Merfolk or semi-budget zoo?

[Fling]

Hey folks, I am a new Legacy player, and since a friend of mine is switching from standard to legacy I am tagging along and want to build a more competitive deck. I've been goofing around with the format for a couple of months and have managed to sneak into a top 8 a couple of times at local 30-40 man tournaments with burn and Kithkin due to favorable match ups and ID's. I now want to build another Legacy deck and I am thinking of either building Zoo or Merfolk. I'm open to other decks as well, but it seemed like both of those had a lot of cards that work in other decks, are fun to play, and are tier 1. My meta has basically everything, there are some long time legacy players and some newcomers like myself, and the top 8 usually looks like a mix of the decks to beat and established decks forum here.

Based on my budget, I was thinking I would build one of the following, then add either more duals in the case of zoo, or eventually fetches, duals, and goyf in the case of merfolk. The options I have in mind are:

A. Build Zoo, but run 8 fetches and 1 of each of the on color duals and of course Goyf, so my manabase would be iffy but I would have the standard burn and creature package.

B. Build your typical mono blue 'folk deck with FoW, Vial, etc.

C: Something else that is a better suggestion, dredge maybe?

Thanks for the help!

[Nihil Credo]

Is your local metagame well-developed or still fledgling? Go with Merfolk in the former case and Zoo in the latter.

Do you plan on buying more Legacy power cards soon? If yes, build Zoo, if not build Merfolk.

Also, to build Merfolk, I'd suggest you wait a week for the next round of B&R unless you have found some awesome eBay auction to grab. I'm 99% sure WotC won't ban anything new this round, but on the off-chance they do it would probably be something that weakens Merfolk (probably indirectly).

[Nightmare]

Force of Will is NEVER a bad investment.

[Fling]

The local meta seems pretty well developed, I've seen many top tier decks, and many of the regulars run multiple tier 1 and 2 decks so things do shift somewhat week to week. I don't mind buying the rest of the lands for zoo after a few months and hopefully some store credit from wins as needed. I think both conditions are true in my case, so what do you think would be the best bet?

Edit: Yeah having Force is a consideration as well.

[Fons]

Merfolk with back to basics is pretty budget.