Vs Fai (Updated)

Before this match up was cursed, you could win but usually it involved getting an early Tomeltai to blow up Mask of Momentum. Mask is what makes this match up so bad since they will be able to farm you dragons for draw triggers. Tome of the Imperial Flame (TotIF) made this match up a lot better. For one it makes Tomeltai’ing them much easier as it not only lets you cast Tomeltai easier but it also helps you dig for it. Card velocity is a strength of TotIF that people don’t talk about much but when you have specific cards in a match up that swing the game this is very important. Next is between the starting Gold token and TotIF itself your ash generation is much better. Making ash was always one of the difficult parts of the match up since you end up blocking so much making it hard to play as positive hands without sacrificing a lot of value. Because of the extra ash, when we draw a good hand that lets us try to push aggressively we can actually play it instead of only focusing on playing ash neutral dragons. This opens up most possible play lines in the match up. The last big thing that TotIF does is let you have really explosive turns that can overwhelm Fai. The number one thing that I have found wins me this matchup is having a TotIF turn where I’m able to present 3-6 dragons in a single turn and say “deal with it”. The Fai player will spend their entire round trying to clear your board but unless they have a popper they will end up taking all the damage from your board. Importantly they usually won’t attack you on this turn since they are busy clearing so you will get to play another 4-5 card hand into them and they will take all the damage again. Depending on what dragons you played and the texture of the Fai’s hand they might not even clear all your dragons. You will usually get 2-3 turns of slamming dragons into their face by doing this and push their life total down before the game resets to you having an empty board. But now you should have a life lead and importantly the Fai’s life total is now getting to the point that they have to start actually blocking. If you can bring the game to the point that the Fai has to start blocking the game will usually end in your favor. This gets even better if you are on Tome of Fyendal since you can play TotIF then use the two resources on Mage Master Boots if you don’t have a Cromai, then draw 2 cards and gain 5 life if you didn’t block with any cards, then activate furnace pitching a card and making 3 resources and play the other 4 cards in your hand. It's an explosion of value that will be hard for the Fai to deal with. The one thing that throws a wrench in this plan though is if you slam your hand into the Fai and they have a popper. Fai usually doesn’t play many poppers if any so if this happens then well, unlucky. Try getting a Cromai down on this turn if you have the option to.

A drawback of being royal though is you do have less armor. As I previously stated you end up blocking a lot in this match up. Armor is very important for blocking some of their awkward break points like Snatch and Mounting Anger. The other thing is there will usually be a turn where you don’t want to block and keep all or most of your cards like a big tome turn. This is where you will use your armor to try and fight over a hit trigger and hold your grip. Having less armor you can throw at them on this turn is a big draw back of being royal but I think the upside of royal is too high.