[Deck] Merfolk

[QUOTE=georgjorge;259593]I've toyed around a bit with the concept, and I've also played AGAINST the deck a number of times - and, sadly, always beat it. The main problem I see for it is the lack of answers to bigger creatures, and I'm not sure if Thrasher can remedy this.

Well, I played with you a couple of nights ago and you had canadian thresh, and still beated you 2-1 :D i know that it was because of an error of yours, but it seemed to me that merfolk did pretty well, not focusing on that error.
For what you say, I think that the creatures which could give Folks sme problems are the most big, the green ones and the "too fast " ones ( read: Terravore, GOYF aove all and sometimes, little crappy goblins..). For the rest, I think that the manadenial suite / merfoks powa concurs to be pretty useful.. I Don't fear an exalted angel r a sea drake so much personally, because 1) mana denial paired with counters is always great , and 2) some MD boucners could help you resolving these points.
However, If you fear those pesky creatures so much, why don't you run Mind Harness SB ? Great against aggro loam, which is one of the most unfavorable MU ( usually, but sometimes if we have a lucky hand we can cut their mana and get rid of them). I don't think that splashing the deck for W is the right way, because a decent build of merfolk can have good matchups against every kind of deck- and I'm not joking, so I think that StP and Sygg aren't so necessary, and it would only be an overexposition to wastelands and non-basic hate problems. And come on, if you want to exploit Sygg decently you do have to fetch out lots of white mana, and it can be given only by Tundras ( 1 single plains isn't sufficient). For the combo matchups, FoWs, Dazes and Stifles should be enough on their own, along with a quick aggro clock and standstill ( or, even better, with CBalance in some versions). ANd i can swear you that this deck can also race dragon stompy in game 1 , and even better in g2 if you side in stuff as BEB , or, to gain rid of chalice, chill, which is phenomenal even against gobbos ( where i usually do a fuckin' crazy thing siding out my vials for pithing needle on their vials and putting chill+ propaganda, it usually works).

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Originally Posted by Piceli89

Well, I played with you a couple of nights ago and you had canadian thresh, and still beated you 2-1 :D i know that it was because of an error of yours, but it seemed to me that merfolk did pretty well, not focusing on that error.

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Were you Fabio ? In that case, it was only 1-0...and it WAS that game that got me thinking about the problem of control elements in Aggro, because in that game you drew TWICE off standstills and still nearly lost (or lost if i played it right) because Goyfs are bigger than Merfolk.

I'll be thinking about your comments, but it was my impression that Merfolk doesn't really have "good matchups against every kind of deck" due to the aforementioned lack of answers to fast big creatures. Yea, Merfolk Bouncer and Mind Harness would be nice there, but Bouncer seems fragile.

But, as I said, splashing also opens you up to the powerful cantrips, and I think those work better here than you might assume. Seriously, they are the best reason to play blue, and they fit into the deck.

Yes, i was Fabio. I only wanted to tell you that it didn't seem to me that merfolks had suck a terrible game against canadian thresh ( and i swear that's one of the most negative MU because bolts and F/I along with counters and goyfs are a pain in the ass for Merfolks). it's sure that Goyf is far more bigger than Merfolks, but i think that some mind harnesses in side would be a GREAT solution, and you can't deny this ( I would have sided them in the second match, but, as you truthfully told, we played only one match). However, could you tell exactly which are the creatures " so bigger than Merfolks to cause problems " ? I believe that those threats can be arginated very well, and not by adopting another color in the build, which is not necessary. However , if you like the UW build, I trust you deeply about what you say and your opinions, but I want you to have tested the MonoU build when you sy that the monocolored version alone can't stand some big and fast creatures.

It's strange to me that people keep talking about Goyf problems and such, but why are anti-creature elements relegated to the side? How about some Shackles or Seasingers in the main?

Also, people are moving strongly in the direction of Cursecatcher over Tidal Warrior as the 1-drop of choice, but with Cold-Eyed Selkie and the possibility of Seasingers in the main, I wonder if Aquitect's Will can be revisited. It can't ever mana-screw them and might even have no positive effect against blue decks, but it'll still cantrip.

Mind Harness could be good. But Bouncer looks too fragile, Seasinger in addition too unstable, and Shackles too slow to me (when usually having only three Islands, you won't ever take a big creature).

The creatures I was referring to are...

Goyf
Crusher
Terravore
Tombstalker
Dreadnought
Exalted Angel
Gathan Raiders
Serendib Efreet

(how pretty, it looks like stairs !)

I was wondering how curious is the fact that almost all those creatures you mentioned above here are often, if not usually, played in decks which pack also chalice @1 ( think at it: aggro loam, Dragon stompy, White stax, Faerie Stompy..) which , often played @turn 1, would make StP a dead card in hand. Why don't you run bouncers, which can be useful-if not crucial- in several situations ??

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Originally Posted by Piceli89

I was wondering how curious is the fact that almost all those creatures you mentioned above here are often, if not usually, played in decks which pack also chalice @1 ( think at it: aggro loam, Dragon stompy, White stax, Faerie Stompy..) which , often played @turn 1, would make StP a dead card in hand. Why don't you run bouncers, which can be useful-if not crucial- in several situations ??

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Hey !!! You know that I completely agree with you ;-)

Moreover bouncers are always good against most fatties (I think about crusher, stalker, nought, exalted, raiders). Gilded Drake is even better, as it has a tremendous synergy with vial. The only creatures (outside from goblins) that are a problem are confidant and tarmogoyf because it's often not worth a 3/3 flying, because it's cheap and because it's pain in the ass to play against.

Shapesharer is good against all of them except confidant (you can't take benefit from the upkeep triggers with shapesharer). So is Wake Thrasher by being bigger than all of them. I think that one should play both with a creature base as follows:
8*pumpers
4*silvergil
4*thrasher
3*shapesharer
The rest is mana base, counterspells, mana denials and drawers (standstill or a merfolk : sygg for instance).

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Originally Posted by Maveric78f

Hey !!! You know that I completely agree with you ;-)

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Incredible !!!! LOL

just piloted this list to a first place finish at my local shop. pretty small tourney but some very tier decks. i think there was 14, but they included solidarity, nightmare survival, UGr thresh, mantle affinity, and goblins.

21 lands
- 4 flooded strand
- 2 polluted delta
- 4 tundra
- 4 wasteland
- 1 plains
- 6 island

23 creatures
- 4 lord of atlantis
- 4 merfolk rejerey
- 4 silvergill adept
- 4 curse catcher
- 3 wake thrasher
- 2 coldeye selkie
- 2 sygg, the river guide

16 other spells
- 4 force of will
- 4 aether vial
- 4 swords to plowshares
- 4 daze

sideboard
- 3 tormod's crypt
- 4 stifle
- 2 umezawa's jitte
- 3 disenchant
- 3 chill

round 1: against random g/w aggro
2-0 in my favor, i wasn't really taking notes, but it seemed like a fairly solid list with goyf, watchwolf, mother of runes, and some equipment. i won fairly easily though with aether vial combat tricks, and a swords for every goyf.
round 2: solidarity
2-0 for me again, again pretty easily won. however, he did make a serious play mistake game 2 by not remanding his own meditation with my force of will on the stack. he chose to remand my force which i recast and he ran out of gas. cursecatcher was a monster both games though, really screwing with his head, buying me a couple of turns without even sacking them
round 3: UGr threshold
2-1, a very tough matchup, but sygg made his inclusion worth it against bigger creatures and more removal. game one was a race, that i won by getting out three islandwalking lords and a timely force of will on a lightning bolt. game 2 he two for oned me twice with fire/ice, with a goyf to mop things up rather quickly. and game three i vialed in sygg in response to a bolt to save my lord of atlantis, and next turn vialed in a rejerey in response to pyroclasm to save sygg, lord of atlantis and a cursecatcher. this allowed me to race two goyfs while leaving a blocker back indefinitely with pro green.
round 4: mantle affinity
drew into the playoffs, but i did play him in the finals
round 5: nightmare survival
2-0, both extremely easy games, involving heavy disruption on his mana sources with stifle, daze and wasteland. usually a closer matchup, but i had 2 god hands, with vial, daze, waste and beaters.
round 6: affinity, finals
2-0, again, probably should have been closer, but first game i dazed a ravager, forced a cranial plating and got him 5th turn with lords and an adept. second game i disenchanted an early engineered plague, and won with a lord, a selkie and a jitte, which killed alot of things on his side.

overall id say my list is pretty solid, i did get lucky a couple times, and it could use some pithing needles and brainstorm, but i didnt have access to those at the time. i think merfolk has a pretty favorable matchup against alot of very good decks and deserves some more serious testing and consideration. thoughts on my list, in particular the cold eyed selkies? has anyone used them, and what do they think? btw, wake thrasher ends games very quickly.

I must say I don't understand the white splash in Merfolks, but maybe that's just me.. Daze and FoW can adress all the creatures I need to deal with, and often I don't need to deal with their creatures, because merfolks have island-walk most of the time (and get big)

Only reason I would play STP is to handle a resolved Goblin Piledriver, since Goblins can rape Merfolks.

Sygg isn't good enough in my opinion, his ability is too mana intensive and useless...

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Originally Posted by Hightower

Only reason I would play STP is to handle a resolved Goblin Piledriver, since Goblins can rape Merfolks.

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you just answered your own question, white has the most useful, powerful spot removal spell ever printed, and a small splash is more than worth it. its not just pile driver, and in anything outside MUC, i would like some way to deal with a creature outside of countermagic. there is only so much 4 daze and 4 fow can handle. and personally i like sygg, because in combination with vial he can be brutal, almost mother of runes good in my opinion, but he is rather mana intensive and would be the first card to go in my list. further, white gives very relevant sideboard options in disenchant/seal of cleansing, and meddling mage.

I don't think 1 card would make me splash for STP, since I don't see that many goblins decks around.. (atleast not in Denmark)

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white gives very relevant sideboard options in disenchant/seal of cleansing, and meddling mage

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In what is it relevant ? Why prefer disenchant to rushing river ? I just don't get.

Playing STP to beat goblins is irrelevant. Propaganda does better, since it deals with pilly as well as with the other gobs. Plus, you probably can't beat goblins neither.

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Originally Posted by Maveric78f

Playing STP to beat goblins is irrelevant. Propaganda does better, since it deals with pilly as well as with the other gobs. Plus, you probably can't beat goblins neither.

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This is true, if you fear so many aggro decks whcih tend to create a horde just play propaganda. StP is sick, that's undeniable, but it's asumed that goblins can replace a sworded piledriver with other pillies and, what's more terrible, very quickly (remember ringleader and matron, and even lackey).
A protected ( if uou fear REBs) propaganda in game 2 can slow down them very consistently, and allows you to create your own blue horde and... smash.
Goblins is an unfavorable match, however, but IMHo not so impossible to handle with.

And in any case, I don't like the white splash, too... blue can make everything you need from another colour,and in a better way. Need to remove creatures ? bounce them. Need to remove pesky artifacts /enchantments ? Bounce them.

i dont understand why bouncing a permanent could be anywhere near as good as removing it from the game. removal is a perfectly legitimate reason to splash a color, bouncing is an option to remove a troublesome permanent when you can win very shortly afterwards, but what will it do against a turn two goyf? well you can bounce it using three mana next turn with rushing river, attack with a lord of atlantis and a cursecatcher for 4 damage. then next turn they replay goyf and force your force. where does that leave you?

I agree with pingveno... come on, bounce is nice and everything, but is not good as true removal. And 4 duals+fetchland and brainstorm don't hurt the deck, as long as you're not going to run back to basic MD.

Of course you could have problems if you plan to play wastes, ports (and every other colourless source), but let's face it: if you really want to follow that road, why not choose a threshold? You can pack wastes and stifles MD, you just need one threat to win the game (goyf, 'goose, or whatever creature'd be included in a black/white/red splashed version of the deck), and you have a tons of cantrips to find even more LD than the average merfolk deck. In other words, why trying to do something that other decks just do better?

For the moment I'm stuck with the MU version, but I guess I'll try a splash (either B or W) soon. Anyone has tried Sygg, river cutthroat yet?

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Originally Posted by Daeniel

For the moment I'm stuck with the MU version, but I guess I'll try a splash (either B or W) soon. Anyone has tried Sygg, river cutthroat yet?

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ive actually tried him, and he seems pretty 'win more' to me. i would rather have something like cold eyed selkie which can draw on its on. also, river cutthroat is a pretty awful topdeck after a sweeper. plus, selkie and any lord is pretty brutal card advantage, and it can draw you at minimum just as many cards as sygg at his best.

Bounce is actually pretty comparable to removal if you are the aggressor, because in this role your attack post-bounce is the most important objective.

Also, in decks trying to gain initiative on you, bouncing their stuff with something like rushing river can create a resource bottleneck. They want to continually lay answers to your threats, or beats to keep pace with you. You bounce something, and their 1 tempo beat per turn is delayed, but re-playing it would prevent them from playing another tempo beat. In terms of the short-term game state (1-3 turns after it is played) it has the same effect as removal in many matchups.

The only time when bounce is significantly worse than removal is when you are using it as an answer, because you buy yourself a turn instead of evening the game. Bounce is best as another threat, almost like a pump spell, making your threats effective for a longer period of time. Something like Rushing River is absolutely devastating tempo-wise as it effects the immediate game state in ways that no other spell can for such a cheap cost.

What bounce does not do is answer something. It slows down the other deck more effectively than spot removal because you get larger changes to game state for the same mana, but it does not prevent you from losing to some killer permanent in the long run unless you win the turn it happens. Removal will do that.

I think bounce (specifically rushing river) fits the aggressive strategy of this deck much better than removal does. Replacing bounce with removal for something like the turn 2 goyf problem is a weak strategy because you are still just hoping you can luck into your answer lottery-style, you aren't actually creating any sort of strategic trump. I sound like the worst parts of Flores by saying it, but I think using options like Shapesharer, Propaganda, Seasinger, Shackles, etc, while keeping bounce is just better Magic.

Edit: I suppose using that logic would merit giving white Sygg a run as a test subject, and in white splash, STP is a more favorable change to game-state than the best 1 drop bounce, chain of vapor, against creature decks that run islands, which is basically just thresh variants and us (and fish if anyone still plays it). Are threshold and the mirror match a big enough portion of the metagame to run the card? The other reason to run STP (or possible black removal) would be if serious testing revealed absolutely no ways to beef up the central strategy of the deck to compete with the best creatures in the format, but in that case I would say the archetype isn't ready yet anyway.

Cloudstrife7, I don't get your edit. STP has always been an awful card in aggro decks, because giving your opponent life is not the way to go.

Let's say that Merfolks usually kill turn 5 or 6 with low opposition and turn 7 or 8 with a strong opposition. After that time, the deck is probably less effective because of daze/mana denial strategy becoming useless. Facing a big creature on turn 2 (tarmogoyf for instance) acts like a Moat. The Tarmogoyf player can't attack because the merfolk attack in response would be more deadly. What is the strategy for the merfolk player : over expand in order to have 20 damages on board and bounce the Moat-like permanents that your opponent is playing. In this role rushing river is the best card because it is almost universal and it can bounce 2 Moat-like permanents, when STP or disenchant are narrow and can bounce only 1 Moat-like permanent.

In addition to that, bounce is as good as removal because mana denial can prevent your opponent to play his bounced permanents, you play counterspells and it's synergic with standstill.

By the way, isn't about time this deck gets moved to Established? When decks like MUC, Vaka Pox and Mighty Quinn - who all see a minimal of play - are still in there, then Merfolks definately deserves to be in.

From Germagic.de: http://www.deckcheck.net/list.php?ty...&format=Legacy

Roger over