavern of Souls, Tectonic Edge and Watery Grave. I think where we are is that Cavern is only justified in aggro-Faeries, which we dislike. I think a single Edge has high value. If we play shocklands, they must be few in number because we plan on paying our life down for faerie rogues.
SIDEBOARD
I feel like the way to approach sideboard is to first agree our match-ups (% of meta and W/L ratio), and then debate our strongest answers. And of course, our strongest answers are always rotating. But I think our lists end up with at least ten slots committed to beating Affinity, Delver, Pod, Storm, and Twin -
2-3 Engineered ExplosivesThis is our go to sweeper, and an answer for resolved enchantments. We have to respect our BU colour limit, meaning we can remove only 0, 1, and 2 cmc with Explosives. So counter and disrupt accordingly. Explosives is quite effective against both Affinity and Delver.
2 Grafdigger's CagePod and Storm both dislike Cage. Pod can remove Cages so we must have more than one of them. Whether you agree on Cage or not, I think we are forced to give at least two slots to Pod and Storm.
2 Negate or Spell PierceI favour the latter, but it seems clear from experience and reports that we want an ability to counter non-creature spells at the cheapest cmc available. That helps in the Twin MU, but also for decks that like to go off like Scapeshift and Storm. And I don't think we want to give our opponent a 2/2 swan, due to our reliance on getting through damage using 1/1 rogues.
2 Spellskite or some other problem for Twin. I also like Sudden Death here, but the point is that we're forced to give up two slots to Twin. Indeed, we have at least ten slots that so far as I can see are mandated in terms of what they address, if not in what we agree are the best cards for doing that.
You are on point mostly but grafdiggers cage doesnt stop living end. What you might want to play there though is chalice of the void at 0 if you can find other profitable uses for the card
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Decks I have in my bag of tricks- Needless to say, someone who wants to play will probably have a deck UB/x Faeries UR Storm XURWB Affinity G Elves UW control
I would emphasize the use of Sword of Fire and Ice instead of mentioning Light and Shadow. SoFaI makes everything you could want from an aggressive option, as it adds 4 (instead of 2) to your clock while drawing cards. Not the most significant Protection, but hey.
I don't know how you guys are using your manlands but I often only attack if I a) have enough resources to react even though i tapped that much mana (at least for Creeping Tar Pit) or b) I don't have any action left, so the potential "blowout" doesn't mean much. I just ask because I still can't really see why Feast and Famine should be that much superior because it untaps. I think it could lead to more blowouts if your critter simply won't hit and you counted on the untap effect which leaves you defensless (if you don't have anything SoFaI would be superior either way?)
The other points vonklaude mentioned are quite spot on in my opinion.
You are on point mostly but grafdiggers cage doesnt stop living end. What you might want to play there though is chalice of the void at 0 if you can find other profitable uses for the card
You are right of course. I've been switching between Relic and Cage trying to get a fix on which is better. Relic does answer Living End. But an important thing to note with End is that you can counter the spell cast for free with cascade. I've only met Living End in two matches. Would you agree that it does not merit special attention?
NB: have edited my earlier post so as not to confuse people. Good spot.
You will never ever get everyone to agree on a 75 let alone a 60. There is no point in trying.
This. A part from the intrinsec difficulty of finding a shared common list it's useless for everyone play the exact same list, playstyle/opponent/meta... are different and so have to be the lists.
People like me are just not yet sold on using Swords. The main problem, however, is that other people are bringing up thousands of ideas and cardchoices at a time, making them basically worthless. The foucs should be on commonly testing one single card a week or so and then discussing our results with it, not testing like 10 cards at once.
My feelings are similar to ThatStoryTeller120, TakeYourShoesOff and Metillon. I also kind of agree with you that we should be working on a shared deck list (or at most a very small number of variants). And my understanding of successful Faeries is that it includes
9-12 CREATURES
3 Mistbind CliqueI have played and read play reports of every number of these from none to four, and three is solid. It is weak against decks with instant removal and is sideboarded out against those.
0-2 Snapcaster MageI don't feel certain that Snapcaster works well in Faeries. I think you need a lot of 1cmc targets, preferably instants, and Faeries doesn't play quite enough of them to get full value.
4 Spellstutter SpriteThe interaction between SSS and 'blossom is basic to the deck.
2-3 Vendilion CliqueVendilion is strong enough to always maindeck and to play up to three-of, but it is never a four-of. It is weak against decks with high card fungibility.
22-25 SPELLS
5 spot removal, drawn from Dismember, Doom Blade, Go for the Throat, Smother, and Tragic Slip. There are other candidates, but these are the main contenders. I believe Tragic Slip is better than it looks due to the favourable interaction with Pod, i.e. 'bolt the bird': preventing T2 pod.
5 hand disruption, being usually 2x Inquisition of Kozilek and 3x Thoughtseize. We need this much hand disruption in order to be likely to play one before T3. And that fits well into our mana-curve. Vendilion adds to this hand disruption.
8-9 counterspells, being usually 3x Cryptic Command, 3x Mana Leak, and more recently 2x Spell Snare. I think Spell Snare exists in the maindeck over Spell Pierce because Snare is typically better in game one.
4 BitterblossomThis card is why we are here.
0-2 Sword of Feast and Famine or other victory condition. Early Faeries reports repeatedly emphasised a need to put more pressure on our opponents. So I think we need 8 or more victory conditions to succeed. SoFaF is good in Faeries because it steps up the hand disruption, and makes it more practical to swing with Creeping Tar Pit. We benefit strongly from ending our turn with our lands untapped. Protection from green works well in a meta containing Tarmogoyf. Earlier decks looked at Sword of Light and Shadow which I believe does more to fix perceived problems with Faeries - like life loss - than get us onto a progressive plan.
0-2 PLANESWALKERS
0-2 Liliana of the Veil OR Jace BelerenMany Faeries pilots have reported liking Jace, but being slightly underwhelmed. They talk about him as a sideboard card rather than maindeck. I like Liliana, but many fear that discarding cards hurts us more than many of our opponents. Some have suggested Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, but I think we feel Ashiok is too random and offers no special synergy.
23-25 LANDSExperience and reports of play have told us that we need to keep our land count tight in order to have enough action. 26 lands produces comfort, but not success.
2-3 Creeping Tar PitWe need black and blue mana, and we like upping our creature count. Tar Pit is expensive to activate in a deck that prefers to tap its lands in opponent's turn. So we don't want too many of them.
3-5 IslandsWe need more blue mana than black, and some number of islands makes us resilient against Blood Moon.
4 MutavaultThis is a four-of due to the interaction with Mistbind and Spellstutter.
3-4 River of TearsThe reason for playing fewer than four is that they don't give us black for instant removal in our opponent's turn. But they do give us black in T1 for hand disruption.
3-4 Secluded GlenWe have enough faeries to make these work. Secluded Glen showing Bitterblossom, into Bitterblossom, being the standard play.
0-2 Sunken RuinsExperience suggests that we don't want to go over six colourless lands. I think Sunken Ruins or not depends on if your deck list needs BB as well as UU. If not, drawing an Island feeds Cryptic just as well as drawing Ruins does.
1-2 SwampsMirror point to islands.
Other lands under discussion have included Cavern of Souls, Tectonic Edge and Watery Grave. I think where we are is that Cavern is only justified in aggro-Faeries, which we dislike. I think a single Edge has high value. If we play shocklands, they must be few in number because we plan on paying our life down for faerie rogues.
SIDEBOARD
I feel like the way to approach sideboard is to first agree our match-ups (% of meta and W/L ratio), and then debate our strongest answers. And of course, our strongest answers are always rotating. But I think our lists end up with at least ten slots committed to beating Affinity, Delver, Pod, Storm, and Twin -
2-3 Engineered ExplosivesThis is our go to sweeper, and an answer for resolved enchantments. We have to respect our BU colour limit, meaning we can remove only 0, 1, and 2 cmc with Explosives. So counter and disrupt accordingly. Explosives is quite effective against both Affinity and Delver.
2 Grafdigger's CagePod and Storm both dislike Cage. Pod can remove Cages so we must have more than one of them. Whether you agree on Cage or not, I think we are forced to give at least two slots to Pod and Storm.
2 Negate or Spell PierceI favour the latter, but it seems clear from experience and reports that we want an ability to counter non-creature spells at the cheapest cmc available. That helps in the Twin MU, but also for decks that like to go off like Scapeshift and Storm. And I don't think we want to give our opponent a 2/2 swan, due to our reliance on getting through damage using 1/1 rogues.
2 Spellskite or some other problem for Twin. I also like Sudden Death here, but the point is that we're forced to give up two slots to Twin. Indeed, we have at least ten slots that so far as I can see are mandated in terms of what they address, if not in what we agree are the best cards for doing that.
- L
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
Also, I think death mark is an important card to mention for pod decks. I'm on 6 MD removal right now and still feel 2-3 is a proper SB call. That and I think after this sword issue is handles we should discuss sower of temptation as a card for the pod matchup specifically... like what to hold/play them for
Decks I have in my bag of tricks- Needless to say, someone who wants to play will probably have a deck UB/x Faeries UR Storm XURWB Affinity G Elves UW control
I don't really post on here anymore (too much arguing around the time I stopped for me to want to keep posting) but I will say the deck will not reward you unless YOU put time into building it YOUR way. One of the major advantages of Faeries is that you only have ~40 cards that are musts in the entire deck, and some of those are just generalized. Build YOUR style. The guy who just went 12-3 at Minneapolis? He and I compared decks at the end of the tournament. We were off by over 25 cards between main and side, and neither of us disliked each others decks. Play YOUR way instead of thinking that there is one "good" way to build/play it.
If you're having issues with pod, look towards sweepers. I play Drown In Sorrow, have played BSZ. I've noted some people dismissing BSZ because of Melira, but the fact is that Melira really only hits the table if they're comboing off that turn. It's an insane card if they don't have melira out.
Drown in sorrow works well for you? I'm looking at playing a few mainly for the affinity matchup myself
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Decks I have in my bag of tricks- Needless to say, someone who wants to play will probably have a deck UB/x Faeries UR Storm XURWB Affinity G Elves UW control
Well I also look for other angles that can be profitable with cards in question so it isn't just for affinity, it would be for pod and merfolk aswell. Also I am back to testing runechanter's pike over swords because they seem to help swing damage in games better than swords at 2 mana and a higher impact on the game with first strike and flexible levels of power bonuses. It really helps to have the card that swings the game come down at 2 mana and be a backup and/or threat for bitterblossom
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Decks I have in my bag of tricks- Needless to say, someone who wants to play will probably have a deck UB/x Faeries UR Storm XURWB Affinity G Elves UW control
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
It's really not unless they explode on you and you have a below-average hand. The entire matchup game 1 is knowing what threats you have to care about and how the matchup in general plays. Postboard you should utterly wreck them. You get to side out cards that while not amazing are a bit subpar for more Spell Snares, Ratchet Bomb/EE, Batterskull, Hurkyl's, Drown In Sorrow, etc.
UB Faeries GP Record - 22/9/2, 1 Top 64
You didn't find batterskull to be too slow? I was playing about 9-10 affinity match ups today against two of my friends and I found that I'd actually side it out more often than not because it never got there.
UB/x Faeries
UR Storm
XURWB Affinity
G Elves
UW control
I'm going to make my own Faeries thread. With blackjack and hookers.
What would direction look like? Where I think we are is agreed on the control deck list with as few lands as possible. With SoFaF. Leaving about two cards undecided.
No, we haven't. People like me are just not yet sold on using Swords. The main problem, however, is that other people are bringing up thousands of ideas and cardchoices at a time, making them basically worthless. The foucs should be on commonly testing one single card a week or so and then discussing our results with it, not testing like 10 cards at once.
UB/x Faeries
UR Storm
XURWB Affinity
G Elves
UW control
You will never ever get everyone to agree on a 75 let alone a 60. There is no point in trying. I dont see why you are complaining right now since we were actually having a relevant discussion on how to make our pod matchup better, and how to streamline SBs and what cards have been used to success from others. It seems like you are getting nothing out of this thread because its either your way or its wrong. For example I play a single sword of feast and famine to great success, I haven never done worse than X-1 with my list and I went X-1 only once. Every other week I go X-0. So go ahead and make your own thread where you will be talking to yourself. I like brainstorming, and I think it will get us a lot farther and faster than ALL of us testing the same list and tweaking one card at a time. Thats just so inefficient. But then again I play a sword, so Im probably wrong.
@ThatStoryTeller: Exactly. We do not need posts like "use swords or not". We need more posts like, "how to deal with threat X?" and "can card Y help in matches like deck Z?
DECKS:
UB Faeries [Midrange/Tempo]
RWUGB Affinity[Aggro]
FAERIES TOO STRONK!!!1111
- Fae Prophecy, 201
5678My feelings are similar to ThatStoryTeller120, TakeYourShoesOff and Metillon. I also kind of agree with you that we should be working on a shared deck list (or at most a very small number of variants). And my understanding of successful Faeries is that it includes
9-12 CREATURES
3 Mistbind Clique I have played and read play reports of every number of these from none to four, and three is solid. It is weak against decks with instant removal and is sideboarded out against those.
0-2 Snapcaster Mage I don't feel certain that Snapcaster works well in Faeries. I think you need a lot of 1cmc targets, preferably instants, and Faeries doesn't play quite enough of them to get full value.
4 Spellstutter Sprite The interaction between SSS and 'blossom is basic to the deck.
2-3 Vendilion Clique Vendilion is strong enough to always maindeck and to play up to three-of, but it is never a four-of. It is weak against decks with high card fungibility.
22-25 SPELLS
5 spot removal, drawn from Dismember, Doom Blade, Go for the Throat, Smother, and Tragic Slip. There are other candidates, but these are the main contenders. I believe Tragic Slip is better than it looks due to the favourable interaction with Pod, i.e. 'bolt the bird': preventing T2 pod.
5 hand disruption, being usually 2x Inquisition of Kozilek and 3x Thoughtseize. We need this much hand disruption in order to be likely to play one before T3. And that fits well into our mana-curve. Vendilion adds to this hand disruption.
8-9 counterspells, being usually 3x Cryptic Command, 3x Mana Leak, and more recently 2x Spell Snare. I think Spell Snare exists in the maindeck over Spell Pierce because Snare is typically better in game one.
4 Bitterblossom This card is why we are here.
0-2 Sword of Feast and Famine or other victory condition. Early Faeries reports repeatedly emphasised a need to put more pressure on our opponents. So I think we need 8 or more victory conditions to succeed. SoFaF is good in Faeries because it steps up the hand disruption, and makes it more practical to swing with Creeping Tar Pit. We benefit strongly from ending our turn with our lands untapped. Protection from green works well in a meta containing Tarmogoyf. Earlier decks looked at Sword of Light and Shadow which I believe does more to fix perceived problems with Faeries - like life loss - than get us onto a progressive plan.
0-2 PLANESWALKERS
0-2 Liliana of the Veil OR Jace Beleren Many Faeries pilots have reported liking Jace, but being slightly underwhelmed. They talk about him as a sideboard card rather than maindeck. I like Liliana, but many fear that discarding cards hurts us more than many of our opponents. Some have suggested Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, but I think we feel Ashiok is too random and offers no special synergy.
23-25 LANDS Experience and reports of play have told us that we need to keep our land count tight in order to have enough action. 26 lands produces comfort, but not success.
2-3 Creeping Tar Pit We need black and blue mana, and we like upping our creature count. Tar Pit is expensive to activate in a deck that prefers to tap its lands in opponent's turn. So we don't want too many of them.
3-5 Islands We need more blue mana than black, and some number of islands makes us resilient against Blood Moon.
4 Mutavault This is a four-of due to the interaction with Mistbind and Spellstutter.
3-4 River of Tears The reason for playing fewer than four is that they don't give us black for instant removal in our opponent's turn. But they do give us black in T1 for hand disruption.
3-4 Secluded Glen We have enough faeries to make these work. Secluded Glen showing Bitterblossom, into Bitterblossom, being the standard play.
0-2 Sunken Ruins Experience suggests that we don't want to go over six colourless lands. I think Sunken Ruins or not depends on if your deck list needs BB as well as UU. If not, drawing an Island feeds Cryptic just as well as drawing Ruins does.
1-2 Swamps Mirror point to islands.
Other lands under discussion have included Cavern of Souls, Tectonic Edge and Watery Grave. I think where we are is that Cavern is only justified in aggro-Faeries, which we dislike. I think a single Edge has high value. If we play shocklands, they must be few in number because we plan on paying our life down for faerie rogues.
SIDEBOARD
I feel like the way to approach sideboard is to first agree our match-ups (% of meta and W/L ratio), and then debate our strongest answers. And of course, our strongest answers are always rotating. But I think our lists end up with at least ten slots committed to beating Affinity, Delver, Pod, Storm, and Twin -
2-3 Engineered Explosives This is our go to sweeper, and an answer for resolved enchantments. We have to respect our BU colour limit, meaning we can remove only 0, 1, and 2 cmc with Explosives. So counter and disrupt accordingly. Explosives is quite effective against both Affinity and Delver.
2 Grafdigger's Cage Pod and Storm both dislike Cage. Pod can remove Cages so we must have more than one of them. Whether you agree on Cage or not, I think we are forced to give at least two slots to Pod and Storm.
2 Negate or Spell Pierce I favour the latter, but it seems clear from experience and reports that we want an ability to counter non-creature spells at the cheapest cmc available. That helps in the Twin MU, but also for decks that like to go off like Scapeshift and Storm. And I don't think we want to give our opponent a 2/2 swan, due to our reliance on getting through damage using 1/1 rogues.
2 Spellskite or some other problem for Twin. I also like Sudden Death here, but the point is that we're forced to give up two slots to Twin. Indeed, we have at least ten slots that so far as I can see are mandated in terms of what they address, if not in what we agree are the best cards for doing that.
UB/x Faeries
UR Storm
XURWB Affinity
G Elves
UW control
I don't know how you guys are using your manlands but I often only attack if I a) have enough resources to react even though i tapped that much mana (at least for Creeping Tar Pit) or b) I don't have any action left, so the potential "blowout" doesn't mean much. I just ask because I still can't really see why Feast and Famine should be that much superior because it untaps. I think it could lead to more blowouts if your critter simply won't hit and you counted on the untap effect which leaves you defensless (if you don't have anything SoFaI would be superior either way?)
The other points vonklaude mentioned are quite spot on in my opinion.
You are right of course. I've been switching between Relic and Cage trying to get a fix on which is better. Relic does answer Living End. But an important thing to note with End is that you can counter the spell cast for free with cascade. I've only met Living End in two matches. Would you agree that it does not merit special attention?
NB: have edited my earlier post so as not to confuse people. Good spot.
This. A part from the intrinsec difficulty of finding a shared common list it's useless for everyone play the exact same list, playstyle/opponent/meta... are different and so have to be the lists.
The real good exercise is this:
- L
"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
UB/x Faeries
UR Storm
XURWB Affinity
G Elves
UW control
If you're having issues with pod, look towards sweepers. I play Drown In Sorrow, have played BSZ. I've noted some people dismissing BSZ because of Melira, but the fact is that Melira really only hits the table if they're comboing off that turn. It's an insane card if they don't have melira out.
UB Faeries GP Record - 22/9/2, 1 Top 64
UB/x Faeries
UR Storm
XURWB Affinity
G Elves
UW control
Isn't Engineered Explosives better since it also stops Bogles and Zoo?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
UB/x Faeries
UR Storm
XURWB Affinity
G Elves
UW control