MTG Salvation

The tournament I had yesterday had 69 participants instead of the around 100 I expected. Guess PPTQ and Modern Masters sealed tournaments were more appealing for many players. This meant the metagame was cheaper than I expected, with too many Urza's lands and too few fetchlands with shocklands; closer to a weekday than to a special tournament, so my decklist didn't seem the most suitable.



Round 1 got paired against Eldrazi Tron. Game 1 he missed with his Thought-Knot Seer, removing Sword instead of Fatal Push. I played a useless Spellstutter Sprite eot to turn on revolt next turn, and got rewarded when I drew a second Fatal Push and he played another Thought-Knot Seer after combat, giving me the chance to kill them all. After those gifts, I only had 2 Mutavault to end the game and they obviously fell short when he started casting Endbringers. Game 2 I mulliganed to 5 and got stuck with 2 lands. Turn 3 I decided to pass the turn to play Mana Leak instead of cracking fetchland for Thoughtseize while holding Ceremonious Rejection; he went for Cavern of Souls into Thought-Knot Seer and all of a sudden those three cards became completely useless. 0-2.

Round 2 I got a bye and spent that time scouting, which gave me the advantage of knowing what my opponents would be playing next rounds. 1-1.

Round 3 I got paired against Jund Delirium. Game 1 he stripped my hand with double Thoughtseize turns 1 and 2 and I was screwed of blue mana for almost the whole game. I played too conservative, and in the end had to gamble at him not having Temur Battle Rage nor Tarfire (he didn't when I checked his hand with Vendilion Clique two turns before) to seal the deal chumpblocking with a Mutavault, championing it with Mistbind Clique and hitting back with Creeping Tar Pit. Game 2 I played two Bitterblossoms turns 2 and 3, he didn't draw the third land in time to cast Maelstrom Pulse on them and the stream of Faeries went out of control. 2-1.

Round 4 I got paired against a regular Tron deck. Game 1 he got fast Tron, but I could still kill Karn after him using the -3 just after casting it with a surprise Snapcaster Mage. Then he got stuck with no green mana and I had hopes of finding a Mistbind Clique with Ancestral Vision to end the game, but he countered it with Warping Weil, drew a Forest and slowly took control of the game. Game 2 I probably missed with my first Thoughtseize choosing to remove Sylvan Scrying over an Ulamog that looked too far from being cast. After using Ceremonious Rejection to allow my Ancestral Vision to resolve, I managed to play Bitterblossom and Thoughtseize to remove an Oblivion Ring that could wipe my board away in a single turn. I passed the turn full tapped hoping to play a Mistbind Clique during his next upkeep. Problem was my opponent was only a mana short of casting Ulamog. He drew a Forest, but instead opted to play Ancient Stirrings to find Ugin and crush me with it instead. 2-2.

Round 5 I got paired against Grixis Delver with Inquisitions of Kozilek. I led on the play with untapped Watery Grave to Fatal Push his Delver, but got hit by Inquisition of Kozilek instead, then I topdecked a Bitterblossom. Next turn he played another Inquisition and I drew another Bitterblossom I played. Next turn I gambled a bit with Mistbind Clique, playing it in response to a fetchland at my eot to dodge a possible counterspell. Luckily for me, he didn't have neither Fatal Push nor Terminate and the game was over very soon. Game 2 he found Bitterblossom in my hand with his turn 1 Inquisition, but I drew another one I could play with just Spell Snare back-up (guessed he had to cut Spell Snares to make room to Inquisition of Kozilek in his deck). Then the game was completely stall, with his flipped Delver and my growing army of Faeries standing in front of each other. My opponent didn't play lands nor spells, while I was setting up a Mistbind Clique with double counterspell back-up to protect myself from my own Bitterblossom. The first turn I decided to attack he casted Electrickery, and I proceeded to play Mistbind Clique despite losing 6 tokens, knowing I wouldn't have to fight a counter war that turn and he could only play two removal spells next turn. His attempts met the double counter back-up defense I had prepared, and I ended up killing his Insectile Aberration and countering all of the spells he tried to cast for the rest of the game. 3-2.

Round 6 I got paired against Ad Nauseam. A bit too late for me. As you can see, my maindeck is pretty soft to pure combo decks like that, so I was happy to keep an initial hand with no removal spells, but Ancestral Vision, Bitterblossom and Vendilion Clique and mana to cast them all on curve. I executed the plan, and my opponent panicked and cast Ad Nauseam in response to Vendilion Clique with no Unlife nor Angel's Grace. He revealed 3 more Nauseams and an Unlife I sent to the bottom of his library. Game 2 I played a turn 2 Bitterblossom despite having Negate and Leak in hand. My opponent had played Pentad Prism and could potentially go off turn 3, but he didn't have the full combo in hand and could only discard Negate (over Cryptic Command) with Thoughtseize. Next turn I used Mana Leak, and the following one I opted to play Mistbind Clique over Cryptic Command on Phyrexian Unlife, knowing I could bounce it back later but that I wouldn't have too many chances to play the Clique. Then I countered a Laboratory Maniac with Snapcaster Mage, and on the decisive turn in which my opponent expected to win resolving Lotus Bloom with Spoils of the Vault to look for Pact of Negation as defense, I again declined to play Cryptic Command to go with Vendilion Clique and Ceremonious Rejection instead. 4-2.

After checking the standings, I realized that if any of the currently at 12 points players would enter the top8, it would be someone with better tie-breakers than myself, but the organizer had promised some packs to the top16, and even with the low participation he kept his word, so I stayed to try to get them.

Round 7 I got paired against a guy I didn't recognize who happened to be playing an Atarka aggro deck. Game 1 I didn't see any Fatal Push and got crushed. Game 2 he kept a hand that was able to deal 14 damage out of nowhere if he drew a second land. Luckily for me it never happened (or at least not before I bounced the first one back to his hand), although I had to play Bitterblossom to keep in check one of his creatures and race him desperately with Vendilion Clique and Mutavault. Game 3 my opponent kept another greedy one-lander, but this time he had an annoying flow of creatures he could cast. I probably played too conservative, getting to the point of discarding Bitterblossom to Collective Brutality instead of playing it, to then get hit by a 2/3 while I only had a Spellstutter Sprite to race it. Luckily I drew a Batterskull the turn I was going to play my sixth land, so I could play it with Spell Snare back-up to keep the board clear next turn in case he drew a second land, as it happened. Then I used Fatal Push to remove his blocker and that was it. 5-2, and the Chandra I opened looked sexier than a playset of fetchlands I already own in random languages I would've have won if I had lost in quarterfinals.

Overall I played quite far from my best Magic (game 1 of Round 3 and game 3 of Round 7 were awful), yet my result was mainly conditioned by luck. About my deck, I like the maindeck a lot, but it doesn't seem the best against those Eldrazis and big mana decks, and my sideboard yesterday was far from fixing those match-ups.

I don't find PV list so odd. It's clear he hasn't played Faeries in Modern that much in some of his choices (Smother, Secluded Glen...), but overall his maindeck is only three spells away from mine. I find weirder that version with no cmc=4 drops but 4 Copters and 3 Lilianas. The sideboard is a completely different matter, but it mainly depends on which match-ups you have in mind when building it.

Judges around the world have this annoying obsession of applying what the rulebook says over common sense as often as they can just to screw you up. If anyone did something shady that game it was your opponent, who called the judge when the game finished instead of doing it when you first noticed the discrepancy in life totals (something you should have also done); this looks very similar to some stories of players who miss draw steps on purpose to then just accuse their opponents of extra drawing, although this time with something easier to track. I hope that after this unfair disqualification, they don't go any further into the absurdity and give you a 6-month ban.

I'm sharing with you my latest decklist.


I took it today to a tournament. I managed to beat Naya Landfall thanks to all the love from my sideboard plus a timely Mistbind Clique game 3, sneaked a draw against Grixis Control (I think it's a bad match-up, but since they cut Gurmag Angler to make room to Ancestral Vision it's better), beat UWR Control in three games and a BUG deck in two, before drawing into top8 to then lose to Elves... sometimes you don't draw well, tilt, misplay and lose badly.

Quote from izzetmage »

4 basic Islands seems like a lot. You can't cast Electromancer + ritual on 3 lands if 2 of them are basic Islands. I'd cut 1 for a fetch/dual.

Value Gifts are a good reason to play Empty the Warrens main. If you search for 2 Mancers + Empty, your opponent has to give you at least one of them. If you get a Mancer, comboing off should be easy as long as you have a ritual in hand. If you get Empty, you can make a ton of Goblins.

Probably I played too many basic Islands. Besides this turn 3 combo attempt from an empty board, you also need three out of four lands to produce red if you want to play Electromancer, Ritual, and play a second one if your opponent either kills Electromancer or counters the first ritual.

I also found interesting your advice on Gifts; that's not an easy to use card, and we must go beyond the Rituals, Manamorphose, Past in Flames pile, which is not that much more complicated than Unburial Rites piles. Thinking about my particular game situation now, fetching the two creatures, Grapeshot and Remand (my opponent was pretty tilted by it and could have perfectly send it to the graveyard) would've been the right pile; Empty the Warrens would've come a turn too late, but it should work in most situations.

A few more questions on Gifts Ungiven: is 4 the right number or 3 are enough? And with so many situations in which we are looking for creatures for it, how useful might be Noxious Revival?

I played this list yesterday:



Drew against Faeries (with hand full of rituals and Past in Flames I got via Peer Through Depths, I don't know if using Gifts Ungiven for lands in response to Mistbind Clique game 1 was the best idea or I should have looked for the creatures and 2 powerful spells, but can't think of any that would have forced my opponent to give me a creature), and then beat Sultai Control, Bant Eldrazi and a tribal Human deck 2-0 each. Blood Moon was the best card in the sideboard today.

I've just been toying with the Gifts version, and I must say I got pretty surprised by how smoothly it ran. The deck has a lot of redundancy, so that makes it less vulnerable to the usual disruption you'll find in most maindecks. You also have Peer Through Depths to fetch either Gifts Ungiven or Past in Flames, and you can even run extra lands and Remands without having to worry about drawing the critical mass of spells: Gifts Ungiven will just find them for you. I don't know which is the optimal configuration, but the deck has a lot of potential.

Quote from LeakyMana »

I didn't see this posted (sorry if I missed it), so I thought I'd put it here: 3rd place at an SCG IQ (28 Jan 2017)

UB Faeries, Justin Parente, 3rd Place SCG IQ 28 Jan 2017Magic OnlineOCTGN2ApprenticeBuy These Cards
Creatures 2 Mistbind Clique 2 Snapcaster Mage 4 Spellstutter Sprite 3 Vendilion Clique Instants 4 Cryptic Command 4 Fatal Push 3 Mana Leak 1 Murderous Cut 2 Spell Snare Sorceries 4 Ancestral Vision 2 Collective Brutality	Enchantments 4 Bitterblossom Lands 4 Island 1 Swamp 3 Creeping Tar Pit 2 Darkslick Shores 2 Flooded Strand 1 Ghost Quarter 4 Mutavault 4 Polluted Delta 1 River of Tears 2 Watery Grave 1 Pendelhaven	Sideboard 2 Engineered Explosives 2 Grafdigger's Cage 2 Spreading Seas 1 Dispel 1 Negate 2 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet 1 Liliana of the Veil 1 Collective Brutality 2 Damnation 1 Thoughtseize

I particularly like this decklist. Just googling this guy, it looks that he's been playing similar lists for some time, so he knows what he's doing.

My latest decklist is pretty close to it. I'm still seeing enough Eldrazis to not play 4 maindeck Fatal Push (but I have the full playset split among the 75), and then I've made room to some of my pet cards (third Mistbind Clique, and singleton Sword of Light and Shadow), which I don't know if will be as effective as they are for me for everyone else. However, playing only 2 Snapcaster Mage seems correct, and I certainly prefer the raw card advantage of Ancestral Vision over flashbacking Inquisition of Kozilek. I always seem to struggle when I play 6 colorless lands, but guess that I'm being biased on this. However, after losing today to double Izzet Staticaster, I might consider getting a Pendelhaven (which is also a very biased reasoning). Guess the extra fetchlands are just to turn on revolt on Fatal Push more often; I'm not sure they're necessary.

I wouldn't recommend to anyone feeling comfortable and having success with his personal configuration to switch to this one, but if that's not the case, then this would be a good starting point to get familiar with Faeries.

Against Dredge, you can use Surgical Extraction in response to Narcomoeba being milled to remove all of them (and presumably preventing some Prized Amalgam from entering the battlefield this turn). However, such an aggressive line should only be used if you already have pressure on the board and don't want your opponent to get some pesky chumpblockers on the board or can replay a second and a third Surgical (or some stronger piece of hate) to deal with the actual threats of that deck.

Against Snapcaster Mage decks, you should wait for your opponent to cast it and try to give flashback to a spell to play Surgical Extraction targeting that spell; this way your Surgical Extraction acts as a counterspell and there is no card disadvantage.

You can also play Surgical Extraction during your opponent's draw step as if it was a Vendilion Clique to prevent him from drawing a very powerful sorcery-speed spell. If you miss, you won't have a 3/1 flying on the battlefield and will have generated card disadvantage, but at least you'll know what your opponent has in his hand and he won't be able to cast that spell for the rest of the game.

I hadn't played Modern for months, so when I had to attend a tournament last week I chose Faeries over other decks that might be more powerful but that I never managed to play that well. I knew that at my store strong players like to play fair decks, so I made a deck aiming to beat them. Just checking the last ones that have appeared in this thread, it looks that I wasn't that far from a correct list, despite not being in touch with the format for a long time:


I managed to beat three blue decks 2-0 in a row, but eventually Naya Company and Dredge stopped me. That particular match-up seems extremely hard. We can choose Disfigure or Go for the Throat depending on whether we want to beat Affinity or Eldrazis; we can run more Snapcaster Mages and cheap answers to become the most reactive deck in Modern, or Ancestral Vision to be better suited against slow decks, but Dredge plays in a completely different axis. We need very specific answers and very few of the ones we already play are as broad as cards like Inquisition of Kozilek or Spell Snare, which make unnecessary Hurkyl's Recall against Affinity and are still good against opposing Snapcaster Mage decks and many combo decks. But definitely my choice of 3 Surgical Extraction was pretty poor; they took too many sideboard slots and without more Snapcaster Mages they weren't impactful enough.

Don't know if anyone will be interested in my personal experience with Grixis Control as of lately. After being playing Grixis Delver two months ago, I felt the Delvers didn't match in such a reactive deck and decided to cut them to add slightly more powerful spells, ending up with something similar to Chapin's deck from a year ago, but with less Cryptic Commands:


The sideboard definitely needs some work; I thought Dredge would be more played and, despite seeing it at tournaments, I never played against it. Reading lugger's report, it seems that just with Anger of the Gods, Izzet Staticaster and just a specific hate card the job is done, so this could free two sideboard slots.

My initial idea with the sideboard was to cover what I thought would be bad match-ups and trust in the power of Kolaghan's Command and Snapcaster Mage to fight fair decks. The experience I've had with the deck however tells me that there are still fair decks that can easily grind me out with raw card draw and/or planeswalkers. In order to solve those problems, I'm thinking of playing a version with maindeck Ancestral Vision, probably something very similar to a video I found of Gerry Thompson.

It would be also interesting to make some room to specific removal for planeswalkers. I'm playing with Go for the Throat just to have a non-red removal spell to deal with creatures with protection from red. Hero's Downfall can hit both pro-red creatures and planeswalkers, but it has an awkward mana cost. Dreadbore has an easier mana cost, but it's a sorcery, thus it doesn't hit manlands, and it's red. My question is, despite Hero's Downfall accomplishing all the tasks, is it worth paying 1BB for this effect in Modern?

I'm a bit unaware of the current metagame, but I've tried this new version of Grixis Delver and at least I've improved my win rate from previous Modern events. This is my current list (pretty typical I guess):

I'm also pretty disappointed with Ancestral Vision in the sideboard: it takes too many slots, and is a card with no immediate effect. I know that with Delver you're usually pretty short on mana, so being able to play your threats and protect them with double counterspell back up with just 4 lands against other blue decks is the spot where we would like to be, so my suggestion costing three mana at sorcery speed might be not the best solution, but wouldn't Painful Truths be a good card for the sideboard in grindy match-ups? I think that just as a singleton it would make a great difference, since it can be replayed with Snapcaster Mage, though I wouldn't mind playing the second copy. This would free some sideboard slots to try to improve the unfair match-ups still not covered by the current sideboard. However, I don't know how bad is the card. Three mana against other blue decks is a lot (against Jund I guess it's fine), and the three life shouldn't be neglected as well. If someone has tested the card, I would appreciate the feedback.

If you checked the first pages of this thread, you might find me whining because Ancestral Vision wasn't legal in Modern. However, now that the card is legal, I don't know how to fit it in this deck.

What I've realized playing Faeries is that one of the main strengths of the archetype (and a very overlooked one) is its early game interaction, with both cheap discard, removal and counterspells. Playing turn 1 Inquisition of Kozilek into turn 2 Mana Leak is an opposite plan to suspending turn 1 Ancestral Vision and playing turn 2 Bitterblossom, and despite the later being an ideal start against many reactive decks, the former is an overall better strategy in this format. We still have the possibility of being smart and starting reactively against fast decks, but we will have lower chances of having such a hand if we cut cheap disruption to make room to Visions.

One of the most natural cuts to make is Snapcaster Mage, which served a similar role to Ancestral Vision and can't flashback it. However, in those fast matches, we can get value from Snapcaster Mage turn 3, while Ancestral Vision should be boarded out. If Faeries has another strength is its post-board game. Once you've identified which disruption elements are better, you can add more from your sideboard cutting the bad ones, and Snapcaster Mage becomes better.

Obviously, now we don't need so many late game cards, because Ancestral Vision should find them in the late game, so redundant copies of Cryptic Command and Mistbind Clique can be cut with little pain, even if chaining Mistbind Cliques with discard in the middle is one of the most elegant ways to close games in Modern.

Regarding the topic of lands, I don't know why people find Choked Estuary better than Darkslick Shores, nor why there are so many lists with 3 Watery Graves. Another comment I read regarding Vedalken Shackles, playing a more painful mana base (which doesn't let you interact comfortably with your opponent the first two turns of the game) and Vedalken Shackles (an awful turn 3 play that leaves you completely vulnerable) doesn't make you better against aggro, but actually worse.

This thread is to discuss control versions, while the other is for the all-in combo versions. Combo focused decks are faster and don't fizzle (that often) when you try to go off, while the advantage of control versions was having a three-color mana base and being able to interact with potentially faster decks. The main problem of the control decks is that without Dig Through Time they don't have any spell capable of refilling their hand the combo turn, while all-in combo decks still can use Ideas Unbound and wish for Scarscale Ritual. A few posts back I proposed Life from the Loam with Flame Jab as a way to refill your hand in the control version, but you would lose the advantage of playing only three colors. Pyromancer Ascension is an engine I'm actually using in my all-in version of the deck, and I still think that card works better with Manamorphose and Ideas Unbound than with Remand and Path to Exile, but this deck still keeps the advantages the control version could have ever had over the all-in version and tries to mitigate the loss of Dig Through Time without altering the deck too much.

Seeing the top versions at the moment (UW and RG), it might look that Temple is the most powerful of the two lands. However, we shouldn't forget these decks are designed to have a better late game than its predecessors, but can still have all the early game power of the colorless and UR versions, where Eye was the most powerful card by allowing you to play multiple creatures the first three turns of the game. I don't know if when Forsythe says they want to weaken Eldrazis but don't make they disappear, he's thinking on just banning a land, but I don't have it as clear as a week ago it has to be Eye and not Temple.