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Pests of Pendelhaven

Modern Faeries Tempo UB (Dimir)

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Sideboard


Maybeboard


This deck is based upon the budget SaffronOlive build which you can find here

Specifically, why mono-blue faeries? No Bitterblossom ! That's crazy!

Historically faeries have a reputation for being a very oppressive and overpowered tribe. Well, I can tell you that in modern this is patently untrue, even for fae. If you want to win with this deck you will need to earn it. When played well this baby can purr, and I've been able to beat some top tiered decks. Play it badly and it's a pile of rubbish. Individually many of the cards in the deck are not super strong; however the deck gives you access to some intangible benefits such as maximum knowledge, 20 life (no pain from your lands), high interactivity, inferred counterspell pressure and flexible tempo. Unlike its brethren, it can switch from control to aggro quickly and without warning. It is difficult to pilot well, but when you do it really feels like you won the game - your Liliana of the Veil didn't just win it for you.

Basic Strategy

Essentially this is a tempo deck. You play your stuff while stopping or slowing your opponent's ability to play their stuff, and you win by pecking them to death with little buzzing faeries before they can get their plan together. Simple (not really). It's important to note that because the deck has no card advantage engines it is not a control deck. You need to establish a clock early as you won't necessarily want the game to go long. Being able to get a clock while simultaneously disrupting your opponent is the art of this deck, and getting it right is challenging, interesting and very satisfying.

Playing the Tempo Game

The most critical feature of the deck is that it plays almost entirely at instant speed due to it having only instants and faeries with flash ( Faerie Miscreant being the exception). In this manner it has similarities to draw-go control decks - you usually draw your card for the turn and then pass. You play faeries at various steps during your opponent's turn or you cast a spell in response to an opponent's actions. Like control decks your lands are untapped during your opponent's turn, and because they know you have counters considerable inferred pressure is created. Playing at instant speed gives you a lot of flexibility in your decision making, the most amount of information possible with which to decide your play, and a strong capacity to maintain high mana saturation. Thus the deck is highly responsive, efficient and frankly full of neat little tricks.

Because you are on a tempo plan you usually want to cast a faerie if you don't cast disruption. Unlike pure control decks lost mana is a significant issue for us. Cards like Vendilion Clique are best used early to slow your opponent's development rather than holding on to them to maximise their disruptive power against specific threats later on. Often in the early game you cast Mana Leak , Remand or Spellstutter Sprite , followed up by larger faeries to get the beats happening. Because of the instant speed nature of the deck, you can play the control game and present little threat, only to resolve a Mistbind Clique or double Scion of Oona (one at their EOT, the other during your declare blockers step) and suddenly have them on a short clock. Usually you want to play aggressively so don't hold up blockers unless absolutely necessary. As we receive no damage from our lands we can often soak up a few turns of damage that other decks cannot. Also, as our creatures are small and we need them to damage our opponent as soon as possible they do not make very good blockers, so Vapor Snag and Pestermite need to do the heavy lifting on the defensive front.

Disruption

One of the weaknesses of the deck is that it has very little permanent answers to our opponent's threats. This means two things; firstly, keep up Mana Leak for the big nasties, Spellstutter Sprite for the little nasties (like Death's Shadow and Tarmogoyf ), and use Remand and Vapor Snag for everything else. Secondly, timing is everything (it is a tempo deck after all). Cards like Vapor Snag can be leveraged very well if you know how. As an example - an Affinity player sacrifices all their artifacts to make a lethal Inkmoth Nexus using Arcbound Ravager . You can Vapor Snag the Inkmoth in response to the Ravager's modular trigger and they get no counters, no artifacts and have an Inkmoth in their hand. Remand ing suspended cards like Lotus Bloom and Ancestral Vision makes their controller wait eons for them to do anything. Vendilion Clique and Dismember give us some permanent solutions as well. Using the right disruption against the right target at the right time can be difficult but often we have good answers even if they are mostly soft answers.

We also have good responses to negate our opponent's disruption. Quickling and Vapor Snag allow us to return a creature to our hand in response to removal. Scion of Oona helps protect our bombs as can our counterspell package. The best part is that nearly all of our creatures have etbs that can be reused once they are returned to our hand!

Sideboarding

I'm not going to go into detail about sideboarding against all the decks currently in the meta, as there are a lot of different decks around and the meta changes fairly frequently. Instead I'll look at some archetypes and how to think about boarding against them.

One thing to note is that some of our sideboard option are sorcery speed, which can throw off our usual strategy a bit. The payoff is that they are strong answers to our opponent's game-plan. However, if a card is just so-so, or you're unsure if it's good, then the best thing to do is leave the sideboard out. Don't fall into the trap of oversideboarding as our deck is highly synergistic and highly synergistic decks don't appreciate overboarding! Because our deck runs on faerie synergies I rarely sideboard out more than one or two of them at any given time. Our flex slots are almost always our instant spells.

Big Mana

Big mana decks usually spend a lot of cards getting the mana together to play their big threats. This makes counters good at tempoing them out - let them spend turns getting their mana together and then counter their big threats. Remand and Vapor Snag are great for making them recast expensive spells. Mana Leak is hit-or-miss for this however as sometimes these decks have some mana to spare and so can be a good option to board out. Spellstutter Sprite is solid for taking out mana generators like Expedition Map or Arbor Elf and helps us to get our damage in faster, which can be important as these decks have some super topdeck draws. Echoing Truth can be good to board in, as can Negate if they are running big planeswalkers or land tutoring sorceries like Search for Tomorrow . Against tron we have heaps of answers, including Spreading Seas , Pithing Needle (naming Expedition Map or Karn/Ugin), and Ceremonious Rejection .

Combo

Generally we like playing combo. I divide combo into three flavours:

Aggro

Remand tends not to be good against the low curve of aggro decks. Lots of these decks like tokens or play lots of four-ofs and so Echoing Truth can be handy. Aggro decks come in lots of flavours so you need to think about how they tick. Relic of Progenitus isn't bad for turning off Tarmogoyf or delirium for Traverse the Ulvenwald against Jund Death's Shadow for instance. Ceremonious Rejection is an obvious in against Affinity. Just remember in these matchups you're the control deck and board accordingly.

Control

In these matchups you're the beatdown, so often the changes don't come so much from your board but how aggressively you play. Taking out Vapor Snag for Negate and Dispel is often good if they don't have creatures so you can try to win counterspell wars. They can also help keep your opponent from removing too many of your threats if they run a removal style control deck such as Grixis Control instead of a counter style control deck. Usually I drop some combination of Mana Leak and Remand for some combination of Dispel and Negate depending on the situation.

Midrange

Midrange decks can be tricky as it's difficult to tell if you're the beatdown or not. If you are the beatdown we have no good options in our sideboard to become more beatdown as the modern meta is very aggressive and our sideboard reflects the need to adopt the control role against a wide range of aggressive decks. Because most midrange decks are made up of 2-4cmc creatures Remand , Mana Leak and Vapor Snag are all quite good. It can sometimes be worth it to bring in Dispel if they are running Collected Company , which is a favourite of midrange decks. Pithing Needle can come in if you find they are running Gideons or Lilianas. It can be difficult to choose what to shave, but if they are running lots of etb creatures or few creatures look to drop Vapor Snag . Often you won't choose to change much against this matchup.

Creatures

  • Faerie Miscreant - the cornerstone of the deck. It would be nice if it was a slightly stronger cornerstone, but it is the best 1cmc faerie available. It provides a necessary turn one play (which we are short on), powers up Spellstutter Sprite and Scion of Oona and enables Mistbind Clique . Unlike most one drops we are not unhappy to see multiples - in fact an opening hand with three Miscreants in it is really very strong. It also tends to get bolted a lot as it represents a turn two Spellstutter even if we don't have one in our hand. In this way it can soak up a removal spell so that better creatures don't have to.

  • Spellstutter Sprite - provides a counterspell for low cmc spells stapled to a small evasive body. It is a very powerful card that helps generate excellent tempo swings. With some of our other cards it can be reused which generates exceptional, sometimes back-breaking value.

  • Quickling - allows us to pick up a faerie that is being targeted by removal, and enables us to reuse that creature's etb. It is very good with Mistbind Clique as we can tap down our opponent's lands for multiple turns and still attack with the Clique. Quickling doesn't target so it isn't a nonbo with Scion of Oona . If you have two Quicklings you can block with one, bounce it with the other, and continue this each turn to block one creature ad infinitum. Quickling has two issues however; firstly if you only have one other creature in play when you cast it and your opponent removes the other creature you lose Quickling too, which is a blow out. The second issue is that is you have no other creatures in play you can't cast Quickling. Overall I find it is worth main-deck slots despite these downsides.

  • Pestermite - Pestermite is used in three main ways. The first is to cast it during our opponent's upkeep to tap down a land. This can deprive them of a mana colour for their main phase which is surprisingly potent in a format with such greedy mana bases. Secondly it can be used to tap down an attacking creature during the beginning of combat step. Thirdly it can untap one of our lands so that it basically costs two, which is helpful if we need to develop a clock but want that counterspell mana too.

  • Scion of Oona - is the solitary lord. it has a terrible 1/1 body but does come with the ability to respond to removal and can be a combat trick. Two Scions give each other shroud making all your creatures impervious to spot removal and +2/+2. If you can get this happening it usually wins you the game. You can also use Scion to protect the manlands by turning them into creatures which gives them shroud.

  • Vendilion Clique - needs no introduction. Good evasive beater, allows you to bottom your opponent's best card in hand or get rid of some chaff in your own. You don't have to choose a card, so if your opponent has nothing but jank in their hand you can let them keep it. Vendilion Clique is best cast in your opponent's draw step so you see their draw for the turn and bottom a card before their main phase. It's legendary meaning it can pull double duty with Minamo, School at Water's Edge if you desperately need a blocker. Unfortunately being legendary means we shouldn't run the full four.

  • Mistbind Clique - is our big bad. It is almost always played in our opponent's upkeep to tap their lands for the turn, which is pretty nasty. Just remember that they can cast instants and they get a land drop for the turn. Mistbind has pseudo-haste due to its flash and so it often is a surprise attacker that closes out games fast. Unfortunately it requires you to champion a faerie, so if your opponent has removal they can kill the other faerie, killing Mistbind Clique and totally blowing you out. Because of this it is advisable to have two creatures on board when you cast it. You can use a Mutavault to ensure that you get your Mistbind if you have five lands. Mistbind Clique also allows for some nifty plays with Quickling or Vapor Snag , as you can bounce it to get the championed faerie back, enabling you to respond to your opponent with a surprise Spellstutter Sprite whilst gearing up for another turn of tapping down their lands.

Instants

  • Mana Leak - Possibly the best counter in modern. It gets worse as the game goes on but is rarely irrelevant. Even if you only make them tap out their lands you have generated a tempo advantage (unless they have no cards in hand / have mana sinks). It should usually be reserved for your opponent's big threats, but can also be a solid turn two play.

  • Remand - the best turn two play outside of Miscreant into Spellstutter. It generates excellent tempo advantage when timed well and replaces itself. Remand shouldn't really be considered a counterspell, it foremost is a tempo spell. While it is strong against spells that can't be recast in the same turn, it can be weak against low cmc spells like Lightning Bolt .

  • Vapor Snag - pulls double duty. It is usually used to bounce an opponent's attacking creature, but it also can be used to protect our important creatures or manlands when necessary. Vapor Snag causes loss of life, so it can help close out close games. Games often go down to the wire with this deck so this can be more important than you would otherwise think!

  • Dismember - sometimes you just have to kill something and this is the best available option. The deck is trying to leverage the fact that it doesn't damage itself with its land base and Dismember goes against that strategy, so it's only a one of. Just casting one can have a great psychological effect however, as your opponent may start to factor it into their tactical decisions despite it being a one of. It can catch opponent's off guard if you haven't yet played it in your matches as they will be unlikely to anticipate hard removal.

Lands

  • Faerie Conclave - is the relevant creature type and has evasion. Along with Faerie Miscreant Conclave is our only other turn one 'play'. It is good for when games go long or your opponent has a lot of hand disruption and you need a way to get in the final blows. It synergises well with Scion of Oona and can help get Mistbind Clique or Quickling into play if you're desperate!

  • Mutavault - like Faerie Conclave , offers us another faerie which is good for grindy games. It is excellent for facilitating Mistbind Clique and pumping up Spellstutter Sprite (be careful your opponent can't remove it however). Although it doesn't have evasion it is very cost effective and can even turn itself into a creature without any other mana source (this taps it, so is best used for Spellstutter, Quickling or Mistbind etbs). It synergises well with Scion of Oona .

  • Oboro, Palace in the Clouds - is an untapped blue mana source with upside. Playing only basic Islands incurs an opportunity cost when we can play lands with abilities and few downsides. With fourteen basics the deck has little problem with Blood Moon or Ghost Quarter . The upside is that if we have too many colourless lands we can convert one into by tapping Oboro for mana, using a colourless land to pay to bounce Oboro, and then replaying Oboro to tap it for mana again.

  • Minamo, School at Water's Edge - follows the opportunity cost logic described with Oboro, Palace in the Clouds . Minamo allows us to untap Vendilion Clique and Pendelhaven .

  • Pendelhaven - acts as a mana sink. It pumps up Faerie Miscreant , Spellstutter Sprite and Scion of Oona . It would be a nonbo with Scion if it didn't pump it up. Pendelhaven is exceptional at generating damage over several turns, and so is good in the early game for turning spare mana into extra damage from Miscreant or making a 1/1 relevant in long grindy games. It also happens to be my pet card <3

Thanks for taking a look! Suggestions, questions and +1s all welcome :D

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Date added 7 years
Last updated 3 years
Legality

This deck is Modern legal.

Rarity (main - side)

2 - 0 Mythic Rares

13 - 6 Rares

10 - 7 Uncommons

16 - 2 Commons

Cards 60
Avg. CMC 2.22
Tokens On an Adventure
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