[Deck] Merfolk

I know I'm likely to get crap for this, but I ran 3x Adaptive Automatons and a Jitte rather than Coralhelms at SCG Pitt. I went 4-1 and then made some heinous play mistakes in the next two matches that came from not playing magic seriously for 10 years. The only time that day when I felt as if I had made a mistake was facing down a resolved Moat with no answers (I played it out in the interest of capitalizing on my 1-0 lead.) Aside from that I won games that Coralhelm wouldn't have on the back of an immediate lord boost. Again, I'm not so sure that Adaptive is a good idea, but I don't think Coralhelm is as much of a stable choice as it once was.

You won't catch crap from me about it. I'm also contemplating cutting Coralhelm Commander. I'm finding he's just too slow. I keep wanting anything with an instant Lord boost unless I'm mana flooded or in the way lategame trying to just get a guy to go the distance. I'm about to start testing the matchups where I think I would want Coralhelm without him and see where it goes.

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Originally Posted by Tacosnape

You won't catch crap from me about it. I'm also contemplating cutting Coralhelm Commander. I'm finding he's just too slow. I keep wanting anything with an instant Lord boost unless I'm mana flooded or in the way lategame trying to just get a guy to go the distance. I'm about to start testing the matchups where I think I would want Coralhelm without him and see where it goes.

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what about a two two split. Have u tried that

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Originally Posted by Sansian

I know I'm likely to get crap for this, but I ran 3x Adaptive Automatons and a Jitte rather than Coralhelms at SCG Pitt. I went 4-1 and then made some heinous play mistakes in the next two matches that came from not playing magic seriously for 10 years. The only time that day when I felt as if I had made a mistake was facing down a resolved Moat with no answers (I played it out in the interest of capitalizing on my 1-0 lead.) Aside from that I won games that Coralhelm wouldn't have on the back of an immediate lord boost. Again, I'm not so sure that Adaptive is a good idea, but I don't think Coralhelm is as much of a stable choice as it once was.

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Why the Adaptive over say, Soverign?

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Originally Posted by SageShadows

Why the Adaptive over say, Soverign?

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Agreed. Pretty sure the occasional double blue screw doesn't near outweigh an inferior Lord who can't pitch to Force.

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Originally Posted by Avatar of Shadow

what about a two two split. Have u tried that

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That's actually what I used to run. Or a 3/3 split, rather, as I generally still run 22 guys, though I'm contemplating dropping to 21.

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Originally Posted by Tacosnape

Agreed. Pretty sure the occasional double blue screw doesn't near outweigh an inferior Lord who can't pitch to Force.



That's actually what I used to run. Or a 3/3 split, rather, as I generally still run 22 guys, though I'm contemplating dropping to 21.

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I'm thinking of buidling this deck, but how does this deck fare against NO decks, hivemind, and the sword decks.

I am running eva green currently, it beats merfolk, but loses badly to the other abovementioned decks.

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Originally Posted by Tacosnape

I'd mull it regardless of whether I knew that I was playing TES. Your chances of a better six are much higher than your chances of drawing into enough disruption quick enough to stop them. And in the world of Mental Misstep, you can't count on that resolving against a blind deck.

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Yeah i think i would mull it blind. I would also mull it vs ANT. But my thought is vs TES 2x wasteland is just enough disruption to make it marginally keepable. You can count on seeing 3-5 cards most of the time before they attempt to go off with 8 relevant counters left out of 53 cards that is 15% chance per card drawn plus the chance you draw island plus daze. Also if they keep a bad hand two wastelands might be enough disruption to win.

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Originally Posted by Avatar of Shadow

I'm thinking of buidling this deck, but how does this deck fare against NO decks, hivemind, and the sword decks.

I am running eva green currently, it beats merfolk, but loses badly to the other abovementioned decks.

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The deck rolls over to Stoneforge decks, from my experience. Stoneforge -> Batterskull is ridiculous, and SoFI just seals the game (if Jitte doesn't do it).
Hive Mind is a winnable match up, and one that I wished I hit more often. Cursecatchers and Dazes are your best bet in trying to beat a resolved Hive Mind and the pacts; counter your own copy with a cursecatcher or a daze (only if you have 1 mana open). Some spell pierces in the SB help as well.
I have no idea about the NO decks, but I would assume that it is bad if they get the T3/T4 Proggy. It's basically a racing game, and NO RUG hurts more because of Grim Lavamancers.

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Originally Posted by SageShadows

The deck rolls over to Stoneforge decks, from my experience. Stoneforge -> Batterskull is ridiculous, and SoFI just seals the game (if Jitte doesn't do it).
Hive Mind is a winnable match up, and one that I wished I hit more often. Cursecatchers and Dazes are your best bet in trying to beat a resolved Hive Mind and the pacts; counter your own copy with a cursecatcher or a daze (only if you have 1 mana open). Some spell pierces in the SB help as well.
I have no idea about the NO decks, but I would assume that it is bad if they get the T3/T4 Proggy. It's basically a racing game, and NO RUG hurts more because of Grim Lavamancers.

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so playing fish right now is not very good then huh?

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Originally Posted by SageShadows

The deck rolls over to Stoneforge decks, from my experience. Stoneforge -> Batterskull is ridiculous, and SoFI just seals the game (if Jitte doesn't do it).
Hive Mind is a winnable match up, and one that I wished I hit more often. Cursecatchers and Dazes are your best bet in trying to beat a resolved Hive Mind and the pacts; counter your own copy with a cursecatcher or a daze (only if you have 1 mana open). Some spell pierces in the SB help as well.
I have no idea about the NO decks, but I would assume that it is bad if they get the T3/T4 Proggy. It's basically a racing game, and NO RUG hurts more because of Grim Lavamancers.

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so playing fish right now is not very good then huh?

Has anybody tried the red splash yet? Call it blasphemy but I honestly think that without Islandwalk, merfolk is just a bad deck. I rarely play blue based competitive decks when I attend tournaments and one thing is for sure, I absolutely love playing against merfolk with any of my aggro-control decks. How about these changes:

-4 Cursecatcher
-4 Standstill
-1 FoW
+3 Grim Lavamancer
+4 Lightning Bolt
+2 Fire//Ice
Lose all the Mutavaults for Wastelands, Duals, and Fetches.

Sorry I had Sovereigns in there as well... It lacked Kira and Dismember. Not having Kira hurt, but I rarely seem to come across them in games anyway. I've pondered upping Kira to 3.

The deck as ran was as follows:
4 Fow
4 Mistep
3 Daze
1 Jitte

4 Curse Catcher
4 Silvergil Adept

3 Sovereign
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Reejerey
4 Automaton

4 Aether Vial

13 Island
4 Wasteland
4 Mutavault

Sideboard:
3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Spell Pierce
2 Submerge
2 Echoing Truth
2 Jitte
3 Back to Basics (Best card in the deck, and it's not even in the deck. This card won basically any game where I saw it.)

As for what I faced that day.
URW Good stuff with Mystic, Grim Lavamancer, and the other sorts of things you'd assume in those colors. I lost this matchup 2-1 Lavamancer was no good to me. I played poorly, it's a recurring theme throughout the day, I missed triggers and even forgot to attack a few times. I was excited since this was my first major Legacy tournament since they changed the name from 1.5. Fortunately, I spent the next day at work running through all of my blatantly stupid mistakes in my head and I feel much better about it now.
R2 was another Stone forge deck in Bant colors. I put him off mana and smashed face in both games.
R3 was a tezz-still deck. I went 2-1 in this match, it's where the moat came out and I punished his slow clock. The final game was a wash because I dropped B2B on him and he never recovered around 3x automatons.
R4 was reanimator. I was slightly nervous about this match up, but I ended up going 2-1. I managed to counter all of his relevant spells in the first game. Lost of a Blazing Archon in the next. Third I put him off black and kept him off of it long enough to find a Relic and put what amounted to a hardlock in play.
r5 was another standstill deck. I don't remember much, but Back to Basics was house again.
R6 was a deck that I don't remember, but that I think was Team America. I started the match and mulled to 6 on the draw...but picked up seven accidentally so I was forced to a very questionable 5 card. I nearly pulled it out but he stabilized at 3 life. The next round he forced a stifled dreadnought through my countermagic and I didn't see any cards that could save me.
R7 I was completely on tilt and played probably the worst game of my life against Chris Kronenberger piloting NO RUG... Which meant that I got punished, badly. The crowning moment was when I got up after shaking his hand and my friend asked how I lost... The moment he said that I realized that I should have sacrifice-attacked with a jitte'd creature to gain the counter I needed to kill his Vendi-Clique. I laughed and then did some quick trades for EDH cards before embarking on the ride home.

All-in-all, I had a great time and met some cool people. Honestly, I wish I had ran Kira as a 2-3x. It would have changed several of the matches where I lost. I chose to focus on lords because I assumed that I would be the aggressive deck in most of my match ups on the day. I was correct, so that was a bit of luck. Sorry for the threadbare report, but I'm solely off of week old memories from a day where I basically had 5 rounds go to time.

Doubled up. (Inflating my post count by 50%!)

Re-edit: The main issue with the red splash as you posited it, Qweerios, is that you're giving up your hivemind/combo matchup. Which isn't a big deal because it's not a massive percentage of the meta, but it sorta has the effect of placing you in a position of not playing to the strengths which make merfolk viable against its good matchups while not truly solving the most problematic ones. I might be wildly off base, but that's just what pops into my mind. Please do give it a try and report what your results are like. : )

Trying a weird version out. Cut Coralhelm and moved Dismember to board for a land, 2 Sovereigns, and 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptors. I'll let you guys know how this works out.

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Originally Posted by Qweerios

Has anybody tried the red splash yet? Call it blasphemy but I honestly think that without Islandwalk, merfolk is just a bad deck. I rarely play blue based competitive decks when I attend tournaments and one thing is for sure, I absolutely love playing against merfolk with any of my aggro-control decks. How about these changes:

-4 Cursecatcher
-4 Standstill
-1 FoW
+3 Grim Lavamancer
+4 Lightning Bolt
+2 Fire//Ice
Lose all the Mutavaults for Wastelands, Duals, and Fetches.

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I played a red splash before like this:
4 island
4 volcanic island
1 misty
1 scalding
1 flooded
1 polluted
4 mutavault
4 waste

4 Loa, rejeery, silvergill, coralhelm, cursecatcher

3 daze
4 mms
4 fow
4 vial
4 bolts
1 chain lightning

Basically I traded the dismembers and flex spots for the burn package. Lavamancer looks good a paper but I found I never had enough graveyard stuff to feed him. I ran fire/ice in the board and it was a beating against some decks (gw, affinity to some extent, gobs, bob, sfm, and tapping down random stuff). I didnt want it maindeck because there's a lot of stuff you want to cast for two mana, and its possible to play a lord and keep mana up for lord but far less possible to fire/ice and lord in the same turn.


It was nice having some removal, but the best was bolting heirarchs and following up with a wasteland for the blowout. It also gives this deck some reach to push through those final points of damage, so you have a slightly easier time in the endgame.

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Originally Posted by Avatar of Shadow

so playing fish right now is not very good then huh?

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Not necessarily. I think Fish's strengths is that even if it has a losing record, it's not that terrible and eminently winnable. Fish is still a solid choice to pilot in an unknown meta, and skill can push those weak match-ups into wins.
Specifically for Stoneforge based decks, I've yet to test my new additions, but I believe Dismember backed up by Cursed Totem (for Elves, GW Maverick, and Stoneforge based decks) will help. Maybe Pithing needle would work in that situation. I'll let you all know when I actually play this revamped deck next week.

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Originally Posted by Tacosnape

Trying a weird version out. Cut Coralhelm and moved Dismember to board for a land, 2 Sovereigns, and 3 Jace, the Mind Sculptors. I'll let you guys know how this works out.

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I'm interested. I don't like the Jaces because they're too high up in curve and the BS is pretty much useless without fetches. I might playtest -1 CC +1 Sovereign with 2 Phyrexian Metamorphs, 2 Dismember, and 1 Island as my flex (3 Dazes).

Does anyone here knows the decklist of Jared Kohler who's playing merfolk in 2011 U.S. National, Thanks

@chinitoz30: Looks like he MD 2 Sower of Temptation, placed 1 Mishra's Factory and SBed Back to Basics, Pithing Needle and Submerge.
ayos ba?

Hi guys,

any tips on the Maverick matchup? I need some input on how to play against them and what cards to bring in and out post board. thanks!

Merfolk, by Jared Kohler – 1st place
Business (38)
4 Coralhelm Commander
4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Merrow Reejerey
4 Silvergill Adept
2 Sower of Temptation
4 Aether Vial
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
1 Umezawa’s Jitte

Mana Sources (22)
13 Island
1 Mishra’s Factory
4 Mutavault
4 Wasteland

Sideboard (15)
2 Back to Basics
1 Dismember
2 Energy Flux
2 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
1 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Spell Pierce
3 Submerge
1 Tormod’s Crypt


Regarding the Maverick matchup, it's one of the worst in Legacy right now. You have to Mental Misstep or even Force of Will Mother of Runes, Dismember Scryb Ranger or kill a guy they try to equip Jitte to in order to generate tempo. I have only won this matchup when I'm on the play anyways. After boarding I bring in Spell Pierce on the play to hit GSZ. Mind Harness is also ok in providing tempo.

You can't really "grind" this matchup out, you just have to win by tempo. Which is pretty hard on it's own against them.