Faeries seems like a really good deck for the meta right now but there's a few questions i have. Is there a way we can build it so there isn't so much air? Cantrips and 1 mana discard seems like bad draws mid to late game because mana is always in high demand since the deck seems clogged with four drops, essentially there are so many good four drops we can be playing how to do we figure out some good plays on curve? Are there any more high power creatures we could include or is something like vampire nighthawk viable? Could always go grixis and include earthquake too. I like the tempo aspect but it seems like once we get behind on board there are a lot of matchups where we don't have the big beaters to wall the board, and have to end up chump blocking till we lose.
Has anyone tested vedalken shackles? It is a super powerful card I feel is really underrated. How does everyone feel about delve threats, and if so, what are the merits of thought scour in this deck? Faeries is super close to being amazing but I think we are missing ways to gain life and ways to have more deadly threats. has anyone tried to make vault of the archangel or zealous persecution work? In WB tokens it is a huge tempo swing and can often win the game against certain decks. If we add white, esper charm? A card like esper charm is exactly what this deck needs in my opinion.
I'm going to disagree with you slightly about the amount of "air" in the deck. Most lists only play ~3 cantrips (even counting ancestral visions) and they play an important role in smoothing out draws since faeries, like any other midrange or tempo strategy, is very weak to drawing its cards in the wrong order. Discard is kind of a necessary evil, since it does become dead later in the game but it's an important piece of disruption in some matchups where our removal is dead and our counters can be overcome (ad nauseam and Gx Tron come to mind as examples). You can hedge the discard a bit by playing Collective Brutality (can function as a removal spell if needed), and I think the manabase is robust enough to support a few cantrips, since we're already supporting 7 creature-lands, so it's actually almost impossible to flood out with the deck, and 1 mana at instant speed isn't going to change the math that much.
In terms of actual curve, it isn't that bad. For my list (a couple posts from the bottom on the previous page) My curve looks like this (ignoring cipt lands):
1 drop - Opt, Thoughtseize, Fatal push (9)
2 drop - Spellstutter, Bitterblossom, Mana leak, snapcaster, go for the throat, collective brutality (16, 13 if you ignore snapcaster)
3 drop - Vendilion clique (3, but I also frequently 1+2 drop, especially with snapcaster)
4 drop - Jace, mistbind, Cryptic command (6)
The point is, we do have a very low curve, and we can deploy optimally because we have access to the "flash" gameplan so we don't need to do as much guesswork for sequencing our spells. You're correct that we're much less favored if we get behind on board, but that's the big difference between midrange and tempo, midrange has the beefy creatures to stall aggression with and rebuild an overwhelming board, while tempo wants to use its spells to stall the board while its creatures try to win the damage race. Focus on trying to use spells to buy additional attack steps instead of trying to win the card advantage/card quality battles, and see if that makes a difference in how your games play out.
There are several lists that have liked Gifted Aetherborn out of the sideboard, but nighthawk cost a little too much for the effect from my testing. Kalitas, traitor of ghet is a similar effect that also lets us position as more of a midrange strategy (usually I like it in matchups where I side out mistbind, so it rarely raises the curve any). I've also played a lot with vedalken shackles in the past (that's why I still play a relatively high basic count) and I think it just ends up being a little too clunky for us right now. We're not hurting for ways to deal with creatures, and it's a huge blowout if it gets answered (which isn't too hard to do in Modern now, everyone packs some artifact hate). I'll probably try testing it again soon (I have a sideboard flex spot that's a damnation right now) because I love shackles, but I suspect that it will prove a little underwhelming. I'll post an update after I've had a chance to play with it.
I realize that I didn't give you the advice that I try to give everyone asking for decklist thoughts. Here it is: At the end of the day, the Faeries shell is flexible enough to support a wide variety of different playstyles, so what I consider to be optimal based on my experience and playstyle may not be optimal for you based on your playstyle. There's a lot of room for customization, metagaming, and pet cards in Faeries, and I suspect that you're at the point where the personalization and experimentation process will become more important than the "peer review" process. That said, I'm going to reproduce my list here and talk about my own matchup thoughts and card choices, and you can use that information to supplement your own testing and matchup plans to settle on a list that you are most happy with.
If I weren't playing the jaces, I'd be playing a sunken hollow and a 3rd cryptic instead.
The cards I consider to be my "signature" on the decklist are the brutalities main with inquisitions side, and the echoing truth, Glen elendra archmage, and to the slaughter in the side as well. The Jaces are the closest things to flex slots in the maindeck, and the archmage, EE, To the slaughter, and 2nd Damnation are the most flexible slots in the sideboard. (I'm also considering nihil spellbombs over surgicals in the side, but I'll need to test before making a decision)
When I was learning the deck, there was a long time where I played without discard maindeck at all. Because of that experience, I'm still very comfortable playing with below-average numbers of discard spells, so long as I have access to them for matchups where they're important. For this reason, I tend to side out discard a lot and play very conservatively with my counterspells (unless I'm deliberately trying to create an "always has it" impression for later in the match).
The way I approach most matches is to treat BB and vendilion clique as my main threats, and the rest of the deck should support buying time to let them kill the opponent. I can present a surprising amount of "burst" damage with tar pits and additional flash threats, so oftentimes I can position myself to race against a lot of decks with boards that look solidly behind my opponents. That means that I'm planning to try and use my removal and counters to keep the board clear early, and then allow something inconsequential to "slip through the cracks" while I deploy my BB or clique. From there, I'm advantaged because every time they cast something I don't feel threatened by, I can just ignore it and keep pressuring them and every time they play something I do feel threatened by, I can spend my answer on it and keep pressuring them.
As far as sideboarding goes, I usually trim into mistbinds (either to lower my curve or to let me bring in archmage and/or Kalitas), discard (sometimes brutalities come out like against Gx Tron, sometimes thoughtseize comes out like against Company decks, usually for battlefield interaction or to massage the discard numbers if I want inquisitions instead of one of the others), or removal (usually for additional discard or counters, matchup dependent). Against decks where I really need to have a good density of interaction like burn, I also side out fields because the LD effect is meaningless and I usually can't afford to spend the time to try and convert it into another land. Mana leaks are also sometimes cut in matchups where I can't rely on them being impactful (against cavern of souls or aether vial specifically, usually these are matchups where damnation is good)
Kalitas and Damnation often come in together against beefy creature decks (Gx midrange, Eldrazi tron, etc.) because wiping their board and leaving a board of my own behind pretty good, and the cards are solid even if I only draw one of them. Against go-wide decks I also bring in EE because setting it on 1-2 usually kills a bunch of stuff.
Surgicals only come in against dredge, storm, and occasionally valakut where I'm targeting specific things to hinder the opposing gameplan and I can count on those things ending up in the graveyard at some point without much assistance from me.
The counters come in if I want to upgrade mana leak or I can't rely on my removal being live (spell-based decks). Inquisitions and brutality can come in for the same reasons. Archmage can also come in in these spots to present an interactive top-end, replacing a mistbind.
To the slaughter is for if I want an additional removal spell, I'm playing against walkers, or I'm expecting hexproof threats.
Echoing truth is my catch-all. It comes in against non-creature permanents that I need to answer cheaply (blood moon, ensnaring bridge, etc.), tokens (lingering souls in particular), and whenever I have an extra spot while sideboarding. There's been far more times where I've left it out and missed it G2 than where I've brought it in and regretted it, and I bring it in a lot.
As an example: here's my sideboard plan against burn.
Out:
-4 BB
-3 Thoughtseize
-2 Mistbind
-1 field of ruin
In:
+2 inquisition
+1 brutality
+2 countersquall
+1 dispel
+1 Kalitas
+1 archmage
+1 EE
+1 echoing truth
The plan: Cut the life loss cards, lower the curve as much as possible, and plan to trade my cards for their cards as aggressively as possible. I'll establish a clock along the way (SSS, snapcaster especially) and give priority to keeping my life total high. 1 field is still in because occasionally I can keep them off a white source.
Here's Eldrazi Tron:
Out:
-3 thoughtseize
-2 brutality
In:
+2 damnation
+1 kalitas
+1 echoing truth
+1 to the slaughter
The plan: Discard is bad (chalice for 1 is common because they expect ceremonious rejection, plus it's a significant diminishing return). High-impact removal and board effects are good. Field should trade with either cavern, temple (to set them back a mana), or to keep them off tron if necessary, and should usually be used in their draw step. I'm probably letting Matter reshapers resolve and planning to answer them later, but TKS, smasher, and ballista should be dealt with ASAP. They will probably have mana trouble at some point, either from flooding or drawing the wrong mix of lands and not being able to deploy threats smoothly. Find an opening to resolve a BB/v-clique, and then slow their board development down as much as possible.
Liking the the list. Very classic. Your creature base matches what I've found to be optimal for my style of play.
Field of ruin is a lot better than ghost quarter, because we can use it to fix our mana without putting us behind a land in spots where the LD effect doesn't matter. I'd also suggest cutting 1 swamp for the 3rd tar pit, the blue source matters and the extra creature-land makes finding one when you want it more consistent. Since you aren't playing Jace, I'd also consider adding a 25th land (extra fetchland, probably).
You may consider maining the thoughtseizes instead of the inquisitions, there's some decks (like tron or scapeshift) where inquisition might as well be blank. Even if you draw TS in a matchup where the life-loss is really bad, there's nothing preventing you from holding it or pitching it to a brutality.
I think you're a little heavy on counters and light on removal. At the very least, you want to main a couple answers to bigger things like smasher, tasigur, or primeval titan. I'd cut 2 counters (probably the spell snares, they conflict with your pushes a lot) for a murderous cut and a hero's downfall (this will free up some space in the sideboard too). If you add the 25th land, you'll want to cut one more counter (leaving 2 plus 3 cryptic plus 4 SSS).
Sideboard, I'm not sure what the 1 chalice is doing, so you may consider cutting it. I'd also upgrade the spell pierces to a mixture of negate (or countersquall) and dispel, the relic to nihil spellbomb (and add a second if you moved the removal to the main) and find a spot for an echoing truth (a great catch-all for when you have more stuff to board out than in). 3 ceremonious rejection seems a bit heavy, especially since Eldrazi tron usually chalices for 1 against us. If you still want that effect, I'd trim 1 for a Kalitas to help against more midrange and Burn while still being effective against E tron (the negates are almost just as good against G tron). If you take all of this advice (move 2 removal main, cut chalice and 1 rejection, add 1 spellbomb, 1 echoing truth, and 1 Kalitas) you'll have 1 slot left over for whatever effect you want. My suggestions would be 2nd Damnation or Glen Elendra Archmage. If you have a good reason for keeping chalice, you can keep it in this slot.
So, I am thinking of buying into fairies. So I just wanted to ask everyone here what they think of my list, and for a bit of advice on it in general. I am 2 cards over 60, so I need to figure out what to cut, but I just am not sure. I also don't have a sideboard worked out, but I have a general idea of what I would be putting in it.
So, as you can see I am splashing white for MB Path to Exile, and it will lead to SB cards like Rest in peace etc. I am going for a bit of a grindy control feel for the deck. So, I am thinking that maybe 2-3 Mutavaults might be better served as Celestial Colonnade possibly, but it lowers the synergy for spellstutter sprite, making it slightly worse, and I don't have that much white spells MB.
As for my cuts in general to fit my list together, I am not too sure where to go. I feel like I am a little light on discard with only a 2/2 split of IOK and TS already, but I hope that my removal package and counterspell choices can help balance that out with Snap for the late game recasts. About the only things I can think of cutting would be 1 Cryptic Command and then maybe a Snapcaster Mage, but that feels bad to me. So I am looking to people with more experience to help out with this decision. If you think my deck needs a complete overhaul, by all means, don't be scared to hurt my feelings, I won't get butt hurt over anything here. Like I said, I am very inexperienced with Fairies, so any and all advice is welcome.
The first bit of advice is always to play the deck a lot and figure out what works for you. Faeries is extremely customizable for how you want to play it, so all our theorycrafting is to some extent limited by our own play styles. That said, here are my thoughts:
In terms of overall gameplan, I'd avoid playing too heavily toward the grindy midrange/control gamplan, because Faeries doesn't have a good source of card advantage to bury people with. Faeries is best at exploiting little openings, which makes the "core" faeries gameplan look a lot more like a slow delver deck than a grindy jund or esper control. One of the ways you can re-coup some of that card advantage is by playing a heavy creature-land suite (6+), because it makes it almost impossible to flood out. Another way to add a grindy dimension to the deck is 2 jace, the mind sculptor, which would replace 1 mistbind and 1 cryptic (giving you a 2/2/2 split). Just remember that, in general, be as aggressive as you can afford to be in-game, because faeries isn't well-suited to extremely long games like dedicated control decks are.
You seem to be a bit light on removal and a bit heavy on countermagic. I'd consider cutting 2-3 counters for an additional removal spell and maybe the extra discard. One piece of tech that I've found helps here is Collective brutality, because it can be a removal and a discard game 1 where the flexibility is more important (it's rare that removal and discard are good in the same matchups). Adding 2 collective brutality lets you cut 1 discard in addition to the 2-3 counters, which nets you at least one of the cuts you were looking for (and leaves you with an effective 5 discard and 8 removal, much better numbers without too much moving things around).
I'd also suggest mana leak over remand. Mana leak is more grindy because it's an answer to their threat. Remand is more combo-oriented because it just delays their threat, which means you still need to find a way to answer the threat later. (if the threat isn't worth answering, you probably shouldn't be spending time playing a counterspell on it. If it is worth answering, you want to answer it now instead of hoping to draw an answer for it) Spell snares are fine but not great, they overlap a lot with fatal push.
I'd also consider trimming into your creature base. Scion in particular is only really good if you're already ahead, and is extremely awkward when behind, so it's probably the weak link in your grindy plan. 4 snapcaster is also a lot without a ton of good ways to take advantage (removal, counters, and discard are only situational, and you have a lot of creatures compared to the "average" snapcaster deck). I'd consider trimming 1 snapcaster (you have plenty of other creatures that give value, unlike most other control strategies) and at least one scion for some copies of opt, it will helps smooth things out considerably and also give snapcaster something to target when you just want to deploy it.
I mentioned Jace above as a reason to trim a mistbind, but I think 3 mistbind is a bit too heavy regardless. I think 2 is generally the right number, because you draw it consistently enough, but it seldom clogs up your hand in awkward spots.
The manabase looks all right, but I'd consider trimming a darkslick shores for a Celestial colonnade instead of trimming mutavaults. You will want a good density of creature-lands (I'd recommend at least 7, especially since you'll have access to colonnade) for the late-game to help secure wins. You may have to compromise on the Godless shrine in order to make cryptic command cast more consistently (but test it, I'm not sure). Full disclosure, I really don't like darkslick shores in the faeries manabase, but I'm in the minority on that question, so I'm not going to be pushy about it.
In terms of the white splash as a whole, you'll need to take a hard look at what it gives you. Maindeck, it doesn't give much, because path is only a slight upgrade over things like murderous cut or go for the throat that you already have in black, and the cost of making the manabase support a third color is significant. My advice would be to take a hard look at the white cards you want to play and determine how many are just "upgrades of effects you already had access to in UB and how many of them are essential effects that you wouldn't get otherwise. RiP may be a "unique effect" on that definition, but path is certainly just an upgrade, as are things like celestial purge and disenchant (echoing truth works just as well much of the time). I'd love to see a sideboard plan to better see how essential this white splash is to you.
Personally, I'd blame the misplay, not the manabase. I think that's the point: that regardless of "unluck" or deckbuilding decisions, playing to your outs and minimizing your opponent's opportunities to close you out will pay off.
There's a couple reasons for catacombs. My list has an above-average number of islands (part of that's a hold-over from the vedalken shackles days), so they are untapped fairly consistently. The other reason is that my playstyle is much more comfortable playing a tapped land on turn 1 (esp. on the play) than on turn 4, so I really don't like darkslick shores in the list. I play a slightly more reactive early game (fewer early discard, holding opt) so losing the T1 mana doesn't cost me all that much, where a delayed cryptic can be game-ending. I think this holds even more true now that Jace is another 4-drop that we want to support.
Mostly, though, I've been very happy with the manabase and haven't encountered a reason to mess with it. Sometimes the best reason is just, "it's working for me."
The "best build" is never a settled thing with Faeries, because the best build of Faeries is a gameplan, not just a list of card choices. The bad builds try to be reactive and play control against everything without having built-in forms of inevitability. The good builds deploy their threats proactively (Bitterblossom, V-Clique) and then press the attack when the opponent tries to play around your answers or punishes your opponent for not playing around them by tightening the noose even further.
Sideboards tend to be all over the place, and depend very heavily on what your maindeck looks like. I'll reproduce my most recent list from last month, and I'd also highly recommend Spellcheck's list from last week if you're familiar with using Liliana of the Veil effectively.
Some good benchmarks for when you're deckbuilding and playing:
All the successful lists tend to play 3 thoughtseize, 2 inquisition, and 3 collective brutality in the 75, with 5 of them main and the other 3 in the board. Maining 2 brutality is good if you want the hedge against burn, which is a hard matchup.
In the side you'll want a 2-4 ways to shut down big dude decks like Eldrazi or GW (Kalitas, damnation), 2-3 graveyard hate, some additional counters/removal to tweak maindeck numbers, and a few catch-all answers to obnoxious things your opponents can do (echoing truth is this for me). Don't go overboard on narrow answers to stuff, your gameplan is already powerful, so you just want to make sure that your answers line up correctly with their threats so you don't die first.
Your main threats are Bitterblossom and Vendilion Clique (on their end step, this lets you hold up (or bluff) a counter in case they play something that you absolutely need to answer right away). Both are a 7-turn clock, and should be attacking as often as possible. If you're flooding on snapcasters, a T2 snapcaster (their end step, no flashback) is also a respectable threat, since you should be attacking if you can.
In close matchups, the right play is often the more aggressive one that trades some damage for putting them into "blitz you to 0" range so long as you are safe from dying. This means know when you can race and when you need to stall first.
Don't be afraid to mulligan. I've found I'm more likely to lose games where I keep a bad 7 than games where I mull to 5 to find a decent hand. We also mulligan very well and have plenty of ways to play from down cards.
If you lose a game (which will happen a lot, especially when you're learning the deck), keep in the mindset that you are the captain of your fate with this deck. Sometimes bad beats happen and there wasn't anything you could do about it, but most of the time losses come from decisions that you (the pilot) make that don't pan out, either because they were a mistake or because you needed to make a decision and picked incorrectly. Also, commit to learning from your victories as well so you can re-create them in the next matchup.
Unfortunately, I can't recommend a list with Jace, the mind sculptor in it yet, as I haven't gotten a chance to test one yet. If you play Jace you'll probably want to be on 24 lands, play 7-8 shuffle effects, slightly fewer discard spells, and slightly more counters/removal, so that you have more live draws when you brainstorm.
Other than discard, value planeswalkers and bitterblossom itself, I always try to exclude sorcery options as much as possible. It is why in my view Serum Visions has no place in this deck, for example.
Somewhat rhetorically, why would someone ever play serum visions over Opt in this deck? Instant and scry before draw are way more powerful than sorcery and scry afterwards, regardless of the extra scried card.
3 lands on turn 5 is pretty rough, especially since your hand has a lot of clunky elements to it. That said, the first this to accept is that we're really behind and can only answer one burn spell with the cards currently in hand. We're completely dead to Boros charm, Lightning helix, Eidolon of the great revel, and main-phase rift bolt. We're also dead to suspend rift bolt if we don't draw a mutavault by our next main phase. We can potentially play around them playing draw-pass with an instant-speed bolt held up, but that line almost always ends with us dead since we need to draw both lands and counters while they only need to draw any sort of action to overload us. That said, we can still easily win if we get a little lucky and our opponent plays a little poorly.
The cards that I don't like here are BB, Mistbind, and second Vendilion, though Mistbind can buy us a couple turns once our plan starts coming together (thats 1 turn from locking out their cast spell and potentially a second from shortening our own clock by a turn). My goal for the next turn cycle is to resolve a Vendilion clique after my opponent does nothing relevant, though I still want to hold up SSS in case they try to lava spike me. I'm going to target myself with the trigger, since there's very little I can do to disrupt their play by seeing what they drew and I absolutely want to replace the BB in my hand with literally anything else. Since we only have 3 lands in play we can't even rip an untapped source to hold up SSS so Vendilion main is right out, so we're going to have to hope to.
So here's the plan: If they draw-pass or draw-swiftspear-attack, I'm ignoring them and casting Vendilion on their end step, shipping BB to the bottom. Going to 1 off a swiftspear attack shuts off my fetchlands, but I think I'm far enough behind that I can't afford to play around that. If they give me a chance I'm countering any 1-mana burn spell with SSS and hoping to draw out of it (smart burn players probably wouldn't play into your SSS with no follow-up, but it still might happen). If they play Eidolon I'm responding with Vendilion clique, but I'm probably dead anyway. If they goblin guide, I'll probably respond to the attack trigger with Vendilion and blocking, as that gives me the most extra looks at finding a land, which is the most important thing I'm missing.
If I survive to my next turn (drawing the 2nd tar pit), I can start attacking with Vendilion and have fatal push + SSS up to counter most of their draws and remove that swiftspear that hit me last turn. With them at 14 I need 4-5 attacks to kill (depending on how I draw) though if I get to 5-6 lands I can use mistbind + SSS + Tar pit to deal 8-10 damage on the last attack if necessary. With the draw steps you mentioned in your hint, I'm going to push their first swiftspear and SSS the second one, attack them to 7 on the next turn and mistbind in their upkeep (champion SSS) which lets me attack for 10 the following turn and strand the bolt in their hand.
If they hold the second swiftspear, we can hold up SSS (since we don't know they have a swiftspear), attack them to 8, and then we either have to bluff double-counter (4 untapped lands makes that somewhat feasible) or decide that they don't have an instant and Mistbind them anyway in their upkeep. The numbers make the mistbind line awkward (attack with tar pit puts them to 1 and we still only have the one counter), but the bluff really only buys us enough time for them to beat double-counter (which is one turn) so in either case we're pretty sunk with the draws we end up with. We can probably bait the second swiftspear with a little showmanship though. If we act like we just drew the fatal push off the Vendilion clique by casting it main phase, we can probably sell the lie that we don't have anything relevant and induce the opponent to play into our SSS, securing the kill.
For challenge 2:
As an aside, this situation illustrates why I'm not a huge fan of Liliana in this deck.
Since they can't tron next turn or the turn after (turn 5 at the earliest), there's no point in holding up mana leak since we want to answer their threats, not their mana. I want to mistbind them on turn 6 if at all possible, and cryptic/mana leak and all my lands are important here for bridging to that point, so I don't really want to Liliana either, though having her in play for future turns isn't terrible for if we draw extra lands/SSS. That said, here's my line. Play tar pit this turn and attack with mutavault.
My general plan is to start attacking with mutavault and plan to mana leak the first threat they play by the time they assemble tron(~turn 5), then mistbind the next turn and hold up cryptic while I clock them. That represents 13 damage (mutavault attacks T3, 4, and 5, plus mistbind attack T7 and one tar pit attack once they get to a low total) with cryptic representing at least 4 more damage (another mistbind attack T8+, with no tar pit since I need the mana to cast the cryptic). This gives me ~6 additional draw steps to find 3 damage before Tron has a decent chance of starting to fight back, and if they can't answer Tar pit they die anyway.
If I'm afraid of T5 World breaker exiling mutavault or wurmcoil engine with 3 mana up I can Mistbind on T5 instead and then try to cash in mana leak later, either with Liliana or if they tap low for something. I don't have quite as much time here, but cryptic can help bridge the gap.
The worst-case is they play tron land into oblivion stone on 3, but we can still make their lines awkward here. We can just continue to attack with mutavault and hold up mana leak and cryptic until they deploy a threat (~T5-6), where we can counter-bounce O-stone with cryptic and then resolve Mistbind the following turn. This lets us maximize the delay in their threat deployment and deals at least 13 damage (assuming we play an untapped land on T6 and immediately get aggressive with Tar pit after mistbind resolves), giving them exactly one turn to answer mistbind/tar pit, with O-stone costing 8 mana (of the ~10-12 they'd have at best) and leaving them at 2 with both tar pit and mutavault threatening lethal the next turn.
In any event, we have a ton of draw steps to improve our lines with things like thoughtseize, BB, Field of ruin, or additional mutavaults/tar pits, and even the tools we have can put them to nearly dead.
There is an argument for deploying Liliana on 3 and discarding mana leak as it can begin to pinch their threat/mana balance over time, but we're already not favored going long, so I'd rather start getting with mutavault and not try to prolong the game by putting us both into topdeck mode.
I agree with you that not pushing our advantage and thinking control rather than tempo is the single, most-common way to lose games with Faeries. Faeries can seemingly win out of nowhere, but those wins usually take a lot of setup and posturing correctly, knowing how much time you need to buy, and identifying what you need to answer vs what you can ignore.
I will experiment with Peppersmoke as a removal, because I've noticed a lot of small body creatures in my meta. Thinks like Steel Overseer, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben or even Vendilion Clique in some control decks. Not sure if that is something that would be applicable to you as well.
In addition to what Ym1r said here, we're already naturally very strong against random X/1 creatures because of Bitterblossom tokens. We want our removal to be able to answer other problem creatures as well.
Due to card availability, I’m playing -1 Jace, +1 Fatal Push since my local store tournament doesn’t allow proxies.
I played a couple of games vs Humans (a home brew version) in between draft rounds at FNM, going 2-3. We were just playing for fun, and I made a few errors/ plays for style points. It seemed to me, that if swarm decks like that get ahead, it’s difficult to fight through and protect a Jace. Bitterblossom is one of the best cards outside of removal in the early game. Also, there’s some hard decisions in this matchup if you need to -1 Jace, as quite a few creatures have ETBs (this version had Venser, Shaper Savant).
After those few games, I’m a little unimpressed by the discard and counterspells. I know we can Jace them away, but if we don’t have a fetch, we’re just hitting them again, and they also are kinda bad to draw off the 0 ability. I know Thoughtseize is a nessisary evil sort of card, and the counterspells help in some matches, but it just didn’t feel great hitting them when digging for action cards. It’s bad enough that we have dead Bitterblossoms in the deck, which clog up the ‘brainstorms’. Opt also feels like a nessisary evil. It helps find lands, and smooth draws out, but it also sometimes feel like spinning wheels and durdling around. What if we cut the three Opt for Ancestral Vision, the Mana Leak for Snapcaster #4 or Vendilion Clique #3, leaving one counterspell for emergencies. Is there anyone who shares these sentiments?
The question you're asking is a lot closer to "how should I sideboard?" than it is "are these cards worth playing?" Did you test sideboarded games at all? Also, how did the games play out when you won vs. when you lost? You managed to pull a 40% win rate making "a few errors," and there's every reason to believe that tightening up your play and taking a larger sample size than just 5 games might see the win rate climb closer to 50%. It's rarely correct to make major changes to your deck based on one matchup.
That said, your sideboard looks like it may want to hedge a little harder against humans. 1 Damnation and 2 Collective Brutality (and Engineered Explosives I guess) aren't enough to replace all the cards you want to take out. Maybe the Liliana's Defeat (which seems super narrow, btw) gets replaced with a second Damnation or a Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet? Maybe Ravenous trap could get cut for something similar? (unless there's a bunch of dredge in your local meta)
On Opt/Ancestral in particular, I'm firmly in the opt camp. I currently run opts in the slot that I used to devote to AV, and have no plans to change that back anytime soon. Quantity of cards rarely matters to us so long as we can use the cards to buy time and keep pressing the attack. I'd rather have 1 card that I know for sure is going to buy me a turn than 3 where (more than likely) 1-2 are irrelevant lands, and I'd certainly rather have that card now than 4 turns from now.
I took some of your advice, and although it looks weird to me to only be playing 3 Fatal Push and 3 Opt, it's completely possible that it's correct. I also hedged a bit on the counterspells. Mana Leak is good early, and Logic Knot is good late, especially with the extra fetchland and cheap spells. I may have made a mistake cutting the Inquisitions completely out, but I think Thoughtseize is the discard spell I'd want the most, and without Liliana, we won't be discarding dead copies. I think 4 discard spells looks right. It's also totally possible that I'm misinterpreting your ideas and internalizing biases, but who knows? What do you think of this new version?
New version looks pretty solid. It looks like you caught what I was saying. I'd love to hear how it performs for you.
I added a Scalding Tarn over Bloodstained Mire, as I only have one basic Swamp, and I’d prefer if my fetches got the most possible targets. It may be better to play a 3/2 split of basics, but I’m not sure. All I know is I wanted an extra one to help vs all the Field of Ruin and Path to Exile going around.
The other questionable choice is the full 4 Cryptic Command. I’ll admit, I’m most likely wrong here, I just love this card too much.
What do you think? Is this a good way going forward?
I'm going to be kind of critical, but don't interpret that as me not liking the list. I like a lot of the choices you've made (the removal suite and manabase in particular) in this list. Think of this as me saying "based on my experience with the deck, here's some problems I could see you having." As always, though, Faeries is one of the most customizable decks you can play, and different playstyles will want different card choices. At the end of the day you play what works for you.
I've got nothing against running 4 cryptic, it's a great card. That said, 24 lands with no opt is asking to have trouble casting your 4-drops reliably. I'm not a fan of Liliana for a similar reason. You're playing 8 4-drops, so in Liliana games you're going to be "spending" a lot of powerful cards without getting any benefit from them, especially since most of them want to sit in your hand and wait for your opponent to make a move. Liliana is best when you can proactively deploy all your threats and answers before using her to mitigate the downside of her +1. It's really anti-synergistic with Jace and the Faeries package (including cryptic), which want you to be holding cards on your opponent's turn to interact.
It's been a while since I last gave the "discard talk" on here, but the gist of it is that I think discard spells are a necessary evil in this deck, not a strong point like in jund or shadow. True you get information and can proactively deal with an opponent's cards, but you're spending your time and mana to answer a card that you opponent hasn't invested any of their time or mana into, which leaves them free to deploy something else. Think of the early game against a deck like humans (traditionally aggro decks are our hardest matchups). If you T1 discard, you may be able to take their vial or champion of the parish, but they'll just be able to play something else on their turn and you'll begin falling behind on board (that's the most common reason we lose games by far). If you have a fatal push instead, then they have to commit to playing one of their creatures and you trade their entire turn for your turn answering it, which lets you maintain board parity. Discard is also a horrible draw late, while fatal push is still live. Historically, I've had a lot of success playing with no discard in the main, so even though I think it's necessary to pack some now, it's a supplement to my tempo gameplan, not a major piece of it.
If you'd asked me to re-build your maindeck, here's how I'd do it.
and I'd swap the 2 inquisitions with the 2 collective brutality. I'd also recommend playing a 3rd tar pit as a 25th land over the 3rd opt. Bringing Brutality main over inquisition allows us to treat them as duress/disfigure split cards, which takes some pressure off our removal without compromising the discard numbers (it's also a maindeck hedge against burn, since that's still not a fun matchup). This lets us cut one fatal push for an opt, and we can cut 1 thoughtseize and 1 cryptic for the other two (the cryptic and the opts will take a lot of pressure off your manabase). I'm also cutting Liliana for Mana leak, since we want to be holding up answers and forcing our opponent to take the initiative in our interactions (we're playing tempo, not aggro or midrange). You'll notice that I've cut 3 sorcery-speed cards for instants, which allows you to play the flash game that faeries is so well-known (and feared) for. If you still want the 4th cryptic, be sure to play the 25th land and then include it as a 61st card for testing. As you test you'll figure out what card is the one you want the least.
What I am missing in the recent lists is something that gives a fast clock and can finish the game when it lands. I mean, we have Bitterblossom, Jace, the Mind Sculptor and maybe Creeping Tar Pit but they are slow in my opinion.
Sure, an unchecked Bitterblossom basically wins all by itself, but how often does that happen? Jace is amazing, but hes more of a facilitator. His -12 takes 9 turns in which he can be answered.
Tar Pits are very mana intensive. 4 Lands to frequently swing for 3 is an expensive plan. I'm not convinced that Vendillion Clique is enough to make that strategy viable.
Am I not seeing the obvious?
We're a slower tempo deck, not fast tempo like a delver deck would be. That said, we play a significantly higher percentage of disruption than most other tempo decks because all of our creatures are also disruptive, and every time we use one we speed up our clock a bit.
That said, I think you may be underestimating how fast our clock really is. Bitterblossom may be a 7-turn clock, but it's a 7-turn clock that is virtually impossible to remove in Modern right now. Tasigur may be a faster clock on paper (5 turns instead of 7) but a single removal spell turns it off entirely, where a removal spell against BB buys at most an extra turn. I've actually come to see Vendilion Clique as my 5-7 copies of BB, since it provides the same 7-turn clock, with the advantage that you can save Vendilion for when your opponent tries to play around your mana leak.
Creeping Tar pit isn't one of our major tempo threats because of the mana investment, but it is a great closer, shaving 1-2 turns off our clock. Besides, when you get to turn 10 and have 7-8 lands in play, what else are you spending all your mana on that you can't afford to send Tar Pit in for 3 extra damage? Many opponents don't really factor in tar pit when they think about how much time they have left, so finding out that you have 1 more turn instead of 3 to answer the board can be a nasty surprise, and often make the difference between a win and a loss.
My stance when I'm playing is "let my clock (BB, Vendilion) do its work, everything else is there to help push my advantage when my opponent tries to answer the clock." Be aware of how demoralizing it is for the opponent to play against this sort of strategy. Every time they don't play a spell to play around countermagic, they get hit for 3 and have to play the same game again next turn. Every time they play into your countermagic, you flash down an answer (SSS, snapcaster, Mistbind) and suddenly your clock is a turn faster than it was before. The opponent has no choice but to let you do what you want, because every time they try to fight it just makes things worse for them.
Pretty much every card in faeries is good at buying time for us to get in another attack, so I think you'd be surprised at how much time you really have to finish the game with this deck.
Don't underestimate the fixing that field of ruin can provide. I run 2 in my list (25 lands) and my mana is infinitely better now than when they were ghost quarters. Even on 25 lands, I've found that it's virtually impossible for me to flood out with the deck.
Your list does look a bit 4-heavy, especially with no opt. You might consider cutting 1-2 cryptic command to smooth out the curve, maybe adding back in some number of snapcaster, V-clique, and/or mana leak/logic knot. I don't know if anyone is really sure whether to cut into mistbinds or cryptics first, hopefully we'll be able to get some reps in soon to find out.
That's a good point about dismember killing Hazoret. I'll have to try and find room to slot one back into my list.
I'm going to disagree with you slightly about the amount of "air" in the deck. Most lists only play ~3 cantrips (even counting ancestral visions) and they play an important role in smoothing out draws since faeries, like any other midrange or tempo strategy, is very weak to drawing its cards in the wrong order. Discard is kind of a necessary evil, since it does become dead later in the game but it's an important piece of disruption in some matchups where our removal is dead and our counters can be overcome (ad nauseam and Gx Tron come to mind as examples). You can hedge the discard a bit by playing Collective Brutality (can function as a removal spell if needed), and I think the manabase is robust enough to support a few cantrips, since we're already supporting 7 creature-lands, so it's actually almost impossible to flood out with the deck, and 1 mana at instant speed isn't going to change the math that much.
In terms of actual curve, it isn't that bad. For my list (a couple posts from the bottom on the previous page) My curve looks like this (ignoring cipt lands):
1 drop - Opt, Thoughtseize, Fatal push (9)
2 drop - Spellstutter, Bitterblossom, Mana leak, snapcaster, go for the throat, collective brutality (16, 13 if you ignore snapcaster)
3 drop - Vendilion clique (3, but I also frequently 1+2 drop, especially with snapcaster)
4 drop - Jace, mistbind, Cryptic command (6)
The point is, we do have a very low curve, and we can deploy optimally because we have access to the "flash" gameplan so we don't need to do as much guesswork for sequencing our spells. You're correct that we're much less favored if we get behind on board, but that's the big difference between midrange and tempo, midrange has the beefy creatures to stall aggression with and rebuild an overwhelming board, while tempo wants to use its spells to stall the board while its creatures try to win the damage race. Focus on trying to use spells to buy additional attack steps instead of trying to win the card advantage/card quality battles, and see if that makes a difference in how your games play out.
There are several lists that have liked Gifted Aetherborn out of the sideboard, but nighthawk cost a little too much for the effect from my testing. Kalitas, traitor of ghet is a similar effect that also lets us position as more of a midrange strategy (usually I like it in matchups where I side out mistbind, so it rarely raises the curve any). I've also played a lot with vedalken shackles in the past (that's why I still play a relatively high basic count) and I think it just ends up being a little too clunky for us right now. We're not hurting for ways to deal with creatures, and it's a huge blowout if it gets answered (which isn't too hard to do in Modern now, everyone packs some artifact hate). I'll probably try testing it again soon (I have a sideboard flex spot that's a damnation right now) because I love shackles, but I suspect that it will prove a little underwhelming. I'll post an update after I've had a chance to play with it.
Here's my current list:
4 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
2 Watery grave
5 Island
1 swamp
2 drowned catacomb
3 creeping Tar pit
4 Mutavault
2 field of ruin
Creatures (12)
4 Spellstutter Sprite
3 Vendilion clique
3 snapcaster mage
2 mistbind clique
4 Bitterblossom
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Cryptic Command
2 Mana leak
3 opt
3 fatal push
1 dismember
1 go for the throat
1 murderous cut
3 thoughtseize
2 collective brutality
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Glen elendra Archmage
2 Damnation
2 surgical extraction
1 echoing truth
1 Engineered explosives
2 countersquall
1 dispel
2 inquisition of Kozilek
1 collective brutality
1 To the Slaughter
If I weren't playing the jaces, I'd be playing a sunken hollow and a 3rd cryptic instead.
The cards I consider to be my "signature" on the decklist are the brutalities main with inquisitions side, and the echoing truth, Glen elendra archmage, and to the slaughter in the side as well. The Jaces are the closest things to flex slots in the maindeck, and the archmage, EE, To the slaughter, and 2nd Damnation are the most flexible slots in the sideboard. (I'm also considering nihil spellbombs over surgicals in the side, but I'll need to test before making a decision)
When I was learning the deck, there was a long time where I played without discard maindeck at all. Because of that experience, I'm still very comfortable playing with below-average numbers of discard spells, so long as I have access to them for matchups where they're important. For this reason, I tend to side out discard a lot and play very conservatively with my counterspells (unless I'm deliberately trying to create an "always has it" impression for later in the match).
The way I approach most matches is to treat BB and vendilion clique as my main threats, and the rest of the deck should support buying time to let them kill the opponent. I can present a surprising amount of "burst" damage with tar pits and additional flash threats, so oftentimes I can position myself to race against a lot of decks with boards that look solidly behind my opponents. That means that I'm planning to try and use my removal and counters to keep the board clear early, and then allow something inconsequential to "slip through the cracks" while I deploy my BB or clique. From there, I'm advantaged because every time they cast something I don't feel threatened by, I can just ignore it and keep pressuring them and every time they play something I do feel threatened by, I can spend my answer on it and keep pressuring them.
As far as sideboarding goes, I usually trim into mistbinds (either to lower my curve or to let me bring in archmage and/or Kalitas), discard (sometimes brutalities come out like against Gx Tron, sometimes thoughtseize comes out like against Company decks, usually for battlefield interaction or to massage the discard numbers if I want inquisitions instead of one of the others), or removal (usually for additional discard or counters, matchup dependent). Against decks where I really need to have a good density of interaction like burn, I also side out fields because the LD effect is meaningless and I usually can't afford to spend the time to try and convert it into another land. Mana leaks are also sometimes cut in matchups where I can't rely on them being impactful (against cavern of souls or aether vial specifically, usually these are matchups where damnation is good)
Kalitas and Damnation often come in together against beefy creature decks (Gx midrange, Eldrazi tron, etc.) because wiping their board and leaving a board of my own behind pretty good, and the cards are solid even if I only draw one of them. Against go-wide decks I also bring in EE because setting it on 1-2 usually kills a bunch of stuff.
Surgicals only come in against dredge, storm, and occasionally valakut where I'm targeting specific things to hinder the opposing gameplan and I can count on those things ending up in the graveyard at some point without much assistance from me.
The counters come in if I want to upgrade mana leak or I can't rely on my removal being live (spell-based decks). Inquisitions and brutality can come in for the same reasons. Archmage can also come in in these spots to present an interactive top-end, replacing a mistbind.
To the slaughter is for if I want an additional removal spell, I'm playing against walkers, or I'm expecting hexproof threats.
Echoing truth is my catch-all. It comes in against non-creature permanents that I need to answer cheaply (blood moon, ensnaring bridge, etc.), tokens (lingering souls in particular), and whenever I have an extra spot while sideboarding. There's been far more times where I've left it out and missed it G2 than where I've brought it in and regretted it, and I bring it in a lot.
As an example: here's my sideboard plan against burn.
Out:
-4 BB
-3 Thoughtseize
-2 Mistbind
-1 field of ruin
In:
+2 inquisition
+1 brutality
+2 countersquall
+1 dispel
+1 Kalitas
+1 archmage
+1 EE
+1 echoing truth
The plan: Cut the life loss cards, lower the curve as much as possible, and plan to trade my cards for their cards as aggressively as possible. I'll establish a clock along the way (SSS, snapcaster especially) and give priority to keeping my life total high. 1 field is still in because occasionally I can keep them off a white source.
Here's Eldrazi Tron:
Out:
-3 thoughtseize
-2 brutality
In:
+2 damnation
+1 kalitas
+1 echoing truth
+1 to the slaughter
The plan: Discard is bad (chalice for 1 is common because they expect ceremonious rejection, plus it's a significant diminishing return). High-impact removal and board effects are good. Field should trade with either cavern, temple (to set them back a mana), or to keep them off tron if necessary, and should usually be used in their draw step. I'm probably letting Matter reshapers resolve and planning to answer them later, but TKS, smasher, and ballista should be dealt with ASAP. They will probably have mana trouble at some point, either from flooding or drawing the wrong mix of lands and not being able to deploy threats smoothly. Find an opening to resolve a BB/v-clique, and then slow their board development down as much as possible.
I hope this helps.
Liking the the list. Very classic. Your creature base matches what I've found to be optimal for my style of play.
Field of ruin is a lot better than ghost quarter, because we can use it to fix our mana without putting us behind a land in spots where the LD effect doesn't matter. I'd also suggest cutting 1 swamp for the 3rd tar pit, the blue source matters and the extra creature-land makes finding one when you want it more consistent. Since you aren't playing Jace, I'd also consider adding a 25th land (extra fetchland, probably).
You may consider maining the thoughtseizes instead of the inquisitions, there's some decks (like tron or scapeshift) where inquisition might as well be blank. Even if you draw TS in a matchup where the life-loss is really bad, there's nothing preventing you from holding it or pitching it to a brutality.
I think you're a little heavy on counters and light on removal. At the very least, you want to main a couple answers to bigger things like smasher, tasigur, or primeval titan. I'd cut 2 counters (probably the spell snares, they conflict with your pushes a lot) for a murderous cut and a hero's downfall (this will free up some space in the sideboard too). If you add the 25th land, you'll want to cut one more counter (leaving 2 plus 3 cryptic plus 4 SSS).
Sideboard, I'm not sure what the 1 chalice is doing, so you may consider cutting it. I'd also upgrade the spell pierces to a mixture of negate (or countersquall) and dispel, the relic to nihil spellbomb (and add a second if you moved the removal to the main) and find a spot for an echoing truth (a great catch-all for when you have more stuff to board out than in). 3 ceremonious rejection seems a bit heavy, especially since Eldrazi tron usually chalices for 1 against us. If you still want that effect, I'd trim 1 for a Kalitas to help against more midrange and Burn while still being effective against E tron (the negates are almost just as good against G tron). If you take all of this advice (move 2 removal main, cut chalice and 1 rejection, add 1 spellbomb, 1 echoing truth, and 1 Kalitas) you'll have 1 slot left over for whatever effect you want. My suggestions would be 2nd Damnation or Glen Elendra Archmage. If you have a good reason for keeping chalice, you can keep it in this slot.
The first bit of advice is always to play the deck a lot and figure out what works for you. Faeries is extremely customizable for how you want to play it, so all our theorycrafting is to some extent limited by our own play styles. That said, here are my thoughts:
In terms of overall gameplan, I'd avoid playing too heavily toward the grindy midrange/control gamplan, because Faeries doesn't have a good source of card advantage to bury people with. Faeries is best at exploiting little openings, which makes the "core" faeries gameplan look a lot more like a slow delver deck than a grindy jund or esper control. One of the ways you can re-coup some of that card advantage is by playing a heavy creature-land suite (6+), because it makes it almost impossible to flood out. Another way to add a grindy dimension to the deck is 2 jace, the mind sculptor, which would replace 1 mistbind and 1 cryptic (giving you a 2/2/2 split). Just remember that, in general, be as aggressive as you can afford to be in-game, because faeries isn't well-suited to extremely long games like dedicated control decks are.
You seem to be a bit light on removal and a bit heavy on countermagic. I'd consider cutting 2-3 counters for an additional removal spell and maybe the extra discard. One piece of tech that I've found helps here is Collective brutality, because it can be a removal and a discard game 1 where the flexibility is more important (it's rare that removal and discard are good in the same matchups). Adding 2 collective brutality lets you cut 1 discard in addition to the 2-3 counters, which nets you at least one of the cuts you were looking for (and leaves you with an effective 5 discard and 8 removal, much better numbers without too much moving things around).
I'd also suggest mana leak over remand. Mana leak is more grindy because it's an answer to their threat. Remand is more combo-oriented because it just delays their threat, which means you still need to find a way to answer the threat later. (if the threat isn't worth answering, you probably shouldn't be spending time playing a counterspell on it. If it is worth answering, you want to answer it now instead of hoping to draw an answer for it) Spell snares are fine but not great, they overlap a lot with fatal push.
I'd also consider trimming into your creature base. Scion in particular is only really good if you're already ahead, and is extremely awkward when behind, so it's probably the weak link in your grindy plan. 4 snapcaster is also a lot without a ton of good ways to take advantage (removal, counters, and discard are only situational, and you have a lot of creatures compared to the "average" snapcaster deck). I'd consider trimming 1 snapcaster (you have plenty of other creatures that give value, unlike most other control strategies) and at least one scion for some copies of opt, it will helps smooth things out considerably and also give snapcaster something to target when you just want to deploy it.
I mentioned Jace above as a reason to trim a mistbind, but I think 3 mistbind is a bit too heavy regardless. I think 2 is generally the right number, because you draw it consistently enough, but it seldom clogs up your hand in awkward spots.
The manabase looks all right, but I'd consider trimming a darkslick shores for a Celestial colonnade instead of trimming mutavaults. You will want a good density of creature-lands (I'd recommend at least 7, especially since you'll have access to colonnade) for the late-game to help secure wins. You may have to compromise on the Godless shrine in order to make cryptic command cast more consistently (but test it, I'm not sure). Full disclosure, I really don't like darkslick shores in the faeries manabase, but I'm in the minority on that question, so I'm not going to be pushy about it.
In terms of the white splash as a whole, you'll need to take a hard look at what it gives you. Maindeck, it doesn't give much, because path is only a slight upgrade over things like murderous cut or go for the throat that you already have in black, and the cost of making the manabase support a third color is significant. My advice would be to take a hard look at the white cards you want to play and determine how many are just "upgrades of effects you already had access to in UB and how many of them are essential effects that you wouldn't get otherwise. RiP may be a "unique effect" on that definition, but path is certainly just an upgrade, as are things like celestial purge and disenchant (echoing truth works just as well much of the time). I'd love to see a sideboard plan to better see how essential this white splash is to you.
Mostly, though, I've been very happy with the manabase and haven't encountered a reason to mess with it. Sometimes the best reason is just, "it's working for me."
The "general" plan generally looks like this:
Sideboards tend to be all over the place, and depend very heavily on what your maindeck looks like. I'll reproduce my most recent list from last month, and I'd also highly recommend Spellcheck's list from last week if you're familiar with using Liliana of the Veil effectively.
Some good benchmarks for when you're deckbuilding and playing:
My list:
3 Snapcaster Mage
3 Vendilion Clique
2 Mistbind Clique
4 Bitterblossom
3 Cryptic Command
3 Fatal push
1 Dismember
1 Go for the throat
1 murderous cut
2 Collective Brutality
3 thoughtseize
3 opt
2 mana leak
4 mutavault
2 field of ruins
4 polluted delta
2 watery grave
1 sunken hollow
1 sunken ruins
1 swamp
5 island
2 drowned catacomb
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Glen Elendra Archmage
1 Collective Brutality
2 inquisition of Kozilek
2 Damnation
1 echoing truth
1 To the Slaughter
1 Engineered Explosives
1 dispel
2 Countersquall
1 surgical extraction
1 extirpate
Spellcheck's list:
3 Vendilion Clique
3 Mistbind Clique
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Opt
4 Fatal Push
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
2 Remand
3 Mana Leak
2 Cryptic Command
2 Liliana of the Veil
4 Polluted Delta
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Mutavault
3 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Secluded Glen
1 Field of Ruin
2 Watery Grave
3 Island
1 Swamp
3 Spreading Seas
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Collective Brutality
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Countersquall
1 Disdainful Stroke
1 Spell Snare
1 Ceremonious Rejection
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
1 Batterskull
Unfortunately, I can't recommend a list with Jace, the mind sculptor in it yet, as I haven't gotten a chance to test one yet. If you play Jace you'll probably want to be on 24 lands, play 7-8 shuffle effects, slightly fewer discard spells, and slightly more counters/removal, so that you have more live draws when you brainstorm.
Somewhat rhetorically, why would someone ever play serum visions over Opt in this deck? Instant and scry before draw are way more powerful than sorcery and scry afterwards, regardless of the extra scried card.
3 lands on turn 5 is pretty rough, especially since your hand has a lot of clunky elements to it. That said, the first this to accept is that we're really behind and can only answer one burn spell with the cards currently in hand. We're completely dead to Boros charm, Lightning helix, Eidolon of the great revel, and main-phase rift bolt. We're also dead to suspend rift bolt if we don't draw a mutavault by our next main phase. We can potentially play around them playing draw-pass with an instant-speed bolt held up, but that line almost always ends with us dead since we need to draw both lands and counters while they only need to draw any sort of action to overload us. That said, we can still easily win if we get a little lucky and our opponent plays a little poorly.
The cards that I don't like here are BB, Mistbind, and second Vendilion, though Mistbind can buy us a couple turns once our plan starts coming together (thats 1 turn from locking out their cast spell and potentially a second from shortening our own clock by a turn). My goal for the next turn cycle is to resolve a Vendilion clique after my opponent does nothing relevant, though I still want to hold up SSS in case they try to lava spike me. I'm going to target myself with the trigger, since there's very little I can do to disrupt their play by seeing what they drew and I absolutely want to replace the BB in my hand with literally anything else. Since we only have 3 lands in play we can't even rip an untapped source to hold up SSS so Vendilion main is right out, so we're going to have to hope to.
So here's the plan: If they draw-pass or draw-swiftspear-attack, I'm ignoring them and casting Vendilion on their end step, shipping BB to the bottom. Going to 1 off a swiftspear attack shuts off my fetchlands, but I think I'm far enough behind that I can't afford to play around that. If they give me a chance I'm countering any 1-mana burn spell with SSS and hoping to draw out of it (smart burn players probably wouldn't play into your SSS with no follow-up, but it still might happen). If they play Eidolon I'm responding with Vendilion clique, but I'm probably dead anyway. If they goblin guide, I'll probably respond to the attack trigger with Vendilion and blocking, as that gives me the most extra looks at finding a land, which is the most important thing I'm missing.
If I survive to my next turn (drawing the 2nd tar pit), I can start attacking with Vendilion and have fatal push + SSS up to counter most of their draws and remove that swiftspear that hit me last turn. With them at 14 I need 4-5 attacks to kill (depending on how I draw) though if I get to 5-6 lands I can use mistbind + SSS + Tar pit to deal 8-10 damage on the last attack if necessary. With the draw steps you mentioned in your hint, I'm going to push their first swiftspear and SSS the second one, attack them to 7 on the next turn and mistbind in their upkeep (champion SSS) which lets me attack for 10 the following turn and strand the bolt in their hand.
If they hold the second swiftspear, we can hold up SSS (since we don't know they have a swiftspear), attack them to 8, and then we either have to bluff double-counter (4 untapped lands makes that somewhat feasible) or decide that they don't have an instant and Mistbind them anyway in their upkeep. The numbers make the mistbind line awkward (attack with tar pit puts them to 1 and we still only have the one counter), but the bluff really only buys us enough time for them to beat double-counter (which is one turn) so in either case we're pretty sunk with the draws we end up with. We can probably bait the second swiftspear with a little showmanship though. If we act like we just drew the fatal push off the Vendilion clique by casting it main phase, we can probably sell the lie that we don't have anything relevant and induce the opponent to play into our SSS, securing the kill.
For challenge 2:
As an aside, this situation illustrates why I'm not a huge fan of Liliana in this deck.
Since they can't tron next turn or the turn after (turn 5 at the earliest), there's no point in holding up mana leak since we want to answer their threats, not their mana. I want to mistbind them on turn 6 if at all possible, and cryptic/mana leak and all my lands are important here for bridging to that point, so I don't really want to Liliana either, though having her in play for future turns isn't terrible for if we draw extra lands/SSS. That said, here's my line. Play tar pit this turn and attack with mutavault.
My general plan is to start attacking with mutavault and plan to mana leak the first threat they play by the time they assemble tron(~turn 5), then mistbind the next turn and hold up cryptic while I clock them. That represents 13 damage (mutavault attacks T3, 4, and 5, plus mistbind attack T7 and one tar pit attack once they get to a low total) with cryptic representing at least 4 more damage (another mistbind attack T8+, with no tar pit since I need the mana to cast the cryptic). This gives me ~6 additional draw steps to find 3 damage before Tron has a decent chance of starting to fight back, and if they can't answer Tar pit they die anyway.
If I'm afraid of T5 World breaker exiling mutavault or wurmcoil engine with 3 mana up I can Mistbind on T5 instead and then try to cash in mana leak later, either with Liliana or if they tap low for something. I don't have quite as much time here, but cryptic can help bridge the gap.
The worst-case is they play tron land into oblivion stone on 3, but we can still make their lines awkward here. We can just continue to attack with mutavault and hold up mana leak and cryptic until they deploy a threat (~T5-6), where we can counter-bounce O-stone with cryptic and then resolve Mistbind the following turn. This lets us maximize the delay in their threat deployment and deals at least 13 damage (assuming we play an untapped land on T6 and immediately get aggressive with Tar pit after mistbind resolves), giving them exactly one turn to answer mistbind/tar pit, with O-stone costing 8 mana (of the ~10-12 they'd have at best) and leaving them at 2 with both tar pit and mutavault threatening lethal the next turn.
In any event, we have a ton of draw steps to improve our lines with things like thoughtseize, BB, Field of ruin, or additional mutavaults/tar pits, and even the tools we have can put them to nearly dead.
There is an argument for deploying Liliana on 3 and discarding mana leak as it can begin to pinch their threat/mana balance over time, but we're already not favored going long, so I'd rather start getting with mutavault and not try to prolong the game by putting us both into topdeck mode.
I agree with you that not pushing our advantage and thinking control rather than tempo is the single, most-common way to lose games with Faeries. Faeries can seemingly win out of nowhere, but those wins usually take a lot of setup and posturing correctly, knowing how much time you need to buy, and identifying what you need to answer vs what you can ignore.
More of these would be greatly appreciated.
In addition to what Ym1r said here, we're already naturally very strong against random X/1 creatures because of Bitterblossom tokens. We want our removal to be able to answer other problem creatures as well.
The question you're asking is a lot closer to "how should I sideboard?" than it is "are these cards worth playing?" Did you test sideboarded games at all? Also, how did the games play out when you won vs. when you lost? You managed to pull a 40% win rate making "a few errors," and there's every reason to believe that tightening up your play and taking a larger sample size than just 5 games might see the win rate climb closer to 50%. It's rarely correct to make major changes to your deck based on one matchup.
That said, your sideboard looks like it may want to hedge a little harder against humans. 1 Damnation and 2 Collective Brutality (and Engineered Explosives I guess) aren't enough to replace all the cards you want to take out. Maybe the Liliana's Defeat (which seems super narrow, btw) gets replaced with a second Damnation or a Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet? Maybe Ravenous trap could get cut for something similar? (unless there's a bunch of dredge in your local meta)
On Opt/Ancestral in particular, I'm firmly in the opt camp. I currently run opts in the slot that I used to devote to AV, and have no plans to change that back anytime soon. Quantity of cards rarely matters to us so long as we can use the cards to buy time and keep pressing the attack. I'd rather have 1 card that I know for sure is going to buy me a turn than 3 where (more than likely) 1-2 are irrelevant lands, and I'd certainly rather have that card now than 4 turns from now.
New version looks pretty solid. It looks like you caught what I was saying. I'd love to hear how it performs for you.
I'm going to be kind of critical, but don't interpret that as me not liking the list. I like a lot of the choices you've made (the removal suite and manabase in particular) in this list. Think of this as me saying "based on my experience with the deck, here's some problems I could see you having." As always, though, Faeries is one of the most customizable decks you can play, and different playstyles will want different card choices. At the end of the day you play what works for you.
I've got nothing against running 4 cryptic, it's a great card. That said, 24 lands with no opt is asking to have trouble casting your 4-drops reliably. I'm not a fan of Liliana for a similar reason. You're playing 8 4-drops, so in Liliana games you're going to be "spending" a lot of powerful cards without getting any benefit from them, especially since most of them want to sit in your hand and wait for your opponent to make a move. Liliana is best when you can proactively deploy all your threats and answers before using her to mitigate the downside of her +1. It's really anti-synergistic with Jace and the Faeries package (including cryptic), which want you to be holding cards on your opponent's turn to interact.
It's been a while since I last gave the "discard talk" on here, but the gist of it is that I think discard spells are a necessary evil in this deck, not a strong point like in jund or shadow. True you get information and can proactively deal with an opponent's cards, but you're spending your time and mana to answer a card that you opponent hasn't invested any of their time or mana into, which leaves them free to deploy something else. Think of the early game against a deck like humans (traditionally aggro decks are our hardest matchups). If you T1 discard, you may be able to take their vial or champion of the parish, but they'll just be able to play something else on their turn and you'll begin falling behind on board (that's the most common reason we lose games by far). If you have a fatal push instead, then they have to commit to playing one of their creatures and you trade their entire turn for your turn answering it, which lets you maintain board parity. Discard is also a horrible draw late, while fatal push is still live. Historically, I've had a lot of success playing with no discard in the main, so even though I think it's necessary to pack some now, it's a supplement to my tempo gameplan, not a major piece of it.
If you'd asked me to re-build your maindeck, here's how I'd do it.
-2 Liliana
-1 Thoughtseize
-1 Fatal push
-1 Cryptic Command
+3 opt
+2 mana leak
and I'd swap the 2 inquisitions with the 2 collective brutality. I'd also recommend playing a 3rd tar pit as a 25th land over the 3rd opt. Bringing Brutality main over inquisition allows us to treat them as duress/disfigure split cards, which takes some pressure off our removal without compromising the discard numbers (it's also a maindeck hedge against burn, since that's still not a fun matchup). This lets us cut one fatal push for an opt, and we can cut 1 thoughtseize and 1 cryptic for the other two (the cryptic and the opts will take a lot of pressure off your manabase). I'm also cutting Liliana for Mana leak, since we want to be holding up answers and forcing our opponent to take the initiative in our interactions (we're playing tempo, not aggro or midrange). You'll notice that I've cut 3 sorcery-speed cards for instants, which allows you to play the flash game that faeries is so well-known (and feared) for. If you still want the 4th cryptic, be sure to play the 25th land and then include it as a 61st card for testing. As you test you'll figure out what card is the one you want the least.
We're a slower tempo deck, not fast tempo like a delver deck would be. That said, we play a significantly higher percentage of disruption than most other tempo decks because all of our creatures are also disruptive, and every time we use one we speed up our clock a bit.
That said, I think you may be underestimating how fast our clock really is. Bitterblossom may be a 7-turn clock, but it's a 7-turn clock that is virtually impossible to remove in Modern right now. Tasigur may be a faster clock on paper (5 turns instead of 7) but a single removal spell turns it off entirely, where a removal spell against BB buys at most an extra turn. I've actually come to see Vendilion Clique as my 5-7 copies of BB, since it provides the same 7-turn clock, with the advantage that you can save Vendilion for when your opponent tries to play around your mana leak.
Creeping Tar pit isn't one of our major tempo threats because of the mana investment, but it is a great closer, shaving 1-2 turns off our clock. Besides, when you get to turn 10 and have 7-8 lands in play, what else are you spending all your mana on that you can't afford to send Tar Pit in for 3 extra damage? Many opponents don't really factor in tar pit when they think about how much time they have left, so finding out that you have 1 more turn instead of 3 to answer the board can be a nasty surprise, and often make the difference between a win and a loss.
My stance when I'm playing is "let my clock (BB, Vendilion) do its work, everything else is there to help push my advantage when my opponent tries to answer the clock." Be aware of how demoralizing it is for the opponent to play against this sort of strategy. Every time they don't play a spell to play around countermagic, they get hit for 3 and have to play the same game again next turn. Every time they play into your countermagic, you flash down an answer (SSS, snapcaster, Mistbind) and suddenly your clock is a turn faster than it was before. The opponent has no choice but to let you do what you want, because every time they try to fight it just makes things worse for them.
Pretty much every card in faeries is good at buying time for us to get in another attack, so I think you'd be surprised at how much time you really have to finish the game with this deck.
Your list does look a bit 4-heavy, especially with no opt. You might consider cutting 1-2 cryptic command to smooth out the curve, maybe adding back in some number of snapcaster, V-clique, and/or mana leak/logic knot. I don't know if anyone is really sure whether to cut into mistbinds or cryptics first, hopefully we'll be able to get some reps in soon to find out.
That's a good point about dismember killing Hazoret. I'll have to try and find room to slot one back into my list.