I understand both players are very skilled, yet I can not help but have run through my head the saying "It's better to be lucky than good".
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
Originally Posted by Spam
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
Well... yes.. he was a bit lucky... needle... submerge like if they were islands... mutavaults and the jitte...
I must agree, there was a lot of luck in there. 2 Submerges, BOTH games? But what it DOES teach you, is that he had 10 potential cards in his SB to deal with the deck. Make the absolute best out of your sideboard (because you're gonna need it...). Makes me want to put more submerges in my 'unknown meta' SB
The lesson is: mulligan if you don't have 2 submerge, a needle and a jitte in your hand :-P apart from the joke, yes it is true, we need to be lucky against Elves. Even if I think that probably the Aggro version of our deck can try to deal with them... the tempo version needs to run the Stifle or to have a very very good hand in game 2/3I must agree, there was a lot of luck in there. 2 Submerges, BOTH games? But what it DOES teach you, is that he had 10 potential cards in his SB to deal with the deck. Make the absolute best out of your sideboard (because you're gonna need it...). Makes me want to put more submerges in my 'unknown meta' SB
I am going to play the "heavy" aggro version tonight, I want to give it a chance before the GP in Paris. I am pretty sure that I will go back to my tempo version but let's see what will happen :)
Ps going to try Sygg too! :)
Good luck and please tell us!
I'm still testing 3 Cosi's Mainboard and 19 lands (3 cavern, 4 mutas, 12 island)
You'll have to forgive me if I don't see the "luck" that's happening here. Matt Nass is perhaps the most skilled Elves player of all time, and he got taken down in a skill-intensive set of three games. Deckbuilding is a skill, one of the three that you need to do well in a tournament, and this Merfolk player used it well to construct a sideboard that gave him lots of cards to bring in and lots of cards to bring out in a matchup that is very bad for him. He's not lucky just because he drew good cards in a bad matchup; when you board in 10 good cards, you're supposed to draw them, and draw them frequently. His deck did what it was supposed to do. Had he not drawn any hate cards, I would have said he was unlucky. And he wasn't even playing some of the best anti-elves cards like Cursed Totem and Grafdigger's Cage and only one Jitte. I don't even think his deck is particularly well constructed, but he's a good player and he was able to squeeze all of his utility out of all of his deck, which is why he got second place.
The lesson here is that, when you have Force of Will and an aggressive gameplan, there's really no such a thing as a terrible matchup. At the very least, you have access to the tools you need in your sideboard, so put them in there and use them.
Thank you :) I will try Cosi's next Tusday :)
I finished 2nd at my last tournament before Christmas (won against painter, won against reanimator, won against a counterbalance deck don't remember the version, lost against cascade - that finished first :-\) with my tempo version so it will not be easy to do better ^^ but apart from the final result, I really want to see the advantages of the aggro version.
Going to run 4 muta, 3 cavern, 13 island. No wasteland for the first time. I have put back the Merrow (I usually don't play it). And I will play Sygg. 4 FoW 3 Daze and 1 Spellpierce ( as someone wrote before without wasteland, daze is not as strong as before... but let's see). :) Plus 2 Sygg.
This is his side:
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Spell Pierce
3 Submerge
4 Swan Song
1 Vision Charm
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
I imagine that he side in: Grafdigger, Needle, Jitte and Submerge. I posted the video and I agree with you that he played well but we can't say that the luck was totally absent. I mean I really like how he plays the Submerge (both in game 2 and 3).. but how many times do you draw 3 cards (when you side in six as I imagine he did) in your first hands / draws? Not so easy. Apart from that I really think that he played a good game, very aggressive, putting the right pressure on the opponent, who IMHO played a quite good game too (I would have not kept one of his hand maybe the one of the second game I don't remember honestly).
He also could have brought in Swan Song and Spell Pierce if he felt the need. Just because we only saw three different sideboard cards from him doesn't mean that that's all he brought in. He spent a lot of time sideboarding, so I don't imagine his deck looked the way you think it did because those are just the easy cards to bring in. If he boarded in 11 cards (which would be the 6 you said plus the 5 that he could have realistically wanted), then odds are in your favor to see three of them over the course of a game. Heck, odds are about even to slightly in your favor to have 2 of them just in your opener, and each of those sideboard games let him see several extra cards.
In my experience, the way that you beat Elves is 1) stop the combo (usually just Natural Order, but sometimes also Green Sun's Zenith and Glimpse of Nature) so that you don't just die, then 2) get Jitte active and take control of the game. That's definitely a lot of things to do and a lot to ask for, but that's what Greg Hatch was able to do in game 3, and he won. And in game 2, he stopped the combo and then beat him before Nass could recover. It's a very difficult deck to beat with any deck because it is so flexible, and I've never seen any other plans win consistently.
I've got a question for all of the Merfolk players: how many counters do you feel you need to run vs. combo to feel secure in your 75? Now that we don't run Standstill, it is almost like losing 4 counters since we usually drew into one.
Ok... I tried the more aggro version... I got hammered... I will go back really soon to the tempo one.
1st match against ad nauseam
I won the first game (probably the only one where the Merfolk really worked in the right way).
2nd I did not know what he was playing because he only played a couple of ponder and brainstorms in game one so I did not side in the right cards ( I really could not imaging)
3rd I won but I was very lucky. He started the combo but he could not find the right cards and he finished the turn with 2 life ... Luckily I waited and I did not concede when he started with the ad nauseam !
Second match agains a combo-miracle (the one with rest in piece etc)
I lost 0-2 ... I played as much aggressive as I could but I always felt like I was missing a counter.
Same thing on game 2 even adding the few counter that I had in the side plus the needle.
Game 3 against elves. No comment. :-/
Game 4 against reanimator.. I lost the first one (elesh + Iona even if I made a copy of elesh before the Iona)
I won the second game adding the counters.
I was a bit unlucky in the third one:
first hand: no land -> mulligan
Second hand: FoW, FoW, FoW, Flusterstorm island island... What would you have done? I decide to mulligan... Maybe I could have kept that one :-/
Third one: lord, lord, lord, mutavault, silvergill....
I could not win that game.
Sorry if there are mistakes or if I was not clear but it is quite late :-)
Summarizing, I can't play the aggro version, I was missing wasteland & counters too many times and honestly I missed the standstill too. ( I hate that card but when i don't play it, I miss it).
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The luck comment has to do with getting a double Submerge two games running and in game 2 getting handed on a silver platter the perfect way to use them. Game 3 was little different. Building is an art, drawing is not.
Why cut Waste from the aggressive build?
It is better to ask and look stupid then keep your mouth shut and remain so.
I hope your afterlife is filled with eternal torment.
Fuck. Which one of my quotes do I drop for this?
Well my idea was to try something similar to this list: http://mtgdecks.net/decks/view/62699
But you can find a lot of list like that one in the last tournament.
So no waste, 4 mutavault and 3/4 cavern
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I know it worked out for him, and he had a huge result. And really, it is incredibly hard to argue with that. But I just think that, well, maybe he is a special pilot or something because I am sure that if I played that build, I'd get destroyed. It might have been a meta decision, I don't know, but I just know that a deck with three Aether Vials would make me incredibly sad to be playing. I am almost always disappointed when I don't get to open with one. I don't understand how he did so well, besides being an amazing pilot, I'd love to hear why he made the deck choices he did.
Just to clarify I did not run exactly the same list, I had 4 vials for example. Anyway he is not the only one who is getting good results with that kind of list, you can find more list like that in other tournament.
The problem is that I agree with you regarding playing that list.. I simply can't play it.. It's not like I play Merfolk. And yes.. I got destroyed. :) But before to judge I like to try, and so I did.
I don't have a twitter, but someone should tweet him here: https://twitter.com/HatchingPlans and ask him to write about his deck, it'd be amazing if he did!
Hi!
I got a message with a link to this thread, was blown away that its still active from 6 years ago discussing all sorts of very specific things about Merfolk, sideboarding, and etc. I have always liked the mono blue aggressive free counter deck strategy in any format, and Merfolk finally got some fresh breath into it with the printing of True-Name Nemesis, not because we can play it, but because we are (generally) favored against the decks that DO play it.
So, I read about 7 pages back through the forum and saw some questions and confusions surrounding Wasteland and Cosi's, among others. I am pretty flattered that my opinion would hold weight in a legacy community focused on specifically Merfolk and want to mention that I only play Legacy about once every 2 months in tournaments. I am, however playing about 14 games a day in my head and with sharpies (if you can relate). I bring this up because I tend to speak matter of factly in situations where that might be considered hyperbolic, and I’m warning you that I am in no way an expert of Legacy and often my play styles “interfere” with what would otherwise be optimal deckbuilding (I try to play essentially similar cards that play better with my “autopilot.” This lets me focus more on the other more fringe scenarios of a game down the line instead of focusing on cards and the current turn that I am not comfortable understanding quickly and predictably without actual effort - such as how to stack a Ponder in Ad Nauseum to play around the most stuff and give best go-off odds).
Anyhow, here is the list we’re referring to. I’m not used to commenting in forums, so hopefully I can get this quote function to work the right way (otherwise the OCD induced edit flood starts). Thanks to Sara for reaching out (unsure of her username here), I love to have a reason to type stuff, I’m not a very proactive person :).
Merfolk -MAINDECK - 60
CREATURES - 29
3 Cosi's Trickster
4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
3 Merrow Reejerey
3 Phantasmal Image
4 Silvergill Adept
4 True-Name Nemesis
SPELLS - 11
3 Æther Vial
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
LAND - 20 with 12 Island
4 Cavern of Souls
12 Island
4 Mutavault
SIDEBOARD - 15
1 Grafdigger's Cage
1 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
1 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Spell Pierce
3 Submerge
4 Swan Song
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Vision Charm
So, I’ll just dive right in.
I. Cosi's Trickster - They don’t call it “The Blue Tarmogoyf” for nothing.
Cosi’s Trickster is pretty good and pretty difficult to keep from being at least a 2/2 Fish of Konda - it’s not often gamebreaking so much as smoothing out a curve by increasing turn 1 plays and enabling two plays on turn 3 more often. I got the idea from Saito’s list on Twitter about 2 weeks before the event after he lamented playing Master of Waves (there’s a way to make it work, but True-Name kind of makes it irrelevant). After trying it out, Cosi’s Trickster was really a lot better than I remember, back when it first came out tried it out and ultimately left Merfolk pilots Bored of Atlantis. I think the increased value of one drops in Merfolk has a lot of this has to do with True-Name Nemesis, as almost everything does, by increasing early plays and making the 8 islandwalk lords more deadly. True-Name also means they will likely be tapped out when they play it, which allows Daze to help out when you play Lord of Atlantis the following turn and also means you can get an attack in without Swords or Lightning Bolt interfering - unless they don’t play True-Name early - which is also fine! Nothing is certain, of course, just mentioning that people are currently MORE tempted to tap out early with True-Name in their hand, which is absolutely great for us. I’ll touch on that more below.
Essentially, Cosi’s Trickster is included to be a turn 1 Merfolk that, at the very least, forces an opponent to fumble around a little during turns 1 and 2 and best case kind of trumps certain early turn shuffle hands (and can force an ill-advised Ponder non-shuffle by a Legacy novice for fear of the dice turning on Cosi’s). If it draws a Swords or another removal spell, that’s an ENORMOUS victory.
II. True-Name is sweet in our deck and even better in theirs.
Not much needs to be said about True-Name Nemesis - it’s sweet. It finally gives Phantasmal Image some job security and I can’t see cutting Image below 3 to 4 copies while Progenitus Jr. is around. Being able to copy their True-Name Nemesis, though, is really where the Image shines.
True-Name makes the bad matchups much better, Maze of Ith and Tarmogoyf complete jokes, and essentially messes with typical non-Plague sideboard strategies. Because we have natural lords, most typical True-Name Nemesis sideboard hate is completely manageable through +1/+1 bonuses, like Engineered Plague and Zealous Persecution (or my favorite, Outbreak).
Additionally, the Caverns and Aether Vials provide a way for this deck to bypass counterspell strategies that other True-Name decks don’t have access to, allowing us to have real tangible games against the 5-8 Pyroblast freaks.
More on this guy throughout, since he’s a big deal.
III. Legacy - Wasteland of the Free Spells and Home of the Graveyard.
Wasteland is the next Standstill.
What I mean by that is, Wasteland has been looking worse in Legacy Merfolk for awhile now.
a) Deathrite Shaman, Noble Hierarch and GSZ/Dryad - The prevalence of single mana accelerants that make our Wastelands look silly, on the play and especially on the draw, keeps me weary. Even Delver players aren’t impacted severely if they play around Wasteland by putting lands below the top cards with Brainstorm and Ponder and they can not shuffle if they get Wasteland-ed and they can shuffle with a fetch a turn or two later if they don’t see any wastelands to draw a spell, no harm done. This is a real concern of mine, Wasteland does only marginally more damage to our opponents than ourselves. We can no longer afford this “punish bad draws and mulligans” kind of card when there are limited direct uses for the colorless mana it can provide and even less if we are the kind of player that would play 6 Mutavault if he could (I would). Wasteland isn’t giving us tempo until turn 3, where we should really be doing something else for three mana if we can't keep them off Tarmogoyf.
To summarize the Wasteland decision - The more experienced the opponent, the less Wasteland is going to be putting people out of the game. The tempo swing simply doesn’t do our deck THAT much good when we need to cast our own True-Name and most decks are playing a bunch of 1 drops (Delver, Deathrite, etc) with a few 2 drops and True-Name (which we really couldn’t care that much about, in fact we often welcome it if we have the islandwalk lords in hand). Legacy decks, combo and delver-styles more specifically, simply don’t need a lot of mana anymore and screwing with the opponents land is a clunky way to attempt an early advantage when we have a lot more synergistic options.
b) Aether Vial - I’ll talk about this more later, but Wasteland was really getting some help from Aether Vial, and as I trend away from Aether Vial I try to keep in mind how little Wasteland can actually help us to cast spells from a colorless perspective if we already have 4 Mutavault involved.
c) Show and Tell and Ad Nauseum style decks - Basically, Wasteland doesn’t really do anything spectacular against these guys. It punishes the two land and one Force of Will hands that Show and Tell keeps, but it doesn’t REALLY stop them from going off if they lead with Fetch into Tomb.
d) “How are we gonna cast True-Name Nemesis?” or, “Cavern of Souls is amazing.” - We need lands to cast True-Name Nemesis and I think Mutavault is pretty uncuttable (and an excellent Phantasmal Image target, I’ve found). Cavern of Souls is now essential as going “Island, Island, Cavern of Souls, True-Name Nemesis” will tear the opponent's heavy removal with Force of Will draws to shreds and will win some games as a threat that won’t ever leave and they have a hard enough time dealing/countering all the lords without our blue 3/1 Hydrochloric Vortex sitting around.
e) Force of Will just became insane - Against non-combo decks, Force of Will often allows us to focus on countering things that actually deal with our True-Name Nemesis or that our True-Name Nemesis can’t ignore entirely. Before True-Name was printed, we needed to counter stuff like Tarmogoyf, Nimble Mongoose and Mother of Runes against Maverick before we’d get anything done! Although we don’t like Mom entering the battlefield without knocking, we certainly can let it slide more often without risking the turn 4 board stall “should’ve countered” regret.
IV. Mutavault is gas
This section is in response to a few comments I saw regarding Mutavault/Wasteland
I think that Merfolk without Standstill needs to ooze value out of every card, or else we should lean back into the Standstill shell. Mutavault also lets us do a lot of interesting things, like ensure a blocker against Abrupt Decay during the final swings and act as a one mana sacrificial goat for Liliana. Copying Mutavault with Phantasmal Image lets us cast Merfolk Reejerey on time, and it’s one of the best ways to keep Jace, TMS honest (which Wasteland does, but worse, since they can always Force removing Jace if they are kept off their lands. Jace TMS is also seeing a LOT less play since there's a certain 3/1 fish that it can't bounce in town).
Instead of Standstill for card advantage, I’ve been sticking to AGGRESSIVELY copying Silvergill Adept with Phantasmal Image when I have two or even one Force of Will hand. I do this because when I have multiple Force of Will in hand, I will lose if I start countering removal on my lords, and I’ll be fine if I focus on inducing removal on Adepts and Cosi’s Tricksters while not lowering my hand card count since everything cycles. Same situation when I have no Force of Will, I gotta find a free counter a lot more than I need an extra lord to make my 4/4s into 5/5s. The 2nd and 3rd lords are credited to winning matchups that would have been won without their help in a many cases, and the deck is so redundant that you just want to play your lords last and resist the urge to "go big" when there's risk of heavy removal on their end There are nuances and exceptions to everything, generally speaking though, having 4/4s is essentially identical to having 5/5s when they have islandwalk, so drawing cards for a Force of Will to make a drop and not lose a blue card for Force is more important than ever since we lost access to good Standstills.
Speaking of bad situations, Standstill is getting a lot of bad matchups lately, as you can rarely “be ahead” against Delver on turn 2 and Show and Tell really views Standstill like Humans view insects. Standstill often comes with an inner monologue of “Ok sweet, draw 3, hope one is Force.” I think everyone is in agreement about Standstill, and I am beginning to think that Merchant Scroll would even be better against the matchups we would want standstill in (not that I’m advocating for Merchant Scroll, quite the opposite, just making a brute comparison).
V. Four Daze and Seven Reejerey Ago.
A common argument against Daze is that it’s bad in non-Vial draws when we need to hit our 2 drop or 3 drop on time. That’s a valid concern, and in my experience Daze helps more often than I find it useless. Here are some fringe uses that make me never want to cut it, so that you can make them pay even if they have mana up.
a) Daze of Our Lives - When you have a Island-Cavern-Mutavault board on turn 4 with no 4th land to play, a seemingly narrow situation comes up incredibly often, I’ve found.
Essentially we want to play two 2 drops on our turn 4 and are unable to because we don’t have the mana, or we want to cast a lord and attack with 2 guys AND our Mutavault instead of leaving Mutavault home alone.
What daze allows us to do is counter our own spell to bounce a land in order to get four mana on turn 4 with only three lands. Now, I’ve done this before during some really niche situations where I had one Island and two Wasteland, or something, and desperately needed double blue for Islandwalk so I Dazed my own freshly drawn Aether Vial to do so, but not anymore!
Now we can Daze our own spell with reckless abandon if we used Cavern of Souls mana to cast it since Cavern makes the spell uncounterable! This makes Daze an awesome counterspell and an accidental Lotus Petal during the midgame and end game turns by ensuring that our Mutavaults will be coming along for the bash. Again, this may seem fringe, and it comes up surprisingly often - of course, only when Daze wouldn’t otherwise be incredibly against your opponent. Since we left Wasteland for better opportunities, Daze finds itself in useless situations a little more often than usual so this trick is nice.
b) Forcin’ Wells - You can always remove Daze to Force of Will, and I find that any free spell with incredible upside, that also happens to be blue (RE: reason I cut the 4th Aether Vial), should require a hard case to be made to lower below 4 copies of Daze in my Merfolk list.
c) Three’s a Crowd - With a more crowded 3 drop slot and only 3 Aether Vial (or less), Dazing on turn 1 or 2 can be disastrous if used too loosely. Just a public service announcement that while Stoneforge Mystic may or may not beat us single-handedly if we don’t Daze it, we’ll all but ensure defeat if we Daze Stoneforge Mystic on the draw with no Force of Will while holding Merfolk Reejerey and True-Name Nemesis in hand. It’s important to consider that we might be better off countering their True-Name Nemesis or Knight of the Reliquary next turn and while suffering to beat Batterskull the old fashion way. After all, tomorrow is just a day away.
VI. Aether Vial? More like Meh-ther Vial - So, we all know how awesome a turn 1 Aether Vial is and how terrible it is to draw one with a lone Force of Will stranded away in hand. My argument against Aether Vial #4 is that with 7 one drop merfolk (and more to be considered below), we now have a bunch of one drops that, while certainly worse on turn one than Aether Vial, aren’t ENOUGH worse that we need a 4th Vial. A second Vial drawn turn 3 hurts a LOT more than having to play Cosi’s Trickster instead of Vial, and often, the Trickster plays out nicer in low creature heavy counter hands. Aether Vial also allows us the opportunity to play spells like Spell Pierce in the maindeck, which I abhor. I think Spell Pierce in the main distracts us against our shaky creature matchups like Maverick and might not even help us against Show and Tell if we are giving them 1 or 2 more turns to live from our reduced board presence that resulted from leaving Spell Pierce mana up too early or too often. With Aether Vial out, Spell Pierce shines. Force of Will hates Aether Vial, and with 4 Cavern of Souls in the deck, I can’t say that Aether Vial’s “uncounterable” feature is of significant importance (although the instant speed Phantasmal Image is amazing, I agree). Aether Vial can be cut entirely, which leads me the next topic of giving them Islands in any way we can.
VII. "This Island's my Land, your Land is Island"
I wanted to play the following maindeck at the invitational, and if I were to play a Legacy Open tomorrow, it would not look much different.
MAINDECK - 60
CREATURES - 31
3 Tidal Warrior
2 Cosi's Trickster
4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
2 Merrow Reejerey
4 Phantasmal Image
4 Silvergill Adept
4 True-Name Nemesis
SPELLS - 8
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
LAND - 21
4 Cavern of Souls
12 Island
4 Mutavault
1 Island, Wasteland or Mishra's Factory.
(NOTE: I've also been trying out a Disrupting Shoal or two since we now have 9+ blue one drops and 3-5 more blue cards TOTAL. It is now very good at countering one drops with this change - along with only costing 3 mana to hardcast counter Swords in the later turns. Removing Daze with Shoal to counter 2 drops from a deck that plays Deathrite or Noble to pay for Daze is also a life saver. It might be silly and not good, worth investigating though.)
a) Why didn’t I play Tidal Warriors at the invitational? - Because they literally did not exist in the room!
I tried everything! I asked the dealers, asked strangers for foil binders, misprint cards, everything!
“Does anyone have a one-drop cube?” was the question I eventually decided would give me the best shot at finding one in 20 minutes. I literally asked every person on site at the time. Of course, I could have just bought them online ahead of time, which requires that I think ahead to consider and predict what could go wrong during my trip and plan accordingly - and I’m much too optimistic to do either.
Anyhow, I started asking for Tideshaper Mystic instead (marginally worse replacement, and sometimes turns Submerge on! #swish). Well, no one had those either! In a huff, I ask around for Aquitect’s Will - a much worse, albeit a cantrip, that accomplishes something similar against Maverick and Death & Taxes - no one has THOSE EITHER! I was NOT playing Spreading Seas against a deck that has maindeck Qasali Pridemage, not to mention Knight of the Reliquary and Wasteland, to thwart my primary plan to win against them.
So, I went with Vision Charm - in the sideboard. I think as a sideboard card, Vision Charm is the best of all the options - since it has practical uses in a number of sideboarded matchups beyond beating the snot out of an opponent with Islandwalkers. These include:
i) Stalling by targeting Batterskull to kill a Germ token
ii) Messing with Top/Counterbalance locks by milling 4
iii) Inducing an otherwise bad attack from Jitte’d creature by phasing after damage in response the the trigger that adds counters. Many players will do anything to get counters on, so we can get a free creature out of the deal by blocking and using Vision Charm to phase out Jitte and prevent counter accumulation for a turn.
iii) Turning Locus lands into anything else for a turn
iv) Giving opponent more Islands than he can Wasteland away (to block)
v) And, funny enough, turning Mountains into Islands against Scapeshift
(The Scapeshift thing actually happened, or would have happened if it didn’t draw duress - successful at any rate).
As nice as Vision Charm is in the board, I’d rather save the slot and play relevant stuff maindeck instead. So the options were Tidal Warrior, Tideshaper Mystic or Aquitect’s Will (being a Tribal - Merfolk for Adept/Reejerey and costing one mana was far better than Spreading Seas, as paying 2 mana is hard to justify).
First I’ll talk about Cantrip vs. 1/1 Merfolk. The board presence, especially lacking Vial, is more about being relevantly fast against non-creature decks and maintaining a board presence when the Merfolk Lords start to arrive. The cantrip is certainly better on turn 4, since you can cast and attack that turn, but there is a significant risk that this comes without a cantrip if you don’t want to activate mutavault or the opponent has removal.
The Aquitect’s Will leaves a flood counter, which doesn’t change the actual land itself, not so bad really, it’s just that allowing the opponent a few turns to Wasteland himself out of it really sucks. I think the 1 drop on turn one will be a nice companion to have when the beats start coming, and can even start messing with the opponents mana in very cool ways. Also, as shown by people struggling to include Spell Pierce into Merfolk easily, we can’t exactly afford to be paying a mana to cycle Aquitects Will during the first 2 turns, which is NOT NOTHING and a huge downside to the “change into island spells” vs. “change into island creatures” like Tidal Warrior.
Below are a few upsides to Tidal Warrior:
i) When used against Dryad Arbor, it is still a 1/1 Island creature. Your opponents, however, may or may not know this! This can be used to prevent an attack or prevent a block on one of my non-islandwalk merfolk if the opponent finds himself certain that it is no longer a creature (as a lot of people are confused about Blood Moon situations, many people don’t know a lot of things we assume all tournament players would “obviously know.”)
Also, a quick aside to clarify ahead of time, I'm not advocating for cheating or fraud by misrepresentation. I'm only mentioning that you give your opponent "just enough rope to hang themselves" by quietly activating Tidal Warrior and saying nothing else about what that means about their new island unless they ask. You definitely can't do it mid combat to keep your guy alive (fraud/cheating), but you can do it upkeep and if they don't equip Jitte to Dryad Arbor and attack, well, that's the idea.
ii) On the same topic, If your opponent casts Brainstorm during his turn 2 or on your turn 2 end step, leaving a fetchland up, you can target the fetch land with Tidal Warrior in response. This doesn’t stop him from shuffling during his upkeep before draw step, but it DOES prevent him from shuffling if he needs to cast Swords to Plowshares that same turn since he will not be able to produce white mana unless he cracks his fetch. Either way, he is down a mana unless he wastes a shuffle or has a spell for a single blue mana to play.
iii) Similar to above, even a little more sinister. Remember the old Wasteland trick where they cast Show and Tell and they only have a single fetchland untapped? Use Wasteland targeting fetchland, and then when they crack, you can Daze their Show and Tell where it would’ve otherwise been useless. Many players that play Show and Tell often have learned that when they aren’t feeling greedy about potential future Brainstorms they should sacrifice the fetchland before playing Shot and Tell, and a lot of new players end up playing the deck without those experienced Legacy insights, and that’s where Tidal Warrior comes in to be a teach them a lesson.
In response to Show and Tell, you can also try casually target their untapped fetch with Tidal Warrior, if it’s available. Now, normally, the knee-jerk reaction is to sacrifice the fetch since Tidal Warrior activations “feel” very similar to activating Wasteland. Why would they ever sac their fetch there? Well, that’s easy to say now, and in a match people make all kinds of mistakes and are often using their “obvious play autopilot” when these things happen. This opens the door for an otherwise useless Daze to be used and can also turn off Pyroblast during games 2 and 3 - in addition to just being plain awesome by making Ancient Tomb tap for one mana or delaying Sneak Attack activations for a turn by taking away access, potentially, to double red mana that turn during their upkeep. I don’t board this one out against them :)
While the above examples are cute, the only real reason we are even considering Tidal Warrior at all is to abuse Islandwalkers against Maverick-style creature decks, which I’ll explain below
b) (Gore) Tidal Warrior - Tidal Warrior looks disgusting on paper, and it doesn’t look any better in your opening hand. It shines in very strange ways, though.
i) Tidal Warriors inclusion is primarily to ensure that board stalls do not occur. Every turn that Maverick takes keeps them from being attacked and eventually I can’t quite break through Batterskull or Knight of Reliquary and Mother of Runes, even with a True-Name out - and True-Name might not be fast enough on it’s own. The Maverick matchup tends to stall constantly, and Maverick wins when it stalls. Since Maverick plans for this, I’m often in a scenario where I have Mutavault, 2 Lords, 2 Merfolk, over 20 power in attackers, and can’t get anywhere or do anything. Islandwalk turns this into a blowout scenario, where they are forced to use Swords on Tidal Warrior - which only makes it the best blue Duress you’re ever gonna see. There are obviously ways that Tidal Warrior can look unimpressive when you are getting overwhelmed by Maverick instead of remaining at temporary parity through turn 5, and just have solace that Spreading Seas or Aether Vial wouldn’t have made the difference either way (generally speaking).
ii) Tidal Warrior can help cast turn 2 Lord of Atlantis off of Mutavault and Cavern of Souls, and then can be protected from Swords (that turn) with by returning Cavern or Mutavault with Daze! It can even bounce Cavern of Souls so it can name “Illusion” for Phantasmal Image to be uncounterable (came up frequently in testing). In strange cases, it can save your Mutavault from Wasteland or Swords to Plowshares - and is simply rife with mind games.
Anyway, I got pretty tired all of a sudden, so I'm just gonna lay out a few things I learned and hopefully indirectly address some of the questions I was meaning to answer when I started.
1) Daze is awesome, and better with Cavern. Don’t cut the 4th Force_Spike//Lotus_Petal Split card!
2) True-Name Nemesis solves a lot of awesome and common problems this deck had at marginal cost, and is not THAT much worse than Reejerey when the protection ability isn’t relevant in a matchup. Additionally, Merfolk itself is better now that more people are playing True-Name Nemesis - more islands and more slow damage strategies! #thefishloveit
3) Island/Island/Cavern into True-Name Nemesis can single-handedly win a lot of games in the same way that Wasteland used to get free wins randomly. If you can plan it out, try to go Island/Island/Cavern whenever possible to ensure you can crush the heavy removal draws with uncounterable True-Names. Also, Wasteland isn’t nearly as good in the metagame as it used to be, and maybe it was always somewhat overvalued in Legacy. Unless it’s your third land or you have an Aether Vial out, it has real, tangible and immediate negative impact on your curve, such that even if you slow them down it is not much better if you didn’t play a lord that turn and they can still play Bolt/Swords/Delver/Brainstorm/etc. People are wise to Wasteland now more than ever, since they want to cast their True-Names - that means more basic Islands being played, another downside to Wasteland and a boon for Merfolk lover everywhere. In the end, Wasteland can be good, but only if the mana "split card" feature is useful often enough that its got multiple meaningful uses - and Wasteland tapping for colorless mana just isn’t enough of an upside when this deck needs blue mana and Mutavault value is essential for reasons stated above. Mutavault is basically a 2 for 1, since it’s a land early (though not that good of a land) and a 2 mana haste creature on turn 4 - truly awesome in pairs. Wasteland can kind of do mana or LD, rarely both, while Mutavault can do mana AND creature without really skipping a beat - and the creature is often better than the LD with all these deathrite type accelerants being played, I've found.
4) Merfolk is likely not the right choice for Legacy if you are new to the deck, if you are used to playing Delver (very different styles of playing Force of Will and threats), and especially if you are more comfortable playing another deck. I’ve found legacy to be a format that rewards knowledge of the format and rewards an intuitive understanding of a deck's fringe capabilities without having to go into the tank DURING the match - those autopilot features you gain through experience are invaluable - that’s why I played Merfolk - I’d been playing it for 10 years.
5) Brainstorm is often thrown into a fetchland version of Merfolk to try it out, and I wanted to comment that Brainstorm works best in a deck that benefits from card selection. Delver comes to mind, as you play a bunch of 4 ofs, but it lets you get rid of lands, extra Delvers, extra Dazes, extra removal, as you kind of want, like, one of each thing. In Merfolk, there is such an incredible redundancy in its cards outside of Force of Will, which is also its greatest strength! You need every land during most games, you have 8 lords and 3-4 more Phantasmal Images that are basically identical. All the cards are just so similar they might as well be interchangeable - and if you consider how much lists like Merfolk toy around with other Lord options and number counts - it paints a clear picture. Every card has value, so Brainstorm isn’t really upgrading your hand by THAT much by letting you exchange away some cards - notwithstanding that we can’t just afford to pay one mana doing “nothing” during the early turns, which means we will less often have a fetch available to do what we want. This is another slight against Aquitect's Will, since we can’t afford to cycle a card for a single mana, the mana is too important early and if we can’t cycle it early then we are dangerously close to dead weight!
6) Against combo decks and sometimes elsewhere, Phantasmal Image should be looking to copy Cursecatcher whenever it doesn’t mess us up too much to do so. It is incredible how much we forget the impact that Cursecatcher has on a match because we never get to really “see” the delays it may or may not have caused. Cursecatcher is awesome against Show and Tell because it’s a low cost way to make them have another land or another answer without messing up your curve. This is pretty critical, since if you can curve out like this:
Turn 1 - Island, Cursecatcher
Turn 2 - Mutavault, Phantasmal Image on Cursecatch (maybe with Cavern naming Illusion?)
Turn 3 - Island, Silvergill Adept, hold up mana for their Daze.
Turn 4 - Mutavault, Lord, Image on Lord or Cursecatcher, etc.
Unless it is left without long game options or Brainstorm effects, Show and Tell typically doesn’t just “go for it” before turn 3 with an average hand since Daze is such a blowout, and Cursecatcher ensures the game goes long. Every Cursecatcher or Phantasmal Image you play requires that they get lands instead of Daze/Force/Blue_Card with their Brainstorms, so it has tangible impact regardless of how many lands they can play to avoid it. The Damage from Ancient Tomb catches up pretty quick and the "Show and Tell into Emrakul" vareity can very easily lose before they can attack.
7) The sideboard is a little variable, and the part I’m least confident in. Here are my thoughts.
4 Swan Song - Amazing, uncuttable, phenomenal. They come in against almost any non-Delver deck because there are some cards you don’t need maindeck and Swan Song happens to be marginally better. I’ve been able to counter my own Daze for a 2/2 flier to kill Liliana and once to equip Jitte, which was cool.
3 Submerge - I wouldn’t go below 3, and 4 might be too many. I certainly liked it against elves ;), otherwise it was simply a “great sideboard card” and not much else. It’s pretty insane, though, I’d always play at least 3.
1 Pithing Needle - I like these kinds of broad cards, not particularly insane against anything in particular but can come in against all kinds of strategies and dodge removal since they can’t bring in any against the threat of a Needle realistically.
1 Llawan, Cephallid Empress - This was my sweet answer to True-Name Nemesis, so it’s not pretty good against more than just Merfolk. I like it a little more than Sower, although both are good and you don’t want both 4 drops in your sideboard. I like the interaction with Cavern making her uncounterable in the mirror, though a version with less than 3 or 4 Aether Vial might find it difficult to cast.
1 Umezawa’s Jitte - A standard inclusion, might not even be here if it wasn’t for the liklihood of using Phantasmal Image on their Stoneforge Mystic to get my Jitte, and I think Manriki-Gusari is a little too narrow since I can’t bring that in against Goblins and Elves, for example. (Also, man, that was a sweet draw game 3 :)
1 Grafdigger’s Cage - I think we want a split of graveyard hate to broadly answer the other decks each one is good against (Relic for Tarmogoyf and Deathrite decks, Grafdigger’s for Elves, etc).
2 Relic of Progenitus - Would rather have 2 Relic than 2 of anything else, though might want a 1/1/1 split with Surgical Extraction or 1/2/1 with 2 Relic.
1 Spell Pierce - Could be anything, I just wanted more insurance against combo.
1 Vision Charm - Would not play against since we have maindeck Tidal Warriors, but was pretty good against weird decks I didn’t anticipate when I included it, like Scapeshift/Valakut and Bant Stoneforge. (Can also turn on Submerge in a pinch!)
Again, thanks for reaching out, I had no idea such an extensive history of Legacy Merfolk discussion existed, would be happy to answer any questions if I can be of use and I don’t get distracted by butterflies.
On another note, I was absolutely a huge underdog against Matt Nass in round 16 of the SCG Vegas Invitational, no doubts about that. People often try to compare luck and skill and make some sort of analysis in all discussions of crazy matches, and in the end I think my friend Simon Bertiou summed it up pretty nicely (paraphrasing):
“Everyone tries to put luck into a box, like they can understand it. We can use models to predict things, and the risk is that we overuse that knowledge to acknowledge certain situations as “lucky” without considering the scope of the matchup, the early turn interactions and draws, the initial keeps or even the temperature in the room. Luck isn’t something we can understand, we can only predict what would happen through averaging very large numbers.”
To which was added:
“It’s like a 6-sided die, it’s impossible to roll a 3.5, but one should ACT AS IF the result will be 3.5 for decisions that include hundreds of die rolls. No individual roll is lucky or unlucky, nor would we know if we were wrong about how lucky it was or wasn’t. It’s simply not reasonable to use a single moment or match to determine the luckiness of an event, and connecting pride to the result of a match isn’t as important or useful as connecting pride to specific interactions and specific turns.”
So, yeah, extremely high variance and 4 NICE submerges between 2 post-sideboard games. An Elves/Merfolk matchup with average pilots on both sides I would estimate to be something like 85/15 percent in Elves favor. I think Matt Nass’s advantage in his experience with Elves far outweighed my benefit of knowledge from playing Merfolk, so maybe more like 88/12 in his favor. It was certainly very, very unlikely that I win that match - and I made a mistake in game 2 which gave him one draw step to try and go off in shambles, which he almost did. (I instinctively assumed playing Lord of Atlantis or Master of the Pearl Trident precombat was more damage, when attacking with 3/3 Mutavault, 3/3 Mutavault, 3/3 Mutavault and 2/2 Lord of Atlantis would force two blocks instead of the one block I forced by playing lord and attacking with 4/4 Mutavault, 4/4 Mutavault, and 3/3 Lord. He would trade Nettle Sentinel for Lord of Atlantis, but he’d be very, very dead next turn. I gave him like 1% or maybe 2% equity in that game by missing that, and its because I just didn’t think about it, seemed so obvious to play lord there, how could it be worse? I'm reminded of knee jerk fetchland Tidal Warrior and Daze interaction, see, that’s the kind of autopilot I was talking about).
Any critiques on my deck or assertions are eagerly welcomed since my reasonings and understandings are mostly based on experiences, intuitions, sheer madness and extensive proxied goldfishing and brainbrewing while daydreaming.
EDIT1: grammar, spelling and clarity - moved some stuff around.
EDIT2: added EDIT1 and EDIT 2
EDIT3: decklist error, minor fixes
EDIT4: added clarification on tidal warrior section
EDIT5: added EDIT4 and EDIT5 ;)
Last edited by greghatch; 01-09-2014 at 08:29 AM.
!!!Thank you so much for posting that! This is amazing, I will geek out over it in the morning (it is 1am here). But thank you so much for coming and posting
(edit: I'm Sarah btw)
First of all congratulations on the finish and that FANTASTIC article. Probably the best Merfolk analysis I've ever read. (Idk why there is not more literature about merfolks, pro's always write about tempo decks, that's repetitive)
And aslo thanks Windmill for contacting him! :)
I can't say I agree more with your words, and made me extremely happy when I was realising while reading that what was written was almost 100% my opinion on the deck.
I have also been saying that Cavern is becoming a really interesting choice, and I'm running them along with Trickster. Your review about Wasteland was also excelent, we can't be tempo if our creatures cost 2 and 3!! At least until turn 4 we don't want to throw a waste, and then is probably too late.
The point about Pierces was fantastic, and that's what I meant when I said days ago that we should be the aggresive deck almost always. We can save mana for Pierces let, but if we had been hitting with another Merfolk for the first turns, probably we can even let that S&T resolve, put a lord, and win!
The interaction between Dazes, Cavern, Swang Song is another good learn, haven't thought about it. :)
I'm really happy that another experienced Merfolk player came to the forum and I hope we can count on you from time to time.
I think Merfolk is a perfect deck in the current meta, but we couldn't simply add TNN to the main like nothing, we need to test if there is a more efficient path, and your deck it's probably one of the best options.
I would like to ask you 2 questions:
1. If you had found the Tidals before the event, would they replace the Cosi's? And after playing it, do you think during the event the Tidals would have been better in the situations you faced?
2. I think something all of us would really apreciate would be a quick SB tech, if you had the time to do it something that would definately help.
Again thanks and it was a really interesting read!
Go Merfolk!
EDIT: One more question. (I remembered you said you wanted 4-6 Mutas maindeck or something like that) This ended 5-6th in the League of Legacy from Madrid (here). I can't find the player to ask him about his choices, but some feel interesting. Could you give us your opinion?
Top 8: Sergio Matesanz
Merfolks
Creatures:27
4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
3 Phantasmal Image
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Merrow Reejerey
4 True-Name Nemesis
Artifacts:4
4 AEther Vial
Instants:7
3 Spell Pierce
4 Force of Will
Lands:22
3 Cavern of Souls
11 Island
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Mutavault
Sideboard:15
2 Pithing Needle
3 Relic of Progenitus
4 Swan Song
1 Manriki-Gusari
2 Umezawa's Jitte
first of all congratulations for your results :)
second thanks for replying, your post is honestly one of the most interesting post regarding Merfolk that I have ever read and I will "steal" a lot of advice.
I have a couple of questions, one is practically the same question of BVB09 .. If you had found the Tidals, would you have played the second list that you have posted? Only 2 Cosi's are not just a bit too much a random ? And no Vials at all? I mean.. I read your post and I can understand your point but.. I don't know.. The vials saved me a lot of time in the past... (apart from dropping down creature when you need - the idea of copying for example a just "re-animated" Griselbrand is very very nice... )
I really like the "Daze - Petal Idea" ... never tought about it before (believe me, I was really thinking to try the petals a few weeks ago even if it looks a completely no-sense idea!).
If I can, I will try the Tidals next week. :) I want to try it.
Last one, never missed any of the cards that can let you draw / scry / etc.? Standstill, ponder etc.?
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