On Sunday, I finished 14th in the Magic Online Season One Championships, going 7-2 with Faeries. This was a 354-person tournament, and I’m pretty sure the average skill level was very high, considering that it takes a reasonable amount of dedication and skill to qualify. While this tournament did not use Alara Reborn because it isn’t out online yet, it still did an excellent job of showcasing how open Standard is at the moment. In 9 rounds I played against 7 different decks. My opponents, in order, played: Boat Brew, GW Elf Combo, Faeries, BW Tokens, GW Tokens, Jund, UW Lark, GW Tokens, and BW Tokens. I lost a close match to the first GW Tokens deck and somehow got completely destroyed by UW Reveillark. With another set added to the mix, the coming Standard format is going to be extremely diverse.
I don’t think any single deck has a realistic shot at taking up over 20% of the metagame in any given large tournament this month. This means you should not worry too much about any given deck. You should know how you’re going to deal with large numbers of tokens, extremely fast single threats like Doran or Rafiq, huge creatures like Broodmate Dragon or Lord of Extinction, late game bombs like Cruel Ultimatum and Nicol Bolas, early threats like Bitterblossom or Sygg, River Guide backed by countermagic, especially Cryptic Command, Planeswalkers generally, aggressive starts backed by excellent reach spells in Red/x decks, and the powerful long game creature based card advantage engines of Reveillark and Mulldrifter (or maybe even Sphinx Summoner and Sharuum). This is not a complete list of the plans that exist in Standard… Earlier today, for example, I played against a Bloom Tender/Umbral Mantle combo deck and a Dramatic Entrance/Progenitus deck.
To me, all of this just says “play Faeries.” People have a lot of new cool cards to play with, and they’re going to want to build decks that use them. From what I’ve seen, people are very bad at building decks that beat Faeries when they’re trying to beat Faeries. When they can justifiably ignore Faeries because it’s only a small percentage of the metagame anyway, things just get too easy for the Faerie player. It may seem like Faeries shouldn’t be able to compete, having gotten very few tools this block, but the cards and synergies in the deck are already more powerful than anything new that’s come out, and Faeries already has more different cards available to it than decks that recently picked up many more options, so the deck can already adjust and adapt however the metagame shifts.
More specifically, Alara block rewards huge effects and pushes decks up the curve. In my early preparation for the block format for Honolulu, I’ve approached deckbuilding by building the fastest decks I can and then gradually increasing the curve until the decks are competitive, and it usually takes increasing the curve by a lot. In Lorwyn block, Faeries forced other decks to adjust to it by lowering their curve. What this means is that the driving force of the format recently is to push decks up to ranges where they can’t compete against Faeries in order to compete against each other.
As for how Faeries should be build for the coming format, I’m not entirely sure, because it has so many options. The build I played on Sunday was:
4 Spellstutter Sprite
1 Vendilion Clique
3 Scion of Oona
1 Terror
2 Jace Beleren
3 Agony Warp
3 Peppersmoke
4 Bitterblossom
2 Thoughtseize
4 Mistbind Clique
1 Remove Soul
3 Broken Ambitions
4 Cryptic Command
2 Underground River
4 Sunken Ruins
4 Mutavault
4 Swamp
2 Faerie Conclave
4 Secluded Glen
5 Island
Sideboard:
3 Infest
1 Terror
1 Countersquall
1 Peppersmoke
2 Thoughtseize
1 Remove Soul
1 Flashfreeze
1 Negate
1 Broken Ambitions
2 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Jace Beleren
The hardest sell of this deck is probably the 5 different counterspells in the sideboard. Many of them are frequently more or less interchangeable, but which one I want depends on the exact build or deck I’m playing against and whether I’m on the play or the draw, and I’ve preferred the customizability of this assortment. I’m torn on Thoughtseize, as far as whether it should still be in the maindeck, and bringing Sower of Temptation back into the 75 could easily be correct depending on how this turn out in the coming weeks. I’m not impressed by it as an answer to tokens, and since I expect to see expensive spells generate tokens a lot more than single bodies, I’ve taken it out for now.
Soul Manipulation is the only new card that could really change the way the deck’s built, and I don’t think I’m that into it, especially in large numbers. I definitely don’t like the Architects of Will plan Patrick Chapin suggested. I don’t like Ponder, and cycling without selection is a lot worse. Granted, it cycles at instant speed, which is significant, but I really don’t want to have to work that hard for Soul Manipulation. Shriekmaw could be a reasonable sacrifice depending on what threats we end up seeing, but sorcery speed is a huge problem, so I think I would be hard pressed to play the card in the maindeck. Without creatures like those that put themselves straight into the graveyard, Soul Manipulation isn’t great, but I could still see is as a one- or two-of just for late game value off the creatures that are already in the deck, and that’s the role I think I prefer it in.
Another card that I’ve never seen in a Faerie decklist that I think is worth keeping an eye on is Zombie Outlander. He doesn’t fit with your plan at all, but G/B is one of the worst matchups, and depending on the threats and answers they play, he could be a huge player in turning that matchup around. If cards like Kitchen Finks and Bloodbraid Elf see more play in other Green-heavy decks, he picks up more incidental value. Most decks will be able to kill him with a Black or Red removal spell, but they probably won’t have a lot of them, and their need to kill him right away could curve perfectly into Soul Manipulating him back. If only he could block Chameleon Colossus.
Peppersmoke is a card I would expect people to try to cut as they look to make room for cards like Soul Manipulation. I wouldn’t do that. I know I mention that I love Peppersmoke whenever I write about Faeries, but I feel like the card gets little enough respect that I have to keep saying it. G/W is going to be a problem with Quasali Pridemage, and those decks are all going to play Noble Hierarch; Peppersmoking that guy is huge. I feel like I get a lot of questions that are basically, “But how does Faeries beat ____?” and a surprising amount of the time the answer is, “I guess you Peppersmoke it.”
Jace? Ditto. I’m not entirely clear on how we as a community, or me in particular, managed to play an entire Block season without fully adapting this card. Maybe things were different then; at least that’s what I’ll tell myself so that I can avoid feeling too bad about frustratingly failing to qualify that season. The card has been so good for me that I’m not really sure how Faeries ever lived without it.
For those of you who are not interested in Faeries, I suggest taking a much closer look at Putrid Leech. Seriously. A Black 4/4 for 2? Is that even fair? I threw together the following just to see if something like this can work:
2 Doran, the Siege Tower
2 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Wren’s Run Vanquisher
3 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Boggart Ram-Gang
4 Bloodbraid Elf
1 Colossal Might
4 Taurean Mauler
4 Chameleon Colossus
3 Nameless Inversion
4 Putrid Leech
3 Murmuring Bosk
4 Auntie’s Hovel
1 Vivid Crag
3 Gilt-Leaf Palace
4 Treetop Village
2 Vivid Grove
2 Reflecting Pool
4 Ancient Ziggurat
2 Mountain
Sideboard
3 Guttural Response
2 Volcanic Fallout
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Colossal Might
2 Terminate
1 Nameless Inversion
4 Thoughtseize
The creatures are all huge and fast, and can generally attack into almost any board. For the most part, you don’t even really have to fear cards like Plumeveil. Sure, they’ll kill your creature, but they rarely get much value of it. Taurean Mauler is the most suspect card, as it’s been available for a long time without ever seeing play. It’s there to make the rest of what the deck is doing work, so to justify it, I need to justify doing what this deck is trying to do.
First off, I want to play Putrid Leech. Second, I want to play Bloodbraid Elf. It should be easy to do that, since it’s all one shard, so the mana should work in the current format. If I’m playing Bloodbraid Elf, I would like to hit things that are good to hit as much as possible, which means there’s some value to not playing one-mana spells. Moreover, Putrid Leech doesn’t really want me playing one mana accelerators like Birds of Paradise. That’s two huge strikes against Birds. But that means I need to make the mana work. Fortunately, not playing one-drops means I can play some lands that come into play tapped. Unfortunately, it’s easy to have too many of those in an aggro deck that’s hoping to curve out. Fortunately, this color combination works very well for maximizing Lorwyn’s lands if we can have enough cards with the right creature types to activate them.
Moreover, an aggro deck without a one-drop is going to need another awesome two-drop. The only one I can think of that can really get the job done is Wren’s Run Vanquisher. That means we need a lot of elves, and there aren’t that many that I love, but at least with Bloodbraid Elf we have a start. Boggart Ram-Gang was the natural three-drop for the deck that lead to my wanting Auntie’s Hovel and at that point I was already looking for Changelings, so I decided to add Murmuring Bosk and go all out.
Initial testing with Tauren Mauler has been pretty encouraging. Yes, he can be hit by a removal spell, but so can any of my other guys and it will be about as good. He’s really impressive against Bloodbraid Elf, in that if they want to play Bloodbraid the turn after you play the Mauler, your Mauler is immediately a 4/4 that can block the elf. Basically, this is the exact right deck for the Mauler. He’s right in the middle of your curve, perfectly supporting your plan, the opponent has to deal with him just like any other threat, and if they can’t he can easily get out of hand.
The one Colossal Might is there to win through tokens. I feel that there are substantial diminishing returns to additional pump spells in Constructed. With just one, the opponent can never really play around it, it’s not going to substantially clog your hand, and really, you’ll only want to cast a pump spell one time in most Constructed games. It could easily come out, but I think the first adds enough value that it’s worth it, and if you play something like this but don’t play the Might, you might be glad I wrote about it.
At a glance, the deck looks like it might be a natural fit for Profane Command, but Ancient Ziggurat makes it really awkward. It still might be worth it, but I think I’d rather try not to play any non-creature spells that cost four or more. At the moment I’m trying Siege-Gang Commander as the finisher, but Demigod of Revenge could easily get the five-spot instead; ideally it would be a four-of, but it might not need to be.
Another card I’d be tempted to try to work in is Dauntless Escort, particularly if Wrath of God gets more popular, but as long as Volcanic Fallout (which does nothing to you, by the way) is the sweeper of choice, I’m comfortable running without him.
The sideboard is thrown together, and Fallout might be a better approach to tokens than Colossal Might, but I felt like the Might had more applications against other decks with larger creatures. It’s also possible that the sideboard should have more different cards due to the difficulty of changing the deck too much without making your manabase fall apart by cutting too many changelings. Anathemancer is another possible card for the sideboard here.
This deck is also probably too extreme. It was designed as an effort to see if this approach works, and I think it might, but… Well, I’m not really sure how I’d want to change it, but I usually get pretty uncomfortable when I see 28 creatures. Maybe Sarkhan Vol or something has a place here.
Another place to start with the Leech could be something like 4 Thoughtseize, 4 Tidehollow Sculler, 4 Putrid Leech, 3-4 Maelstrom Pulse, 3-4 Doran, 2-3 Lord of Extinction, 2-4 Profane Command, 4-8 one-mana accelerators, some combination of Path to Exile, Terror, Eye-Blight’s Ending, and Crib Swap, a few Chameleon Colossuses or Wilt-Leaf Lieges, some Kitchen finks, and maybe a Behemoth Sledge or two. The deck as a whole is nothing too new or special, but I’m pretty sure the Leech itself is. Also, Lapse of Certainty was surprisingly strong against me on Sunday, so maybe that would be a good card for a deck like this to consider.
That’s all I have for this week – something old and something new. As a closing thought, I’ll mention that, as a Faeries player, I might be more scared of Zealous Persecution than Volcanic Fallout. That card has to have applications against enough different decks to be correct for BW Tokens. It just does so much.
Thanks for reading.