Friday 15 May 2009

Faeries for regionals, really? 3 decks to take to Altrincham

By Jim Marlow

Hey everyone,

Most of you will know i am having trouble finding a deck i really like and want to play at regionals, i liked the g/w deck a bit but i hashed together a token deck with a g/w aggro deck and it could have been better. I like the jund rock type deck, but it was still haunted by the mana problems, because all your cards require 2+ colours, and so i think at a minimum you need rampant growths in there.

I have been building and testing loads of decks, obviously the power of spectral procession + windbrisk heights is defining the format, but i dont really like any decks with those two in, so i want to look for something else.

1) Jund rock

4 x kitchen finks
4 x putrid leech
3 x anathemancer
3 x chameleon colossus
3 x broodmate dragon

2 x garruk wildspeaker
4 x rampant growth

4 x jund charm
2 x terminate
3 x maelstrom pulse

2 x banefire
2 x primal command
1 x loxodon warhammer

4 x savage lands
4 x treetop village
3 x fire-lit thicket
3 x twilight mire
4 x forest
3 x swamp
3 x mountain

S/B

3 x thoughtseize
2 x thought hemorrhage
2 x makeshift mannequin
3 x cloudthresher
1 x anathemancer
3 x volcanic fallout
1 x primal command

I like this build quite a lot, it makes good use of anathemancer and has a decent curve. Colossus is a house in the mirror but sadly the token decks all play path, so maybe its worth going down to 2 for an extra sweeper, meta depending.

That said, i crapped out of this weeks T2 event with 1-3 with this deck. Saying that i was playing pretty badly, and at least 1 entire match was lost over greedy keeps, where both games lost i didnt play a spell.

Plainswalkers / cruel control

I based this on the deck John Ingham was playing at Standard last night, which i think he got from a guy who did well at Leicester. I found it really hard to fit all the cards i wanted in, and i think this deck needs a lot of work.

4 x kitchen finks
3 x anathemancer
4 x mulldrifter

4 x cryptic command
4 x esper charm
4 x wrath of god
2 x cruel ultimatum

3 x ajani vengeant
3 x jace beleren
2 x lilliana vess
1 x nicol bolas, plainswalker

+ 1 cruel control manabase.

I was only goldfishing with this deck but i had so much fun playing it, the thought that bolas could be your next rip is pretty hilarious. 4 sweepers, which kill everything very much dead, seems like too few but you draw enough cards to make me think that this is ok pre-boarding. But is bolas really playable in standard.

Faeries

4 x spellstutter sprite
4 x mistbind clique
3 x scion of oona
3 x vendilion clique

3 x jace beleren

4 x bitterblossom
4 x cryptic command
4 x broken ambitions
3 x terror
3 x thoughtseize

4 x secluded glen
4 x sunken ruins
4 x mutavault
2 x underground river
8 x island
3 x swamp

Yep, my old favourite and yours. I didnt see one faeries deck in the entire room at Leicester, and that tells me that either everyone correctly believes faeries is dead in the current token heavy meta full of volcanic fallouts, or everyone thinks its dead, but faeries is actually still good.

Volcanic fallout is a huge problem, but its not the end of the world. I think the deck relies more on mistbind clique, but having jace in the main i think is very important, you need to find the cryptics and cliques, and from there you should take control.

So which one of these, if any, should i play sunday? are they all worth their weight in Standard right now, or are these tier 2 or lower.


So thats about it, this may be my last chance (...before the last chance qualifier) to qualify for nats so im hopinf it all goes well, its annoying i have to work on saturday night because i know sleepless nights really dont help, but i will just have to stay as composed as possible.

Glad to see everyone is enjoying the draft articles, i have 2 more to go up...sadly in both i crapped out in the first rounds so at least you guys can tell me how bad my drafting is again!

See you all soon,



Until then,


Jim


As always, feel free to comment on anything about this article, or anything unrelated to magic whatsoever. If you would like to contribute to the TLM blog, please email any ideas, articles, pictures or anything else to ss07jm@leeds.ac.uk

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