Commander Collection: Dreamcatcher

Commander / EDH Faeries Flash Flying UB (Dimir)

Jurrane

Creature (28)

• 1x Alela, Cunning Conqueror
• 1x Archmage of Echoes
• 1x Blightwing Bandit
• 1x Brazen Borrower
• 1x Faerie Bladecrafter
• 1x Faerie Harbinger
• 1x Filigree Sages
• 1x Glen Elendra Archmage
• 1x Glen Elendra Liege
• 1x High Fae Trickster
• 1x Hypnotic Sprite
• 1x Likeness Looter
• 1x Malleable Impostor
• 1x Metallic Mimic
• 1x Mocking Sprite
• 1x Nettling Nuisance
• 1x Nymris, Oona's Trickster
• 1x Obyra, Dreaming Duelist
• 1x Oona's Blackguard
• 1x Scion of Oona
• 1x Shadow Puppeteers
• 1x Sire of Stagnation
• 1x Sower of Temptation
• 1x Spellscorn Coven
• 1x Spellstutter Sprite
• 1x Talion, the Kindly Lord
• 1x Tegwyll, Duke of Splendor
• 1x Wydwen, the Biting Gale

Sorcery (7)

• 1x Damnation P
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Feed the Swarm
• 1x Kindred Dominance
• 1x Notorious Throng
• 1x Torment of Hailfire
• 1x Toxic Deluge

Land (35)

• 1x Ancient Tomb P
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Choked Estuary
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Darkslick Shores
• 1x Darkwater Catacombs
• 1x Drowned Catacomb
• 10x Island
• 1x Morphic Pool
• 1x Mutavault
• 1x Otawara, Soaring City
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Riptide Laboratory
• 1x Rivendell
• 1x Shipwreck Marsh
• 1x Sunken Hollow
• 6x Swamp
• 1x Three Tree City P
• 1x Underground River
• 1x Volrath's Stronghold P
• 1x Watery Grave

Artifact (8)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Coat of Arms
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Mana Vault P
• 1x Nyx Lotus
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sword of the Animist
• 1x Thought Vessel

Commander (1)

Instant (14)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Countersquall
• 1x Cryptic Command
• 1x Cyclonic Rift
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Disallow
• 1x Doom Blade
• 1x Fierce Guardianship
• 1x Flare of Denial
• 1x Force of Negation P
• 1x Go for the Throat
• 1x Mana Drain
• 1x Vampiric Tutor

Enchantment (7)

• 1x Bitterblossom
• 1x Black Market Connections
• 1x Cover of Darkness
• 1x Dire Undercurrents
• 1x Kindred Discovery
• 1x Mystic Remora
• 1x Necropotence

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“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”

William Butler Yeats, The Land of Heart's Desire

{U}{B} Introduction: Fae-tal Attraction {B}{U}

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Maybe it’s because I’m a Brit, and Celtic mythology is part of our heritage, but I’ve always been intrigued by faeries in MtG. Their depiction in Magic lore is far removed from stereotypical Disney cartoons, and far more akin to the wicked, cruel creatures that haunted the darkness in pagan folklore, and crossed the veil between the real world and the otherworld to wreak havoc on unsuspecting victims. They perfectly reflect the Dimir colour identity in Magic, combining blue’s search for knowledge with black’s selfishness and greed. They slip to and from the shadows, and harness the power of forbidden places and dark arts. They’re elusive, mysterious and manipulative, and have been an integral part of the Llorwyn and Eldraine sets. And they’re one of my favourite tribes of all time.

Background

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While Dimir Faeries decks have dominated various competitive formats in Magic’s history, Faeries in EDH isn’t really seen as one of the stronger tribes. This is mostly down to card selection: there aren’t many viable Faerie commanders and, similarly, there are relatively few strong cards with the Faerie creature type to form the backbone of a tribal deck. Things have changed however with the release of Wilds of Eldraine and a new Commander precon, and we have a bunch of upgrades for the weaker creatures in our list.

In my opinion, U/B Faeries works best as a tempo deck that relies on subtlety and trickery instead of attacking with hordes of creatures. It plays well at instant speed, disrupting opponents’ board states while gradually amassing threats of its own until it’s ready to take over the board. It delights in thwarting enemies’ plans and likes to play the long game, needling away with interaction and removal before delivering the killing blow.

The Commander for ‘Dreamcatcher’, my Faeries deck, is Oona, Queen of the Fae. She’s unquestionably a bomb card and is expensive to put into play (especially with multiple instances of commander tax), but she’s amazing at generating threats and can take over the game quickly if the tokens she produces are paired with lord or pump effects. Unlike some Oona builds, this deck doesn’t go all-in on a mill strategy, but instead seeks to use her ability to augment some of the better creatures from the Faerie tribe. The result is a deck that’s surprisingly effective and is a lot of fun to play.

Power Level

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I categorise decks in my collection according to four tiers of power, from 1 (most powerful) to 4 (least powerful):

Tier 1: Higher powered decks with fast mana, free spells, and infinite combos or instant wins that are searchable with tutors.
Tier 2: Well tuned decks which may have infinite combos or instant wins that are searchable with tutors, but not many fast mana sources and/or free spells.
Tier 3: Reasonably well tuned casual decks that are capable of powerful plays. May occasionally have infinite combos or instant wins but don't generally use tutors to find them.
Tier 4: Lower powered or linear decks, weak enough to play against other casual decks.

I would classify this as one of my Tier 2 decks. It's fairly well tuned and features optimised card selections in most categories, other than fast mana. It has an infinite combo win condition, with the combo pieces able to be found with a couple of different tutor cards. However - and despite its recent power boost - Faeries still isn't one of the strongest tribes and it's quite slow to get going, which means it can get outclassed by faster, more competitive decks. Its win rate at the moment is 50%.

Budget

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The average price for this deck on Card Kingdom is over $600. It's not really a budget list and I've invested in some cards to make it as strong as possible. In itself however, Faeries isn't an expensive archetype to build and it's absolutely viable to build a good Faerie tribal deck on a budget, as many of the key pieces are very cheap. The most expensive cards are the tutors (Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor) and some of the other premium choices like Cavern of Souls, Fierce Guardianship, Bitterblossom, Cyclonic Rift etc.

If I was to upgrade to a higher budget build, my priority would be to add fast mana sources like Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, Chrome Mox, Jeweled Lotus etc. But they aren't essential and the deck performs OK without them at the moment. I'd also like to add more free counterspells, particularly Force of Negation and Pact of Negation.

Routes To Victory

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This deck’s main route to victory is to generate Faeries – either by playing creatures or putting tokens into play with Oona, Queen of the Fae and Bitterblossom - while keeping the board clear of opposing threats using removal and countermagic. We have various lord effects to give our Faeries a bit more punch. It also has a couple of other bomb cards, Torment of Hailfire and Cyclonic Rift, as to support this strategy, either of which can easily be found with Demonic Tutor or Vampiric Tutor.

We also have a combo plan. Oona, Queen of the Fae goes infinite with Nyx Lotus and Filigree Sages, allowing us to win on the spot by milling all our opponents’ libraries at once.

Experiences Playing The Deck

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I’ve played quite a few games with this deck and it’s definitely been one of my more successful builds. Here are some of the things I’ve learned from those games.

- We play the long game. We’re not a hyper-aggressive creature deck that quickly overwhelms its opponents through sheer numbers. Our creature density is too low and we don’t have a lot of early plays to put pressure on our enemies. We’re definitely one of those decks that gets stronger as the game goes on and, while we might not have a horde of creatures in the early game, we’re very good at protecting our board with counterspells and ensuring we build slowly and steadily over the course of the game.

- Our tribal boosts help a lot. Because we don’t have the largest pool of strong creatures to choose from, we can dedicate more slots in our 100 to buff and lord effects. While it’s rare that we can go wide (unless Bitterblossom, Oona, Queen of the Fae, or Notorious Throng can generate a lot of tokens), the creatures we have can often get buffed to the point where they’re unmanagable. Coat of Arms and Door of Destinies put in some serious work for this deck, alongside lord effects like Glen Elendra Liege, Metallic Mimic and Scion of Oona.

- Oona is a target. She’s not quite a kill on sight commander but opposing players fear and respect her, and will seek to remove her whenever they can. In my experience, she doesn’t tend to stick around – if you can get two or three decent activations out of her, you’re doing quite well – but fortunately we’re not the sort of deck that needs its commander to win. I think of her as the icing on the cake: if we get to use her then happy days, but the game is definitely not lost if her casting cost becomes prohibitive because of commander tax.

- Card advantage is one of our key strengths. We have numerous ways to draw extra cards, which means we can often outlast other decks when we play the long game. Necropotence, Mystic Remora, Black Market Connections, Dire Undercurrents and Kindred Discovery are fantastic sources of repeatable card draw. We might not always pack the biggest punch with our creatures but when we're continuously replenishing our hand with new resources, we can gain a lot of incremental card advantage over our opponents.

- Use countermagic carefully. We have about a dozen different sources of countermagic, which is enough to keep our opponents on their toes, but we have to be selective. When playing this deck, I tend to save countermagic for protecting our team (ie. when someone boardwipes when we have plenty of creatures in play, and we can’t save them with bounce effects); or when a player crosses the line from “doing their thing” to “about to win the game”.

- We love playing at instant speed. Related to the last point, as a tempo deck we like playing at instant speed. Plenty of our Faeries have flash so it’s always worth leaving mana open so we can play them at the least convenient times for our enemies. Scion of Oona is our instant-speed all-star for its lord effects and for its ability to give other Faeries shroud.

- We have a neat infinite combo. Oona, Queen of the Fae, Filigree Sages and Nyx Lotus can combine to make an infinite mill combo. Here's how it works:

1. All permanents must be on the battlefield with {2}{U} available.
2. Tap Nyx Lotus for {U}{U}{U}{U}
3. Activate Filigree Sages to untap Nyx Lotus.
4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 to make infinite blue mana, powering Oona, Queen of the Fae's mill ability on all opponents.

Upcoming Changes

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I'm pretty happy with this deck at the moment and I'm not looking to make any major changes. I've got Black Market Connections arriving soon, to replace Pyre of Heroes which has been underwhelming so far. As mentioned above, I'd like to also add Pact of Negation and Force of Negation as free counterspells work well with our tempo strategy. I have Raise the Palisade in a couple of my other blue tribal decks and want to try it here as a pseudo-Cyclonic Rift.

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Date added	5 years
Last updated	2 days
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 0 Mythic Rares 51 - 0 Rares 11 - 0 Uncommons 10 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.12
Tokens	Copy Clone, Faerie Rogue 1/1 B, Faerie Rogue 1/1 UB, On an Adventure, Pirate 4/2 R, Shapeshifter 3/2 C, Treasure
Folders	Deck Copy Ideas