Utilizing Gnats' "Annoyment"

1) INTRODUCTION:

I'm an amateur player and the deck is of its nature amateur too, however I wanted to share with you this deck idea. It must be cautioned first that Gnats, though being the main cogwheels of this deck, must be played with a great dose of prudence. One must be aware that Gnats can easily become a factor of one's death, and so one must think and decide how many of them should be played and at what moments of the game. It is usually best to play them at the very beginning and start to sacrifice them early in the game or even make suicidal attacks with their use to gradually chip our life down, buffing up Soul Eaters, lowering the cost of Imperial Airship, or feeding Doomgate Door to Oblivion, though it might not be so - everything depens on one's cards and situation. Getting the hang of the deck might take some time because one might first not fully feel when they should get low on health and when to heal themselves up. Balancing your life is not a mechanic that is often seen, and if one hasn't played such type of a deck yet, they might at times feel confused how they should play it.

2) WIN CONDITIONS:

Imperial Airship is the strongest card in our deck as it can be played very early with the help of Gnat-sacrifice mechanics. In many games, it will be the most efficient and deadly play, especially if we manage to do the combo quickly. Setting the 10/10 creature under the opponent's orb might be quite a problem for them (dash 3 is what makes it fairly easy) unless they have hard removal. Soul Eaters are the second great power of this deck. Buffing them up with the constant sacrifice of Gnats will give us an immense advantage. They come with a cost, though, as we have to place 6 special lands before we can get them on board - that needs time. Ionas Smile and Time of Legends help to fish for our win conditions. The first spell is also a good way of finding Gnats. Feeding Doomgate is also a viable way to win the game, and you may want to keep it in your opening hand as it poses a big threat when being undelt with (it's also just a good source of card draw).

3) HOW TO PLAY:

The deck has a plenty of options for healing, so you should not be afraid to sacrifice Gnats to the full potential. Just do that (or sacrifice other creatures) in order to get as many advantages as you can. It's specially beneficial to sacrifice Gnats (or even make suicidal attacks with them) when you have Weeping Idol on board, which will give you additional faeria to work with. If you have Imperial Airship in our hand (or if it's your plan to find it and play it later in the game), you should try to chip your life down to the amount that will be beneficial for you to play the Airship (as its cost equals your life). In doing that you have to be be careful not to get too low, especially when you play against an opponent with burn cards. However, it's quite safe to do the combo when you have some healing cards in your hand that you can use in the same turn you played the Airship (after getting it on board first, of course). It's not worth focusing merely on getting the Airship in if your opponent has an easy options to deal with it (e.g. Frogify or Last Nightmare). It's sometimes enough to put on board and keep sacrificing only one Gnat - don't rush them both if it's too dangerous! Use your taunt creatures to protect Doomgate from getting hit (if the situation allows you to do so).

4) STARTING HAND:

Gnat may not be a good card to keep in starting hand (as he can't harvest faeria) if you haven't drawn any cards that would help you to utilize him. He's good in combination with Demon Wrangler, though. Cartographer is an even better creature together with the demon. Playing them both in a proper sequence leaves you with two harvesting creatures and an Explore card (provided that the situation allows you to set up double collection). Basically, it's (probably) good to keep any Demon Wrangler and Cartographer that you receive in your starting hand. It's also good when you get Doomgate. In that scenario, you should mulligan the rest of your cards for low cost creatures (i.e. choose to discard Soul Eaters and Imperial Airship as well - though they are your win conditions, you don't want to have them in your opening hand ever).

5) THINGS TO BE CONSIDERED:

The deck may have problems with heavy burn and aggro decks. Be careful how many Gnats you put on board when you play with these types of decks. In some cases it might be advisable even not to play Gnats. It all depends on situation, so judge it well and don't play Gnats if you feel that it's not a good thing to do.

6) PLAYING TIPS:

a) After Gnat dies, it may respawn on your opponent's land. You can use that opportunity to make your lands next to it!

b) Gnats can also respawn on your lands. Take that into consideration if there are any creatures you want to play on specific lands the turn you sacrifice Gnat. Place them first.

c) Use your Gnats to make suicidal attacks to get fearia from Weeping Idol or to set your life low for faster Imperial Airship.

d) It's good to play Soul Eaters in places from which they can immediately attack your opponent or double collect from wells (depending on how big they are and what you want to do with them). Keep it in mind and preemptively produce special lands in strategic spots.

7) A FEW WORDS FROM ME (not connected with the deck):

That's a modification of a deck of a player named: ESofDawn (here's link to his deck:https://www.faeria.com/the-hub/deck/3405-gnatcrifice). I liked his idea, so I started to play his deck and later on made some modifications that I felt suit more my playstyle.

You can see me playing this deck on my twitch stream: "https://www.twitch.tv/ajvis". You can also see how to pull off combo in this video: "https://www.twitch.tv/videos/291803964". The match starts at 1:40, but the crucial point is at 8:45 - knowing that I already drew 3 flaying creatures I know that Iona's Smile will get certainly get me the Airship, and so what I was doing throughout a part of that was trying to get my health low and do the combo.

I will be informing about anything new that comes to my mind and updating the deck and guide if any changes are done to it. I'm open to any kind of suggestions.