MTG Salvation

Quote from Zetsu_Sensei »

What's the perfect sideboard in today's meta?

Funny that you would ask this, I'm actually in the process of creating a guide for Faeries sideboard so that people can look through potential cards to use and what would work best against certain decks. Here's a link:
Faeries Sideboard Guide
If you have anything you would like me to test or add, like it says, please let me know. I do my research a lot when it comes to this deck and I am willing to test play a lot of things to ensure that people get access to ideal lists.
edit:
As of 9/6 I have enabled comments on the page. It's my mistake that I didn't turn these on to begin with.

Played at a PPTQ in Southern California today, went 4-2 and got 11th place overall out of approx 37 people, my only losses to the 1 and 2 seed going into the top 8.

I went in expecting to play against a lot of red/green and artifact/colorless decks, which I, unfortunately, didn't face in any way.
My matchups were as follows:
Round 1 - 0-2 LOSS BR Goodstuff
Round 2 - 2-0 WIN Esper Mill
Round 3 - 2-1 WIN Abzan Red
Round 4 - 0-2 LOSS 4 Color Humans
Round 5 - 2-0 WIN Abzan
At this point, we find out that there is little chance that an X-2 makes it into the top, but due to me losing to the top seeds and the rest of the people I played doing halfway decent, I decided I would stick around and try and win my last game.
Round 6 - 2-0 WIN UW Control

I feel really indifferent because overall I feel like I did well but missing the top 8 was disappointing.
I was upset I didnt get any use out of Flashfreeze as well because the night before at FNM it actually was pretty great, but everyone seemed to audible to different things locally. I think the best thing I could do at this point is switch out LtLH in the main for something else, and move her to the sideboard in Flashfreeze's place. Everything else seems to be the right numbers, but sweepers will probably go back to 1 Languish 1 Damnation.
As per usual, if you guys have any questions always feel free to ask me anything. I'm in the discord as well so if you want to reach me there you always can.

Coming up soon I would also like to test out Jace, Cunning Castaway just as a little bit of spice. I had someone tell me today when I brought it up that I should just be playing Jace Beleren but I think since this Jace can still make dudes to close out games, I would like to test him a little bit before completely throwing the idea out the window. I think everything else in the deck is consistent enough to where I probably wouldn't change it too much.
Anyways, thanks for reading, hope you guys enjoy hearing about my tournament.

TCGPlayer States - California
Overall Record: 6-1-1 3rd/61

Maindeck:


Sideboard:


Round 1 Burn 2-0
Kept hands in both games with Kalitas and Collective Brutality which essentially is an instant win.
Sideboarded in 2 Dispel 1 Negate taking out all AV

Round 2 BG Infect 2-1
Game 1 was heavily in my favor due to having a lot of removal, and I eventually won with manlands.
Sideboarded in 2 dispel 1 Fatal Push
Game 2 I had lethal on board, but he topdecked like a boss and got this game from me.
Game 3 was essentially game 1 with better cards because I actually had a sideboard. Extra fatal push came in clutch here.

Round 3 Dredge 2-1
Game 1 was heavily in his favor as this was the only game I mulliganed super hard. I went down to 4, he started off insanely aggresively, and after showing him 2 lands and a removal spell, I scooped to go to the next game.
Sideboarded in 2 Grafdigger's Cage 1 Damnation 1 Surgical
Game 2 was heavily in my favor as I started off with a cage, countered early faithless lootings, and took the game over with kalitas.
Game 3 essentially had the same thing happen, with the exception of keeping a sketchy hand but it had cage and damnation. Started off with only two lands, watched the guy overcommit, wrathed the board, and then slammed Kalitas to win again.

Round 4 Collected Company 2-1
Game 1 was in my favor tremendously as he mulled to 6, kept a 4 land two spell hand, and I kept a discard heavy hand which he could never recover from.
Sideboarded 1 Fatal Push 1 Engineered Explosives 1 Damnation
Game 2 was heavily in his favor as he started off fast and I got mana screwed with damnation in hand.
Game 3 was a flashback to game 1 a bit, but I was low on threats and he eventually got around to playing some stuff, which I had the removal for. Man lands won me the game in the end.

I was a lock at this point even with a loss and a tie, but got paired down against a 3-1 so I had to play him.
Round 5 Skred Red 2-1
Game 1 I make him discard a blood moon on turn 1, and he can't fight through the removal plus kalitas and bitterblossom.
Sideboarded in 2 Dispel 1 Lost Legacy 1 Negate
Game 2 I did my best to keep him off of moon, but he ended up topdecking one on his 4th turn after I tore his hand apart. He proceeded to beat my face as I had only one basic island in play with a lot of black cards in hand.
Game 3 I clique on his turn 3 and tuck a blood moon, even though I had two islands in play already. I needed the black as the rest of his hand was weak to removal, which I took full advantage of and eventually slammed Kalitas for the win.

Round 6 ID to top8

Before it's posted for the world to see, our top8 was awesome. This is what it ended up looking like before we started top8:
1st - UB Faeries
2nd - Mono Green Tooth and Nail
3rd - Skred Red (Different guy than the one I played)
4th - BW 8 Rack
5th - Jund
6th - Jund
7th - Bant Spirits
8th - Bant Spirits

Round 7 Bant Spirits 2-1 (FIRST ROUND OF TOP8)
Game 1 was back and forth, but I eventually got there between Brutality and Snapcaster-ing Fatal Pushes.
Sideboarded in 1 Fatal Push 1 Damnation 1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Game 2 was in his favor as he just tempoed me with quellers and I wasn't able to recover quickly.
Game 3 I tore his hand apart and noticed he wasn't drawing colors well, so after making him discard his only mana fixer (hierarch) I ghost quartered him and he had to choose a plains to keep himself in the game. He didn't draw much of anything from there and I took the game away quickly.

Round 8 Bant Spirits (Again) 0-2 (SEMIS)
Game 1 I kept a sketchy mull to 5 and got stomped super quickly.
Sideboarded in basically the same as the last match.
Game 2 I attempted to come out strong with AV's and a lot of removal, but I got quellered 3 times in a row and I wasn't able to recover from it at all.

This deck is amazing. I had compliments from tons of people who said that my deck was definitely the talk of the tournament, as it was the only copy of Faeries there and I was doing incredibly well with it.
If you guys want more detailed things or have questions about anything please feel free to message me or quote me on this post. I'd be glad to answer any questions you guys might have.

I got 3rd at TCGPlayer states California playing UB Faeries and will post an updated list with details tomorrow. I went undefeated until the semis where I picked up my only loss which knocked me out.
This deck is good. Im very happy with its results as of late and this performance was the icing on the cake.
Expect some small writeups and sideboard strats when I get the chance tomorrow.

Quote from Axel_kh »

Quote from superadb »

I used to play 1 Duress and 1 Dispel - they're similar effects against control. Having 2 Dispel against Suicide Zoo makes tapping low much safer. Generally speaking, against decks where you want Kalitas, he does his job by just sitting there rather than making zombies. Dispel allows him to come with protection sooner.

What do you think about Collective Brutality? It's sorcery speed but I guess it works as a Duress and a Disfigure, and allow us to make extra value from Bitterblossoms or seizes stuck in hand.
Right now i'm playing 3 IoK, 2 Seizes, 1 Brutality in MD and 1 more Brutality in the board.

I've actually been wanting to test this out as a 1-2 of in the main/side just to see how it performs. It doubles as discard and removal therefore making it quite relevant if I'd like to pitch a seize or BB, like you had mentioned.

Quote from RedGauntlet »

Ofcourse its exiled...ofcoruse

Imagine a world where it didn't exile and you could go decent 3 drop into Goblin Dark-Dwellers into 7 drop like Bruna, the Fading Light and potentially reanimate your 3 drop again immediately (and that's in standard, too). It makes sense that it's exiled, it could be very easily broken if it wasn't. I'm still looking forward to it as I've been wanting to play a resto-angel deck for a while and this creates a new tool for those strats.

Quote from MeatShield »

Ya, that seems fair. I did play at regionals over the weekend and noticed that some of the deck were running main deck artifact hate expecting affinity to have a big showing.

Edit: on a side note hide/seek was an all star. At the regionals tournament I used it to tuck a stony silence, tuck a karanos, and search out eye of ugin against tron.

Glad to hear other people are also trying out hide/seek. I'm really fond of using it for both sides of the card, it definitely helps us against troublesome things like chalice, keranos, stony silence, and other misc things

Forgot to do a little report from regionals, so here it is a few days later.

I went 3-3-3 in total, and here are the match ups:

Round 1 - Burn - 0/2 Loss
Game 1 i had no chance of winning, he had a pretty nut hand I couldn't get around.
Game 2 i had to mulligan to 4 seeing no lands at all in all of the mulligans, finally kept a hand because it had leyline and potential to land a bridge, ended up dying insanely fast by getting hit by creatures.

Round 2 - UR(g) Kiki - 2/0 Win
Game 1 I locked with bridge and took kiki out of the game, he scooped after I made sure he couldn't draw any of his bounce spells.
Game 2 He misplays like 3 or 4 times with engineered explosives on 2, ratchet bombs that never went off, chalice on 1 after i already had shown him that i had drawn an abrupt decay, and while he had chalice on 1, which i sat through for a little bit because pestermite was the only creature on board, he attempted to cast multiple 1 drops and I had to remind him how his own Chalice worked. Easy win pulled off after i milled him out. (I actually used Pyxis' 7 mana ability in this game and put 2 bridges, 1 pithing needle, 3 lands, and 1 spellskite into play. Only miss was off a thoughtseize. He hit irrelevant cards, mainly all lands.)

Round 3 - UG Infect - 0/2 Loss
Game 1 was just a nut draw on his part, I even kept an insanely good hand against him. Couldn't stop him from going wide with inkmoth and glistener elf.
Game 2 I of course saw no bridge, pyroclasm, needle, or anything, and got stomped.

Round 4 - Scapeshift - 0/2 Loss
Game 1 I had a chance of winning, but made a crucial misplay and tapped out letting him draw into a scapeshift.
Game 2 I milled enough mountains to keep him off of using valakut, but he managed to actually get me so low in the mean time through lightning bolts and using snapcaster that I struggled to recover.

Round 5 - Kiki Chord - 1/1/0 Tie
Game 1 I stomped him, he had absolutely no chance of getting around bridge in the first game outside of qasali pridemage, which i milled very early.
Game 2 He played INSANELY slow. It was extremely bothersome and I wasn't sure exactly what was going on. He apparently waited until we went into turns, dropped his win condition on the 5th turn and beat me so we didn't have to game 3 because he felt like he might not be able to win another against me. Pretty annoying in my opinion.

Round 6 - U Tron - 1/1/0 Tie
Game 1 Completely shut out their draws, never let them draw more than 2 lands in the first game (which were only islands) and they scooped once I had 3 mill rocks out. Literally took like 5 minutes for them to concede.
Game 2 They land a platinum angel early, and then proceed to play slow as f**k because of the fact that they "might be able to pull it off." So, we play it out, and they do the same thing that happened in the game before, where they waited until turn 5 of turns to finally slam down the win-con they had been holding in their hand so we wouldn't have to go into a game 3.

Round 7 - UG Infect - 2/0 Win
Game 1 Completely shut them off of infect, made them switch to normal damage, and then proceeded to Aether Grid their entire board.
Game 2 Was a complete shut out after making them discard their sideboard hate early game and surgicaling it, then doing the same thing as game 1.

Round 8 - Lantern Control - 2/0 Win
Game 1 My opponent had forgotten to un-sideboard after we had already gotten into the game while on my turn 1 i had already surgicaled his pithing needles out of the game. Called judge, and he got a game loss.
Game 2 Was literally the other 47-48 minutes of the round. I played around what he attempted to do, and made sure that he couldn't draw the mill rocks i was drawing. Shut off all his stuff by using needles, then pyxis of pandemonium and ghoulcaller's bell won me the game.

Round 9 - Affinity - 1/1/0 Tie
Game 1 He had no way really easily around bridge, once i landed aether grid and had pyrite recursion, he scooped.
Game 2 Was actually insanely close and could have gone either way. I had to tap out to make sure he wouldn't draw into the correct cards to work around bridge, but he managed to barely pull it from me. We finshed this game with like 2 minutes to go in time, and since it was the last round, agreed to not play game 3.

Over-all, I like the deck. I played against decks I KNOW I could beat if given more time, which seems to be the way it runs a lot of the time. I had no chance against the burn player sadly, but I feel like my loss to infect could have easily been a win if i had mulliganed into a better hand, and the same against scapeshift, because i kept a hand without leyline which really would have helped me tremendously in that game. My ties against kiki chord and u tron were extremely frustrating. If you've got the win, just kill me and lets go to game 3. Don't pull that s**t against me.
My wins I felt like i definitely deserved and definitely worked for. But, for right now, with the meta it way it is, and with how hard I keep getting hated on by my local meta, I'm going to be switching to another deck for just a little while. Hopefully we will see twin back soon, because this meta is a bit more difficult to predict outside the fact that there's obviously a TON of burn, infect and affinity. And soon, a lot of eldrazi decks. I don't know if we're amazingly positioned in this situation, but this deck is still probably my favorite deck i've had the chance to play since i started playing magic. We will see how things look in the future though. I'll occasionally switch back to this deck to throw off my local meta, plus I want to be able to use my nearly all foiled out deck now.

And to the other Lantern players who were with me in San Diego, it was great to meet you all. Hope to see you guys in May in LA.

Little FNM update. Here's the list I'm running for reference:



Round 1 - Ad Nauseum (i think that's how you spell it?) 2-0
Game 1: Pretty easy shut out. Knew what deck he was on, and I used Surgical Extraction on an early milled Lightning Storm and the game was over.
Game 2: (Sided in 1 needle, 3 nature's claim) Again quite an easy shut out. Turn one Pithing Needle on Lightning Storm and preventing him from drawing spells like Angel's Grace sealed the deal quite quickly.

Round 2 - Abzan 2-0
Game 1: Had an easy turn 3 bridge, turn 4 or 5 I milled over an Abrupt Decay and surgical'ed it to see what he was working with, and surely enough, he had only one other mainboard way to deal with it in a one of Maelstrom Pulse. The rest of game 1 was me milling him until I milled over the pulse, then he conceded and went to game two.
Game 2: (Practically the same boarding in as the last match, he had Scavenging Ooze and Liliana of the Veil that I was slightly worried about in the longer game) Game went quite quickly into turns as I had a hard lock on the board with 2 bridges and a spellskite as protection. Ended up burning him out with Pyrite Spellbomb in turn 3 of turns, I believe.

Round 3 - Tooth and Nail 1-0-1
Game 1: He had never played against the deck before. Went all out trying to swing in, only really had Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre as a way to get rid of a bridge. Spellskite back-up was tremendous as he just scooped knowing he had gone through so many cards (and played all his eldrazi) that there was no way to stop me from milling him out or just recurring the spellbomb which I had already presented to him.
Game 2: (boarded in 2 grafdiggers cage, 2 welding jar, and 2 nature's claim) I expected hate to come in, and man did I see it. I was lucky enough to land a grafdiggers, which is nice to turn off Ancient Grudge flashback. Over the course of the game, I had established a lock quite easily and was presenting that with each time he removed something, i'd just put spellskite back on top of my library and bring it back out. Went into turns without there being a way for me to win quickly enough. He did side into Purphoros, God of the Forge and Avenger of Zendikar, which wasn't expected, but was funny to see. Almost had me with it too.

Round 4 - Temur Twin 0-2
Game 1: Established a lock with 2 bridges in play, and attempted to keep him off of playing cryptic to bounce a bridge to my hand and swing in with infinite exarchs. He eventually got there, through unlucky draws on my part.
Game 2: (Sided in 2 nature's claim, 2 grafdigger's cage, an extra pithing needle, and two welding jars) Kept a semi decent hand with 2 discard, surgical, 2 land, spellskite, and a millrock. Figured i'd have a semi decent time going up against whatever he through out. Proceeded to draw lands for the rest of the entire game after top decking two pithing needles and lost, quite obviously.

Over-all, the deck preformed quite well and I feel like I did fine with it and am becoming a lot better of a player with the deck. Decisions have been a lot easier to make and I feel like I'm not taking as long of turns as I used to be when I was a bit less familiar with the way the deck worked. As for mainboard, I think my list is pretty straight-forward. My 3-3 split on thoughtseize and inquisition is due to the eldrazi deck, tron, and decks like tooth and nail being in my meta. Feels a bit better than a 4-2 split in favor of inquisition. I'm liking my sideboard right now, although the Torpor Orbs are just a flex spot right now. Not sure what I might want in there in the future, and I didn't really use them in the one match-up where I should have. Had a really good run with the deck though going 3-1 for FNM, and am feeling more confident with it every time I go to play, and a lot more people have been pointing it out as well, that I've been performing a lot better with it now that I'm becoming a lot more familiar with it. I'm going to try and do more FNM updates leading up to SCG regionals, which I'm still hoping to be able to attend. It's not super far away, which is kinda scary, but I hope to do well if I do end up going.

(Also foiled out my Pithing Needles and my one of Ghirapur Æther Grid. Good day today.)

If anyone has any questions about what I run or why I run certain cards, feel free to ask. I'm open to discussion about this deck and am switching to it as my normal deck from now on (stopping playing Tron, got boring doing turn 3 Karn. Feels more fair to completely lock my opponent out of attacking me and milling them through a slow and painful death).

Comment Hidden

So Ninja's are probably the UB archetype, and Slivers are RW? This one's cool, hope the rest aren't horribly overcosted like 80% of the ninjas in the current card pool.

I was really hoping there was gonna be a hidden spoiler in the article... Missed a chance there, WotC...

Quote from mtgnorin »

It is really funny. The key is in my opinion more interaction cards like dismember and tec edge...but people dont use them. They play decks without interaction and cry about 2 ships passing in the night. Maybe only 1 time, they should try cards we have? But it seems it is more easy only crying for bannings

You think you can change the meta by playing interactive cards? When the etron opponent casts a turn 3 smasher with cavern and you have mana leak, dismember, terminate and cryptic command in your hand give me a call and tell me what a great time you're having and that we should all join u in playing interactive cards.

In the meantime, I'll be playing Baral t2 and hoping they dont have a T2 TKS.

If Twin is not 'safe' then this format is busted. How Twin could even potentially be oppressive in this format is beyond comprehension.

Not just 'bat god,' but 'bat god of night.' So as to not be confused with bat god of day, who has temples at every street corner and acolytes handing out flyers at WalMart.

You don't have any space for the swords (feast/famine, fire/ice, light/shadow are probably the big ones).
Glen elendra archmage could also make the list. Not as good anymore, but it used be a big one, and it could definitely come back.
Batterskull (I'd lump it in with the creatures) should also be on there.
Delve threats (tasigur or gurmag mainly, but tombstalker too) have popped up in sideboards from time to time.
I'd also consider a note for kill spells. Cards like dismember, disfigure, go for the throat, etc, that, while mainboardable, often find their way into sideboards.
Spreading seas, fulminator mage, and rain of tears are definitely important.
Someone on the previous page had a big game hunter in their board.
Liliana's defeat has been kind of quiet after release, but its definitely playable.
On that note, ratchet bomb should get a note along side EE.
I'd recommend putting ancestral visions in there too, as its potentially a worthwhile sideboard card.
You have no room for lands either. Cavern of souls, tect edge/ghost quarter, and others may all be worth including.
I'm not sure if you're willing to consider splashes (as it would be a lot more content to add) but theres plenty of things in other colors that would obviously make the list.

Quote from Ryperior74 »

Lack of flash disappoints me.

Seriously. 1/1 flier for 1 with a very relevant ability late game, and you want it to be a counterspell too?

"omg it's so bad!" It's a 1 mana MERFOLK who becomes a 2/2 with an ISLAND. It's fine for an Uncommon.

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