Breakdown:
MD:
Disrupting Shoal - a 0-mana arcane spell that offers protection against turn 1 discard and enables some of our fastest kills.Horobi's Whisper - a 0-mana reuseable removal spell. Combo-control decks often face the difficult choice of "do I spend my resources on interacting with my opponent or on furthering my own game-plan. With whisper our deck can do both. Unbound, scour, fetches and the large number of cantrips fill our yard quickly allowing us to remove creatures at a blistering speed. For example: We go turn 1 fetch scour. Opponent plays a noble hierarch. Turn 2 we cast ideas unbound killing noble. He plays a scooze. We untap and kill scooze with a cantrip. Despite how good it is we only run 3 as they are bad in multiples and we can easily find one between the cantrips and tutors.
Roar of Jukai - Combo piece that only gets better in mutiples. In fact, drawing two makes the turn 4 much easier.Serum Visions - Cantrip to fill the yard and dig for the combo.
Thought scour - Cantrip to fill the yard and dig for the combo. Space is tight, especially for non-arcane spells so I could not fit the fourth. If your meta is filled with creatures you want to kill with whipser, a 4th one is probably worth running.
Reach Trough Mists - Cantrip that lays a big role in our fast kills by being cheap and finding more arcane spells.Eye of Nowhere - Arcane spell that buys time. Keep it mind that it can bounce lands and blood moon amongst other things. The second could possibly be cut. Peer through Depths - Digs deep for roar and most other relevant cards. Sadly can't grab remedy.
Tainted Remedy - You rarely lose games where this sticks, but sadly it can be a little annoying to find.
Eerie Procession - A tutor for roar and situational arcane spells.
Darslick Shores - Does an amazing job of casting our spells when we need to. Drawback is almost never relevant.
lots of Basics - blood moon is a card and we can afford to begood against it, so why not.
Lots of fetches - Scour puts 3 cards in the yard, so fetches are needed to hit the magic number 4 on turn 2.
SB:
Leyline of Sanctity - Pulls double duty against discard and burn. Due to needing to keep our arcane density high we can not afford to bring in too many cards in any given matchup, which means the sb should be filled with specific hate.
Surgical Extraction - Hate against decks like dredge and esper gifts.
Fatal Push - Improves our mu against creature decks by furthering our plan of taking a more controling approach. However, slots are tight in those matchups as we want scour and whisper (cards that often get boarded out) and we need to keep our arcane density high. 3 push therefore might end up being too many.Eye of Nowhere - Comes in against problematic expensive permanents.Spreading Seas - Good against big mana and greedy mana bases while the cantrip aspect means that it does not hurt our arcane density too much.
Collective Brutality - Brutal against burn.
Hideous laughter - Tutorable reccuring wipe against elves and affinity.
Strengths and Weaknesses:
+Fairy fast combo kill
+Difficult to interact with. Has leyline and shoal against discard. Shoal against counters. Basics against blood moon. Does not rely on the graveyard. Does not get hit by stony silence. Surgical extraction does not do much without hand disruption since our combo pieces do not naturally go to the yard.+Roar is possibly the best answer to death's shadow in the format. That creature extremly seldom survives a turn cycle in play.
-Struggles to beat turn 3 karn.
-Gets raced by affinity and burn.
-Can't kill non-shadow black creatures in game 1.-Once Lilliana of the veil has emptied our hand we can't win since our combo relies on having multiple cards in hand and we can't draw multiple cards in a turn.
Matchups in order of metagame share (have not played enough games to draw statisticly relevant conclusions (I think 300 games per mu was the limit?) so I will give an idea based on how the matchup has felt and played):
Titan Shift - Favorable game 1. Game 2 depends on their sideoard. We are a faster combo deck. They get explosives for interaction while we get shoal and whisper. Post board they get Reclamation Sage, Nature's Claim, Maelstrom Pulse, Chameleon Colossus and Slaughter Games while we get leyline which luckliy answers slaughter games. Game 2 and 3 have been decided by swingy topdecks, so I am not sure about the mu post-board.
Grixis Shadow - Favorable. (but my opponets kept in shadows for games 2 and 3, which I think is wrong). Death's Shadow sucks against us and we can easily deal with snappy, so the only threat they have is gurmag. The mu therefore comes down to "can they kill us with angler before we combo?". Most of the time it seems that the answer is "no". I do not bring in push
Affinity - Unfavorable. They race us in game 1 and we can't kill Vault Skirge. Post board we can kill scourage but comboing becomes harder.
Eldrazi Tron - Even . We lose against turn 3 karn, but chalice does not stop the combo since them losing life is a cost and we can kill though-knot. At least once I have had an opponent board in surgical extraction which I think is wrong. Combo pieces can end up in our yard via scour which is unlikely and we will not pitch them to unbound and smasher since we fear extraction.
Have not played against storm - I am not too worried between removal, force of will (uhm, I mean disrupting shoal) and a fast combo kill.
Burn - Somewhat unfavorable game 1 since they can race us. We do have shoal and whisper, but it is often not enough. Post board we get leyline and collective bruality, but they get Destructive Revelry which is problematic (we do have shoal, but still).
Tips and tricks for playing the deck:
Making your opponent gain life can kill a death's shadow.
Since the life gain (loss) is a cost they do not get to respond so counters do not matter once remedy is in play.When sideboarding keep your arcane count in mind. Whisper only somewhat counts as an arcane spell as you rarely hard-cast it.
While Sideboarding keep your blue count in mind. Especially if you have something specific you want to counter (like revelry against naya burn) keep the appropriate count up.
Cards that often get boarded out 21st land on the draw, thought scour + whisper, 2nd eye of nowhere, the 3rd Eerie Procession
Further improvement ideas:
Splashing white for Etheral Haze main and stony silence + path in the board (might hurt the burn mu and soften us to blood moon but improve the affinity one and the ds one)
Replacing the 3rd push with a pithing needle for Liliana of the Veil and affinityHurkyl's Recall in the board for affinity
