[Deck] Merfolk

The problem is that there is no single solution to the problem.

If you play Tormod's Crypt, they can slow-roll the Vengevine assault and/or just cast their way to beatdown.
If you play Faerie Macabre, after the first time they (GBx versions) can preemtively strip it.
If you play Disenchant, Quirion Ranger helps Fauna Shaman come in the back door. Plus it too can be stripped.
If you play StP and PtE, well, you'll never have enough.
If you play Propagana, you better be playing Stifle too. And it still seems too slow and unlikely to be enough. Not to mention it don't do a thing to stop death by Oozy.

As for Absolute Law/Arcane Laboratory/Ethersworn Canonist (which has long since stopped being an answer), I have to quote:

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I would run 3x absolute law.. (though I have tested it and it really isn't that great)

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I agree except, of course, for those first three words. A three-drop that matters little after the assault is on and can be killed after one activation. Not going to get there.

Hibernation seems like a maybe a Time Walk for three... at best. Imagine they play Survival with you on the draw. They untap, perhaps with a Hierarch or Birds in play. That gives them four mana. That's three Vengevines coming at you. And on your best (albeit non-counterspell hand), you might have played Aether Vial on turn one, a vialed Cursecather and a hardcast Lord on turn 2. I know they don't always play it turn two, but that seems like the situation to evaluate.

Pithing Needle is looking pretty good. One mana, blocks either Survival or Shaman as needed, and if they're liable to Seize it you can play it preemptively. It can be destroyed, but they have to draw and resolve the artifact destruction. It is also strong against other decks.

If I had the Seas to play a black splash, I might consider Leyline of the Void or Planar Void. I heard the latter somehow can be stacked but didn't actually read up. Anyone care to link or explain?

You could just go mono-blue and load up on the Spell Pierces. But in my (admittedly limited) experience, some metas are relatively unpierceable. Dredge loves them, Aggro Loam loves them, Goblins love them (but I guess we're in danger regardless), and the non-Survival decks they help most with are combo, which often doesn't need the help. Maybe Spell Snare is the one?

I guess white splashes (did you work out yet that I like the white splash?) could go with Wheel of Sun and Moon, but double white is hard. I was thinking Samurai of the Pale Curtain would work too, but I guess it is only permanents. If only Wing Shards wasn't double white, but I guess all those Vines would just grow back the next turn anyways. White splashes do have the advantage of running Enlightened Tutor, which can stretch your sideboard to fit hate for all seasons, but probably means that hate will turn up a turn late.

After all those words, I think I'm back to where I began.

I have come to the conclusion that merfolk is no longer a tier 1 deck with survival running around. My original claims are supported by a recent article on starcitygames.com. http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...s_of_Data.html

The article breaks down two months of starcity open data. Its a great article with a lot of DATA and not just un-verifiable claims. In a past post, I said that merfolk has a terrible matchup vs. zoo, goblins, and survival variants. I was right and the data proves it.

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Originally Posted by BWEEEZY

I have come to the conclusion that merfolk is no longer a tier 1 deck with survival running around. My original claims are supported by a recent article on starcitygames.com. http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...s_of_Data.html

The article breaks down two months of starcity open data. Its a great article with a lot of DATA and not just un-verifiable claims. In a past post, I said that merfolk has a terrible matchup vs. zoo, goblins, and survival variants. I was right and the data proves it.

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Except that the data is only SCG series and takes nothing into account of any other large (50-100+) player tournaments. If your only goal is to play at SCG Opens, then the data is for you, otherwise it's incomplete.

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Originally Posted by Sims

Except that the data is only SCG series and takes nothing into account of any other large (50-100+) player tournaments. If your only goal is to play at SCG Opens, then the data is for you, otherwise it's incomplete.

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Wrong, survival also did well in the recent tournament with 138 people in your own city getting first and another top 8 spot:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post501050

and also dominated the mox tournament here in Los Angeles placing 3 out of top 8

and looks like it's finally catching on in Europe:

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=5356

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=5323

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=5356

and it goes on and on and on, more than half the big tournaments with 50-200 people you will see survival multiple times.

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Originally Posted by Team America

Wrong, survival also did well in the recent tournament with 138 people in your own city getting first and another top 8 spot:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...l=1#post501050

and also dominated the mox tournament here in Los Angeles placing 3 out of top 8

and looks like it's finally catching on in Europe:

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=5356

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=5323

http://www.thecouncil.es/tcdecks/deck.php?id=5356

and it goes on and on and on, more than half the big tournaments with 50-200 people you will see survival multiple times.

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L 2 Read.

a.) I said THE ARTICLE does not take into account anything outside the SCG Open series.

b.) Juptier Games is not in "my city." I'm 2 1/2 hours away from Vestal.

c.) Yay. A few European tournaments have Survival win them or place multiple top 8/16's. Gratz?

My point was the matchup breakdown data that is in that article, and the article itself, only relates to the SCG Open series. It cares nothing for the other tournaments you posted and does not take any match data from them into account. How do we know in the tournaments you linked, even, the exact matchups each survival player faced? How do we know, for certain, that the matchup percentages claimed in the article are accurate of the European or even American Non-SCG tournaments? Yeah, gratz you proved Survival decks are winning. Cookie? I don't care about that, the deck proably won't exist in a month. The data presented in the article is incomplete unless your goal is to look at and focus only on the SCG series. That is not my goal, my goal is to look at the metagame as a whole.

Star City Games opens do not equal the entire Legacy metagame.

Sims what is the point of the last post? I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Bweezy, you are correct Merfolk isn't a tier one deck when there is no blue in the meta.

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Originally Posted by SlopeeJ

Sims what is the point of the last post? I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Bweezy, you are correct Merfolk isn't a tier one deck when there is no blue in the meta.

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That it is pointless to cite an article and say that it is definitive proof that Merfolk is no longer tier 1 in the metagame, when said article only uses 1 group of tournaments as it's data. It does not take into account the entire picture of Legacy. As such they are trying to pass off the Star City Games Open series as the Legacy metagame, which is not true.

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Originally Posted by Sims

That it is pointless to cite an article and say that it is definitive proof that Merfolk is no longer tier 1 in the metagame, when said article only uses 1 group of tournaments as it's data. It does not take into account the entire picture of Legacy. As such they are trying to pass off the Star City Games Open series as the Legacy metagame, which is not true.

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But you have to admit that the SCG Open metagame is a relavent portion of the overall metagame. Also, because of the format of the Open series (having both Standard and Legacy) many players who came for Standard played Legacy also, and since it is one of the cheapest Tier 1 decks, the result are probably skewed by worse/inexperienced play. I think Merfolk is definately Tier 1 still, depending on your interpretation of Tier 1 - right now the only real Tier 1 deck is Survival by many interpretations.

Hi there,

back from our weekly Legacy Tournament. I managed to pilot my deck to 7th place out of 39 players.
I went 4-2 beating Zoo, Goblins, Dreadstill Countertop and New Horizons. I played nearly the same list as last week; made only some Sideboard changes. Maybe I´ll post a roundup tomorrow. The games I lost were both mirror-matches.

Here´s my current list:


3x Mutavault
4x Wasteland
13x Island

4x Stifle
4x Force of Will
4x Daze

4x Standstill
4x Aether Vial

4x Phyrexian Dreadnought
4x Silvergill Adept
4x Coralhelm Commander
4x Lord of Atlantis
4x Merrow Rejeery


Sideboard:
1x Mindbreak Trap
2x Pithing Needle
1x Llawan, Cephalid Empress
2x Tormods Crypt
2x Reliq of Progenitus
2x Umezawa´s Jitte
3x Hibernation
2x Submerge

Bye for now.
Chezchris

Congrats on your results. I tried the Dreadnought plan as well and had mixed feelings about it. You said your two loses were to the mirror but the dreadnought plan was suppose to be good against the mirror as long as you play the stifle/nought around daze/spellpierce.

Thx.
Yeah it should be good but my opponents were a bit faster and I was only once able to resolve a Dreadnought.
And my draws were really really bad in those 2 Matches. With LoA online its only a race and they played more Merfolk so they won it ;)

I got something bit unusual this time ;) This weekend I finished 9th ( :| ) in an interesting 2-day mixed format tournament (6 rounds of legacy and 6 of limited in a form of 2 drafts), making 4-2 in legacy, but why I write this is because it should be 5-1 if I played well my last game, so it's not that bad.
Here we go:
4x Wasteland
4x Mutavault
12x Island

4x AEther Vial
4x Force of Will
4x Daze
3x Standstill
1x Echoing Truth

2x Cursecatcher
2x Tidal Warrior
4x Silvergill Adept
4x Lord of Atlantis
4x Merrow Reejerey
4x Coralhelm Commander
2x Merfolk Souvereign
1x Thada Adel, Acquisitor
1x Cold-Eyed Selkie
1x Kira, Great Glass-Spinner

Side:
1x Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
2x Pithing Needle
2x Spell Pierce
2x Hydroblast
3x Submerge
2x Llawan, Cephalid Empress
1x Tormod's Crypt
2x Relic of Progenitus
I managed to win with Rw Burn with Steppe Lynxes (2-1), Zoo (2-0, but i should mention that opp had awful mana screw in 1st game), other folks (2-0) and Bant Survival. I lost to Affinity (!!!) - 0-2, I had absolutely no answers to 1st-turn 4/4 myrs supported by next-turn cranial platings, and 1-2 with UG Survival (but as I mentioned above, it could be 2-1 in my favor and report would be a bit longer, including top8 games... I should have mulliganed my hand in 3rd game, but my greatest mistake was 2nd turn attack with mutavault having only FoW as a counterspell, while opponent had Hierarch, so he could easily protect his SotF with Daze turn later. If I stayed with some mana open game would probably be on my favor, as I could race having lord, 2 reejereys and commander on my hand then).
Cutting catchers doesn't hurt us, as there's much less countertops and such decks now. However, while dredge returns to tier1, it's worth considering playing 3 of them, but still 4 is too many in my opinion. In their place I have Warriors - that little guy appeared to be awesome, helping much against zoo with lord on the battlefield (and of course it improves much the MU I was afraid most - against GW Survival). Once I had option to change eachl opponent's lands into islands, I tried to find out other cards that could use it. So Lord of Atlantis was soon accompanied by Selkie, which can give awesome CA - for example in my mirror match, in first game I was able to draw circa 8 cards before my opponent shuffled his permanents. Without it, after having 2 of my lords countered and with pretty nice aggro start on the other side of the table, I'm afraid it would be a loss rather. And finally, Thada Adel. If you think about mirror and stealing vials or even jittes, you're right. If you think about goblins and doing the same, you're also right. But mainly my idea was to help myself against a combo I have not so many answers to in main board-> Ooze Survival. After one swing and removing devourer we're just facing an aggro we can race with, without need to wait with our counterspells for late game ooze. By the way, it helps slightly against other SotF versions (stealling memnite or other 0-mana artifact they play, what gives us 1 VV less to face when they turn on - and if we have aggresive start it really matters). I think it's worth being tested more, but still it's just 2/2 vanila against zoo, so I wouldn't play more than one. Well, Kira is kind of obvious now, and Echoing Truth as an universal answer is also something that doesn't require explanation. I had possibilities to side-in every single card from my sieboard, and I think that this alsow worked well.

If you got any questions - go ahed. But what interests me is your opinion about this way of improving merfolks - and I don;t mean here the single-techs, but the general idea of using Tidal Warriors here.

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Originally Posted by ForlornEgoist

The Dreadnought is definitely a random win I love. ^^

Overally the deck seems solid to me. The only suggestion I really have is that Wake Thrasher. Honestly, imo he's a sub-par creature not deserving of deck space. Sure, he's great on the attack, but in the absense of multiple Lords he becomes a chump blocker at best. He also lacks trample or evasion, so he isn't exactly difficult for an opponent to deal with. And even with your 7 cantrips, as a 1-of it's very doubtful you'll draw him, nor can I think of any instance where you would wish you had him on hand.

My only suggestion is:

-1 Wake Thrasher
+1 Standstill


Something I've been looking at building is a Ur variant of Merfolk. Before I continue, let me just say that I had obtained some Volcanics for Sneaky Show, but have since then dismantled said deck. I already have a Mono-U build of Merfolk (or I did before I took it a apart) so I'm looking at a Red splash for Merfolk. It's just for fun to see how it works, I fully expect it to be the worst splash of the other four colors available.


4 Scalding Tarns
2 Misty Rainforest
4 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland
4 Mutavaults
3 Island

4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Standstill
3 Spell Snare

4 Aether Vial

4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Merrow Reejery
4 Coralhelm Commander
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Taurean Mauler

I always have problems finding cards to subtract from decks such as Merfolk because so many cards are necessarily to the overall power of the deck. I also had a great deal of fun trying to find ANY Ur Merfolk deck on the various search engines (I found none ><').

I opted for Snare over Pierce aas my current meta is more aggro-oriented right now (Aggro Loam, VengSurvival, Merfolk, with random Storm/Land/Enchantress) so I felt the Snare would overall be more useful to my meta.

You'll also note that I switched out Cursecatcher for Mauler. I'm reluctant to remove a 1-drop from the deck, however I wanted to see how Mauler faired. A 3-drop (which ultimately could slow me down in comparison to other aggro) however he benefits from the Lords and gets bigger on his own which is beneficial against decks like Loam/Land/Enchantress who rely on casting multiple spells a turn.

As it stands the R Splash will be more prominant in my SB. I'm considering Moon effects and perhaps Artifact hate/REB. Anyway, let me know your thoughts of suggestions.

Again, I'm building this for the fun of it. I fully acknowledge there is a 99.9% chance it is/will be weaker than the other color splashes.

Forlorn Egoist

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Have you tested Ceta Disciple? Merfolk has been dying for an additional one drop since we ousted tidal warrior. I'm curious to see how this card would fare in a blue red deck.

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Originally Posted by BWEEEZY

I have come to the conclusion that merfolk is no longer a tier 1 deck with survival running around. My original claims are supported by a recent article on starcitygames.com. http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...s_of_Data.html

The article breaks down two months of starcity open data. Its a great article with a lot of DATA and not just un-verifiable claims. In a past post, I said that merfolk has a terrible matchup vs. zoo, goblins, and survival variants. I was right and the data proves it.

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His logic suffers a pretty terrible breakdown, IMO

He says in that artcile:

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I'd also put U/G Survival in the fight since it's the most popular and probably has the weakest player base.

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Okay, fair enough, maybe UG is better than we think because so many people play it.

Merfolk is the most popular archetype in this report. A lot of people are playing it. As pointed out earlier, it's also the cheapest good deck in the format, so a lot of the people playing it are likely fairly new.

Why does the same argument [lots of people playing the deck, likely not all of them are staller] not work for Merfolk as well?

All of these suggestions for how to beat survival are cards that make your deck worse in order to do it. It's similar to people using Duress in an aggro deck to strip your opponent's counters, when you could just play another threat that does the same thing.

Better cards to be using against survival:
Spell Snare
Spell Pierce
Submerge against GW

Now you're back to being the aggro deck; they have to resolve Survival or they die, as Fauna Shaman is going to be too slow. Shaman plus Ranger might be fast enough for them if they're playing without islands, but that's where Submerge comes in.

To thine own self be true.

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Originally Posted by Malakai

All of these suggestions for how to beat survival are cards that make your deck worse in order to do it. It's similar to people using Duress in an aggro deck to strip your opponent's counters, when you could just play another threat that does the same thing.

Better cards to be using against survival:
Spell Snare
Spell Pierce
Submerge against GW

Now you're back to being the aggro deck; they have to resolve Survival or they die, as Fauna Shaman is going to be too slow. Shaman plus Ranger might be fast enough for them if they're playing without islands, but that's where Submerge comes in.

To thine own self be true.

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What about Hibernation? I haven't tested it very extensively in Merfolk, but it's good on paper at least, unless they get a sick, sick draw and you have no counters.

I can see arguments for it, but Hibernation doesn't really do anything in your other matchups nor does it do much against the Ooze combo versions. I'd rather have Submerge.

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Originally Posted by Malakai

I can see arguments for it, but Hibernation doesn't really do anything in your other matchups nor does it do much against the Ooze combo versions. I'd rather have Submerge.

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Agreed. A free timewalk is almost always better than a 3 mana bounce a few permanents.

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Originally Posted by Tru3z3rox

Agreed. A free timewalk is almost always better than a 3 mana bounce a few permanents.

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Well, the point of Hibernation is that you bounce Survival, Hierarchs, Rootwallas etc. in addition to the Veggies, so you'll actually set him back pretty far if you cast it in the declare attackers step.

Submerge is a Time Walk in what universe? Setting them back a creature, some mana, and a draw step is big, but it's no board sweeper. Survival can do a lot without drawing a card. Getting what you want without relying on the draw step is precisely what the card is all about.