Yes, 2 Sunken Ruins could be the right number. So far I'm trying to run a manabase that deals me no damage at all, and if I had to give up on that purpose, it would be to add 3 fetchlands and a couple Watery Grave, but never Underground River. My current 25 lands are:
2 Tectonic Edge
4 Mutavault
3 Creeping Tar Pit
4 River of Tears
4 Secluded Glen
4 Darkslick Shores
3 Island
1 Swamp
I would replace one tar pit and one shore with 2 ruins. Probably just personal preference, the possibility are so much that is possible to build 2-3 different and yet efficient manabase in UB...
- L
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"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
Yes, 2 Sunken Ruins could be the right number. So far I'm trying to run a manabase that deals me no damage at all, and if I had to give up on that purpose, it would be to add 3 fetchlands and a couple Watery Grave, but never Underground River. My current 25 lands are:
2 Tectonic Edge
4 Mutavault
3 Creeping Tar Pit
4 River of Tears
4 Secluded Glen
4 Darkslick Shores
3 Island
1 Swamp
Ok, so you got the 4 Darkslicks, that's a great start. SOM fastlands are great in decks that want to have a good early game manabase, after all.
Secluded Glen's going to be powered out untapped and there's mindgames to be had in what you reveal.
With 2 TecEdges and 4 Mutavaults you're in dangerous territory running 6 lands producing only colorless. As such, putting Sunken Ruins in means you start worsening your odds of a good turn 1 hand disrupt play, or perhaps chance the possibility of Sunken Ruins having no U/B source to filter into colors. I'd think in this deck you can actually just not care about the opponent's lands, so maybe gut them from the main for the Sunken Ruins and then have the Edges in the side or something where they're there when you need them but not there to ruin your game 1 mana?
River of Tears may need to be fussed with, but what I think is most easily removed from that landbase is Creeping Tar Pit. Strong land, don't get me wrong, it's just the cost to animate it that actually makes it a bit of a trap in Faeries. Tar Pit is a peculiar manland suited for sneaking in all ninja style and doing damage where damage is of importance, but he does it at a significant dent to your tempo.
Anyway here's my on-the-spot idea
4 Watery Grave (you can always just play it tapped turn 1 and forego the turn 1 hand disrupt; shocking yourself to Thoughtseize is honestly a very unsavory way to kick off a game, no matter how strong it is as well)
4 Darkslick Shores (fast mana is obviously best mana)
4 Secluded Glen (because tribal)
3 Islands, 1 Swamp (Crypcom mana!)
4 Misty Rainforest (see prior hypothesis about Islands and fetching)
4 Mutavault (and with the obligatory tribal manlands we're at 24 lands)
1 Sunken Ruins
Feel free to twiddle these numbers if you want, I got so caught up in 4ofs here that I'd ruin the elegance of it all to have a proper 2 Sunkens.
Some cards I've been considering: Thassa, God of the Sea Affordable as a 1 of in the deck having the ability to help stack what you draw in this deck helps a ton. On the offchance she ever does become a creature she's very large. Bident of Thassa Being 4 mana can be a drawback, but makes all your critters that much more of a threat. (more affordable then swords) Vapor Snag + Remand A more tempo version of the deck that would probably run 4 scion of oona and a phantasmal or two.
I'm not saying River of Tears is a bad land that shouldn't be played, but just that drawing more than one among your first 4 lands can be annoying, as it is drawing 2 Mutavaults. Probably just replacing the Tectonic Edge with Sunken Ruins I could solve the problem. About the Creeping Tar Pit, definitely I'm not activating it as often as I did when playing Dark Delver 2 years ago, but uncounterable threats and lands that do stuff besides tapping out for mana are good in this format, specially in a deck whose hand gets empty so fast.
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Currently sleeved: WUR Copycat ft. Stoneforge Mystic
So I went to a GPT today and got the utterly unimpressive result of 2-3. Won Melira-pod and a burn deck and lost to BW tokens (due to gaming 2 and 3 never managed to go past my 2nd or 3rd land drop), Zoo which is a terrible MU especially if they T2 Cavern of souls into Voice, its more or less an autoloss and lost to Jund due to pilot errors and mulligan.
Overall however I was quite happy with the deck. The fact that I hadn't played it for so many years impacted my plays and doesn't mean the deck is not T1 material. I was maindecking dismember but I think I will switch it for Agony wrap as it seems to be way better especially against Zoo. Also I have a very good proposition: everyone should run Chalice of the Void in SB. Chalice for 1 against Zoo and burn which are going to fill the meta is simply incredible.
Experimenting with a Snapcaster over a Cryptic, seeing if the extra utility helps out, both pre- and post- sideboarding. Unsure if Phyrexian Crusader is better than Vampire Nighthawk in the 3CC slot against Zoo. Crusader blocks up the ground entirely, outside of a giant Goyf, but Nighthawk has lifelink, which can take you out of reach of the Zoo opponent once you stabilize. On the downside though, Nighthawk gets blown up by Bolt/Helix.
The single snap has been working great for me in testing, may even up it to two. For removal i've been using a dismember and two go for the throats but I think I want to drop that to one gftt and add in an agony or two. Im not sold on disfigure yet since it can't hit a lot of things like goyf and nacatyl which I expect to see a lot of.
The two other new cards I'm wondering most about (other than Snapcaster) are Liliana and Bident, particularly in the more attrition based Fae builds that popped up during the Extended format featuring Cawblade.
So I have a question from one prospective UBx Faerie player to all you guys: Is this deck definitely going to be a player in the new modern metagame that is going to crop up soon? Many of the people I've talked to have doubts it'll even be tier 1.5. Their arguments seem to boil down to that more hate has been printed since the last time UB Faeries was a deck. In addition to Volcanic Fallout and Great Sable Stag there is now abrupt decay, supreme verdict, and Loxodon Smiter to contend with. Furthermore, decks have just gotten better and more powerful. I guess my question is with all these uncounterable cards and powerful modern decks is our deck just going to be able to be hated out whenever people try to and/or just not be good enough? Or is our deck resilient and powerful enough to make the cut in Modern? Forgive me if these questions sound a little elementary but I didn't play during the reigns of UB Fae in standard and extended so I don't have experience with how good the deck can be. I just want other fae players input on this matter since many of you have tested the deck for modern more than I have probably since BB got unbanned.
The deck will definitely be at least tier 2. Before the unban, Faeries was tier 3 with scattered MTGO wins. The ban announcement does two thing to make Faeries much better. First, most obviously, it introduces BB to the deck which makes all of the cards better. It lets you support the painless manabase better (Secluded Glen), it virtually makes Spellstutter a hard counter, and it enables a consistent Mistbind on turn 4-5.
More importantly, however, the DRS ban means that the deck most likely to use Abrupt Decay is going to see a lot less play. AD is by far the best answer to BB in the format, especially in its BGx shell, and the old Fae decks never had to deal with it. Although Fae will see the card in Melira Pod and the remaining BGx decks, it won't be nearly as prevalent as before.
So at worst, this deck is going to be a tier 2 contender alongside things like GW Hatebears, Bogles, BW Tokens, etc. I think it's much more likely that it will be tier 1.5 or tier 1, but it's a safe bet to say that it will at least be playable.
Nitpicking, but WB Tokens is going up at least half of a tier because of Bitterblossom. Also, the new meta should bring Hatebears to tier 1.
I'm not understanding how people are having so many issues with straight UB manabases. Can someone tell me where the problem is stemming from? We should never have to take a point of damage from our lands, so it just confuses me how I see people running shocks/fetches and everything from Vivid lands to Reflecting Pool.
I was actually testing out the single Reflecting Pool to see if it's better than the 3rd River of Tears. So long as it's not the only land in your opener it should be a straight UB fixer.
What T1 Thoughtseize issue? I run 3 MB discard spells, and if my only land in my opener is a Reflecting Pool, just as if it was a Mutavault or a Tectonic Edge, I'm going to mulligan. I wouldn't even want to keep most any 1 land hand. As I've said, maybe it should just be the 3rd River of Tears. Against Affinity I have all my removal sans Go for the Throat, as well as SB BSZ for X=2, 2 Engineered Explosives, and a Hurkyl's Recall. Now, obviously I can't beat everything, and perhaps if Affinity is a higher percentage of the meta then I will have to adapt.
Crusader trumps everything in Zoo sans a large Tarmogoyf, so I think curving out Removal->Counter/EE->Crusader is something I'd like to be doing. It also gives a very serious clock against any variant of UWR, it's practically a True-Name Nemesis in those matchups.
i would also like to add that we should be taking into account Boggles in the new meta game. With lower jund/junk players, meaning less liliana this deck will be back. Top 4 on the GPT I played yesterday consisted of 2 Boggles
i would also like to add that we should be taking into account Boggles in the new meta game. With lower jund/junk players, meaning less liliana this deck will be back. Top 4 on the GPT I played yesterday consisted of 2 Boggles
This brought the discussion on a card dismissed too fast: Liliana of the Veil.
- L
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"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
i still can't decide if lili is with a spot or not. for now i would no but that could change.
boggles shouldn't be too rough. spellskite is a real beating to them as is ADD and g eths verdict. I'm honestly thinking about just going to a full set of spellskite in the board. it's good in all of our bad matches.
I have a question for people regarding remand, mana leak, and rune snag. First of all I would like to say that Rune snag is much better than mana leak with our deck drawing 0 grave hate in games 2 and 3, and with Deathrite Shaman gone- rune snag has all upside IMO. That is of course assuming that you run 4 rune snag, which I don't think I can commit to the 60/75 with 3-5 T1 discard spells and 4 sss. With that being said I have tried remand, and mana leak as a 3 of in my 60 and I think mana leak is MUCH more powerful in the aggro match ups where we're weakest. Mana leak is much weaker against control decks, and almost worthless versus Tron.
I've had some major issues with the deck's draw engine though where I often flood out on mana so I was wanting to try to get remands back in to filter through the deck quicker to maintain tempo. I was wanting to try out dropping the lands down to 24, running 3 remand and 2-3 squelch as a replacement for the 2 tectonic edge. Squelch has the benefit of land destruction versus any non budget deck that isn't faeries, it slows down Tron, UWR control, Pod and helps in the mirror with equipment(Which I've elected to pass on for Scion of Oona). I will be able to test my idea tomorrow so I look forward to testing, but I also look forward to critiques of this idea. Thanks and good luck
Edit: I forgot to mention why I prefer squelch over shadow of doubt. I think that the importance of being able to play mutavault early is paramount to the success of the deck. Obviously Shadow of Doubt and mutavault aren't easy to use together, and I like that Squelch stops everything that Shadow of Doubt stops. I can't think of any spells that search the library but don't have an activation in the modern meta. I can sympathize with the argument that you can't cantrip Squelch like you could Shadow of Doubt with a late top deck but I think that the benefit of stopping man lands, pod activations, and equipment- makes the card much stronger.
I can't really see how one would take profit from Lilly. Basically you would want to -2 her, but then again I think you would only want to +1 her later in a topdeck war while drawing lands... seems a bit too bad to me?
I would replace one tar pit and one shore with 2 ruins. Probably just personal preference, the possibility are so much that is possible to build 2-3 different and yet efficient manabase in UB...
- L
"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
Ok, so you got the 4 Darkslicks, that's a great start. SOM fastlands are great in decks that want to have a good early game manabase, after all.
Secluded Glen's going to be powered out untapped and there's mindgames to be had in what you reveal.
With 2 TecEdges and 4 Mutavaults you're in dangerous territory running 6 lands producing only colorless. As such, putting Sunken Ruins in means you start worsening your odds of a good turn 1 hand disrupt play, or perhaps chance the possibility of Sunken Ruins having no U/B source to filter into colors. I'd think in this deck you can actually just not care about the opponent's lands, so maybe gut them from the main for the Sunken Ruins and then have the Edges in the side or something where they're there when you need them but not there to ruin your game 1 mana?
River of Tears may need to be fussed with, but what I think is most easily removed from that landbase is Creeping Tar Pit. Strong land, don't get me wrong, it's just the cost to animate it that actually makes it a bit of a trap in Faeries. Tar Pit is a peculiar manland suited for sneaking in all ninja style and doing damage where damage is of importance, but he does it at a significant dent to your tempo.
Anyway here's my on-the-spot idea
4 Watery Grave (you can always just play it tapped turn 1 and forego the turn 1 hand disrupt; shocking yourself to Thoughtseize is honestly a very unsavory way to kick off a game, no matter how strong it is as well)
4 Darkslick Shores (fast mana is obviously best mana)
4 Secluded Glen (because tribal)
3 Islands, 1 Swamp (Crypcom mana!)
4 Misty Rainforest (see prior hypothesis about Islands and fetching)
4 Mutavault (and with the obligatory tribal manlands we're at 24 lands)
1 Sunken Ruins
Feel free to twiddle these numbers if you want, I got so caught up in 4ofs here that I'd ruin the elegance of it all to have a proper 2 Sunkens.
4 Secluded Glen
4 Island
3 Sunken Ruins
3 Mutavault
2 River of Tears
2 Swamp
2 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Tectonic Edge
4 Mistbind Clique
4 Spellstutter Sprite
3 Vendilion Clique
2 Scion of Oona
1 Snapcaster Mage
4 Cryptic Command
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Mana Leak
2 Thoughtseize
2 Smother
1 Doom Blade
4 Spreading Seas
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Extirpate
3 Torpor Orb
2 Deathmark
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Spellskite
Some cards I've been considering:
Thassa, God of the Sea Affordable as a 1 of in the deck having the ability to help stack what you draw in this deck helps a ton. On the offchance she ever does become a creature she's very large.
Bident of Thassa Being 4 mana can be a drawback, but makes all your critters that much more of a threat. (more affordable then swords)
Vapor Snag + Remand A more tempo version of the deck that would probably run 4 scion of oona and a phantasmal or two.
Currently sleeved:
WUR Copycat ft. Stoneforge Mystic
Overall however I was quite happy with the deck. The fact that I hadn't played it for so many years impacted my plays and doesn't mean the deck is not T1 material. I was maindecking dismember but I think I will switch it for Agony wrap as it seems to be way better especially against Zoo. Also I have a very good proposition: everyone should run Chalice of the Void in SB. Chalice for 1 against Zoo and burn which are going to fill the meta is simply incredible.
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
4 Spellstutter Sprite
1 Snapcaster Mage
4 Scion of Oona
2 Vendilion Clique
4 Mistbind Clique
Other Spells- 20
4 Bitterblossom
2 Thoughtseize
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Spell Snare
3 Mana Leak
3 Cryptic Command
2 Disfigure
1 Go for the Throat
1 Victim of Night
1 Agony Warp
4 Mutavault
2 Tectonic Edge
1 Sunken Ruins
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Secluded Glen
2 Creeping Tar Pit
2 River of Tears
4 Island
1 Swamp
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Deathmark
1 Geth's Verdict
1 Black Sun's Zenith
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Phyrexian Crusader
1 Extirpate
2 Duress
3 Spreading Seas
Experimenting with a Snapcaster over a Cryptic, seeing if the extra utility helps out, both pre- and post- sideboarding. Unsure if Phyrexian Crusader is better than Vampire Nighthawk in the 3CC slot against Zoo. Crusader blocks up the ground entirely, outside of a giant Goyf, but Nighthawk has lifelink, which can take you out of reach of the Zoo opponent once you stabilize. On the downside though, Nighthawk gets blown up by Bolt/Helix.
Grand Arbiter
Omnath
Skittles
Nitpicking, but WB Tokens is going up at least half of a tier because of Bitterblossom. Also, the new meta should bring Hatebears to tier 1.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
UB Faeries GP Record - 22/9/2, 1 Top 64
UB Faeries GP Record - 22/9/2, 1 Top 64
Crusader trumps everything in Zoo sans a large Tarmogoyf, so I think curving out Removal->Counter/EE->Crusader is something I'd like to be doing. It also gives a very serious clock against any variant of UWR, it's practically a True-Name Nemesis in those matchups.
UB Faeries (15-6-0)
UWR Control (10-5-1)/Kiki Control/Midrange/Harbinger
UBR Cruel Control (6-4-0)/Grixis Control/Delver/Blue Jund
UWB Control/Mentor
UW Miracles/Control (currently active, 14-2-0)
BW Eldrazi & Taxes
RW Burn (9-1-0)
I do (academic) research on video games and archaeology! You can check out my open access book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/the-interactive-past
This brought the discussion on a card dismissed too fast: Liliana of the Veil.
- L
"The problem isn't when Scissors says Rock is overpowered, it's when Paper says it is."
-Mark Rosewater
boggles shouldn't be too rough. spellskite is a real beating to them as is ADD and g eths verdict. I'm honestly thinking about just going to a full set of spellskite in the board. it's good in all of our bad matches.
UB Faeries GP Record - 22/9/2, 1 Top 64
I have a question for people regarding remand, mana leak, and rune snag. First of all I would like to say that Rune snag is much better than mana leak with our deck drawing 0 grave hate in games 2 and 3, and with Deathrite Shaman gone- rune snag has all upside IMO. That is of course assuming that you run 4 rune snag, which I don't think I can commit to the 60/75 with 3-5 T1 discard spells and 4 sss. With that being said I have tried remand, and mana leak as a 3 of in my 60 and I think mana leak is MUCH more powerful in the aggro match ups where we're weakest. Mana leak is much weaker against control decks, and almost worthless versus Tron.
I've had some major issues with the deck's draw engine though where I often flood out on mana so I was wanting to try to get remands back in to filter through the deck quicker to maintain tempo. I was wanting to try out dropping the lands down to 24, running 3 remand and 2-3 squelch as a replacement for the 2 tectonic edge. Squelch has the benefit of land destruction versus any non budget deck that isn't faeries, it slows down Tron, UWR control, Pod and helps in the mirror with equipment(Which I've elected to pass on for Scion of Oona). I will be able to test my idea tomorrow so I look forward to testing, but I also look forward to critiques of this idea. Thanks and good luck
Edit: I forgot to mention why I prefer squelch over shadow of doubt. I think that the importance of being able to play mutavault early is paramount to the success of the deck. Obviously Shadow of Doubt and mutavault aren't easy to use together, and I like that Squelch stops everything that Shadow of Doubt stops. I can't think of any spells that search the library but don't have an activation in the modern meta. I can sympathize with the argument that you can't cantrip Squelch like you could Shadow of Doubt with a late top deck but I think that the benefit of stopping man lands, pod activations, and equipment- makes the card much stronger.
Torpor Orb seems like the worst card possible to run in a faeries list.