Mono U Faeries

So my buddy Chris put me onto the idea when he mentioned an uncommon from Morningtide that strikes a chord with me. I played magic from 4th edition up through Prophecy. One card that I fondly remember using is Impulse. Digging four at instant speed is a pretty nifty trick, and anyone who played with it in cycle knows that it is a potent resource hunter. Need land? Grab land. Need gas? Grab gas. So when Morningtide presented Thieves’ Fortune, I got a little giddy. So last night, Chris says to me, “You know what card I want to use? That prowl for one blue impulse.” Who am I to argue? I will pay three all day to dig through four cards. I’ll also laugh when I get to use one of my favorite spells for one less mana to ensure my land drop for the turn, thus ensuring I win in the next seven turns.

Here’s the list that I came up with. It has yet to be tested, but believe me, goldfishing makes this deck look promising.

• Creatures
  • 4 Mothdust Changeling
  • 4 Cloud Sprite
  • 4 Spellstutter Sprite
  • 4 Scion of Oona
  • 3 Latchkey Faerie
  • 2 Mistbind Clique
  • 3 Vendilion Clique
    
• Spells
  • 4 Remove Soul
  • 4 Rune Snag
  • 4 Cryptic Command
  • 4 Thieves’ Fortune
• Lands
  • 4 Mutavault
  • 18 Island
• Sideboard
  • 2 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
  • 3 Sower of Temptation
  • 3 Vendilion Clique
  • 4 Flashfreeze
  • 3 Snapback
  • 3 Boomerang
  • 3 Evacuation

So the list is fairly simple. Play a faerie on turn one, keep swinging until a response shows up and counter it. Flash in Scions and when you have heaps of mana, prowl out the Latchkey Faeries for the hefty beats. Easy enough to play. The genius is in the sideboard. Currently, the local shop usually sees about 5 Reveilark blink decks, a Big Mana R/G here and there, a couple Rock decks and then general aggro like kithkin or RDW.

The board contains tripple Sower to respond to aggro as that guy happens to totally disrupt the flow of the game. Even if it gets hit on their next turn, they lose an attack for a turn and a removal spell. Even more importantly, Sower combos with the main deck Scions to make the switch hitting permanent. In general, my guys will be more evasive than their guys and so I can just damage them out. Also, with scions hitting the board at essentially no cost (played at end of opponent’s turn) my damage potential is usually higher than say a Kithkin deck that is having trouble resolving spells.

For Big Mana decks, I’ve got those sweet two mana hard counters that are going to be oh so effective against Garruk, Siege-Gang Commanders, and Cloudthreshers. Speaking of that 7/7 instant speed monstrosity. He’s the biggest threat to the deck. If he resolves, it’s pretty much lights out. The way we cope with that? Make sure that there is ample countermagic and ample mana available at all times. I cannot emphasize this enough. Threshers have become more popular recently as they eat almost anything and help decks get there with it’s hurricane effect. Faeries do not win against that guy. As soon as my opponent could potentially have four mana, I need two counters and enough mana for both as they will generally attempt to flash one in EOT and then cast one on their turn. If I can beat two, there’s almost no chance of them seeing let alone resolving the third one. So few people run four that you really don’t need to worry about it, but it does highlight a nice board switch to be made. Seeing as I haven’t tested this build or any of it’s matchups, I’d have to say that I’d initially like to sower a cloudthresher. Taking a 7/7 is kind of like slapping your opponent in the face. The problem with this plan is that you are assuming that the thresher resolved, and everything you had is now in the yard. I don’t know about you but I’d rather have a heap of evasive shroud guys. Really the key is to just keep him off the board. A commander can really hurt the team, but the thresher just pulls your guys out of the air and into oblivion. The board decision is for the Vendilion Cliques. They will essentially RFG a thresher and ensure that he doesn’t see the board as R/G doesn’t run any tutor effects. The clique scomes out faster than the 4 mana R/G needs to evoke the thresher, but generally you flash in the clique after allowing garruk to resolve. As threatening as Garruk is, the thresher is much more deadly, and therefore you drop the clique in response to Garruk’s untap ability and snipe that cloudthresher. Oh yeah and you get to kill Garruk next turn with your evasive creatures.

Blink happens to have a similar “must not resolve” spell. He’s named Reveillark and if you haven’t noticed, he wins games. Many decks pack a lot of hate for this guy including Extirpate and Tormod’s Crypt (current FNM promo). I like to take a more proactive approach such as shucking him to the bottom of my opponent’s library from hand at instant speed. The trio also likes to tear away Momentary Blink, Venser, Riftwatchers, Cloudskates, Mirror Entities, and Body Doubles. Now the real reason why this deck is such a bad matchup is because everything in it flies. It seems that they had my game plan as well and now we are clashing in the skies. This means that the clock is much slower, a significant advantage to them. Fortunately, it is easy to make a blink deck pay for it’s lackadaisical early game. Turn one guy into turn 2 guy into turn 3 scion is a lot of damage fast and can generally put an opponent on their heels. Also, the countermagic back up gets really good when they try to blink during the combat step. Those shenanigans will make your losses even more painful. Scion is a house in this matchup because she protects everything else on board and has a Standard Bearer effect. Even more potent, with two scions out, they can’t bounce my guys at all so it seems pretty good. Wrath is really the only defense against my flying horde and because they are packing snags, you need to grip snags. Also I hear Teferi is pretty good against lark because it nerf bats all of their counters and makes blinks look like running fat kids rather than the Flash.

So finally I’ll address the elephant in the room. The mana base is notably missing the appropriate man land for the color. Faerie Conclave is a good card. It has a lot of punch against wrath effects. I have three problems with it. Firstly, It comes in tapped and bounce is really big right now. Blue abuses Venser and bouncing tap lands has become very in Vogue. Secondly, it costs two to activate, so its relevance is limited to the late game when I’ll have counters + extra mana for animation. Thirdly, it is not a rogue. The rogue splash in this deck is light, but important. The thieves’ fortunes are super helpful when you need to find something useful, if only to pull four not so awesome cards off the top of your library. The latchkeys usually start hitting around the 5-7 mana mark depending on the opposition’s hand size and board position. Mutavault happens to not have any of the problems it’s flying counterpart has and it is much more useful at bumping up a spellstutter sprite.

This build looks good, it solitaires well, it has good matchups against some big archetypes, I’m confident that it is at least competitively playable. I’m not sure about snapback yet. One real concern I have is Treetop Village carrying a Warhammer that managed to get through when I’m looking at a pair of remove souls. The twelve point life swing is more than any deck can withstand and so I was thinking a bounce effect, possibly for an alternate cost would allow me to tap out in the face of some trees having a party and still live to swing for critical next turn.

I’ll be testing this beast out tomorrow for about an hour against some common archetypes so I’ll let you know how it goes and any changes that are made. I think this one’s gonna be a playable idea and I hope it runs as well as I’m planning.

Thanks for reading and good rips.

Thaddeus Walsh

Advertisement