Wherein: I take shots at Stifle, present Yet Another Variant of a Tarmogoyf-based Daze aggro deck as a lead-in to a Legacy Faeries deck, and make medium controversial claims concerning Force of Will and Leyline of the Void.
I submit that Stifle is bad in Legacy Daze-based aggressive decks. In those decks, Stifle is primarily used to counter fetchland activations. It has some fringe uses against some other cards (Engineered Explosives, Relic of Progenitus, Goblin Ringleader, et. al) but, primarily, Stifle is there to hit a fetchland in the first couple of turns. Let us look at all of the things that have to go right in order for this to happen:
Usually, the player with Stifle will have to be on the play. Most players lead with their fetchlands for a variety of reasons. In Legacy, most decks play eight or more fetchlands and only two to four dual lands; they will usually need to fetch their dual to cast their spells. Other players will want to use their fetchlands quickly to thin their deck, power up their Knight of the Reliquary or Terravore, or fuel Grim Lavamancer. Certainly, your opponent might have two fetchlands…but they might, you know, not. There are some lines where a player will lead with a non-fetch into Ponder intending to shuffle on turn two, but that’s about the best you can hope for.
Now, what if Ponder is also in your opening hand? If Stifle is in your deck, you’re pretty committed to the mana denial plan; you can’t really afford to Ponder on one and let your opponents’ only fetchland get away while Stifle rots in your hand…but waiting a turn to Ponder can set you back if you need to Ponder into a land for Tarmogoyf or Knight of the Reliquary.
What if your opponent just leads on a dual land or a basic? You can Wasteland, sure, but Wasteland isn’t particularly impressive unless you have an on-board advantage to press; setting both players back a land drop without advancing some other plan in the interim does very little to affect more long-term plans. If the other guy is just out of lands, yeah, trading land drops on a neutral board is good for you, but if he woke up and decided that he wanted to cast his spells today, he’s probably not just dead to your turn one Wasteland.
More to the point, if the other guy leads with a dual or a basic, you’ll go into your second turn with a good deal of uncertainty. Some blue decks will try to hold their fetchlands in order to get maximum value from their Brainstorms, but to ensure that you can hit their fetchland, you’ll need to hold up mana again, and if they don’t give you a target you’ll have essentially ceded all advantage from going first.
This doesn’t even address the possibility that your opponent simply doesn’t draw any fetchlands, or that you draw Stifle on turn five or six and it’s virtually dead.
The goal of playing Stifle is to stunt your opponent’s mana development so that he can’t effectively execute his own gameplan or answer your threats. This goal is laudable, but what about using a different tool to disrupt your opponent? Perhaps Spell Pierce and a greater focus on permission?
Creatures (14)
Lands (19)
Spells (27)
This is a list I’ve modified from a deck that Chris Lennon and Nick Colpron played to some success in local tournaments in the Pacific Northwest. Stifle was first cut for Spell Pierce, the reasoning being that I could play my spells freely in the first few turns and then hold up mana for Pierce in the midgame, as opposed to having to hold up mana for Stifle early. That plan was solid, but in your land-light Daze deck, getting up the mana to play a three-drop while holding up Pierce is more than a little tricky. I also wanted my one-mana counters to answer Tarmogoyf as well as Counterbalance, so some Pierces hit the bench when I was making room for Spell Snare.
The threat base has been modified considerably. As mentioned, the three-drops don’t play well with the one-mana counterspells, but Knight of the Reliquary got to stay due to his synergy with Wasteland. (I also built the deck before Mystical was banned, and using Knight to fight Inkwell Leviathan was important against Reanimator.) Umezawa’s Jitte has many detractors, but frequently the Zoo matchup is defined by whoever has the largest creature in play, and Jitte ensures that you come out ahead in Tarmogoyf and Knight fights. Jitte is also an absolute face-smashing against Merfolk. Qasali Pridemage is another warm body for Jitte, but is also an important tool against any Counterbalances that slip into play, as well as an answer to random nonsense such as Thopter Foundry or Ensnaring Bridge.
Most Legacy decks have embraced the Alan Comer philosophy of deckbuilding, allowing them to run an extremely low land count and relying on cantrips to find their mana. I don’t think people pay nearly enough attention to the opportunity costs associated with this. When you have to spend your first few turns cantripping to hit your land drops, you cede tremendous tempo. Not every deck can take advantage of that, of course, but you certainly don’t want to give away games to decks that can. Enter Noble Hierarch. Hierarch is significantly stronger than a land, because you can cast Hierarch on turn 1, then Ponder on turn 2 without feeling like an idiot because you can still cast your Tarmogoyf.
The mana is designed to be resilient against Wasteland while minimizing exposure to Price of Progress. Having access to basic Plains is pretty key against Merfolk and pseudo-mirrors, lest their Wastelands cut you off from your white removal spells. However, tension between all of the colored sources meant that a Wasteland had to go. That’s not a huge loss, though; you can still Knight up a bunch of Wastelands if you just need to knock the other guy into the Stone Age. You get slightly fewer wins on the back of double Wasteland, but I more often find myself using Wasteland to bottleneck my opponent’s mana on one crucial turn than simply trying to manascrew him.
Still, when I sent this list around to a few friends, the general consensus was pretty negative. Zac Hill, in particular, was pretty vocal about his dislike of the big dumb animal plan. People liked having a ton of counterspells, but all of the green creatures made the deck feel incoherent and lacking in any sort of real plan.
I sent Zac a message. “I cut all of the Green cards for Faeries.”
“I like it.”
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (2)
Lands (22)
Spells (28)
I sent Zac an early version of this list; he brewed up a sideboard and promptly X-0’d his way through a local Legacy event before dropping in the top eight to meet a friend. Let me tell you, it is pretty hard to lose when you play Bitterblossom and Daze your opponent’s two-drop, then untap and ship the turn back to him with Spellstutter Sprite up. This list plays much smoother than the list above; there isn’t nearly as much tension between your counterspells and your threats, and the addition of Jace gives you an impressive source of card advantage. Because most non-creature decks are pretty solid matchups, Spell Pierce got benched for Force Spike. Ponder got cut because I couldn’t afford to cast it in the first two turns, so more lands got added.
The sideboard is obviously geared towards aggro decks; control decks are generally pretty easy matchups since you have eighteen counterspells along with Vendilion Clique to keep the other guy from getting anything done. And, even though I like the Faerie list more against the format as a whole than the New Horizons-esque list, it does a little worse against beatdown because you don’t have Tarmogoyf or Knight of the Reliquary to hold the ground.
The best way to address the Zoo matchup is to turn it into a war of attrition, so that’s what you do. -2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor, -4 Force of Will, -4 Daze, -1 Force Spike, +4 Dark Confidant, +4 Path to Exile, +3 Engineered Explosives. A single Force Spike stays in; it’s not that good with Path, sure, but it’s exceptionally good in your opening hand, and you can shuffle it away if you don’t need it in the late game.
An aside on sideboarding out Force of Will: A lot of people act like Force of Will is some sort of sacred cow and that it’s uncuttable*. The reality is that Force of Will is Counterspell with the option of pitching a blue spell (which is a substantially higher cost than pitching a card) and paying a life rather than paying retail. There are matchups where the ability to counter on turn zero is well worth one life and one blue spell. There are also matchups where it is not. About the best card to Force out of Zoo is Wild Nacatl. Force is not particularly exciting against most of the Daze aggro decks, either. In matchups that hinge over one person resolving a key spell, then yeah, you’ll want Force. If the matchup is mostly about attrition, you probably won’t.
Sideboarding is similar, though fluid, in most other aggro matchups. Against New Horizons, for example, you usually don’t want Daze, Force Spike, or Force of Will, but you usually want Jace. An exception might be if your opponent is unusually aggressive, in which case you might still need Daze. Whether or not you want to leave the taxing counters in tends to depend on whether or not you believe your opponent will play around them or if you expect to be casting Path to Exile.
Dark Confidant frequently comes in against control decks, as well, but what you cut varies dramatically on what they are doing. Against a Landstill deck, you don’t really want or need Force of Will…but against Natural Order Counterbalance, Force of Will is about the only thing keeping you safe from Progenitus.
You might think that because Dark Confidant comes in for so many matchups, you want him maindeck. That’s not really true. Specifically, Confidant is so good against aggressive decks because when you board out all of your fours and fives, the life loss is pretty manageable. However, randomly spiking a Force of Will in game 1 can lead to some pretty awkward moments. Similarly, against some control decks, you want to cut Plows for Confidants, but against others, you’ll want to bench Daze, or Force of Will. You want to bring in Confidant when you’re optimizing your deck against a specific opponent, but simply slamming him into the maindeck doesn’t help you do that, and can in fact cost you games.
If you wanted to include the Price of Progress splash against Lands, you could…but if you can counter Lands’ acceleration pieces or keep their Loams under control, the matchup is pretty good, and it’s not that difficult to tick Jace up to ultimate if you need to. Do note that Lands can set up Academy Ruins even after Jace has exiled their library; you’ll probably need to set up a turn where you legend rule their Ruins and then counter Life from the Loam repeatedly.
I should probably address the “three Leyline” sideboard: Leyline of the Void is the best sideboard card against Dredge, Reanimator, and Lands. It completely stops the main engine of all three decks, requiring those decks to answer the Leyline before executing their primary gameplan.
It is, in fact, so much better than Tormod’s Crypt, Relic of Progenitus, and Ravenous Trap that it is worth having awkward situations come up where you draw Leyline on turn two and have to wait until turn four to play it. It’s true that drawing Leyline in the midgame is a little embarrassing, but it’s also rare that Crypt, Relic, and/or Trap are good enough if you randomly mise them in the midgame, at least against Dredge. (and besides, don’t you make most of your mulligan decisions against those decks based on the presence or absence of Force of Will, multiple counterspells, or hate cards?)
However, there is not room in the sideboard for four Leylines. There is room for three. Thus, three Leylines.
Overall, the Faeries deck is pretty strong. Trying to control every aspect of the game in Legacy is a pretty tall order; with so many different decks doing so many different things, it’s better to take a more proactive approach rather than try and answer everything that everyone could conceivably throw at you. Faeries certainly doesn’t lack for answers, but utilizes them in conjunction with powerful threats to close games quickly, instead of assembling any sort of soft lock. It has strong matchups against both beatdown and control, and has a lot of resiliency against most strategies. If you’re looking for a Blue deck for Columbus, I’d start with Faeries.
Max McCall
max dot mccall at gmail dot com
* This has become less true in the past year or so, but I still encounter it fairly frequently.