Modern is a for the most part defined as a format, but much like Legacy in its heyday you always get some fresh new decks that pop up and take you by surprise. Such was this deck that almost took down a 200+ plus PTQ.

 

UG Faeries Modern Format Creatures: 21 2 Scryb Ranger 3 Mistbind Clique 3 Vendilion Clique 4 Birds of Paradise 4 Noble Hierarch 4 Spellstutter Sprite 1 Venser, Shaper Savant Instants: 9 2 Voidslime 2 Remand 2 Cryptic Command 3 Mana Leak Artifacts: 7 3 Sword of Feast and famine 2 Sword of Fire and Ice 2 Vedalken Shackles

Lands: 23 2 Forest 4 Breeding Pool 2 Mutavault 3 Verdant Catacombs 4 Misty Rainforest 2 Tectonic Edge 6 Islands Sideboard 3 Kitchen Finks 2 Spellskite 2 Engineered Explosives 2 Threads of Disloyalty 2 Scavenging Ooze 2 Spell Snare 2 Hurkyll’s Recall

The cool thing about this deck is that you actually accelerate into some pretty nice stuff.

Turn 1 : Noble Hierarch off a Forest of Breeding Pool.

Turn 2: Mutavault and pass turn or Breeding Pool

Opponent’s Turn: they cast a 2-drop.

Activate Mutavault to turn it into a creature then Spellstutter Sprite their spell.

OR

Cast a Scryb Ranger, return a forest to hand to untap Noble Hierarch and cast a Spellstutter Sprite to counter their card.

 

Mana dorks. They don’t just look good, they ARE good!

It’s got way better tricks but that’s just a small early game example.  You can also Time Walk your opponents that classic way by going Mistbind Clique on their upkeep and then countering something with Cryptic Command later while bouncing your Mistbind Clique to hand and having another chance to Time Walk your opponent next upkeep as well. It gets even better if you championed a Vendilion Clique with it since you get a great deal of value all while getting rid of their best card (kind of) and gaining hand knowledge.

Did you hear about the new cool Blue/Green Faeries deck?

 

Angel meets tentacle

The green splash is pretty sweet even for cards like Voidslime. Yes, Squelch or Trickbind do the ‘counter activated ability’ thing as well, but Voidslime is much more versatile (depite not having the Split Second of Trickbind of the Draw a Card of Squelch). Your Scryb Rangers do very good work in various matchups, like untapping your Mistbind Cliques or tapped attackers equipped with Swords in order to surprise block and kill their attackers. If you think you will miss your next land drop, you can even end of turn the Scryb Ranger.

This will allow you to tap your mana dudes (Birds of Paradise and Noble Hierarch) as well as your lands for mana, then untap one via Scryb Ranger. You then bounce a Forest to your hand and then play it as your land drop. You’ve just generated 2 extra mana! This is not an uncommon play for when you want to cast and equip a Sword of Feast and Famine on your turn 3 (even with the missed land drop). Obviously you get insane value if you connect with the equipped creature, since you get to untap and setup a Spellstutter Sprite counter (or Mana Leak). Don’t be sad if your counterspell was Voidslime either (you can activate the Scryb Ranger ability on your opponent’s turn as well to generate another mana and allow you to go ahead and Voidslime their spell.

Faeries used to be green. True story!

The deck is worth a try for anyone looking for something cool and different to try (I always am) in a  format that is still open to innovative brews. I am not a fan of the overpriced Bitterblossom at the moment either, but it still can be a ‘thing’ depending on how the metagame shift.

I was a little shocked to see that this little gem is being released in Magic 2015:

Yeah … we probably don’t want our opponents casting Gryff here

I really like it when cards that are meh (like Torpor Orb) get a body attached to their ability to make them very playable. Things like Magus of the Moon, Thalia,etc. It gives you the opportunity to maindeck hate cards with decent stats in decks that are more aggressive all while keeping the aggro plan going.

While a budget version of the deck is possible, I would not really recommend it. You can’t fully replace cards like Noble Hierarch and swords,etc. Spellstutter Sprite is criminally underplayed in a format where it can counter soooo many spells with it (even without the extra Fairies in play). Wish I still had that Spellstutter playmat I did her holding an Umezawa’s Jitte …