Quote Originally Posted by Dark Ritual View Post
NO RUG and stoneblade both crush merfolk. Stoneblade has batterskull on turn 3, which merfolk can't beat without a really really good creature draw. NO RUG has good removal, dudes, and isn't affected by daze that much when they go turn 1 hierarch/GSZ for arbor. They also get more post board in REB/pyroblast and other sweet cards against 'folk.

People still play merfolk but it isn't winning due to the field being saturated with NO RUG and stoneblade, both unfavorable MUs. People will try to make it work though despite the uphill battle they face against stoneblade and NO RUG.
Stoneblade sometimes has a batterskull on turn 3, when they don't have it, or the merfolk player can stop it by countering the Mystic or killing it before the stoneblade player untaps with it, the matchup gets a lot better for the fishes. NO RUG sometimes play a lot of removal, but often just runs 4 Bolt + 1 Fire//Ice. It does get to sideboard more effectively than Merfolk, and so does Stoneblade, if the pilot wants to dedicate sb space for it.
It is true that blue control/aggro-control decks have gotten better against Merfolk, but just as important, I think, is the hosing of combo and the simultaneous rise of decks like Maverick, which is a pretty lousy matchup for Merfolk.

I think we will continue to see plenty of 'folk decks around, since it is a (by legacy standards) fairly cheap and easy to play deck and gets to play a game of magic against every deck out there. However, we will probably see fewer of them at top tables, since the current meta does not exactly seem to be one that Merfolk preys on. That could change, of course.
Clearly, as above posters have pointed out, Merfolk still do well for themselves. This may be because the legacy metagame is fractured and slow moving at times, and/or because of the number of people playing Merfolk.

I don't really think the deck needs to be updated, however. The list posted by Death is quite soild, and there is a reason most folk decks look like that. At one point, I remember that some people wanted to take
Cursecatchers out of the deck. If your metagame is such that Cursecatcher is bad, you should just realize that that means that merfolk is bad in your metagame. Same with adding Brainstorm, I think. Play another deck, that actually uses Brainstorm well, and come back to merfolk (without Brainstorm) when/if the meta changes.