Green is for the Nature's claim and Engineered Explosives in my pile of definite SB cards and maybe Aburpt Decay, but Im thinking Id rather just go Maelstrom Pulse for anything I would abrupt decay...in this deck specifically, simply because it isnt really a consistant aggro removal option with my manabase.
Ah alright, I see. I think I'd try to make room for Shamans, if I were in these colours.
Hey guys, I was hoping for some advice for the Scapeshift matchup. In reading it seems everyone considers it a favorable matchup, though in practice I have always had a hard time with it -- which means I am probably approaching the matchup wrong. Any advice would be appreciated!
I have to disagree.
Scion and Mistbind ARE the cards that make the deck "Fae" (back in the days and now) and not delver. Every delver deck has SSS/Muta/Vendilion now, so from your point of view delver is only a "good" fae deck while the ones that run Scion and Mistbind are the "bad" ones.
The Delver list that is putting result, on MTGO at least, is a merge of old delver lists with the young pyromancer and fae lists with a low curve, into a more tempo oriented and "better" deck.
My suggestion is to call the solid deck that is being played on MTGO something like UR Tempo or UR wizards, as i see it as the centre of a spectrum with several variations that goes from pyromancer built to midrangy built with mistbind and cryptic command.
- L
I agree with that. 2 different theads would be nice: one thread of UR wizards/delver/tempo, and one thread for U(x) faeries (a broader scale, where x is not even always R. It has been G, and could be B)
Vendilion, Spellstutter and Mutavault together sees/saw play in variety of decks that have little to do with faeries indeed (e.g: UW stoneblade in legacy, at times), and don't define faeries.
On the other hand, decks that include Scions and Mistbinds automatically feel like tribal faerie.
You gave me a crazy idea: How much is viable a transformation SB with 4 Pestermite (maybe less if you several) and 4 Splinter Twin to deal with impossible MU or just to surprise the oppo?
There is a chance that opponents side out all the removal (or the majority of them) in game 2-3 or not?
- L
I tried with a couple splinter twins before, but I didn't like it. The problems were that:
- we have only half the targets twin-decks have, to start with
- we don't have much to dig for more splinter targets or filter-out unneeded extra twins
- Our deck isn't as tuned to protect the combo
- If you have splinter-twin in hand, and don't have Pestermite, enchanting a Mistbind or a Spellstutter sprite looks appealing at first glance. But what happens is that it sort of prevents from attacking with them. It puts our deck into control mode suddenly.
(You could still make a copy at end step to attack with, but it doesn't feel like a very optimal use of the card)
If splinter-twin could be easily replaced with Kiki-jiki, that'd totally work though :s
I remember Wildfire393 plays one mainboard, he'd have better advice about that perhaps? But give it a go if you feel you can make it work
scion is a much better top deck than delver. between running 4 mutavaults, 2 or 3 cliques, 4 spellstutters and maybe a conclave, you'll be +1/+1ing something. that said, you do lose the free wins from flipping delver and riding him to victory (as hoogland himself said). i don't think there's a strictly better version. its just down to play style.
It's a better top deck than delver, yeah. But I find it can be pretty bad, because it does nearly nothing on its own. When you top-deck one while facing a Liliana/goyf/Ajani/Geist, and you have nothing else, it can be pretty depressing.
That's why I cut some scions and run a couple Pestermites mainboard: they disrupt and hit harder.
To be perfectly honest I have no experience with the format, and I am only starting to look at it. I have, however, played Standard U/b Faeries to top 8's at States and Regionals, extended faeries to a 2nd place PTQ, and Mono-U modern faeries to a day 2 finish in a Grand Prix. Oh, and I won the 2 MTGS standard tournaments way back when with faeries. So, while the format is new (Haven't looked at it since that Grand Prix) I'm not new the faeries archetype, and it's something I gravitated to immediately. Anyways, thoughts on the decklist? Matchup analysis? Current standing in the meta?
I'm playing a very similar list actually
I play 2 Tectonic Edge mainboard as well - We can lose a lot of games to man-lands, and these come really handy.
I have just a few differences:
-1 Mistbind Clique and -1 Scion for +2 Pestermites (I've explained why in a previous post)
And -2 Cryptics for +2 Shackles.
And 25 lands sounds good if you run 4 Cryptics & 3 Mistbind
How about the Mono-U version? I assume Cryptic helps, but anything else other than buffing your Fae?
I don't play mono-U, but looking at some competitive lists (source), the only things I've seen that could do something against souls are:
- Engineered explosives (in mono u!)
- Pendelhaven
- Ratchet bomb
- Mortarpod
I guess they just rely on counters or try to power through...
Can anyone enlighten me as to how this deck deals with Lingering Souls efficiently?
Preboard, it can be a pain. In U/R, you have to rely on Electrolyze and counters (Remand being handy), Lavamancers if you run them. Scions can help blocking and powering through provided you have other dudes, and Shackles helps surviving as a last resort.
Post-board, you have various options - Engineered Explosives, Sulfur Elemental, Firespout, Izzet Staticaster perhaps.
I've been working on a UR Faeries list with a friend of mine. The twist? Kiki-jiki, Mirror Breaker + Pestermite. Having the Kiki-mite combo gives you an out-of-nowhere win against a lot of decks that Faeries can have trouble with, and both cards are great on their own. Pestermite gives you a faerie for various tribal effects that also can Timewalk the opponent by tapping down a key land or creature. Kiki with any non-Mite fae still does good work - Spellstutter Sprite can lock out a lot of their spells, Sower of Temptation makes combat unwinnable, Mistbind Clique locks them out of their mana, Snapcaster Mage gives you infinite value on your spells. Red also gives you burn and Blood Moon, which as people have seen from other UR lists, is a good thing for Faeries, and the mana works out pretty well despite Cryptic Command and Kiki because of Cascade Bluffs.
It shores up a lot of the weaknesses of Faeries traditionally without picking up Twin's weaknesses in the process.
Kiki-Jiki is definitely a better choice than Splinter Twin. But I'm not a 100% convinced with its RRR combined with Cryptic's UUU and mutavaults. How is your manabase looking like?
These UR lists seem to be getting more and more away from Faerie types. Once you take out Scion of Oona for Snapcaster Mage, all you are left with is... Spellstutter Sprite? The only thing that interacts with the tribal mechanic. Not necessarily a good or bad thing... Just an observation. Some of these lists look more and more like RUG Tempo who play Snapcaster Mage, Tarmogoyf, Vendilion Clique and Eternal Witness. The spell package is almost identical.
(edit: and Mistbind Clique - I missed that one. I derped out. I think my point stands though - the decks feel pretty similar.)
True, with delvers and snapcasters, this no longer looks like a faerie deck. It's effective, but it's just something else.
I've tried adding Pestermite again by the way. They actually seem to work better than scions against decks with heavy removal like Jund/UWr mid-range. A Scion requires you to have another faerie on the board to be able to do anything (and your board can be pretty empty when playing against those decks), and alone, it only hits a Liliana for 1, and cannot kill a geist.
But I still want scions, so I'm testing this creature package. It seems to be working well so far:
3 Grim Lavamancer (could be Snapcasters, but I've mentioned my reasons for Lavamancer before)
4 Spellstutter Sprite
3 Vendilion Clique
3 Pestermite
3 Scion of Oona
2 Mistbind Clique
1 Sower of Temptation (it could be a third Mistbind Clique)
Two: To answer the question, there are times when she ends up being dead, i'd have to say once every four or five games. I find she's mostly a hat trick. If you are looking for the top tier she might not make the cut, but most games with a decent draw package, she works fairly well for me.
And on average, do you often get 2-for-1'ed when playing it?
It's safer than Mistbind since it you can return anything you want, but I still worry a bit...
And yeah, it'd be perfect if it had flash, and the return-creature effect was a cost rather than an ETB
I honestly really like this list, the absence of Scion of Oona stands out but in a positive way (I tested snapcaster as a 4-of a while ago and I think it is really good, but using scion as a removal counterspell seemed to play better for me), some of the numbers in the SB arent my cup of tea, and the lack of spellskite, but Im positive that it was playskill dependent with knowing how to gain advantage over an opponent.
Good point about the scions. The problem I have with these, is that they do very little on their own. Against a deck with heavy removal, you want a scion to counter one of them, yet you end up having nothing else on the board to actually protect (your Vendilion got shot, you'd need 5 mana to protect your mutavault, and your spellstutter sprite is not really attracting removal on her). So either it sits in your hand alone, or you cast it and it beats for 1, or it gets removed.
The frustrating thing is, once you manage to stick 2 scions on the board, the game can go your way so quickly...
I can totally see why he cut them, they can feel like they're a bit win-more. If you play a build with Vials & Phantasmal images on the other hand, they're really good.
Ah alright, I see. I think I'd try to make room for Shamans, if I were in these colours.
What are the green sources for?
Could you post your decklist?
I agree with that. 2 different theads would be nice: one thread of UR wizards/delver/tempo, and one thread for U(x) faeries (a broader scale, where x is not even always R. It has been G, and could be B)
Vendilion, Spellstutter and Mutavault together sees/saw play in variety of decks that have little to do with faeries indeed (e.g: UW stoneblade in legacy, at times), and don't define faeries.
On the other hand, decks that include Scions and Mistbinds automatically feel like tribal faerie.
I tried with a couple splinter twins before, but I didn't like it. The problems were that:
- we have only half the targets twin-decks have, to start with
- we don't have much to dig for more splinter targets or filter-out unneeded extra twins
- Our deck isn't as tuned to protect the combo
- If you have splinter-twin in hand, and don't have Pestermite, enchanting a Mistbind or a Spellstutter sprite looks appealing at first glance. But what happens is that it sort of prevents from attacking with them. It puts our deck into control mode suddenly.
(You could still make a copy at end step to attack with, but it doesn't feel like a very optimal use of the card)
If splinter-twin could be easily replaced with Kiki-jiki, that'd totally work though :s
I remember Wildfire393 plays one mainboard, he'd have better advice about that perhaps? But give it a go if you feel you can make it work
It's a better top deck than delver, yeah. But I find it can be pretty bad, because it does nearly nothing on its own. When you top-deck one while facing a Liliana/goyf/Ajani/Geist, and you have nothing else, it can be pretty depressing.
That's why I cut some scions and run a couple Pestermites mainboard: they disrupt and hit harder.
I'm playing a very similar list actually
I play 2 Tectonic Edge mainboard as well - We can lose a lot of games to man-lands, and these come really handy.
I have just a few differences:
-1 Mistbind Clique and -1 Scion for +2 Pestermites (I've explained why in a previous post)
And -2 Cryptics for +2 Shackles.
And 25 lands sounds good if you run 4 Cryptics & 3 Mistbind
I don't play mono-U, but looking at some competitive lists (source), the only things I've seen that could do something against souls are:
- Engineered explosives (in mono u!)
- Pendelhaven
- Ratchet bomb
- Mortarpod
I guess they just rely on counters or try to power through...
Preboard, it can be a pain. In U/R, you have to rely on Electrolyze and counters (Remand being handy), Lavamancers if you run them. Scions can help blocking and powering through provided you have other dudes, and Shackles helps surviving as a last resort.
Post-board, you have various options - Engineered Explosives, Sulfur Elemental, Firespout, Izzet Staticaster perhaps.
Kiki-Jiki is definitely a better choice than Splinter Twin. But I'm not a 100% convinced with its RRR combined with Cryptic's UUU and mutavaults. How is your manabase looking like?
True, with delvers and snapcasters, this no longer looks like a faerie deck. It's effective, but it's just something else.
I've tried adding Pestermite again by the way. They actually seem to work better than scions against decks with heavy removal like Jund/UWr mid-range. A Scion requires you to have another faerie on the board to be able to do anything (and your board can be pretty empty when playing against those decks), and alone, it only hits a Liliana for 1, and cannot kill a geist.
But I still want scions, so I'm testing this creature package. It seems to be working well so far:
3 Grim Lavamancer (could be Snapcasters, but I've mentioned my reasons for Lavamancer before)
4 Spellstutter Sprite
3 Vendilion Clique
3 Pestermite
3 Scion of Oona
2 Mistbind Clique
1 Sower of Temptation (it could be a third Mistbind Clique)
And on average, do you often get 2-for-1'ed when playing it?
It's safer than Mistbind since it you can return anything you want, but I still worry a bit...
And yeah, it'd be perfect if it had flash, and the return-creature effect was a cost rather than an ETB
Good point about the scions. The problem I have with these, is that they do very little on their own. Against a deck with heavy removal, you want a scion to counter one of them, yet you end up having nothing else on the board to actually protect (your Vendilion got shot, you'd need 5 mana to protect your mutavault, and your spellstutter sprite is not really attracting removal on her). So either it sits in your hand alone, or you cast it and it beats for 1, or it gets removed.
The frustrating thing is, once you manage to stick 2 scions on the board, the game can go your way so quickly...
I can totally see why he cut them, they can feel like they're a bit win-more. If you play a build with Vials & Phantasmal images on the other hand, they're really good.
22 lands:
1 Faerie Conclave
5 Island
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Mountain
4 Mutavault
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Steam Vents
1 Sulfur Falls
15 creatures:
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Spellstutter Sprite
3 Vendilion Clique
23 other spells:
2 Burst Lightning
2 Electrolyze
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Mana Leak
2 Pillar of Flame
4 Remand
3 Spell Snare
2 Telling Time
Sideboard:
3 Blood Moon
2 Dismember
3 Magma Spray
1 Negate
1 Spell Pierce
1 Spellskite
2 Spreading Seas
2 Threads of Disloyalty