Airfolk

[djeyjey]

Hi folks !

Let's begin by saying i'm a very occasional & casual player : just playing with friend from time to time. But i've always been interested in legacy format and watching the source closely.
So i've been toying with this decklist for a while, and after a lot of goldfishing, decided it was good enough to be presented here. I don't have MWS being on Mac so i must say my tests are limited to goldfishing. BTW if someone has suggestions for Mac &/or iphone playtesting i'll take that gladly! Here's the list:

AIRFOLK


// Lands
8 Island
4 Wasteland
3 Polluted Delta
2 Swamp
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

// Creatures
4 Judge's Familiar
4 Baleful Strix
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Illusory Angel
4 Skaab Ruinator
4 Street Wraith

// Spells
4 Æther Vial
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Umezawa's Jitte


So as the title says, this deck is inspired from Merfolk. It tries to do the same kind of things with different cards: dropping threats & putting pressure while disrupting the opponent with free counters. Of course, we lack the pumping & synergy of Merfolk, but each creature being a flyer becomes a threat & we can drop a few fatties quite early in the game, thanx to Vial.

CARD CHOICES

I'm trying to have a Waste-proof manabase (& to avoid buying duals!) even though we're 2 colors, but this can easily be changed. Sideboard will be discussed if u think this deck is worth developping. I'll pass quickly on FoW, Daze & Vial, everyone knows why.

• Judge's Familiar is the deck's Cursecatcher… same function here + helps feeding the Skaab
• Baleful Strix is a gem here, the reason i splash black: reminder of Silvergill Adept, taking down creatures when chump-blocking & feeding the Skaab at the same time.
• Cloud of Faeries is the toolbox: Angel enabler, Skaab feeder with cycling, easy Jitte wearer…
• Spellstutter Sprite fits perfectly with the idea of disrupting & dropping threats at the same time.
• Illusory Angel & Skaab Ruinator being the decks fatties
• Street Wraith allows to feed the Skaab while renewing your hand
• Jitte is obvious with this lot of creatures, winning games by itself

Been talking a lot about Merfolk in this post only because that's what inspired this deck. Don't misunderstand me, Merfolk is certainly way better than this. I just want to try & discuss this deck and it may be that it takes a different gameplan with further developments.

Thanx for reading and commenting!

[TraxDaMax]

Hi, you know the angel and 5/6 seem pretty nifty with Aether Vial. The Street Wraith kind of looks out of place although I can understand it feeds the 5/6.

Maybe something like Shriekmaw that cleans up a creature and acts as fodder? Just a random thought. There might be better ones out there.

[Piceli89]

I think that the deck has some little inner sinergies that make it interesting. Although being clearly underpowered and not able to compete with tiers, you raised my interest into trying to craft a better configuration for this list. Let's try it.

-The first things that gets to my eyes is that you're playing too many lousy cards that don't do anything on their own just to support the cards with drawbacks (Ruinator, Angel) the best way possible. This implies some inner inconsistency/poor ratio of actual "business" creatures that may punish you in mid-game and on, especially because you don't even have Brainstorm to filter your draws.
While this is another point worth being discussed, let's forget it for a second and relate to the issue:

-Street Wraith is plain useless. Although feeding Ruinator for free, that's pretty much about it; you can use those 4 slots for something better.

-Skaab Ruinator is a good offensive card for certain matchups, but I doubt it's worth the full set. Remember that it is totally dead in the opening hand, and a 3 cmc creature in a Vial deck should be minimized anyways (of course with Merfolk lords being an exception because they provide global beenfit to all the creature pool). I think that even without Street Wraith, Judge's Familiar, Cloud of Faeries and creatures naturally dying because of removals/combat trading could feed him enough without the need of playing anything else. Another thing that it comes to my mind is that you'll probably pack some Relic of Progenitus post-board as your weapon of choice to fight/mitigate graveyard-based strategies (which comprehends Punishing Fire decks as well), thus you really don't want to stumble into too many Ruinators.

-Somehow similarly, Illusory Angel should be trimmed down in some copies. I think that running a split of 3s between Angel and Ruinator may be enough. After all, it's just a beatstick with no other impact on the balances of the game.

-At this point, given you're running SSS and Cloud of Faeries, you can get the aforementioned trimmed cards at cc3 by playing Vendilion Clique, which is an all-star good in legacy and especially in this deck.

-Baleful Strix, and black in general, is not worth splashing. One (and the only) advantage of staying mono-colored in this kind of decks is that you can effectively play utility colorless lands without hampering your colored mana requirement at all- as you just need one. You can play 12 Islands (or 6 + 6 fetches if you were to run Brainstorm) and 4 Wasteland plus 4 Mutavault or Mishra's Factory; that could give you another angle of attack and a sturdy manabase. Strix is a bypassable removal that "just" cycles itself, and a 1/1 flyer. You can clearly see that, although being good, it can't really be the motivation of adding another color, especially if you're not willing to cash into Useas.
- Run Dismember in two copies. Same as Merfolk, I know, but Lavamancer, Stoneforge Mystic, (Dark Confidant) and the likes may give you headaches. You can also attempt to shrink Griselbrand and trade 1-on-1 if you are desperate.

@the Brainstorm enigma that I anticipated: it was already widely discussed. Some argue that it's doable, others prefer to fill those slots with straight cards that accomplish your goal in a more squared way without diluting your tempo. I am a fan of being able to have a little manipulation and thus to reduce the number of narrow/non-pillar cards, but I can also see the disadvantages (fetches and Brainstorm means feeding Deathrite Shaman, which otherwise wouldn't have much to mess with our gy, and being randoly hit by a Stifle). I guess it's up to personal tests and conclusions; still, keep in mind that transforming dead Vials, lands and/or Familiars into possible Cliques and Ruinators is really, really good, and that's actually an option Merfolk can't have.

To sum it up, that's what I would run:

6 Island
6 Blue fetches
4 Wasteland
4 Mutavault/Factory

#cc1
4 Æther Vial
4 Judge's Familiar
2 Dismember

#cc2
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Spellstutter Sprite

#cc3
3 Vendilion Clique
3 Illusory Angel
2 Skaab Ruinator

#trump
2 Umezawa's Jitte

#glue
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will

Side:
4 Relic of Progenitus
2 Spell Pierce
9 other slots, with 2 BEBs almost mandatory.


I hope I have given to you some interesting input. I will keep an eye on this topic and craft on my own, maybe something cute can come out.

[landwalker000]

Pride of the Clouds seems like a good fit. I know you wanted to keep it mono-blue but this does work quite well with most of the deck.

[panda samurai]

How about chrome mox with angel? that synergy seems okay, considering you can drop angel on turn 2 and playing chrome mox also helps cast the angel.

[Aggro_zombies]

I would run Illusory Angel over Skaab Ruinator, Piceli. Ruinator is realistically only going to be castable once or twice a game unless you are absolutely throwing your guys away, which seems like a terrible plan. Angel is realistically castable in conjunction with Cloud of Faeries or any one-drop in addition to being good Aether Vial fodder.

My biggest issue with this deck is that it trades Merfolk's one strength - creature synergy - for evasion. This does not strike as being in any way, shape, or form a good trade: you suffer from the same problems stemming from all of your creatures being individually mediocre, but they're exacerbated by the fact that committing more creatures to the board does nothing to help the ones already there. This is particularly noticeable when you compare the cards in this deck to Delver. Angel or Ruinator aside, it takes three of your own creatures to present as much of a clock as a single Insectile Aberration, which is pretty terrible no matter how you slice it. Piceli's list, with Angel, Ruinator, and Clique does better in this regard, but you're losing damage because your beefy creatures are three mana instead of one and two of them have onerous casting restrictions (the third is legendary).

[Sardukar]

Interesting deck. BTW, maybe it would be not bad to play singleton of Riptide Laboratory ? it's great with Sprites.
Besides, i think Bittterblossom is good for this deck

[Zupponn]

Seems like Ninja of the Deep Hours could find a place here. He's great with a large amount of flyers and also lets you reuse a Spellstutter Sprite on occasion.

[TomasChile]

I want to play this deck, it seems to be a pretty fun deck to go on a legacy non competitive tournament, so i've been trying to figure out some way to make it competitive, and i wanted to ask you for some opinions about this configuration:

3x tundra
2x underground sea
8x fetch
6x island
1x riptide laboratory

4x cloud of faeries
4x spellstutter sprite
3x pride of the clouds
3x illusory angel
2x vendillion clique

4x aether vial
2x jitte
1x sword of fire and ice

3x bitterblossom

4x brainstorm
3x ponder
4x fow
3x swords to plowshares

i think that only 4 counters is not enough, maybe put on some daze or spell pierce. Also i really like baleful strix but i don´t know where to put it, maybe get rid of the white splash and put 3 baleful strix and 3 daze or spell pierce. the Sword of fire and ice is there just because is great, i don't even know if it should be there.

another thing that i've been wondering is if stoneforge would finds a place in the deck, that way we can get rid of 1 jitte and put on 1 batterskull.

and finally if i'm playing black, why not play some thoughtseize, or kozilek, or tourach.

maybe you guys have more experience in the craft of making decks, so i really like to hear your opinions (read)