Merfolk, baby

[Finn]

So I finally got around to attending an actual tournament with actual paper cards and opponents who don't suck after a long, long forced hiatus. With all that time, one might figure I had ample chance to bring a well-oiled pounding machine. Yeah, whatever.

Offense
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Merrow Reejerey
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Tidal Courier
4 Stonybrook Banneret

Defense
4 Nameless Inversion
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
3 Stifle

Production
4 Aether Vial
4 Wasteland
3 Rishadan Port
3 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
1 Watery Grave
4 Polluted Delta
2 Island

Boarded Up
3 Seasinger
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Thoughtseize
2 Extirpate
1 Stifle
3 Mana Leak

That's what made the trip. I made an 11th hour decision to try out Nameless Inversion, ya know, since it's a Merfolk. So I had to gut the mana to accomodate black, and revamp the sideboard with whatever black cards I figured I could benefit from.

Rd 1 versus Adam with Rifter
Just thinking about this match brings a dry lump in the back of my throat. He has had this deck built with almost every card being the exact same for about two years. My deck is uniquely ill-equipped to handle Rifter. His only nonbasic lands are cyclers and a single Plateau (which never saw play). I have not a single card in the deck or in the board to kill an enchantment. Oddly enough I still won game 2 when I Extirpated a cycled Eternal Dragon and Decree of Justice. Humility hit play in all three games, and it essentially killed me in two of them. Oh, at one point I had three Nameless Inversions in my hand. Lovely.
0-1

Rd 2 versus Matt with Belcher
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Here's another player who was playing this the last time I was around.
-Game 1 I let him get his two goblins from Empty the Warrens. Well it was going to be 14, but I Stifled it. His hand was empty from the Lion's Eye Diamond, and he never recovered.
-Game 2 I brought in the Mana Leaks, Thoughtseizes, and the last Stifle. He Duressed me on turn one taking Stifle and seeing Mana Leak. But I waited until turn three to play an Aether Vial, and dropped one Merfolk after another, keeping my mana open. That card cheats so well. When he finally tried to go off, I had already assembled plenty of defense. That's how these matches tend to go. He already saw Threshold rd 1, and dropped. Poor lad.
1-1

Rd 3 versus some guy with a Truffle Shuffle-Dirt Hybrid
Yes, Dirt still shows up in some form in South Florida. This deck featured Sinkhole and Glittering Wish over Living Wish. He also had Tarmos and Gigapets as the primary finishers. In the two games, I played Stifle five times, and it certainly won me the game. Wasteland - Stifle. 2xDeed - Stifle. Bloodstained Mire - Stifle. Gigapet trigger - Stifle. Tee-hee-hee on that last one. He was counting on it. Anyway, my opponent did a good job, but I got a lot of card advantage from my stuff, and him not so much. Consequently, I had more threats than he had answers. At one point, I hit the guy 5 turns in a row with a lone Banneret with Deed in play.
2-1

Rd 4 versus Kyle with UGrThreshold sans Counterbalance
Smile.
Game 1, I win the flip.
me: Delta-Underground Sea-Aether Vial.
him: Force of Will pitching Fire//Ice
me: Daze, pass
Smile.
him: Volcanic Island, Engineered Explosives, pass
me: Underground Sea, pass
him: sac Explosives
me: Stifle
him: hrmmph
Smile.
Wasteland, Daze, FoW accompanied by a steady stream of people with tails sent him to the scoop phase quickly.
Game 2
him: Polluted Delta, pass
me: Polluted Delta
him: (thinks for awhile) sac
me: sac-Underground Sea-Stifle
him: FoW pitching Daze, fetches Tropical Island, Mental Note
I see another Tropical Island go to the graveyard here. He untaps and does NOT play a creature, and I think I have him. I Wasteland the Tropical Island, then another. He fetches the last one which I tap down with Rishadan Port for a long time while we trade my creatures for his removal and counters for a long time while he slowly loses life. The plan wasn't perfect though. He Iced my Port eot once and got a Nimble Mongoose out. It even hit me a couple times until he had to stay back to block. (He was holding two Tarmo's but had seen Seasinger in my hand as payment for a Silvergill). I Dazed a dragon as well. If that had made it through I was toast. Eventually, though, I resolved a Lord of Atlantis, and my Islandwalking Silvegill killed him. I never played the Seasinger, and yet it kept two Tarmos from killing me all game.
Smile.
3-1

Top 4 was:
Goblins w/black
UGbThreshold w/Countertop
UGrThreshold w/o Countertop
Merfolk

We did not play a single game of it, and I got a bunch of singles with store credit.

the numbers:
18 - players
10 - decks with Tarmogoyf
6 - decks with Counterbalance
4 - completely different Threshold decks
1 - person playing Merfolk

...and...

0 - times I cast Nameless Inversion all night. Good call.

[Maveric78f]

From your list, I really don't understand your SB. I don't think you need more disruption as you have MD (except the stifle, but it should be MD I think). But you need heavy answers to grave dependant decks, like leyline of planar void. I would also play anti aggro cards, the best one being propaganda, as you have a mana denial strategy. Eventually engineered explosives is also a very useful card in a lot of MUs. Rifter is still a bad MU. Jitte is quite good at winning it (it has to be effective quite early though).