Home News Magic 2014 DLC preview: Up to Mischief deck list (updated)

Our exclusive Magic 2014 DLC Deck Pack #2 preview continues with Up to Mischief, the new monoblue faerie-based option. Sporting a range of tricks, traps, and yes… faeries, Up to Mischief is designed to frustrate your opponent, steal his goodies, and pester him to death with the collective, sugar-coated might of magical sprites!

Below, you’ll find the base decklist for Up to Mischief – the pile you get when first receiving the deck. Come back Monday for the full list, including unlocks and promo cards. In the meantime, share your thoughts on this new monoblue deck with us in the comments!

Up to Mischief base decklist

Unlocks

  1. Oona, Queen of the Fae
  2. Oona’s Gatewarden
  3. Switcheroo
  4. Sleep
  5. Overwhelming Intellect
  6. Wasp Lancer
  7. Forced Fruition
  8. Hands of Binding
  9. Last Thoughts
  10. Switcheroo
  11. Stolen Identity
  12. Psychic Possession
  13. Wasp Lancer
  14. Reins of Power
  15. Hands of Binding
  16. Forced Fruition
  17. Psychic Possession
  18. Last Thoughts
  19. Hoodwink
  20. Vendilion Clique
  21. Dissipation Field
  22. Mind Unbound
  23. Diminish
  24. Overwhelming Intellect
  25. Hands of Binding
  26. Switcheroo
  27. Sleep
  28. Illusory Angel
  29. Sprite Noble
  30. Scion of Oona

Promotional Unlocks

  1. Sower of Temptation
  2. Scion of Oona
  3. Glen Elendra Archmage
  4. Psychic Possession
  5. Mind Unbound
  6. Switcheroo
  7. Reins of Power
  8. Illusory Angel
  9. Sprite Noble
  10. Dissipation Field
44 replies to this post
  1. 9 AM, Top Tier Offices, Secret Town, Somewhere, USA. Despite the time of the year, the temperature outside is a pleasant fifteen degrees Celsius and the sun has little difficulty piercing through the clouds. It also falls into the office through the half-opened blinds. Little is moving except for two people; Wingspan sits back in his chair enjoying hot chocolate from a cup that says “Top Tier Tactics” with little pink hearts dotting the Is. Meanwhile, Toraka paces back and forth in front of the whiteboard, which is written half full with a list of names.

    “Faeries,” Toraka says after minutes of walking. She doesn’t stop, however. “It really had to be faeries. After the removal spammers have finally stopped some people from using angels, they had to remake the deck with even more tournament level cards plus twenty counters and everything has flash on top of it.”

    “It’s an interesting deck type.” Wing sets down his cup. “At worst it’d defeat Dodge and Burn. So what? It still has major weaknesses.”

    Toraka grabs the black marker and crosses out some names on the list while underlining others. “Like Izzet was weak to stuff with high toughness? Like Demons are weak to getting out-spammed or out-raced? This is Illusions, with five times the counters and none of the drawbacks, plus free counter recursion. How do they think it’ll work in a format of battlecruiser Magic? Giving a deck a single counter can drastically affect its viability, how about fifteen?”

    “Time will tell.”

    “Wizards keeps adding worse cures, I’m telling you right now.” Toraka circles in a single entry and sets off to his workstation.

    But really now. On the list of things that Duels requires, a better Illusions deck is not very high at all.

    • Why must you complain about every blue deck?

      The deck does have drawbacks compared to MM. It’s creatures have considerably lower power and toughness for their cmc than MM’s creatures do and their lords come a turn later. I don’t know every card on the list but I have looked at all the blue faeries they could chose from and power = cmc is quite rare especially when cmc <= 4. This means the deck will be at least 1-2 turns slower so the additional counterspells will likely be necessary.

      • I’m a cynic, I complain about things. That’s literally how I got this job.

        Did you take into account split cost Faeries as well? There’s plenty of meanness to be had there. Certainly they are smaller, but that’s easily offset when they counter every spell you play. Don’t need to be strong if your opponent doesn’t show up.

        Besides, it’s beyond unnecessary. This is around the fifth entry to DotP14 using the same colours and general archetype, when stuff like Monored Set Shit On Fire gets neglected. (No, Izzet doesn’t count because it doesn’t exist in my perfect world.)

        I’m also mainly an author, writing stories is what I do. Not, of course, that this was a story. Working in Top Tier Offices is pretty awesome once you get used to the neighbourhood of Secret Town.

    • Ok, when I started writing this reply I simply did not see all the counters…I saw 9 maybe 11 if lucky…then I realized exactly how stupid that was considering all the bounce. Also, I would LOVE to play this in 2HG with an exhume build of UB.

      That being said, watch out about relying on counters too much in this deck…most of the counters have severe limitations.

      As a final note, is it just me, or is the game not giving any time to stop timer and counterspell against D&B instants? I keep finding myself unable to counter that one spell I need to in order to win.

      • If it’s Volcanic Fallout or Banefire for 5+ they’re unable to be countered so that may be why? As for the time, that may be due to connection problems.

  2. I cannot see one reason beyond someone really REALLY wanting a Fairy deck for this deck to exist. We’ve got plenty of synergy-theme deck already – Illusions, elf, samurai, zombie….

    There better be some might sweet unlocks cause I don’t see a virgin deck winning many matches in multi.

    • With the exception of maybe elves pretty much all of the decks change radically with the unlocks and promos. I don’t think any of the base decks would be competitive in multi-player 1v1.

      The base deck for faeries has at least a decent number of cards I could see my self running in a final build…

      Spellstutter Sprites, Scion of Oona, Pestermite, Zephyr Sprite, Faerie Impostor, Briarberry Cohort, Sower of Temptation, Familiar’s Ruse, and Unsummon are all potentially main-deckable. That makes around 24 playable cards in the base deck and unless something drastic changes with the unlocks and promos I will probably be running 22 lands which means the deck needs at least 14 playable cards in the 40 cards yet to be spoiled.

    • I just don’t see the point of having another weenie deck. Sure, it has evasion and flash and a few counters here and there but overall, it just doesn’t seem to be an interesting deck. It hardly warrants the title ‘mischief’ – annoyance is more like it if flash is all it does.

  3. So……..

    Two Forced Frution. 9 counters, 5 of them reusable critters.

    .
    .
    .
    .

    I know what I’m doing tomorrow.

  4. My metric for deck quality is simple:
    1) Does the deck WORK? If it doesn’t, it’s just not fun to play (see also, Dragons every year).
    2) Is the deck *interesting* – ie does it reward subtle plays and require lots of good decisions.
    2012 and 13 had heaps of these! But there are too few of these decks in 2014.

    This faerie deck looks JUST what I need – a genuine aggro-control rage-inducer, unless some degenerate weenie rushdown build proves the best.

    This deckpack looks like it will make up for the last one, with two broken decks that simply don’t have the tools to do what they’re trying to (Dear Wizards, would the full 4 Restoration Angels really made Bounce and Boon overpowered? Really?? I never thought I’d find a deck I’m less scared of than 2014’s Bant Exalted).

    • For me, it’s mostly two things:

      1. How easy is it to win with this deck? The easier, the more I am turned away.
      2. How much can I break it? Hence how I was drawn to artifact-based Dream Puppets. In this deck, I see two Forced Frutition and more Dimir than Masks has. Betcha I’m going to make that deck work somehow.

      • Right with ya there bro (sis?).
        I’m basically similar but my competitive side needs a deck that can also get a decent win % no matter how difficult.

        In paper magic for example, I’ll set myself an arbitrary goal (break this card, make a modern LD deck, or Legacy rats or w/e), and without breaking my theme I then do whatever I have to make that deck take wins against the best the competitive metagame can offer.

        That’s just how I get my kicks I guess.

      • That’s how to enjoy the game. Haven’t found the time to test my standard cow tribal yet, but I’m determined to play it. (It’s not minotaur tribal for reasons of cow. I’ve also got two Purphoros’ Emissary in there. It’s a cow, alright?)
        Other decks built so far, all casual standard:
        – U/R More Annoying Than Izzet (Composed literally half of instants and sorceries because creatures are overrated. Guttersnipe soloing players, woo!)
        – G/R Devotion Bros Nylea + Xenagos Excessive Mana (I mean it. This deck can play and fuel a Colossus… by turn 6 consistently.)
        – Bant Elspeth + 59 (Lifegain Heroic white, with a splash of green and a lighter splash of blue. Who needs early game when you have the Fabled Hero of violating orifices?)
        – U/B Flying Cards Be A Dick (It flies. And draws cards thanks to being U/B and three promo Bidents of Thassa. And is a dick to its opponent. True Dimir!)

        Pretty sure that’s all of my decks. No, no mono, not even as a starter. ‘Cause mono-tony.

  5. First thing that struck me in this deck that made me lol.

    Imagine this situation:
    Mirror match where you and your opponent both play Psychic Possession canceling both your card draws, no card draw spell, creatures cancel each other out and all die and then have an infinite game of skipping turns until one of you quit.

    • Each deck has a “Because fuck you, Izzet” card. That is this one’s.
      Opinions? I suppose it cantrips if nothing else (Your opponent draws right after the turn in which you play it. If they get rid of it on their turn, all the more advantage for you during your unskipped draw!) and REALLY hoses Izzet. Then again, Faeries don’t really do much besides all die to a single Flames of the Firebrand, so I’m not sure if there’s even any hope to a matchup facing any way of removal whatsoever.

      • lol@Evil! That WILL happen.

        @Toraka – There’s a lot of breadth of cards in there, I wouldn’t jump to any conclusion about a deck with so much Blue goodness is weak to anything before testing a few builds.

        I still remember how the 2011 (10?) Duels mono blue illusions deck could be built as pure control and, despite the brutal aggro decks in the format, could beat everything and anything because Blue. and just working well. And Blue.

      • Okay, after using it once, I’m convinced. Also note the sick combo between that and Forced Frutition. Sure THEY get to draw seven cards, but SO DO YOU! Except you can stop at any time if you’re in danger of milling out!

        http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=201006370
        Actually got the combo off. Taken one turn before I draw out my entire deck, thinking I’m protected by Possession’s May, only to then realise that I have Mind Unbound on the field. Yup, I’m definitely playing Fallrietard control. After seeing what it can do, I long for that glory. Now if only it had a win condition besides drawing 30 faeries and literally swarming your opponent. (Then crying itself to sleep once the Sulfurous Blast comes.)

        Also note that two Possessions, given one initial draw, would go back and forth indefinitely. However, since it is a may ability, it won’t kill either player. Howeverever, the active player is most likely going to lose when both players hold their decks in their hands, but she has to discard down to seven. Then again, so will the other one.

        With all the Flash that’s going on, I doubt drawing on your opponent’s turn will be anything but hilarious. Who needs main phases, anyhow, when you can just play everything during THEIR turn?

  6. Also check out that decklist:
    3 x Scion of Oona
    3 x Spellstutter Sprite
    2 x Glen Edra Archmage
    6 + flash creatures
    There is some resilience to removal.
    This deck may or may not be great, but it smells at least viable to me.

    • We’ll see. I haven’t been able to figure out any pattern so far, but it’s been a while since we’ve seen artifacts. Who knows, maybe they’ll make an affinity and storm deck just to mess with us!

      • Fingers crossed, if only because I enjoy watching true storms of magicka go off. Until you reach your final ritual you need for Dragonstorm and the other guy Remands it.
        I don’t see Storm though, since it NEEDS rituals and the mana pool doesn’t exist in DotP. Artifacts could be, though. I think there is room for more controlly decks… not that Affinity had any interest in the game lasting longer than four turns, mind you.

      • With 7 decks including white, 7 with green, 6 with blue, 5 with red and 5 with black. I’d hope to see a little R/B maybe.

        I called Faeries a very long time ago when talking to a friend so maaaaaybe following a creature based tribal theme if they do Vampires again I’d expect a more red focus with cards such as Falkenrath Marauders, Markov Blademaster, Rakish Heir perhaps. Stromkirk Noble to screw with Humans would be nice. Maybe splash some black adding things like Go for the Throat (so artifacts can clearly counter the deck), Stromkirk Captain and Vampiric Dragon. A bunch of haste +1/+1 countery goodness. I’d like to see something around that at least, but probably won’t.

        As for Artifacts I’d guess there will be Myr based stuff seeing as B+B has some.

      • Cow tribal.
        Come on, Theros has been out for ages now, you can do cows! Of course, not that there were enough decent cows to fill half a deck, and that is including non-cow goodies like a Whip of GG, Purphoros’ Emmissary (which is technically still a cow), Tymaret, and the game-ending Underworld Cerberus.

        So maybe not. Be careful what you wish for though, we don’t want to see the mistake that was last year’s RB deck again. Except now with Olivia Voldaren to break ties.

        Personally, I want to see a GOOD 3-colour deck. And an artifact one, but also 3 colour. How about a Naya (WRG) one? No big strategy, just mana ramp, fixing, and really big fucking things that smash stuff really hard.
        (That was Naya’s theme during Alara block. The others got stuff like Exalted and Unearth, but Naya’s cards only cared about your stuff being really really big.)

  7. I really, really wanted to like this deck but god it’s just as annoying to play this deck as it is to play against it. All your creatures are so tiny and weak, and it seems like they took the very worst faeries in paper magic and put them here. Don’t get me wrong: there are some good cards in the deck, but they don’t come in multiples usually and aren’t plentiful enough to balance things out.

    I’ve found that the entire strategy for this deck revolves around getting a ton of faeries out quickly and racing your opponent for the win by stealing, bouncing, or tapping their flying blockers. Since all the creatures are so tiny, it’s hard to build as a true control because all those fast beatdown decks will just roll you early. It really is a shame because I wanted to build around the synergy between Psychic Possession and Forced Fruition and win by mill via Oona. Unfortunately, this deck basically forces you to run those shitty Zephyr Sprites or your Faerie Impostors and Spellstutter Sprites won’t be useful early, making you wait until turn 3 to actually put creatures on the board.

    Idk… I’ve been a fan of Duels for a long time now. I love being able to play Magic for just $15 in an environment with balanced, themed decks with powerful cards I couldn’t afford in real life. I love tweaking those decks and finding the best possible combination of cards to win games, so all that play-testing and unlocking cards is actually enjoyable to me. However, this year’s DotP is just miserable. The decks have not only gotten worse, but the balance is also way off and the deck packs haven’t helped this at all. With just one remaining DLC remaining and no attempt from Wizards to patch the existing decks, I guess I’ll just have to wait until next year and hope for the best. I know I’m not the only one either.

    • Oh yeah, and it’s been like four years and I’m still waiting for a planeswalker to show up. It can’t be that hard now can it Wizards? Your game is called Duels of the “Planeswalkers” right? And please, add a mana pool, mana-generating creatures, and some land variety. I want some man-lands. Stop relabeling the same crap with new decks and pretend like it’s a new game every year. The new “big” thing this year with DotP 2014 was suppose to be sealed. Don’t even get me started on how buggy that is, and how ridiculously expensive the deck slots are…

      • Sorry mate gotta but I really gotta disagree on several points here.

        Firstly, as a introductory, beginner’s magic game, the Planeswalker card type’s intrinsic complexity and unintuitiveness simply don’t fit in the main game. Maybe in a Challenge. The decks derive complexity from the subtle interaction of cards, as this is invisible to new players until they get beaten in ladder and go WTF, which is a good way to learn.

        Secondly, I think, while the balance has been rocky this year, and isn’t as good as some of the previous iterations, it’s still in a reasonably good place now, and it’s very fun and enjoyable – and Deck Pack 2 is a step forward.

        Thirdly, with regard to Faeries: You Are Doing It Wrong. Bigtime.
        The deck can be built two ways, neither of which is Aggro. The only viable builds I’ve seen are Aggro-Control (super annoying, tough to play, and very nearly tier 1 in power), and Combo/Midrange (which while weaker, but is simpler to play and utterly hilarious).

        Aggro-Control stuffs the opponent around until they either die from air damage, or you manage to untap with a game-breaking bomb like Oona or Stolen Identity.

        It’s incredible to lose to this with one of the stronger decks, everything telling you lol, I’ve already won, only to have the faeries squeak through another turn, then another and suddenly you’re dead :)

        The Combo-Midrange variant just tries to stay alive long enough to draw into the mill enchantments and put the opponent on a 4-5 turn unavoidable clock. This is a bit luck-based, but if you get it off you are rewarded by a combo that’s basically as lethal as Panoptic-Warp from last year, but way less annoying.

        I don’t think either variant is tier 1, but it’s definitely not far off and I may even be wrong, as someone figures a tighter build with a more consistent curve. Very good addition to the game and with Enchanter’s Arsenal (another deck I’m really impressed with) almost makes up for the appalling mess that was Deck Pack 1.

      • Doing it wrong? -_- The way you’re describing the faeries (Aggro-control) is exactly how I’m running it. (Did you even read my post?) It’s probably the only way to run it. The deck simply doesn’t have the tools to survive and combo like you’re describing. It’s also largely luck based, as nearly all your control relies on you having some sort of board presence. Against beatdown, if you don’t draw your one and two drops to power your Spellstutter Sprites and make your Scions of Oona useful you just lose. I’m still winning a high percentage of my games with the deck, but it’s so fragile it’s just a pain in the ass to play. If they resolve just one not tiny flying blocker and you have no answers, you just lose. If they resolve any sort of board wipe no matter how small it is, you just lose.

        And your thing about planeswalkers I just totally disagree with. They aren’t complex at all and are easy as hell to use. If this really is an intro for new players, that’s all the more reason to introduce these vital aspects of the game. That card type has gotten so popular that leaving it out of any Magic game is just stupid. Also, it’s pretty important to introduce new players to the concept of a mana pool don’t you think? It’s near impossible to play this game without it.

      • No fighting, please.

        I have to agree that Planeswalkers might be a bit over the top. There are tons of unintuitive rules bendings associated with them. For instance, saying “I bolt your Liliana” is actually wrong, as you would bolt the player and then, upon resolution once it’s too late to counter the spell, choose to redirect the damage. Attacking them with creatures, however, is declared in the declare attackers step; You block knowing whether or not you’re defending your Planeswalker. Then there’s the priority and speed thing, in other words, why you can’t bolt a non-Vess Liliana to death most of the time.

        (Intermission: Did you know that Xenagos the Reveler’s first ability is an ability that doesn’t target anything and adds mana to a player’s mana pool, thus it would resolve as a mana ability, except that it doesn’t because with the first Planeswalker came introduced a new rule that Loyalty abilities can’t be mana abilities? Weird, as I’m saying.)

        Okay, assume that that’s fine, it’s a game to teach after all. The only problem is that most Planeswalkers will flip the game your way if they don’t die literally the turn after they are dropped. (Or a reasonable time after that. They can’t be allowed to survive.) So all decks would need some way to ensure that the other guy can’t turtle up behind his ‘Walker, without making the decks OP without a Planeswalker to kill. Yeah, easy. What would you give the green stompy deck, then? Would you want to play a game with so much removal forcibly flying around that there’s no realistic point to playing any creature with toughness 6 or less? (Like DotP14 now, but slightly worse yet.)

        Alright, we SOMEHOW fixed that and all the decks are balanced. So the stompy deck gets a Garruk, Set Shit On Fire (TM) gets a shiny new Chandra, maybe a Xenagos for the non-shitty R/G deck, and the Esper and G/U decks get…

        Oh. That’s a problem, isn’t it. Even if it’d be singletons available only as promos, you can’t give one deck a Planeswalker without giving one to all of them, and you’d want the colours to fit as well as possible. Plus, even when dodging to mono coloured ones for multicolour decks, not all possible cards really fit the flavour, and some Planeswalkers are best left untouched even with means to remove them. (Remember Thoughts of Wind? Jace the Format Sculptor would probably turn that into a DotP14-dominating deck.)

        Besides, when you start playing paper (which is what DotP hopes to achieve since they can then suck the buying price out of you every single week) there’s a good chance you’ll be going for months without opening a single one, until you collect enough decent rares suckled from the bottom of the draft pool to trade for one. At which point you’ll probably have stopped playing this imbalanced, luck-above-skill-rewarding game.
        Or, you know, you could buy a single booster after the draft and pull an Elspeth. I did that last Friday.

        So in conclusion, I think Planeswalkers won’t happen until there are enough of them, but the mana pool NEEDS to happen. You just can’t really play ramp or multicolour with only basics.
        (Case in point why the mana pool is awesome: I have a green ramp deck that splashes blue, red, and black because I do what I want. All of it (besides a Mul Daya Channelers) is in Standard right now. Mana base: 2 Rootbound Crag, 1 Temple of Mystery, 17 Forest, 1 Island, 1 Mountain, 1 Swamp. I’ll leave it to you to figure out how I do it, but I never run into colour issues.)

      • Ok sorry you’re doing it right. You made it sound like you were trying to play beatdown with it.

        Looks it’s not tier 1, but it works more often than it loses to itself, so it’s a totally fine deck with a decent skill cap that looks like most of the rest of the tier 2 decks.

        That said, its pack brother, Enchanter’s Arsenal, is way more consistent and stable. If the ‘oh you had the earthquake huh’ aspect of Mischief gets your goat (which I totally understand), then play that instead.

        What Toraka said is basically what I’m saying. Walkers would be fun and all, but they just don’t fit the game any more than say, Storm cards would. I totally think they should be introduced in the Challenges though, like Storm.

        Except, uh, Toraka did you just call paper magic more luck than skill ^^ What the hell happened to you at last FNM mate?

      • I’m sorry, that came out wrong. Paper Magic and most types of Magic in general are awesome. DotP14, however, is… eh. Odds of success depend largely on whether or not you’re playing Izzet or removal spam, and all the decks are so brittle that you NEED the free mulligan.
        In this game, I’ll turn down a flying bear because it’s situationally bad and just doesn’t do enough, because I know that I can count on getting something useful despite low numbers. (I think odds to get one out of a playset in DotP are around 90% or something, if you want to mulligan aggressively.)
        In Paper? Fuck, I played Fleshmad Steed at a recent Sealed, partially because my pool was spread completely evenly across all five colours with many multicolours, and partially because I valued not having to mulligan for lack of creatures more than actual quality. (In fact, that won me a game into third place. Okay, maybe I got carried by a Bident of Thassa and it merely served as another body swinging into too few blockers with a Bestowed Emissary, but small steps.)

  8. Ok I am biased because I play mostly 2hg. This deck was created to balance out and make the dragon and sliver deck better options. I absolutely love up to mischief and if you can get mind unbound out on turn 6 the game should be yours… We all know it has some definite flaws

  9. I’ve tried a good long while to make this deck win, but haven’t had much luck. It seems to depend too much on the order you get things. I’ve so far never managed to get possession and forced fruition out at the same time, and the times I have won with this deck were usually because I was able to keep Oona out and just overwhelm with a swarm of fairies. I’m pretty noob though so I’m sure that accounts for at least some of my problems with this deck, but I’ve had a lot more success with the enchant deck, and kinda like it better since most of the DOTP decks are light on enchants. I really like blue decks though, and kinda disappointed in this year’s pickings. Crosswinds, Dream Puppets, and even Mindstorms were a lot more fun I think than any of the blue picks this time around.

    • Aye. It isn’t very good to begin with, and I can only wonder whose idea it was to toss a horde of 1 toughness guys into a format where you die to Izzet or live long enough to see yourself play that deck. Oh how I can already see the comments complaining that I didn’t make a Legacy deck out of it…

      No, wrong attitude! I love commenters, of all kinds! Especially the ones insisting that the best strategy is to hope for five specific draws in your opening hand and instalose otherwise! (And even then, if the enemy has an Unsummon.)

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