UW Spirits is a tempo deck that disrupts opponent's plays, and then capitalizes on opponent's resource disadvantage by quickly ending the game with aerial combat. At its core, UW Spirits trades off explosiveness of the Bant version of the deck for consistency and larger number of disruptive elements. Additionally, the 2-color manabase allows the deck to play a number of utility lands (meta-dependent), preserves higher life total against aggressive decks, and is less susceptible to
Blood Moon
-style effects.
UW Spirits - Core (31 cards)
Creatures:
4x
Mausoleum Wanderer
- a flying 1-drop that is able to pressure our opponent's ability to cast instants and sorceries. Not only is this card a good attacker (being pumped any time a Spirits enters the battlefield on our side), but it can also be used in combination with other flashed in Spirits to add extra mana tax on their instants/sorceries.
3x
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
- while not a Spirit, Thalia is a solid 2-mana creature that is able to defend us on the ground while disrupting any non-creatures the opponent is playing. By itself, Thalia makes life very difficult for non-creature decks like Izzet Phoenix, Tron, and Control variants due to the tax ability. This card is one of the primary reasons to play the UW version of the deck, in addition to reasons listed above. Since it is a legendary, I opt for 3 copies of the card to avoid flooding out on multiples.
4x
Rattlechains
- a 2/1 Spirit that can be used to fizzle removal on many of our other Spirits, while giving almost all cards in our deck Flash. Makes it much more difficult for the opponent to interact with our board, and makes it much more difficult for opponent to react to our plays.
4x
Selfless Spirit
- a 2/1 Spirit that can be used to protect any of our creatures against targeted removal or blank fieldwipes like
Supreme Verdict
.
4x
Supreme Phantom
- a 1/3 Spirit lord that can be Vialed in or flashed in off of
Rattlechains
to raise toughness of our creatures in response to burn spells, or just to increase the power level of the board. In multiples, it is capable of surviving through 3-damage sweepers and
Lightning Bolt
variants.
4x
Spell Queller
- a 2/3 Spirit that generates some of the highest tempo swings in the deck. Not only does it force the opponent to play around a potential "counterspell" (generating both real and virtual tempo), but it can also be flashed in as a surprise attacker/blocker. Even though we are not capable of playing Queller on Turn 2 like the Bant version of the deck, it is still an integral piece of our strategy and every bit as good.
4x
Drogskol Captain
- a 2/2 lord that functions as copies 5-8 of
Supreme Phantom
while blanking targeted removal. It can be used on offense to increase the power level of our board to close out the game, or can be used on defense to blank targeted removal and keep our Spirits alive. Notably, with 2 copies of
Drogskol Captain
on the battlefield, we create a "hexproof lock" that invalidates any spot-removal or spot interaction our opponent has.
Instants:
4x
Path to Exile
- a premium removal spell in Modern as it cleanly deals with any non-hexproof creature. While it can technically be cast at any time, there is a need to be careful with giving our opponent an extra land as it may let them recoup the tempo lost due to our disruption.
Artifacts:
4x
Aether Vial
- a necessary evil in the deck as it allows us to deploy our creatures quickly to the board on turns 1-3, while being a poor topdeck in the lategame. Vial allows us to flash in any of our creatures at any time, to disrupt our opponent's plays.
UW Spirits - Flex Spots (4 cards)
Creatures:
1x
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
- Spirit that acts as a pseudo-5th copy of the
Drogskol Captain
that can additionally protect non-Spirits like
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
and
Deputy of Detention
.
2x
Deputy of Detention
- a creature version of
Detention Sphere
that can be Vialed in at any time to disrupt our opponent. While it is susceptible to removal, it is the glue that holds the deck together due to ability to interact with any nonland permanent (such as opponent's
Ensnaring Bridge
). I prefer to keep 2 copies MB, and 2 copies SB due to curve considerations.
Planeswalkers:
1x
Teferi, Time Raveler
- our source of card advantage that is able to catch us up on tempo if we fall behind, while preventing opponent from being able to interact with our creatures on our turn. Teferi's minus ability synergizes well with our creatures due to ability to re-use ETB abilities of
Rattlechains
,
Deputy of Detention
, and
Spell Queller
. Worth noting that due to the static ability, opponents will not be able to cast the spell that was under
Spell Queller
when we bounce it with Teferi's minus (permanently exiling that spell). This means that with Teferi on the battlefield, we are able to generate a bit more grind into the late-game by being able to recur "counterspells" in form of
Spell Queller
. Lastly, Teferi's minus can be used to turn a late-game
Aether Vial
topdeck into a 1-mana cantrip (if opponent's board is clear).
UW Spirits - Manabase Crafting (Outdated)
Since we're running only two colors in the deck, we need to know what the maximum number of utility lands we are capable of running while consistently casting spells on-curve. To figure this out, we need to take a look at Frank Karsten's Guilds of Ravnica manabase article (link currently broken). Please note that I don't own any copies of
Seachrome Coast
and will be using
Glacial Fortress
as a budget replacement.
Near the beginning of an article, Frank mentions that his chart with minimum number of mana sources to cast a spell is optimized for consistently casting spells 90% of the time. This means that while we won't have an ideal manabase due to utility lands, it should be good enough to cast our spells 90% of the time.
Since the most challenging aspect of casting spells on-curve is having access to a single type of mana on Turn 1 or a double of a specific type of mana on some other turn, we are going to take a look at
Mausoleum Wanderer
and
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
as the "stress conditions" for consistency of our manabase (with respect to Blue mana).
Mausoleum Wanderer
requires 14 blue sources to be "castable" on Turn 1 90% of the time, while
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
requires 18 blue sources to be "castable" on Turn 3 90% of the time.
Considering that we have 22 lands total, we need to have 14-18 of them produce blue mana the turn they come into play. Starting off with playsets of
Flooded Strand
and
Glacial Fortress
, we have 8 out of 14-18 blue sources covered (with 14 lands remaining). Then, we can add 2 copies of
Hallowed Fountain
(and not more due to life loss) and bring up our numbers to 10 out of 14-18 blue sources covered (with 12 lands remaining). Since
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
is not always cast on Turn 3, we can accept a small casting consistency loss and add 6 Basic Islands to bring up our blue source count to 16 (with 6 lands remaining).
Since both
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
and our white sideboard cards like
Stony Silence
and
Rest in Peace
need to consistently come down on Turn 2, we now need to take a look at how many white sources we have to run. According to Frank Karsten's article, we need 13 white sources to be able to cast 1W card on Turn 2 with 90% consistency. Since 10 lands in our manabase effectively produce both colors of mana, we need to add only 3 Basic Plains to bring up our white source count to 13 (with 3 lands remaining).
So, 3 of our lands can be utility lands. We have the following options:
Utility Lands
Shefet Dunes
- a team "pump" effect stapled to a land. There is an additional benefit in it producing White mana when we might need it, while producing colorless when paying for
Aether Vial
or generic mana symbols in our spells. In my opinion, it is a bit win-more.
Ghost Quarter
- land that sets opponent back if they're on Tron, giving us enough time to beat the opponent before one of their haymakers lands and ends the game. However, by activating
Ghost Quarter
we can set ourselves back a land and thus lose tempo advantage in the early game.
Field of Ruin
- another version of
Ghost Quarter
that replaces itself post-activation. Great against Tron if you're on the play, but doesn't stop turn 3 Tron if you're on the draw.
Scavenger Grounds
- a maindeckable graveyard hate land card. Meta-dependent, and obviously not as good as
Rest in Peace
out of the sideboard or some copies of
Remorseful Cleric
mainboard. What it does do effectively is create redundancy in grave-hate cards in the deck post-sideboard in matchups where that matters.
Blast Zone
- a maindeckable
Engineered Explosives
for converted mana costs 1 and up. It greatly helps in matchups against swarm aggro decks (Affinity, Elves) and vial decks (Merfolk, Humans) by being able to act as a maindeckable fieldwipe. Also good against decks relying on their 1-drop permanents like
Hardened Scales
,
Amulet of Vigor
,
Death's Shadow
and the others.
Mutavault
- a 2/2 "Spirit" that dodges discard spells and sorcery-speed removal (like fieldwipes). Most UW Spirits decklists run at least 1
Mutavault
and some run up to 3 copies depending on the meta.
Moorland Haunt
- a land that lets us convert any creatures in our graveyard into 1/1 Spirits. This land gives us extra grind against removal and discard-heavy decks, and can win a game on its own when paired with lord effects of
Supreme Phantom
and
Drogskol Captain
.
UW Spirits - Manabase (21 cards)
4x
Flooded Strand
- fetch any basic land or
Hallowed Fountain
.
3x
Glacial Fortress
- almost always comes in untapped as 15/22 of our lands have basic subtype Plains or Island.
2x
Hallowed Fountain
- dual land that can be fetched whenever we need double of any type of mana (such as when casting
Mausoleum Wanderer
and
Rattlechains
in the same turn).
7x
Island
- additional blue sources to let us cast our blue spells like
Mausoleum Wanderer
and
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
on-curve.
3x
Plains
- additional white sources to let us cast our white spells like
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
on-curve.
3x
Mutavault
- a utility manland that can't be discarded, or killed by sorcery speed removal like fieldwipes and planeswalker abilities.
