This deck has a better time adapting to a midrange strategy than my grow decks, especially in game one. It does feel like tempo against a good chunk of decks, especially the slower ones like Twin and BGx. Glad you’re still on Monkey Grow; I took the deck to a Super Series last weekend and will publish a tournament report this Friday.

On Shoal math: it’s actually a little different than Force math, since Shoal requires specific casting costs. I like a minimum of 22 blue spells in the main with a playset of Shoal. More on the numbers in this article:
http://quietspeculation.com/some-bob-with-your-bugs-confidant-in-delver/

Stupid question first… It seems to me that you’re running a lot less blue spells than your other lists with Disrupting Shoal. Can you still support it? Keeping in mind that, being a D&T player in Legacy, I have no idea about the math with FoW.

How does the game feel like playing compared to midrange strategies / your other tempo decks? Do you still retain that complex decision making? Does the game actually feel like tempo? Anyway, it looks like a lot of fun to play.

I think I’m short 1 Snapcaster Mage and the 4 Bitterblossom of being able to sleeve up the deck. I’ll see if I have some spare cash after Christmas.

Thanks! A U/B version cashed at the GP, as mentioned in the article. Personally, I don’t think U/B is where interactive decks want to be in this format. Maybe you own Lightning Bolts?

Perhaps
-1 Abrupt Decay
+1 Simic Charm

Small Zoo, for one, looks like a problem for your deck. A Sprite will be a nice tempo swing, but when you’re getting bombarded by 1-drops that are bigger than anything but a well-fed Goyf, it’s a problem. CoCo Zoo will also be a problem, though less so. Damnation (or EE on 2, but that one has more friendly-fire issues) also helps against the likes of Merfolk, which historically has beaten the tar out of decks like Faeries. It also makes a lot more sense when you’re advocating a IoK-for-Peppersmoke swap (as I currently am).

I disagree with the notion that IoK is always a tempo-negative play, though. Ripping out an aggro deck’s 2-drop of choice can throw their whole curve out of whack and give you a pretty significant advantage. Furthermore, IoK’s inability to interact with resolved permanents feels a lot less bad in a deck with Abrupt Decay. I think the number of decks where a Peppersmoke feels bad in hand is greater than the ones where an IoK does.

Is your local LGS meta always so combo heavy? I wonder how this deck would fare in a meta rife with fast clocks. You say the infect matchup is good, but what about Nacatl decks?

Grindy mirrors are already very easy to win. I don’t mind only losing to one tier deck.

Golgari charm may help the tokens matchup

im Gul Dukat btw.

IOK is definitely better than Pepper in certain metagames. I like that Pepper shuts down Modern’s faster aggro decks and disrupts synergy, while not being dead against other decks in game one. IOK is an always tempo-negative play that doesn’t deal with resolved permanents.

What matchups would you want a sweeper effect for? The only time I’ve lost to a bunch of creatures so far in my testing is against tokens, sometimes out of non-“Tokens” decks like Abzan. Affinity has been fine. Granted, I haven’t tested against CoCo, but I think Dispel, Denial, Peppersmoke, Decay, and Thoughtseize effects should contain that deck just fine. I’m wary of adding cards to the sideboard that don’t address specific problems that I know exist.

I was worried this was going to be more 3-drop garbage like most Faerie decks. I’m pleasantly surprised.

This deck is indeed very fun. I brought it to a local tournament tonight and had a blast, playing a bunch of matches and going 5-1. Went 2-0 against Burn, 2-0 against Ad Nauseam, 2-0 against Eggs, 2-0 against UW Emeria Control, 2-0 against Soul Sisters, and as expected, 0-2 against BW Tokens (losing twice to Ajani Goldmane).

To my chagrin, Peppersmoke sat in the board for every matchup except Soul Sisters, but opening Bitterblossom, Goyf, and double Smoke against that deck game one made up for it 😀 As I said in the article, Smoke really helps in otherwise tough matchups that can get ahead of us. If it’s bad in already favorable matchups, that’s fine; we’ll just board them out there and win anyway.

That said, I moved one Peppersmoke to the side and cut the Spell Snare from my list to play two Probes, which have been sweet. The info is superb in this deck, and I like having more blue cards for Shoal. Since the Burn matchup is so good, I figured we could play some Probes. IMO most blue decks that don’t lose to Burn should run them.

I wish we could fit discard effects into the mainboard, as they’ve been all-stars from the side, but we can’t without weakening Shoal the deck’s true enabler. Without Shoal, the Faeries deck doesn’t have time to do anything in Modern, which I consider much too fast for traditional shells.

The games I lose with this deck are due to flooding out on expensive cards like Leak and Snap as opponents beat me up with one-drops. Painful Truths would only exacerbate this problem and contribute nothing to the harder matchups.