I have spent the past few weeks rambling around the new possibilities with Shadowmoor in Standard, poking around from good idea (Merfolk love Cursecatcher!) to bad idea (Mono-Green 36 creature deck!) as we wandered around the format. Some thoughts were interesting — I expect to see Firespout as a key player in the new format, and Time Walk.dec is proving to be an actual contender in the format from what testing I have done. But this week we are going to look at the Faeries deck, previously The Best Deck In The Format, to try and figure out how the Faerie deck has changed as we get closer to the Pro Tour in Hollywood. To cement this on a more personal level, it is looking like I will be attending the Star City Games Standard tournaments this weekend, so unless something strange changes I have quite a bit on the line since it is not my intention to waste my time… if you’re in it, be in it to win it. It’s one of those new rules to life that I am trying on for size.
In previous times, I would acknowledge that Faeries was very good, inwardly cringe at the idea of having to be better than everyone else playing Faeries, and go on about building something else that hopefully beat Faeries and could play against the other decks too. Sometimes I would succeed — most of the time, though, I would fail at my appointed task, and wonder why I didn’t just start with the framework of a good deck for once in my life? It seems sometimes, however, I am not the only one not picking the good deck in the format… which just goes to show, if I was getting all worked up about having to play ‘mirror matches’ anyway, if most everyone else is making the same decision to play something else, doesn’t my reasoning behind picking something else stop being valid too?
The core to nipping this tendency in the bud is the fact that I have begun to conquer that feeling of inadequacy that tells me I am a good deck mechanic, not a good deck pilot, and thus could not help but be hopelessly outclassed by someone playing the same deck as I am. While there are certainly times when I would expect to be outclassed — such as if I pick up a deck that is now brand-new to me, or really am just playing someone on a vastly higher plane than I am — conceding the field of battle before even a single card has been played is not a recipe for victory. In actuality I have quite a functional tactical mind, and am routinely able to craft the ‘best’ line of play, thanks to the fact that really there is very little new under the sun when it comes to Magic and I have been playing this game for well over a decade. That I was doing so largely with an overabundance of mental baggage is not so relevant, today… yesterday’s problems created yesterday’s results, and have no effect on today. So in my planning for the upcoming Standard events of note, such as Regionals, I played around with a lot of things… and more or less reached the same conclusion everyone else has, that Faeries is (in the abstract) the most powerful deck in the format, though the wide-scale adoption of Red decks could be problematic for it. Considering my long love for Fish-type decks, the fact that the best deck of the moment also happens to play heavily upon the skills I have been developing ever since I shuffled up my Lords of Atlantis for the first time to face down the dreaded Jabberwock (… or, y’know, Replenish, as it actually was known at the time. Evan Erwin doesn’t have a monopoly on nicknames that make no sense!)… considering that I had basically trained to play this deck all of my life, why not play this deck? Novel idea, I know.
There was just that niggling problem of the Red decks. Against Red, you have to conserve your life total, meaning you have to play cards quickly so you do stuff that matters at a rapid pace. Unfortunately… I was having a hard time finding any pre-existing deck that matched what I really wanted to do. I started tracking results from the City Champs, to come up with a ‘averaged’ decklist among the winning decks of that event, to identify trends and figure out where the ‘sweet spot’ for Faeries is. Before even accounting for the fact that doing so is a fallacy — the formats are actually going to be quite different, because “Red decks” make a much bigger impact in post-Shadowmoor Standard — I was having problems because they didn’t always run the same parts. Let’s look at two winning decks, side by side:
| City: | Baltimore | Charlotte |
|
Finish:
|
1st
|
1st
|
|
Name:
|
Dan Garmon
|
Adam Westnedge
|
|
4
|
3
|
|
|
3
|
2
|
|
|
4
|
4
|
|
|
4
|
4
|
|
|
4
|
4
|
|
|
4
|
2
|
|
|
0
|
4
|
|
|
0
|
1
|
|
|
Total Lands:
|
23
|
24
|
|
0
|
4
|
|
|
4
|
4
|
|
|
0
|
3
|
|
|
3
|
3
|
|
|
2
|
0
|
|
|
4
|
4
|
|
|
Total Creatures:
|
13
|
18
|
|
4
|
4
|
|
|
4
|
4
|
|
|
4
|
3
|
|
|
4
|
4
|
|
|
4
|
0
|
|
|
0
|
3
|
|
|
4
|
0
|
|
|
Total Spells:
|
24
|
18
|
Both of these decks won their tournament — so for the purpose of looking at it just on the weight of merit, unless you know something I don’t about the quality of players in Baltimore versus the quality of players in Charlotte, both decks speak with an equally compelling voice. In one of the lists you have a total of 21 threats, between the creatures and the lands… and in the other you have 28. This is a huge difference, really, it is. The deck with fewer creatures and man-lands has only 75% of the threat capacity the other deck has… and makes up for that with added countermagic effects and disruption, with an added removal spell, the 4th Cryptic Command, and four Thoughtseizes… oh, and to make room, he shaved off a land, going down to 23. They argue over which creatures, too… one has Spellstutter Sprite, the other, Thoughtseize. But they can’t seem to agree on Pestermites or Sower of Temptation either for that matter, and the only spells they can seem to agree on are Bitterblossom, Ancestral Vision, Rune Snag, Scion of Oona, Vendilion Clique, and Mistbind Clique. I would sooner stab myself in the neck than cast Thoughtseize against a Red mage, to borrow a line from Tim Aten and Josh Ravitz, and frankly think that ideas such as “cutting Spellstutter Sprite” tend to be “wrong”… not just against Red decks, where the little man is a quality drop, but against opponents in general.
Bitterblossom, Ancestral Vision, Rune Snag, Scion of Oona, Mistbind Clique. These are the five cards everyone can agree on, save for a few people who cut a Clique to drop their curve, or a few people who tried getting by without Rune Snag and apparently actually had that work out for them somehow. That, then, is the basic core of our deck-to-be… you can have a lot of customization, but some key part of the deck’s core remains the same. With the intention of modifying the deck to fit into a new format, then, we ought to look at how the pieces match up against the rest of the format and see what we want… or, while we are at it, if our opinion of how the deck works has changed any in recent months, ever since the Grand Prix in Shizuoka saw two Faerie decks meet in the finals.
One huge change that has been made recently is for Vendilion Clique to come into the public’s eye. He originally caught attention as a role-player in the decks piloted at Grand Prix: Philadelphia in March, but since then has been coming forward as a very efficiently-costed attacker, with a very powerful effect and the ability to be played at Instant speed besides, held back from popular acclaim as a four-of solely because of its legendary status. The current trends, looking over the assorted City Champs decklists, are for splitting Vendilion Cliques and Pestermites down the middle, filling the mana curve with however many three-drops they wanted and then figuring out of that meant 2/2, 2/3, 3/2, or 3/3 of Pestermite/Vendilion Clique.
I, on the other hand, want four. Radical theory, I know — a card that you think is amazing for your deck, you should play four copies of it. Admittedly, its Legendary status makes it difficult to want to play a lot of them. I’ve found I’m not afraid to run four, though… you can easily put the first one to good use, like trading in combat, getting killed by removal or being Championed to Mistbind Clique, and still get use out of a second copy. Drew three? Duress yourself with it instead, to turn that third copy into something new. The question then is whether Pestermite has a role I wish to fill… and this is why we play with the cards. After a week of testing various Faeries lists, then, I wanted to present my look at Faeries’ moving parts to see how to assemble them together into a deck that is poised against the metagame:
The Lands:
Here at least there was some obvious agreement. Players who didn’t show budget concerns, as a rule, had four each of Underground River, Secluded Glen, and River of Tears. Some players had budget concerns, as you could see all throughout their list, and missed a few duals in there… these people did not win their championship, as a rule. On top of twelve dual lands it wasn’t generally ‘needed’ to have an additional black source, though frequently one or two Swamps would crop up in the decklists… interestingly enough the first Swamp always made it in over the first copy of Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, despite that land presumably being ‘better’ in each and every way. Faerie Conclave showed up in numbers from zero to four, as did Mutavault; both are reasonably free to add to the deck, especially if you think of Faerie Conclave as a second one-drop alongside Ancestral Visions rather than a force competing against each other.
Looking at the new additions, you can look at Sunken Ruins as a great mana-fixer but really it just looks to me like another land that never taps for mana on the first turn, and which provides Black mana reasonably consistently… but at what cost? If the choice is between these and Mutavault, I pick Mutavault. It doesn’t replace any of the twelve existing duals in the deck, though it might complement them, so Sunken Ruins will be the last land added if we want it, and will not be a four-of in any version that runs Ancestral Vision. (Some lists didn’t. They were wrong. They also tended to play Loxodon Warhammer, to give you an idea of the types of people who were as a rule cutting Ancestral Vision from the deck.)
The land count is the greatest concern; I won’t be willing to go below 24, and would be happier with 25 land instead. You have to find room somewhere, though, so where exactly I’ll manage to find it may be surprising, since I’ve found you have to position your mana curve very specifically to beat an aggressive Red deck. And since likewise I have found I want to throw my spells in the way of their creatures as often as possible, and don’t really have time for this “card advantage” thing, I’ve been finding that having access to as many man-lands as possible is a Good Thing (TM). Because of this, I am looking at the following manabase, which has generally been able to play its Black spells on time, and which has generally been able to suspend Ancestral Vision on turn one when it draws it in its opening hand. Half the lands don’t play Ancestral Vision turn 1… but half the lands do, so your average two-lander “keep” is generally able to suspend Visions if you want to.
4 Mutavault
4 Faerie Conclave
4 Underground River
4 Secluded Glen
4 River of Tears
4 Island
The 25th land for consideration, as a rule, has so far been 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. Whether I really want 25 or not is still up to some internal debate, as I look at the deck’s curve and how it mulligans and see if I am ever kept waiting on a key spell because I was shy on land. The more land your Blue deck plays, after all, the happier your Blue deck tends to be… so given that we are expecting to have a significant number of four-drops, I would be pondering “can I run a 26th?”, not “so can I get away with 24?” for the most part.
The Men:
Mistbind Clique — As I’d said, at least everyone seems to agree that this is a hugely efficient flier with a ridiculously powerful effect, basically giving you a 4/4 flier on turn 4 while also cutting your opponent’s turn to nearly nothing at all thanks to the fact that most people like casting spells. It’s large and in-charge, and happens to be the better part of a Time Walk while you’re at it.
Scion of Oona — The other creature everyone can agree on. This is the guy who says “you should play a Faerie deck” instead of whatever creatures you felt like playing, and is a hard-working man providing a power and toughness boost alongside a significant protection effect… and since he’s playable as an instant, like most things in the deck should be, he feels partway like a counterspell effect.
Spellstutter Sprite — A nearly-universal adoption in the Faerie decks, this guy does good work early in the game and is a hard-counter later in the game, a meaningful cheap play that helps to ensure that there will be a useful effect on turn two regardless since you have a lot of good turn two plays. Some people have been cutting him from their lists… and Gerry T has said they are wrong. What more argument do you need besides “I playtest like it’s my job, and you should be playing this guy”…?
Pestermite – … And no sooner do I say “GerryT says to play Spellstutter” than I turn around and dissent on the use of Pestermite. Pestermite has a role that he plays against aggressive decks, stealing tempo while providing a body, but as a rule I don’t want to tap a creature, I want to counter or kill a creature. This means I focus heavily on the early game, including sideboarding more of the appropriate types of cards to keep me alive in the early game, and find the need for Pestermite to be very small. Pestermite taps a Ram-Gang and gets you a flier… Vendilion Clique trades for that Ram-Gang, and turns the best card in their hand into a random draw, cutting their card quality down a notch (if admittedly only a small notch) and providing the opportunity to flood on mana. Against non-aggro decks, Pestermite is a ‘filler’ card that does a job and plays a role, but Vendilion Clique does so much more against those sorts of decks… after all, they have generally large classes of cards you just don’t care about, like mana-accelerants out of the G/R Mana Ramp decks, but can completely negate a Sulfurous Blast or Cloudthresher before it can become a problem.
Vendilion Clique — This is the higher-octane three-drop, and while its role is less clear against aggressive decks, trading with a three-drop like Boggart Ram-Gang as it is more or less at its peak of early adoption for the first weekend of post-Shadowmoor Standard play is a very relevant difference between Pestermite and the Clique. I see no good reason not to play four just on the face of things, and everything I’ve been playing so far in the past month suggests that the fact that Pestermite is on its face better against aggressive decks doesn’t change the fact that the way Pestermite plays against aggressive decks is not the way you need to focus if you wish to win the match.
Sower of Temptation — Some lists like Sower. Some eschew him entirely — including one of the two that made the finals of the Grand Prix that began our explorations of Morningtide in Standard. Conceptually, he is a clunky fit to the deck — he is obviously the only creature in the deck you have to play on your own turn, and the most expensive spell in the deck that gets played at sorcery speed. Sorcery speed is slow as molasses in this deck, and cuts off the strongly reactive nature of the deck’s spell selection… for the most part you do things on your opponent’s turn in response to spells, or in their upkeep, not on your turn. One of the advantages to the deck, after all, is that it makes its choices last and thus chooses best. Sower is a four-of in Merfolk, and ironically generally thought of as a three-of when most people think of him in Faeries, probably because all those Cliques, Commands and Sowers start to be a drag on the mana curve.
I have recently seen more than a few Champs lists that eschew Sower entirely, many of which reach for instant-speed cheap removal like Terror or Nameless Inversion in its stead. In a world where the Red deck is a threat to be aware of, I concur with the notion that Sower isn’t quick enough for the main deck… as a design choice I want to drop the curve lower, so I can do more meaningful stuff in the early game, and so I am considering Sower of Temptation to be a sideboard kind of guy.
The Rest — You’ll look across various lists and see Oona’s Blackguard, Oona’s Prowler, Nightshade Stinger… these things are basically not what you want to be playing in the deck. I put each of these options below Pestermite in the deck, and Pestermite is currently not good enough to make the cut in my Faeries list.
The Spells:
Ancestral Vision — This is a non-negotiable. I am a proponent of Ponder over Visions in the right deck, specifically one that doesn’t expect the game to reasonably last long enough to make it relevant, and even I am considered insane for ever considering cutting Ancestral Vision from a Blue deck. This is exactly the kind of Blue deck that can make good use of it… it doesn’t fall over in combat against opposing creature decks if the game lasts past the first five turns… so it commands the use of the best card-drawing spell currently in the format. Some people cut it entirely from their Faeries lists, and I assume that this is because of budget concerns. I discounted all such lists just by looking at them. This is clearly a non-negotiable aspect of the Faeries deck, because attempting to ‘customize’ the number of them you play is, as we say, ‘wrong.’ And we only say it that gently when we are being polite.
Bitterblossom — See “non-negotiable”. It’s currently under consideration for “the best card in Standard,” and this is one of the two decks that puts it to the best use. (The other sacrifices the tokens it makes to feed Husks and Gargadons with Grave Pact out. This is, by the way, the better of the two decks.) You’d play six if they’d let you, so quit waffling and get yourself four if you haven’t already.
Cryptic Command — That you are going to play Cryptic Command is not in question. As the most potent of the Commands, at least in the Standard format where you can’t combine Eternal Witness and Profane Command, this is one of the format-defining cards… it is just so punishing in a beatdown deck. What I have painfully concluded, however, is that the format may not give you the time you need to put multiples to good use — and so, as with Sower of Temptation, I keep my eye on this one because it is a four-drop, and only wish to sustain so many of those in a format where I can reasonably expect the opponent might go first and cast Tattermunge Maniac. For Saturday at least, I have come to the conclusion that there will be a reasonable number of Red decks… and that I cannot afford to have that many four-drops in my deck while on the play, and have earmarked the slot of the 4th Command as where I want to find room for that 25th Land I am craving.
Rune Snag — Our focus for the modern format is to do things quickly, and to have redundancy in our turn-two plays… so many busy things in the two-drop that we can’t help but have a two-drop spell of significance, since our first turn will as a rule be ‘skipped’ for Ancestral Vision, Faerie Conclave… or stone-cold nothing. That some people played Faeries, and even did well, without Rune Snag… goes to show how good Faeries are in general, that you can build the deck wrong and still batter people with it. Another non-negotiable.
And now that we’ve covered the Big Four in the spell department, we do get to negotiate.
Terror / Nameless Inversion — The tendency of late has been for Faeries decks to run Nameless Inversion, because unlike Terror it can kill a black creature. I had been doing it myself and noticing not too much of a difference… because I wasn’t routinely facing down Gargadons or Tarmogoyfs, and against everything else out of a Red deck the two are basically identical. In the mirror, Terror can’t kill a Bitterblossom token or Oona’s Blackguard or Oona’s Prowler… the latter two shouldn’t be present in a good list, and the former you are unlikely to want to trade a spell for. It can, however, kill Mistbind Clique where Nameless Inversion cannot… so right away we see a difference by picking Terror, so long as we are living in a world where we may not want to grow an opponent’s Tarmogoyf, or might even want our kill spell to kill it. I looked over every single decklist reported from the City Champs and compiled a list of all the creatures Terror cannot kill that were played:
Troll Ascetic
Chameleon Colossus
Nantuko Husk
Marsh Flitter
Liege of the Pit
Shriekmaw
Earwig Squad
Nightshade Stinger
Oona’s Blackguard
Oona’s Prowler
Frogtosser Banneret
Prickly Boggart
Stinkdrinker Daredevil
Mad Auntie
Squeaking Pie Sneak
Stenchskipper
Wort, Boggart Auntie
Nath of the Gilt-Leaf
Doran the Siege Tower
Shadowmage Infiltrator
Teneb, the Harvester
Korlash, Heir to Blackblade
Knucklebone Witch
Tombstalker
Hypnotic Specter
Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
Wydwen, the Biting Gale
Razormane Masticore
Bottle Gnomes
Epochrasite
Triskelavus
Phyrexian Ironfoot
Stuffy Doll
Of these, Nameless Inversion would not kill Phyrexian Ironfoot, Triskelavus, Razormane Masticore, Tombstalker, Korlash, Teneb, Doran, Nath, Stenchskipper, Liege of the Pit, Nantuko Husk except on a really bad day, or Troll Ascetic and Chameleon Colossus because they can’t be targeted anyway. Twelve out of 33 were immune to either spell, and the following 21 are a “hit list” of some of the awful Black creatures some very few people try to wedge into Standard at the moment:
Marsh Flitter
Shriekmaw
Earwig Squad
Nightshade Stinger
Oona’s Blackguard
Oona’s Prowler
Frogtosser Banneret
Prickly Boggart
Stinkdrinker Daredevil
Mad Auntie
Squeaking Pie Sneak
Wort, Boggart Auntie
Shadowmage Infiltrator
Knucklebone Witch
Hypnotic Specter
Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
Wydwen, the Biting Gale
Bottle Gnomes
Epochrasite
Stuffy Doll
Playing what we are presuming is the best deck in the format, I am not afraid of any deck playing pieces of these, enough so that I am going to pick the worse kill spell because two people in the room might be playing heavy-Black Goblins or mono-Black Rogues. Many of the decks that had creatures like these had a reasonable variety of spells that you could kill with a Terror, and these weren’t even necessarily the best creatures in that deck anyway. So if you are going to play one… play the right one, and pick Terror. If you are going to play more than one, fill up on Terrors first. I get to sideboard against them too, and take those junky Terrors out, on the off chance I do play them… really, there is just no good argument for running Nameless Inversion over Terror, save that you are copying your betters and they made the wrong choice first because it felt right prior to scrutinizing it. Terror over Inversion is another one of those GerryT-approved choices, so if you don’t believe the thorough analysis of a snapshot of the format, try believing him. Admittedly we are introducing Shadowmoor after that snapshot, and more than your average number of creatures from that set are black. More than your average number of creatures from that set suck, too, and it is really the Red ones that you have to worry about.
Thoughtseize — I have seen several Faerie lists packing Thoughtseize. The idea of casting Thoughtseize against a red deck causes me to look for the nearest really tall bridge, and that is not a good feeling. There is a time and a place for Thoughtseize… and that is why we have sideboards.
The Rest — I have seen Unsummon, Remove Soul, Loxodon Warhammer, Profane Command, all manner of strange things in here. Remove Soul is probably the next counter behind Spellstutter Sprite, Rune Snag, and Cryptic Command… and we are considering cutting the Commands a little, because it is getting harder to run that many expensive spells against aggressive decks without it catching us in the butt. Unsummon is just worse than a pure kill spell, and Profane Command, while potent, is just not intended for this type of deck… we don’t need more evasion to break through, everything flies, and if we want to kill a creature we want to do it on the cheap. Resurrecting a creature and saying “go” undermines everything the deck is about with its instant-speed effects… so we have a bad Fireball that does one of these three things on top of everything else. Cut it and play something that works well in the deck instead. Warhammer… likewise, expensive and over-commits to Sorcery speed, and thus is clunky and gets in the way of what you are trying to accomplish. It won’t let you race faster and it certainly will never gain you life against an opponent who is trying to burn you out, you’ll just trade your first six mana and attempted attack for their one mana and Shock.
Putting all of this together, having tested the format somewhat extensively the past few weeks to see what is possible and where the trends in deck design are going as we figure things out and actually prepare for the rigors of tournament play, gives us the following:
Creatures (16)
Lands (21)
Spells (23)
Sideboard
You probably expected to see Flashfreeze here — but the one definite impact of Vexing Shusher on the format, at least from this deck’s perspective, is that R/G-specific countermagic doesn’t actually help, while more kill spells that can kill a Vexing Shusher actually does. I want to be able to sideboard out the slow cards that will get me killed against an aggressive Red deck, because I don’t have the time to wait on Ancestral Vision and Bitterblossom (nor the life to pay to the latter) and want things in from the sideboard that work fast and kill things without being as truly reactive as countermagic… and thus I sideboard out those eight slow things for seven kill spells that work fast and another land to make sure I don’t hiccough in a messily lethal fashion against an aggressive deck. The Swamp is there to actually add, not just ‘fine tune the mana-base,’ so yes I am comfortable with having a basic Land in my sideboard… the first Urborg is clearly better, and already in the deck; the second, well, laughs mercilessly from your hand as you stumble on mana against a beatdown deck.
Those Peppersmokes are also pretty good against other Faerie decks, since every actual creature spell I am running save for Mistbind Clique has one toughness. Sower of Temptation is an all-star against the decks that he is actually fast enough against to be effective, like Rock decks with Doran or an opposing Reveillark deck, while Thoughtseize has the obvious applications… and feels absolutely merciless next to four Vendilion Cliques besides, giving us a total of eight Duresses in our otherwise mono-Blue aggro-tempo deck.
I won’t tell you Flashfreeze is wrong… but I will tell you that I cut it from my list for this weekend’s event, as I expect the Red decks and Green decks I will face will have the usual vulnerabilities to the counters I already play… and I don’t want to overload on counters against decks that can drop Vexing Shusher on me anyway. Considering that at present the improvement of Flashfreeze over Rune Snag is pretty marginal anyway, I would rather sideboard more Black kill spells in those slots and address the fast Red decks, and presume that the fact that Faeries is already good against R/G Big Mana can carry the day by pointing Duresses at their key spells and not falling prey to Vexing Shusher out of the sideboard because I over-committed to the countermagic plan.
We’ll see how this all plays out in tournament play, then, and return next week to see if any opinion have changed or matured through trial by fire.
Sean McKeown
s_mckeown @ hotmail.com