are wisps solved yet

im not completely convinced they are solved yet, but i do think they are getting really good. lets jump into the card analysis!

Twinned Spiteling is perhaps one of the most busted sleepers in set 9. it solves the issue wisps had where they were nothing but utility, or cards that depended on niche goldberg machine draws to do anything (xenan killers syndrome).

it is in effect, a Pathlighter that summons a giant fatty, and because of it, it doesnt get shut down by a single silence - rather, a silence on a stick has to choose between answering the deadly body, or the Timekeeper it summons. and it is a very good revival target for Soulbringer, their synergy can lead to some truly ridiculous turns.

the other wisps in this deck are Friendly Wisp, Magenta Wisp and Void Drummer. in previous builds in the past i had come to terms that friendly was one of the better wisps to revive, and that still stands true today. drawing cards is good, and soulbringer makes it less punishing to play a friendly wisp without guaranteed value. in addition, with the amount of plunders in this shell, its honestly not that difficult to get to 6 power on curve with a wisp into a 4-cost unit that triggers it.

Magenta Wisp gives you a very powerful removal option that generates value from soulbringer. it is also a great tribute enabler, as you can use its ability and then play soulbringer with tribute enabled to immediately revive two wisps (which could include itself, nice)

Void Drummer beefs up your friendly wisps, dawnwalkers, magentas or even other drummers in the void. if it swings twice with a friendly in the void, you can play a soulbringer, revive the 5 5 friendly wisp and it will ultimate off of its own statline.

Twilight Hunt may at first look a bit out of place, what with the deck not running the traditional wisps from other shells such as Pathlighter or Weary Spiteling, or the Shadowlands Guide those lists usually ran.

...but!

playing Twinned Spiteling and immediately giving it killer to develop a nice bountiful void can be very effective, the deck can make good use of killer Dawnwalker, and hunt's dinosaur matters text can be the juice a Twinbrood Sauropod needs to eat a fatty and live. if all else fails, a single killering out of a Timekeeper might be what keeps you in a game. even something as innocent as Desert Alchemist can make good use of the card, and Flamebathe Reformation can spread it around if you hit a recursive threat with your Twilight Hunt. exalted killer dawnwalkers anyone?

ultimately, i think that deviating from the xenan killers shell and playing less killer effects and less puny deadly wisp dorks that asked you to give them killer, 2 for 1 yourself if not disrupted, then revive it two more times to start generating an advantage has been nothing but upside. i think that the small 1 cost rare and legendary wisps like Wandering Wisp, Weary Spiteling and Pathlighter are just awful at pretending to be Xenan Killers, and that their particular deck where they are good has yet to be discovered.

back to Flamebathe Reformation. It can allow you to solidify Timekeeper's statline into a weapon whose statline bonus cant be silenced, and give it to something that can leverage it better... such as... Twinned Spiteling that summoned it ! with all the lifesteal from having a Spiritweaver in play, the stats of the big time fatties, and the evasion of units like Friendly Wisp, Dawnwalker, Void Drummer and Twinned Spiteling this relic carries a lot of games pretty hard. oh and its a reliable tribute enabler for Soulbringer that also scraps value out of enemy Permafrost plays.

lastly the elephants in the room: Sandstorm Titan, Spiritweaver, Twinbrood Sauropod. In order to be able to exert pressure, wisps need their board to matter, and the easiest way to do that is to make sure that you can lifesteal tank the enemy's damage while damaging them yourself. Spiritweaver gives very valuable lifesteal to all our fatties while providing a solid defensive body early in the game against aggro and hopefuly plundering a copy of Twinbrood Sauropod so that instead of 2 halfs of a card it becomes a time sigil + half a card.

in fact, id wager that the plunder mechanic, and its value generation when played alongside cards with echo or fate: draw a thing (Jotun Hurler, Xo of the Endless Hoard) alongside the previous widely successful mechanic that is the market has helped solidify a lot of decks across every color pairing. it helps you not be power screwed, influence screwed, and even fights off power flood by transmuting power cards into treasure troves.

Sandstorm Titan is in the build because wisps, in month of july 2020, still have no real proper answers to fliers. they are a deck that doesnt play fliers - the wisps with flying, the radiants with flying, they are all either draft chaff thats not really up for consideration, or prohibitively expensive bombs like Umbren Occluder. set 9 did bring us an interesting card in Lumen Defense but that card looks a lot more like a payoff for Xenan Obelisk style shells and its purely reactive nature is not very appealing. love that you can Crack the Earth and then cast it though, that is probably pretty powerful in whatever deck it fits into. but in spite of the units it summons being wisps i am simply not convinced the wisp deck is the right one for it.

ok thats it for the maindecked cards, now for the market.

Banish is just the most versatile, relatively cheap, powerful answer to a lot of problems. it doesnt ask you much to be a live card in a matchup, and with the fast speed of Ebon Dune Smuggler you can potentially do a lot of strong changes to combat math in the midst of an enemy wide attack.

Xenan Temple provides you with a killer spell, a draw spell + some health, and the scare can ocasionally kill things or make their statlines a lot worse. the passive also shuts down enemy recursive units such as Inquisitor Makto, Ephemeral Wisp and opposing Dawnwalker. its cheap for a site, too, so its just a fantastic option a lot of the time.

Passage of Eons does a lot of things that xenan appreciates: suddenly no enemy has text, so all their bodies are vanilla bodies, meaning they are both not evasive, and have to compete with yours in the realm of who has the dumbest, biggest fatties. you are the xenan deck. its going to be you. specially when you have a bunch of deadly bodies, or recursive threats.

Dizo's Office is one of the strongest shadow market options in the entire game period. the passive text is one of the strongest among all sites, kill a thing, selectively draw a card, give something some extra attack (dawnwalker appreciates that), can almost never go wrong with picking this one.

Nahid's Distillation because drawing is good, and with ambush Ebon Dune Smuggler reliably sets you up to be able to play it for 5 cost.

and that's the deck.