Sword of Light and Shadow works out the best in general for me so far.

How well do you do against Fish, Affinity, Zoo, Elves, Infect and Rdw game 1?

veeonix

Fish sucks hard regardless of game 1, 2 or 3. AEther Vial is not fun to deal with and they flood too easily. I would rather play against affinity at this point.

rdw and elves are better after sideboard but game 1 is decent if you can keep blockers coming and keep them off important things.

Infect isn't too bad. Better with more Disfigures in the mainboard though. After sideboard you should not lose unless they have a nuts draw you can't deal with. But it basically comes down to knowing when to disrupt them.

Zoo is better to deal with than Eldrazi & Taxes but not enough experience with Zoo itself to give a proper answer.

Affinity is a real sideboard game to me. I need to board out things like Remand and put in things like Spellskite, Ashiok, Engineered Explosives and Hurkyl's Recall

You have 5 removal spells in the deck. Which is more than some Fae list run. Fae have a notoriously bad matchup with aggro game 1.

Fish appear unbeatable for this deck, sideboard or not. Getting your Damnation countered by Spell Pierce or Curse Catcher is GG. I see nothing that handles Vial, Mutavault or Cavern of Souls. With few removal spells, and no chance to counter the threats, how do you win?

Elves simply have a mana advantage. They play more spells than you can counter, assuming they are not playing Vial or Cavern themselves. Not to mention ther potential to combo off with Ezuri, Genesis Wave, Beck and Call, Cloudstone Curio or that enchantment that lets you sacrifice creatures to look for new ones. Chumping turn after turn with flash creatures seems like a losing strategy with no endgame potential.

Some of infects threats cost 0-1 mana, which can be played before your first land drop. This means countering them can be sometimes impossible. Thoughtseize/Inquisition basically hits a redundant pump spell. If you spend mana turn 2 on hand control spells instead of setting up a blocker, its possible you never untap again. Spellskite, though good in the matchup, is in the board. With so few removal spells, winning a war to kill an infect creature is hard through Spell Pierce, Stubborn Denial and Appostles Blessing.

1 mana threats are simply faster than your 2 mana removal/counterspells. Hand control helps, but the speed at which threats are deployed is crazy. Your Flash creatures get put on chump block mode quickly. Your Vendilion comes down, you hope lives so it can trade with a Nacaatl. If you are unluvky, it gets Bolted/Pathed. You take more damage while their board develops. Being at a mana dissadvantade sucks. Virtually everything said here applies to Affinity as well.

Burn is... terrible. Lands hurt, Thoughtseize hurts. Bitterblossom hurts. Bolts on the skull hurts. This matchup is crap, and worse without mainboard Dispel.

Affinity sounds like a lost game in the first game. Game two sounds fragile and shotty at best. Even lucking out to draw sideboard options, the speed the deck moves at is often faster than what Fae can interact with. Ashiok is more useful than Remand, but still sounds week. Recall basically time walks them a turn. Nice, but they can recover if you don't capitalize.

Eldrazi Taxes sounds rough. If they don't open with Cavern, at least you have counter spells back. They tend to kill you slowly (Reality Smasher the exception) giving you time to leverage position. This is the one deck you are at parody with your opponent for mana consumption in the early game. Thoughtseize on 4-5 drops is efficient. 2 mana removal/counter for 2 mana threats are fair trades. This deck, while troublesome, is probably your best game 1.

A large chunk of the metagame is aggro. They are some of Faes worst matchups. They are more mana efficient, making 1-1 trades a losing strategy. Everyone and their grandmother runs Cavern, Vial and Land creatures, making counter magic weaker. This brings me to the conclusion that traditional U/B Fae are poorly positioned in the current Meta.

By no means was this meant to tear you or your deck a part. This is simply an observation. I too am a Fae player in this current Modern Format.

The current meta has shifted. There are more aggro decks than combo/control/midrange right now. Fae, by nature, have a good matchup against control, combo, and midrange. Aggro is where we struggle. to successfully play against aggro, we need to evolve. Here are some things I did, which helped out immeasurably.

More removal. I run 12 "creature" removal spells instead of the 3-4 Fae are stereotyped with. Most at 1-2 mana. This fixes lack of interacting in early turns, and handles resolved threats.

Play lands and Spells as aggressive as possible. While it seems counter intuitive to spend life against an aggro deck or inefficient to play a control decks resources in such a way, surving to later turns wins most games. You have higher card quality. Dragging games out against say Zoo or Affinty, you often win.

Stop running Cryptic/Remand. Cryptic is taxing on the mana base and dictates a 2 mana color deck. Its a clunky spell and sucks to counter a 1-2 mana spell. Drawing the extra card is more value, but 4 mana (3x blue of it) is hard to cast. Aggro decks aim to kill you by turn 4. If you missed a land drop, you can die from lack of opportunity to cast. If you have it and have to Fog, you trade a turn for a turn, problem is still there next turn. Remand is bad against low mana spells, which is where the format is. Countersquall/Remove Soul/Mana Leak are usually just better.

Run mainboard artifact removal. Deals with Affinity and Aethervial. It impresses me how much easier these matchups have been with Lightning Bolt and Kolaghan's Command.

Whats with Familiar's Ruse as a counter?

@veeonix I'm going to reply to you with a more in depth response. I have just been really busy. But I agree with you, Fae is so not in the current meta and does rather poorly and requires more thought through plays than most other decks that currently are. except on the matchup vs infect/burn. Everything else is spot on.

I do not want to splash red. I want to keep my build UB. Otherwise I might as well just play jund or turn it into UR faeries with splash black for kolaghan's command.

Familiar's Ruse bouncin Spellstutter Sprite is sick.

Yeah bouncing an SSS with Familiar's Ruse would be really sick but I do not feel like I could run a counter that requires a creature in play. I would feel more comfortable running Deprive.

Kolaghan's Command gives you the same feeling as Familiar's Ruse in Fae. Let's you have your first effect, and rebuys Spellstutter Sprite. Truly is efficient and quite amazing.

Switch tasigur for scion of oona