Vedalken Orrery has been a monster of a card in Commander for a long time. Having the flexibility to cast your spells whenever you please in a four-player format gives you and your cards a lot of survivability. Not only can you react to all three of your opponents, but they have small windows to interact with you. Ever since Vedalken Orrery gained popularity, any effects that let you play at instant speed have been made a bigger deal in the Commander format.
In MTG Foundations, a Faerie creature releasing as part of the main set happens to function like a Vedalken Orrery, but even the card itself has Flash! While creatures are easier to remove than artifacts, a lot of MTG Commander decks will need compelling arguments against High Fae Trickster to not run it.
High Fae Trickster
High Fae Trickster is even better than Vedalken Orrery in any decks that can actually run it. The main reason for this is that the Trickster itself has Flash. Once Vedalken Orrery resolves, your spells have a lot more agency, but even the Trickster itself has the agency that you want to give the rest of your spells.
For that reason alone, High Fae Trickster is a leg above the Orrery, at least in our opinion. If that weren’t good enough, thanks to being a Faerie Wizard creature, High Fae Trickster has additional synergies in specific strategies.
In Faerie and Wizard typal decks, High Fae Trickster is an auto-include. Not only will this card benefit from your typal payoffs, but High Fae Trickster allows you to play your other threats reactively. This can allow you to navigate better around the everpresent board wipe.
Where to Play
Putting Faerie Typal decks aside, since those are obvious synergies with this card, High Fae Trickster does really well in any deck that benefits from setting up for big turns. If you have a lot of wheel-spinning pieces that do not provide value on their own, which is common for Commander, those are the scenarios where High Fae Trickster and Vedalken Orrery perform best. That’s because you can react to anyone trying to deal with your board.
Let’s use Doubling Season as an example. This incredibly popular Commander card is the most expensive reprint in MTG Foundations as of the writing of this article. The card does not provide any value on its own but doubles the value of any cards that it affects. This gives opponents a window to get rid of the card before you get any value off it.
If you have High Fae Trickster in play, not only do you get to Flash in Doubling Season, but you can also Flash in the things that Doubling Season affects. This lets you get value from your enchantment in response to someone trying to get rid of it.
You probably don’t want the Trickster in decks where you need to do a lot of things at Sorcery speed. Equipment and Voltron decks are an example of this. While you can Flash in your Equipment, you can’t equip creatures at instant speed without other cards like Sigarda’s Aid. Voltron decks are also proactive since you’re attacking – this can also be awkward for the Trickster.
Honestly, though, you’re going to be hard-pressed to find a deck that doesn’t want High Fae Trickster. Giving all your cards Flash is such an absurd effect as long as you can continue to hold effects up turn after turn.
Weaknesses
Faerie Trickster’s toughness is awful. This alone will likely prevent the card from seeing play in any constructed format that’s older than Standard. Any piece of damage-based removal that’s popular in those formats gets rid of Faerie Trickster, which enables a relatively easy trade-up on mana. Spending one mana to remove a four-mana creature with something like Fiery Impulse is just not where you want to be. Fortunately, Commander favors more expensive, flexible removal spells, so this shouldn’t be as big of a problem.
The card could still see Standard play, but that likely depends on what ends up being competitive. If a ton of cheap removal spells that could hit the Trickster are popular, the card will likely be terrible. That said, the sheer upside of the card in longer formats like Commander should allow it to see play there.
