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Hello and welcome to another article about those lovable Blue miscreants, the Faerie tribe. Today I’ll be going over the general matches, tips, and some testing results against the top three control decks from GP: Krakow: Mono Blue Guile, UW Pickles and UB Mannequin. I’ve received a number of e-mails asking for match advice, and some general questions on how the deck holds up against Pickles-esque decks, so instead of answering each individually it seemed easier to do it all at once.

Seeing how we are now two weeks away from the State Championships, we have the opportunity to examine the Standard metagame in motion. We are on our way to the World Championships in a month’s time, give or take a little, and in addition to looking at the States metagame as it played out, we can advance it one week into the future by examining the results of this past weekend’s Grand Prix in Krakow.

I made a Kithkin Soldier deck. I know. I can’t believe it, either. Me, Chris Romeo, building a White Weenie deck as his first one using the latest cards. Go figure. I wanted the goodness of Clash in there somewhere, to smooth the draws. This is the part where you scurry to figure out which card with Clash I could possibly use in a White Weenie deck. It’s Springjack Knight.

Last week’s article was a little awkward, because my deadline was a couple of days before States decklists went up, but the article came out on the same day the States page went live. It’s like I was frantic and scrambling for some obscure theorem to use on a midterm, and then an hour after I turned in the paper someone uploaded Stephen Hawking’s entire brain into my skull.

I’m not sure why States, as a tournament, holds such an allure for me. Maybe it’s the freewheeling, undefined metagame, which allows for any deck to break through and become the Next Best Thing. Maybe it’s the mad scramble to find any crumb of tech to wedge into a deck.

For me, I think it’s the plaque.

Leading up to States, I heard a lot of grumbling about how underpowered Lorwyn was compared to Time Spiral and Ravnica. I think the results from States and Grand Prix: Krakow put that notion to rest. I’m of the opinion that Lorwyn was pretty masterfully designed – many of the cards don’t set off alarm bells when you’re just looking at the text box and stats, but when you shuffle them up in a deck and start playing with them, many of them give you that “oh, wow!” feeling.

I have looked through a fair number of the Top 8 decklists from States, and I haven’t found the combo decks. I haven’t seen any. Am I just missing something, or are they really not present? More importantly, is there a combo deck people just haven’t seen yet? Hint – I think so.