Creature (19)
Land (17)
Instant (15)
Sideboard
Instant (8)
Have you always wanted to play with mischievous Faeries but weren't willing to shell out the $30 price tag for a Vendilion Clique? If so, Pauper faeries can put up all of the same shenanigans for nearly the price of half of a play set. There are many decks in Pauper that feature faeries such as Mono-Blue Delver and Izzet Delver, but our aim is to create a deck entirely revolving around faeries. So, with that being said, how do you construct a Faerie tribal deck in Pauper?
There are two ways to build our faerie friends, U/B and Mono-U. U/B adds better removal, but also strains our mana base quite a lot. Two color decks in Pauper don't function quite as well as mono-color decks, as the mana fixing isn't anywhere near up to par. Not to say it isn't doable, because it very well is, but one of the main things I look for in a deck is consistency. The U/B version of the deck just wasn't good enough for me to justify a splash for it, even a light one. Our goal isn't to remove our threats, it's to counter them, bounce them, or go above them in the air. The mono-blue version of the deck does all of these very well.
So, let's get in to the deck tech!
FAERIES
The goal of faeries is to be as annoying as possible to our opponent. We counter their spells, tap their permanents, and return their important creatures to their hand.
Faerie Miscreant -- A decent card draw engine, also helps with Spellstutter Sprite countering spells and making Briarberry Cohort a 2/2 on turn 2 if you can. All in all it's a decent Faerie as it's a 1/1 with a solid ability.
Briarberry Cohort -- Unfortunately, Pauper faeries don't have a ton of interaction unlike Modern faeries, so we'll have to opt to go a slightly more aggressive route by playing Cohort. He's a decent Faerie, a conditional 2/2 for 2 that'll speed up our clock for our opponent.
Spellstutter Sprite -- Sprite is our most important Faerie by far, and is such a great card. Flashing in Sprite to counter our opponents spell is such a fun play for us, but very annoying for our opponent. Not only do we counter the spell, but we get a 1/1 that'll add to the X for the next time Sprite gets cast. Plus, Rebecca Guay art.
Pestermite -- Another fun and annoying card to play, Pestermite lets you relive the glory days of the Splinter Twin combo in Modern. This is a great card to flash in on your opponents upkeep and tap down their best creature, or tap down a certain color of mana. I love the card.
Latchkey Faerie -- No real shenanigans here, just another beater that we will always try to play by paying the prowl cost of 2U for. It's a solid 3/1 that'll draw us a card on ETB, so that's good for pauper.
And that covers our main faerie package for the deck. Obviously some upgrades include Delver of Secrets
, Ninja of the Deep Hours, and Spire Golem, but at that point you're playing Mono-Blue Delver, and that's not what this deck is about.
NON-CREATURE SPELLS
The non-creature spells we have here dig for our cards, counter our opponents spells, and return their creatures to their hand if we can't counter them. Vapor Snag on a Gurmag Angler that was casted by delving a graveyard is insane. With all the Mono-White Heroic running around, Vapor Snag and Snap are great here too.
Ponder -- Ponder is almost an auto-include in most blue decks, depending on the deck. In a mono-blue deck, we don't have a ton of shuffle effects so Brainstorm doesn't work very well. Ponder is going to be a good way to dig three cards deep and set up the next few turns. If we don't like what we see, then we can just shuffle it all away and pray that we draw a good card.
Preordain -- Probably the best cantrip in a deck without shuffle effects, Preordain allows us to scry the bad pieces to the bottom or keep the top pieces up top where we need them. Preordain is the most expensive card in the deck at around $4, so if you need to budget, you can play Brainstorm instead with Ponder, as Ponder can shuffle away your bad cards.
Vapor Snag -- A great way to ping our opponent for 1, in addition to returning an important creature to our opponent's hand. There are really good times to have this and really bad times to have this card in your hand, but I'm usually always happy to have it. It's especially helpful against decks that cheat out creatures and decks that delve.
Daze -- Definitely one of the best tempo counter spells out there. It's a classic card and should always be played in decks that want to have counter magic up even when your tapped out. By far my favorite counter spell in the deck.
Snap -- This is essentially a free return creature to hand spell, as it untaps up to two lands when you cast it. You can use this on your opponents creatures, but I find myself using it on my creatures as well most of the time as a lot of our faeries have pretty good ETB abilities, so playing Snap on a Spellstutter Sprite, returning it to your hand, and then casting it again to counter a spell is one hell of a play.
Counterspell -- It's counterspell. Always belongs in blue decks.
Bonesplitter -- So, we have an extra slot available and I like running Bonesplitter as a cheap way to get some extra damage across. Putting it on any of our faeries exponentially increases the damage we do to our opponent, so a 1-of is always going to be nice at pretty much any time unless we have an empty board.
In terms of lands, run 17 of your favorites. I run 17 of the flower islands from Lorwyn, since most of the faeries are from the Lorwyn era.
SIDEBOARD
Stock blue sideboard for the most part, but we play a few extra janky little faeries for fun.
Annul is there to stop any enchantments or artifacts for just a single mana. Mono-W Heroic and Bogles are key match ups for this.
Dispel is great to end counter wars and as a little trick for playing other decks with a ton of instants and sorceries.
Fade Away is a neat little trick to wipe your opponents board if you're playing a ton of decks that go wide. It's the only way blue can really wipe a board.
Hydroblast is a mono-blue staple for sure. Very expensive on MTGO, super cheap in paper. Definitely recommend playing these in the side.
Curse of Chains is a favorite of mine and is very annoying for our opponent. It's a permanent Pestermite every turn.
Gut Shot is another really fun card to play with because you can just pay 2 life to in essence kill a creature, or, in some circumstances, kill your opponent.
Oona's Grace is a card I'm playing to fit the tribal theme and against long, grindy control decks, this card is great. It'll repeatedly be "draw a card, discard a land" over and over.
Weatherseed Faeries comes in against red decks and U/R decks because it has protection from red and is still a 2/1 flyer. Put a Bonesplitter on one of these and have some fun with it!
Thornwind Faeries is our last sideboard card and no one ever expects this thing. A lot of decks play a ton of x/1's (just like us) and this card is very punishing for them if it sticks and stays. It's a super weird little creature but is very fun to play.
Some additional cards you can run here are Dispel, Spreading Seas, Sea's Claim, Aura Flux, and Deprive.
And that about covers the deck for the most part! As said earlier, if you're looking for a better mono-blue deck, play mono-blue delver. This deck is mainly for fun and if you like Faeries, it's a neat little deck that still has plenty of power behind it. Faeries are tricky, annoying little pests for your opponent to play against and they're truly a blast to play.
So, you don't want to spend $60 on a Pauper deck? Totally understandable. Let's see where we can cut some budget out, but still maintain the overall viability of the deck.
Curse of Chains is also $2-3 a card right now, so by removing them from the sideboard and adding in something such that will also either tap your creatures opponent, or just enchant it so that it can't attack. You can also just add in more Dispel or disruption here.
Daze isn't super expensive in paper but on MTGO it's ridiculous. Replace it easily with Mana Leak or Deprive.
Hydroblast is expensive as hell on MTGO as well. Play Dispel as a budget alternative.
Preordain and Ponder are both expensive but crucial to the deck, but you can get away with playing cheaper cantrips such as Opt, Brainstorm, and other less efficient spells to save money.
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Revision 1 See all
(6 years ago)
| +4 | Daze | main |
| -1 | Dispel | side |
| +2 | Fade Away | side |
| +2 | Gut Shot | side |
| +3 | Hydroblast | side |
| -4 | Mana Leak | main |
| -2 | Piracy Charm | side |
| -3 | Spreading Seas | side |
| -1 | Thornwind Faeries | side |
| Top Ranked |
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| Date added | 6 years |
| Last updated | 6 years |
| Legality | This deck is not Pauper legal. |
| Cards | 60 |
| Avg. CMC | 1.84 |
| Folders | supa hot, pauper, Pauper, Pauper, Pauper Ideas, Pauper, Pauper, yo!, Stuff |
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