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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Midsummer Faerie deck
July 3, 2007

Hiya, BMoor. I'm a big fan of your articles, and reading them has really helped me improve alot of my decks. I'm writing to you to ask for advice on my little sister's Faerie deck (which was built with just a tad of help from yours truly).  I know you already did an article about a Faerie Deck for DevenDraconie in May of 2006 (reading that article helped me greatly by the way), but I think this is a subject that could use to be revisited. Since you wrote that article, several new Faeries have come out, as well as a multitude of other cards that could be used in this deck. I can't figure out what the perfect combination is, and I seem to have hit a wall. The deck plays good, but I can't help but feel that there's a way to make it better.
Here's what I've got so far:

Artifact

2x Loxodon Warhammer
1x Sensei's Divining Top

Blue

4x Cloud of Faeries
3x Cloudseeder
4x Delay
2x Mahamot Djinn
4x Snap
4x Sprite Noble
2x Telling Time

Green

4x Alpha Status
4x Glimpse of Nature
1x Moment's Peace
4x Scryb Ranger
3x Scryb Sprites
2x Wild Growth

Land

5x Forest
8x Island
4x Simic Growth Chamber
1x Yavimaya Coast

The basic idea is to get a bunch of mana using Cloud of Faeries and/or Snap combined with a Simic Growth Chamber/land with Wild Growth on it; then drop faeries like it's D-Day in wonderland. Things get even crazier if the flood of faeries is preluded by a One with Nature. I know those Mahamoti  Dijnns look out of place, but they are in there because in the words of my sister "My Faeries need a man". At first I didn't like them, but I've come to see that having a big creature makes a great backup plan in case things don't go so well.  But aside from the Djinns, I would like to keep it all Faeries.
Well, what do you think? Can this deck be taken up another notch? Your sagely advice would surely be a great help.

Keith and her sister here have been waiting quite a while for me to get to their deck, and I have to admit, my mind was so full of self-affairs, I did lose it.  But you have my full attention now.

At first blush, this appears to be a straightforward Faerie deck.  However, careful readers will have noticed Keith's powerful combo before he even described it: using Cloud of Faeries and Snap (most likely Snapping the Cloud of Faeries) to repeatedly untap a land that produces more than one mana, thus generating a great stockpile of mana with which to play Faerie after Faerie.  Glimpse of Nature lets you draw a card for each creature you drop on your One Big Turn, letting you chain into a massive flying army.

If this combo fails somehow (most likely due to not drawing all the right pieces), there's still Mahamoti Djinn and Alpha Status allowing you to swing away with one big flyer instead of a lot of little ones.  So, how can we make this deck hum more smoothly?  Well, let's start by looking at the combo first.

In order to "go off", you need a certain game state.  You need at least one land in play that taps for more than one mana(Growth Chamber or an enchanted land, or an enchanted Growth Chamber).  In your hand, you need at least one Cloud of Faeries and at least one Snap, or possibly two Clouds.  I'm not sure if two Snaps would work, but one of each works best since you can play the Cloud, Snap the Cloud, then replay the Cloud, thus untapping your land at least three times.  More copies of either works even better.  You'd also want a Glimpse of Nature in your hand to increase the odds of chaining out as long as possible, or a decent number of creatures/spells in your hand to ensure you can spend all this mana you're generating.  How can we increase the odds of you getting what you need?

Well, the first thing I'd like to do is replace Wild Growth with Overgrowth.  It costs a little more, but it gives you more mana, so every time you untap it, you're getting more for your efforts.  There's also Dawn's Reflection and Fertile Ground if you often fnd yourself wanting blue mana instead of green, but Overgrowth is likely the one you want.  Next, you can add in a few more "untap" spells.  Frantic Search would work well since it also helps you find your combo if you're not ready to go off, and Treachery might work well, since once you cast Overgrowth you've got the mana for it.  There's also Early Harvest, but that won't work on Simic Growth Chamber.  More's the pity.  And finally, you can add more creatures, to increase the likelihood of drawing a good amount of them with Glimpse of Nature.

That works quite well with the "Faerie tribal" theme of the deck as well, because it lets us add more Faeries.  Which Faeries?  Well, if you frequently face off against artifact creatures, try Argothian Pixies.  Thornwind Faeries is basically a flying Prodigal Sorceror, which is always good.  You've got Scryb Ranger for anti-blue, why not Sea Sprite for anti-red?  Slikwing Scout makes good land searching as well as a 2/1 body, and Surveilling Sprite can help you draw cards.  And finally there's Willow Priestess, who is anti-black, and puts Faeries from your hand directly into play.  It doesn't work all that well with you're wanting to play out a lot of Faeries at once, but it's a good card-- much better than Cloudseeder for your purposes.

Finally, there's the possibilty that you might have everything you need to untap and retap your uber-land into about 12 mana, but not be able to spend it all.  In that case, a mana sink would help.  Might I suggest Chimeric Staff?  It's rumored to be coming back in 10th!

That's all I've got to say about this deck.  Thanks for writing in, Keith, and here's hoping that your sister is able to use it to make her wildest midsummer nights' dreams come true!

~BMoor