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  1. #1
    Here I Rule!!!!!!!!!!
    Phoenix Ignition's Avatar
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    BUG Ninja Faeries

    I've been wanting to restart playing Modern since Modern Horizons gave me my favorite mechanic back -- Ninjutsu. The mechanic is only good with a critical mass of dinky value creatures, which we now have in Ice-Fang Coatl. This list has been evolving for a bit, but after about 100 games playing it against myself playing the top tiers I'm confident in it.

    // 60 Maindeck
    // 4 Artifact
    4 Arcum's Astrolabe

    // 20 Creature
    4 Faerie Seer
    4 Ice-Fang Coatl
    4 Coiling Oracle
    4 Stoneforge Mystic
    4 Fallen Shinobi


    // 11 Instant
    2 Assassin's Trophy
    4 Force of Negation
    3 Fatal Push
    2 Abrupt Decay

    //2 Equipment
    1 Batterskull
    1 Sword of Fire and Ice


    // 20 Land
    1 Breeding Pool
    1 Overgrown Tomb
    1 Watery Grave
    4 Polluted Delta
    1 Snow-Covered Forest
    1 Snow-Covered Swamp
    3 Snow-Covered Island
    1 Hallowed Fountain
    4 Misty Rainforest
    2 Flooded Strand
    1 Godless Shrine

    // 4 Planeswalker
    3 Teferi, Time Raveler
    1 Liliana, the Last Hope


    // 15 Sideboard
    // 3 Artifact
    SB: 1 Nihil Spellbomb
    SB: 1 Executioner's Capsule
    SB: 1 Mycosynth Lattice

    // 3 Creature
    SB: 2 Plague Engineer
    SB: 1 Walking Ballista

    // 5 Instant
    SB: 2 Surgical Extraction
    SB: 1 Fatal Push
    SB: 1 Assassin's Trophy

    // 5 Planeswalker
    SB: 4 Karn, the Great Creator
    SB: 1 Ashiok, Dream Render






    The worst matchup is humans, which is why there's so much sideboard for it. Leylines + Surgicals along with maindeck Nihil Spellbombs make dredge extremely in our favor, but due to its popularity I don't want to run any less.

    Force of Negation is a powerhouse card to keep yourself not-behind until your deck can start gaining card advantage everywhere. It also helps when you have that card advantage to maintain the lead, since mana spells are only good when you have the mana up to pay for them. Seriously, this card singlehandedly will change Modern. Every single deck that wins before turn 4 abuses a single card engine, and this shuts it off. It's like playing against old Belcher in Legacy with Force of Will, you can win matchups that were previously determined by your opponent's luck. 1-2-3 Karn is never going to be oppressive again because of FoN. That was my most hated matchup because it just felt like dumb luck before. It just sucks that FoN is virtually dead against Humans.

    Fallen Shinobi: his ability is absolutely dirty against every deck. Even just getting 2 lands while being a huge threat and knocking out 5 life is huge, but grabbing at least 1 good card makes it insane. He is single handedly winning the Humans matchup because he uses their bullshit against them (hello Reflector Mage or a team of chump-blockers). Against control, they're terrified of him hitting a planeswalker. Most other decks are trying to cheat big things into play with Izzet Phoenix, Eldrazi Tron, or Dredge. With Shinobi for the late game we can focus on what Faeries in general does best... stalling.

    Ingenious Infiltrator After much playtesting with it, it just didn't make the cut. Most of the time the best thing it could do is draw a card while resetting a creature, but Modern is fast enough that you don't want to trade a chump blocking Ice-Fang for a tapped 2/3. Even worse, sometimes you draw hands where you don't have any low-costing dorks but you drew all your ninjutsu creatures and you're stuck with 3 over-costed creatures. It ended up getting cut from 4-of to 0-of in the course of testing.

    Ice-Fang Coatl is pretty all around good, being blue for Force, drawing a card, but most importantly has flash. I was playing this deck with Faerie Seer instead as basically a ninjutsu target, but my pre-board matchup vs. humans was literally 0%. Like their worst draws vs my best draws I'd still lose. Ice-Fang has done a huge part in bringing that matchup back, with all of your basics being snow. That means around turn 4 or so you'll usually have deathtouch online, which stalls them out a ton. Humans aren't great at topdeck wars from a stalled boardstate, and we are, so that's the route to victory. Against most other decks it's just a nice way to do something when holding up Spellstutter mana.

    Assassin's Trophy is the best removal I've used in Modern. The basic land very rarely matters, but the ability to hit all the new planeswalkers, random crap like Altar of Dementia or Pyromancer's Ascension, Hollow One/Gurmag Angler, and just literally everything makes it invaluable. I think the main reason is that most decks, with the exception of UW Control, don't ever plan on casting something for more than 2 mana. Against UW Control you'd be happy to give them a land to shut off whichever planeswalker they have. With the ability to flash them back with Snapcaster, you can easily deplete every non-UW Control deck of their basics.

    I had creaturelands in here, Mutavaults in particular, but you just never want to be attacking with them. Against control decks, the normal place to really want that ability, you would rather just run as many basics as possible. UW Control abuses the crap out of decks that don't run at least 4. They typically have as many Field of Ruin as you'd have creaturelands anyway. The weird 2-2-2 basic land base I'm running is less awkward than you'd expect since the majority of our 2 drops have a colorless mana in their cost so give you a lot of leeway there. It kinda sucks we have both Bitterblossom and Ice-Fang Coatl to worry about casting on turn 2 but with 8 fetches I haven't found it to be a real problem.

    If there's interest I'll post more thoughts on sideboarding and what to look for in each matchup. I'm practicing this a bunch against the top tier decks in preparation for GP Minneapolis (although I'm still on the fence about going).
    Last edited by Phoenix Ignition; 08-26-2019 at 05:16 PM.

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