:rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by DukeDemonKn1ght
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Anyway, I also play the deck, have won 3 30+ man tournaments with it, and insist on running 3x Stifle. I don't care what anyone else here says about it, as I've given up on most people who post in this thread anyway.
Trying to profit off of bluffing you have Stifles rarely (or never in my opinion) works. Anyone who doesn't crack their fetch in order to wait for you to tap out after you keep the 1 mana up every turn is A) a bad player, or B) has nothing to crack it for anyway.
Here's why: Merfolk is a tempo deck. You try to win quickly, and disrupt just enough to get 20 in. Any turn an opponent spends second guessing whether they should attempt an answer to your exponentially growing damage, not getting the land and playing an answer is a huge mistake by them. The chances of drawing into a counterspell to answer your Stifle is low enough that it is better to just crack the fetch and hope you don't have 1 of 3 stifles (seeing as you don't have brainstorm or ponder or any digging to hit the stifle).
You need to answer the merfolk early, and if they have the stifle, it's going to kill your land just as much on the 3rd turn as it does on the 5th turn. If the merfolk player is smart he will not play into you waiting for him tap out, and will instead just bash for small until he draws more lands to dump more guys on the field.
Secondly, the mana denial package of merfolk is absolutely game-breaking. It stops the opponent from getting enough mana to mass removal you (with the exception of two cards, EE, and Deeds). The amount of times I've been wrath of goded or firespouted successfully is less than 33%. This is due exclusively to Daze and Cursecatcher with Wasteland and stifle. Dazing someone, waiting for them to crack the fetch, and then stifling it is a game breaking play that happens more often than is given credit for.
EE and Deeds both lose to Stifle, so in addition to reading "Destroy target land," It says "All of your creatures gain Indestructible until end of turn." In your bad matchups, aside from Mono-red exclusively, the card is huge. Even against some of the decks that don't run fetches or need lands, the card can be huge.
The debate about "first turn Vial or mana for stifle" is the best argument against the tempo element of the deck, but I consider this to be less of a problem than normally stated. Most of the time you know what your opponent is playing (2/3 games at the least, but if you know the person, scout the field, or even try to read the opponent) you can make an educated guess at the right answer.
If you play first, leave up the land and your tempo is even with the opponents. Waiting a turn to play the vial on turn 2 is rarely gamebreaking in tempo, and is still largely relevant against counterbalance since they couldn't have played it yet. If you are on the draw and have no idea what they are playing (based on the land they dropped), then I'd go with vial, but based off the land they drop you should be able to narrow the deck down quite a bit.
And arguments about making the opponent misplay based off such and such is only relevant for bad opponents. Plan on playing and beating good opponents instead of bad opponents. Bad opponents you should be able to beat without exploiting plays.
tl:dr? Stifle stops mass removal on your swarm, and/or landscrews the opponent out of the game. Play it.
@Hanni:
It's tough to balance the amount of lands you play in merfolk, since you can't shuffle any away, sometimes a late game 3 in a row is equal to game over. Also, you need at least 11 or 12 islands in there, which limits the amount of colorless lands you run. I haven't played ports since Mutavault came out and I'd say that they are far too mana heavy to use. I run less lands than you though, so if you prefer running 22 lands then I would say it's worth it.
