Harpies & Friends

[Maveric78f]

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// Lands (19)
4  Polluted Delta
3  Flooded Strand
5  Island
3  Swamp
1  Scrubland
1  Plains
1  Underground Sea
1  Tundra

// Creatures (27)
3  Cavern Harpy
3  Corrupt Court Official
3  Ravenous Rats
4  Dream Stalker
1  Leonin Squire
4  Sage of Epityr
4  Meddling Mage
2  Dimir Infiltrator
3  Trinket Mage

// Spells (14)
4  Umezawa's Jitte
4  AEther Vial
1  Engineered Explosives
1  Pithing Needle
3  Cabal Therapy
1  Tormod's Crypt

// Sideboard (15)
SB: 1  Leonin Squire
SB: 1  Disenchant
SB: 2  Pithing Needle
SB: 4  Force of Will
SB: 1  Cabal Therapy
SB: 3  Vindicate
SB: 1  Absolute Law
SB: 2  Warmth

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Let's talk about that surprising deck before raising the questions that I can't decide by myself.

I've been testing this deck a lot for months now (2 or 3) and it's a very strange and consistant deck based on the synergy between aether vial and cavern harpy. It can avoid the main threats in the format :
- creatures : I'm playing 27 cheap creatures. With instant speed bouncers, they all become very fair blockers.
- combo : I play a lot of discard that become very quickly recurrent. Plus meddling mage that is awesome in combination with cabal therapy.
- controle : discard also helps a lot plus I play 4*umezawa jitte which is a must counter for almost all control decks. Moreover the instant bounceability of my creatures or even permanents thanks to the dream stalker is very precious. It's simple, it's very difficult to make me run out of creatures and that's a real pain for all board-controle decks.

Now let's look at the synergies in my deck :
- trinket mage + low cost artefacts (including vial) + leonin squire : answer MD to all dredge engines and thresh or graveyard strategy based decks. Pithing MD is always good for you to deal with deeds or jitte when you're waiting for yours to come and you are going to bounce your pithing at the rigth moment.
- vial + harpy : instant save of all the creatures (or almost). Harpy is a very good blocker too : 1 life for 1 creature threat even flying ones and punches for 2 before coming back to hand. It's clearly the best trick of the deck. Harpy can attack for 2, then be bounced against 1 life and then make a utility creature block an opponent creature and then bounce it with harpy. And eventually, you'll be able to attack the next turn with the harpy and play again the utility creature (a rat, a mage, a sage ??? : just choose the one you want).
- vial + dream stalker : well, compared to harpy it's for less recursive but there are so many thing you can do with that : save a vial, a jitte, produce 1 additionnal mana by bouncing 1 of your lands in main phase. Moreover stalker is a 1/5 that can block all the non-flying threats is legacy with no needed help. Stalker does not have defender, so that you'll equip it with a jitte and it becomes a very big threat difficult to get rid of.
- all these weak creatures + jitte : jitte is never useless in that deck because jitte can do almost everything as long as a creature to equip. I ALWAYS have a creature to equip. Jitte wins alone a lot of games.
- cabal therapy + meddling mage + pithing needle : you can play you're meddling mage early in the game as you'll be able to bounce it if you targetted a wrong card. Morover, cabal therapy will tell you what card to name.
- fetches + sage of epityr/trinket mage/dimir infiltrator : I have a lot of way of shuffling the deck, and the sage helps me to topdeck.
- all these 2CC cards + dimir infiltrator : dimir infiltrator can be good to feed a jitte and then be used to get a killer card such as harpy or jitte (if the firt is destroyed).
- harpy + rat/corrupt : there is a combo here with instant discarding thanks to vial. It's a lock that wins a lot of games too.
- the mana base : it's very light in double-land the fetches between friend colors and the basic lands are far than enough for this deck because I use vial and because I never need two mana of the same color for a single spell.
- chalice of the void immunity : even if most of my cards have a CC of 2, most of them keeps usable with chalice in play. Moreover, EE tutored by a trinket mage will get rid easyly of it.
- engineered explosives immunity : the EE player never knows if he should crack it with 1 or 2 counters. For 1 he may get rid of my vials but keeps in play jitte and creatures. For 2, I can still combo and save my creatures in instant. (pernicious deed won't have that problem though...)
- pithing needle immunity : ok I'm sensible to pithing needle what should you name : jitte, vial, harpy ? Or maybe explosives because I really don't like pithing.


Now what are the fundamental questions I have :
I'd like to have :
4* mesmeric fiend
4* cabal therapy
4* meddling mage
Because it's the perfect disruption for a control deck but these cards become very quickly useless as the opponent has no card in hand. Morover, fiend doesn't lock as well as the rats or the corrupt court officials do.

To test it, I did :
-2 rats
-1 official
-2 dimir infiltrator
+4 mesmeric fiend
+1 cabal therapy

But I can't afford the loss of dimir infiltrator and the rats. I think I will have to choose a more temperate decision such as :
-1 rat
-1 official
-2 mesmeric fiend

[xsockmonkeyx]

You should definately go with 4 Cabal Therapy.  You have a ton of creatures which become weak after they come into play (Squire, multiple Ravenous Rats).  Also I would think that Faceless Butcher would go well in here. You could freeze cards in their hand over and over every turn until you therapy it away.

Have you considered playing Dark Confidant? He would be is an absolute bomb with the Sage bouncing into play over and over.  This deck needs infinately more Force of Will.    Finally, why only 3 Harpies?  I thought that was the name of the game.