I went 3-1 at a weekly tournament with the Faerie Miscreant list posted on the previous page bare a few SB changes (-1 Trophy -1 Cage -1 Rod +1 Return to Nature +1 Jitte +1 Blossom). The deck performed well throughout numerous intense games. My loss was to Maverick as I got Choked twice and suffered under SoFaI. Unfortunately I couldn't find a Plague or Jitte in any of those games. The game I won was by adapting Pteramander. In fact, adapting Ptera happened in half my games and was the pivotal moment where I went from durdling with card advantage and circumventing threats to actually closing out the game. Here are a few examples:

-Adapt G1 against Maverick won the race;
-Adapt and flip FoW on Yuriko via Brainstorm against Depths before the second Lage token came online;
-Adapt for 3 mana in my 2 games against Miracles turned up the pressure

Faerie Miscreant was garbage as usual but did its job as an enabler which leads me to believe that Outcast might be better than Seer as a replacement. I don't believe Seer can replace Ponder, especially with Ptera... Outcast is without a doubt the best enabler by having the ultimate typing and evasion. In all my games, all that I expected from that slot was to enable a T2 Ninja or Sprite. I've also had a few stare downs with Marrit Lage and Scryb Ranger that could have been avoided if I had Outcast instead of Faerie. Faerie did pitch to FoW on a few occasions but I believe that was a symptom of the card being horrible rather than a lack of blue cards.

As much as I like Ninjas, I think 6 is a good number (good odds of finding one with a cantrip). I tested a list with Chrome Mox and more Ninjas instead of Ponder and what happened the most was that I would brick on land drops or have to mulligan much more than usual, likely because of the lack of manipulation or perhaps too few lands. Ninjas are clunky and I much prefer being able to set up a good ninjustu rather than having to jam as many as possible.

Another thing I noticed is that the Faerie typing is really just icing on the cake. Most of the time Sprite is used as a flash evasive body or to counter removal and cantrips as you pretty much have to fire it off every chance you get because of the low impact nature of the card. Trying to use Sprite as a hard counter for key spells is inefficient as we want to be doing stuff all the time. Sprite shines against Combo and postboard against Control when paired with Blossoms. I usually side them out against DnT, Maverick and Tomb/City decks.

Also, given the slow/midrange-y nature of the deck, playing against Eldrazi, Cloudpost ramp, and Depths decks is really a game about how many Wastelands and Forces you can find. Forces are good in every matchup but Wastes are sub-par or just dead weight against a big chunk of the meta. Colorless mana only pays for Sprite, Adapt, and Daze/Thalia taxes. I think it's important to have 4 Wastelands in the 75 but splitting them in the main/sb might be a good idea.

Bitterblossom is the nuts against control decks and makes Grixis and Miracles an absolute walk in the park. They also help tremendously against Depths. I went up to 2 copies in my SB and they did not dissapoint.

Our worst matchups are the toolboxy aggro decks like DnT/Maverick. Lucky for us, Plague Engineer goes a long way shoring those matchups. I've been struggling with SFM decks lately because every equipment is a must-answer (Jitte, SoFaI and BSK all shit on our parade). Return to Nature has been pretty flexible so far against Loam decks and Snapcaster+SFM decks. Return is a great complement to Nihil Spellbomb when you don't want to bring in Surgical Extraction (i.e: Miracles with AK and Snap, Aggro loam, Slow Depths). The problem is that the card is green... I can't really afford to play too many green cards against Wasteland decks. I stumbled upon Grip of Phyresis and I think it might be the answer to my prayers.

My plan against DnT and Maverick is to go:
-4 Spellstutter Sprite -3 Daze
+2 Plague Engineer +2 Fatal Push +1 Return to Nature +1 Grip of Phyresis +1 Wasteland

Sprite is too slow and doesn't have any meaningful CMC1 targets. Daze setting us back a land drop against Vial and mana dorks sounds terrible. I try to avoid cards like Grip of Phyresis and Dread of Night as much as possible since they have such narrow application. At least Grip is good against Stoneblade.

Plan for Stoneblade:

UW with B2B
-4 Baleful Strix -3 Wasteland
+2 Bitterblossom +2 Plague Engineer +1 Diabolic Edict +1 Return to Nature +1 Grip of Phyresis

I take out Strix because there is nothing to block in this matchup. Most lists are on B2B so Wasteland comes out. Bitterblossom comes in because they buffer Sprite to counter TNN and they will likely bring in Verdicts.

Esper/Jeskai
-4 Strix -3 Daze
+2 Bitterblossom +2 Plague Engineer +1 Return to Nature +1 Grip of Phyresis +1 Wasteland

Edict is arguably the worst card here as it isn't guaranteed to hit TNN with Snapcaster, SFM, and BSK floating about.

Y'all got any suggestions?


2 Bitterblossom
2 Plague Engineer
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Flusterstorm
2 Fatal Push
1 Diabolic Edict
1 Return to Nature
1 Grip of Phyresis
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Wasteland