Extended Fae: preparation for PTQ Leicester

By Jim Marlow

Hey everyone,

So yesterday was sadly my last WNM for 4 weeks due to me going home for Easter holidays from uni, but for the lucky few of Team Leeds going to the last PTQ of the Honalulu season, you shall be graced by my presence. I will of course be playing the blue menace, which is well known to have been my deck of choice for many months over the course of standard and before that block constructed.

I firmly believe that faeries is the best deck in extended right now, for many of the same reasons that it was good in standard. Obviously the deck has some of the best spells avalible in the extended card-pool, but moreover the deck is resilliant to mediocre draws, and can stall out long enough to gain slow control, whereas many decks in extended simply crumble without great draws.

This is the decklist i will be playing in Leicester.

4 x spellstutter sprite
4 x vendilion clique
3 x sower of temptation
2 x glen elendra archmage
1 x venser, shaper savant

4 x ancestral vision
4 x stifle
4 x spell snare
4 x mana leak

3 x engineered explosives
2 x umezawa's jitte

4 x polluted delta
2 x flooded strand
4 x mutavault
2 x hallowed fountain
2 x steam vents
2 x riptide laboratory
1 x academy ruins
6 x island
2 x plains

Sideboard
3 x relic of progenitus
4 x ethersworn canonist
3 x kataki, wars wage
2 x path to exile
3 x firespout

Card choices

4 x vendilion clique - i recently put the 4th in over a 3rd jitte because i wanted to better my matchup against the combo/control decks in the format. Clique is great against both fae and teps because he puts a clock on as well as stripping the hand, and hopefully you can play with 4 you will have a backup clique when they deal with your first.

4 x stifle - again a move to fight teps and the mirror, which i think are the trickiest matches to navigate with this deck. The deck is fairly resiliant to the aggro lurking in the format so i think i can afford to play the 4th. Also, stifle can end games against zoo if you manage to get 1, or even 2 of their fetchlands away.

2 x riptide laboratory - Obviously riptide lab is totally sick, and when active with something like clique, venser, or spellsutter you can lock opponants out of the game. However i really wanted to put in an academy ruins because i was going down to 2 jittes and i thought that it would be better against aggro style decks, and i didnt really want to have 8 colourless mana producing lands in the deck, so the third lab had to go.

0 x cryptic command - For a long time cryptic didnt seem to get played in faeries, and now it seems to be in favour with many players as a 1 or 2 of. I began by playing it, but aside from the fog effect against zoo, i simply cant justify cryptic as good enough for the deck. Instead i think the glen elendra archmage's do a better job, because they counter all the accelerants from teps, both without costing 4 a time, and without adding to the storm count. It pains me to take this out because of my love for them in standard, but the triple blue cost was the last straw and i took them out.

The sideboard is obviously nearly all white, but i think the white splash instead of black gives me far more, and better options against the bad matchups for Fae. Although ethersworn canonist maybe not the best option against elves of teps because they know about it, i think its probably as good as thoughtseize, plus i dont think most players playing elves or teps will expect Fae to board it in.

Anyway, wish me luck in Leicester, and good luck too all other members of Team Leeds going, look forward to seeing you all there


Jim

Feel free to leave comments regarding the article, or anything else. If you are interested in contributing to the Team Leeds Magic blog, or want to contact me for any other reason my email address is - ss07jm@leeds.ac.uk