[Deck] Merfolk

This is not even close to the first new lord printed for this deck. It is the first one that gives us the possibility of never needing more than two mana though. If the Commanders and Reejereys are reduced to 2 and 2, you could probably cut back on the lands which is clearly a boon.

Labelling any of the cards in this deck a sacred cow is foolish. There are too many good cards so something has to go. On that note, there actually is the chance that 8 is too many Lords of Atlantis, especially considering Images are also in the deck. Islandwalk does not stack, and is not universally good anyway. And Merfolk has always wanted to draw a variety of threats and defenses to be effective. Slivers sucks in large part because it has no effective guys other than aggro (Lords and the like). So while it may be clunky with Vial, there are a variety of reasons to keep four Reejereys in the deck.

And OMG to the Brainstorm argument still gasping. That is a card that actually has been tested and rejected by oh, so many players including myself. The deck already can't fit all the cards it wants to. Why would any intelligent person shoehorn something that requires them twist up its mana supply? Oh, and it is an anti-tempo card. Ya know, antithetical to the entire strategy the rest of the deck relies on.

There is no such thing as too many Lords of Atlantis in Merfolk, why are you even still playing Images after Lord of the Pearl Trident?

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Originally Posted by Final Fortune

There is no such thing as too many Lords of Atlantis in Merfolk, why are you even still playing Images after Lord of the Pearl Trident?

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Phantasmal Image can offer more depth/versatility than +1/+1 and redundant psuedo-evasion. One should run Master of the Pearl Trident, it's a 4 of. I personally think Lord of Atlantis is worth 4 slots right now too, but I don't think Image is suddenly antiquated by Master's printing.

Image if anything has gained stock in the current meta and with another good Lord at CMC 2 offers further incentive to maintain Vial at 2 counters and maximize Image tricks. It offers great tech against Reanimator, Sneak and Show - Legend ruling them- and Dredge by electing not to copy to blow out Bridge from Below. There are probably some other corner cases against other archetypes too, but the fact it can pad these more combo oriented matches while still functioning as another copy of the most practical Lord on the field I feel like is a pretty strong defense to continue running 2-3 copies.

I also agree with the posters defending Merrow Reejerey. He's our best option against our non-Blue match ups and I feel really has to remain a 4 of to keep some semblance of game against Maverick and to lesser degrees Junk, Nic Fit, BW Deadguy, etc.

This is the configuration I'm testing currently:

4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Merrow Reejerey
3 Phantasmal Image
3 Coralhelm Commander

4 Aether Vial
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
2 Spell Pierce

4 Mutavault
3 Wasteland
14 U sources (playing around with mono-U and splashes for SB)

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Originally Posted by Finn

Labelling any of the cards in this deck a sacred cow is foolish. There are too many good cards so something has to go. On that note, there actually is the chance that 8 is too many Lords of Atlantis, especially considering Images are also in the deck. Islandwalk does not stack, and is not universally good anyway. And Merfolk has always wanted to draw a variety of threats and defenses to be effective. Slivers sucks in large part because it has no effective guys other than aggro (Lords and the like). So while it may be clunky with Vial, there are a variety of reasons to keep four Reejereys in the deck.

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There are sacred cows in the deck. 4 Silvergill, at least up to the third of the following: Force, Daze, Vial. There isn't a good reason to go to 2 copies of any one of those.
As for redundant evasion... A second LoA means 1) should your opponent have a swords effect the rest of your team goes unblocked and you don't lose your board and 2) your other LoA now has island walk should you decide you cannot afford to play around removal. Both of those things seem very relevant to me.

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Originally Posted by Finn

And OMG to the Brainstorm argument still gasping. That is a card that actually has been tested and rejected by oh, so many players including myself. The deck already can't fit all the cards it wants to. Why would any intelligent person shoehorn something that requires them twist up its mana supply? Oh, and it is an anti-tempo card. Ya know, antithetical to the entire strategy the rest of the deck relies on.

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While I agree with you, I am currently testing BS in the deck again, since a friend asked me to look back into it. It isn't -bad- just there are probably better things for the deck.
It sure is nice putting back those unneeded vials though.

I truly love this whole argument over what 'folk rate, and the fact that we can actually have it. There's just so much good stuff in this deck that we're spoiled for choice. Just test the theories, and see what really is effective. Let's go from there rather than argue theory.

If Return to Ravnica gets another good two drop - or a good one drop - this thread goes nuclear.

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Originally Posted by Finn

This is not even close to the first new lord printed for this deck. It is the first one that gives us the possibility of never needing more than two mana though. If the Commanders and Reejereys are reduced to 2 and 2, you could probably cut back on the lands which is clearly a boon.

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Is this what we want to be doing, though? Do we want to streamline the deck at the cost of the deck's power level? At what point are we playing Countersliver except without Crystalline Sliver? Do we want to play that deck? Is that deck good?

Maybe it is, I don't know, but these are the questions I would like to ask.

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Labelling any of the cards in this deck a sacred cow is foolish.

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Untrue. Silvergill Adept is an auto 4-of in the deck because we need the card draw. LoA is in the deck because, without it, we're basically playing Goblins without Warchief or Piledriver. Aether Vial is in the deck because "curving out" is not what we want to do; the deck thrives on curve-jumping.

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And OMG to the Brainstorm argument still gasping. That is a card that actually has been tested and rejected by oh, so many players including myself. The deck already can't fit all the cards it wants to. Why would any intelligent person shoehorn something that requires them twist up its mana supply? Oh, and it is an anti-tempo card. Ya know, antithetical to the entire strategy the rest of the deck relies on.

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The question is, do we want to be the same Merfolk deck that we were 2 or 3 years ago? Does that deck beat RUG Delver? Does it beat Reanimator? Does it beat Maverick? Can we take a different approach to improve those matchups? Why are we the midrange deck, in-between RUG as a fast, resource-oriented deck, and Maverick as a slower, more bomby deck? Is our card quality that much better than RUG that we can afford to have a slower clock? Is our deck fast enough that we can afford to not play guys that can compete in size with a Knight of the Reliquary?

"Shoehorning", as you so eloquently put it, Brainstorm into the deck is certainly wrong. The question is, does there exist a deck similar to this one in strategy which might be better positioned in the metagame that uses Brainstorm to execute a more effective gameplan than the one we're currently fiddling around with?

Quick tournament report. Went to a small legacy tournament this past Sunday at Heroic Dreams in Pickering. There were 14 players and I decided to play merfolk. Here's the list.

13 Island
4 Wasteland
4 Mutavault
4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Coralhelm Commander
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Merrow Reejerey
2 Phantasmal Image
4 Aether Vial
2 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Force of Will
3 Daze

3 Submerge
3 Spell Pierce
3 Faerie Macabre
2 Energy Flux
2 Sower of Temptation
2 Pithing Needle

The only slots I wasn't too sure about were the maindeck Jittes as I thought Dismembers wouldn't do enough and having 2 maindeck Spell Pierce felt kind of weird. I also wanted Jittes to legend rule the opponent's Jitte. Also, the sideboard felt kind of iffy. Not sure if the Pithing Needles were worth it and the Energy Flux was in there because I knew someone was going to be playing Stax/MUD.

Anyways on with the report.

Round 1 - Dejan (Pox)

Basically this was a super grindy matchup. If a vial ever resolves, it's game over since it's extremely difficult for them to get rid of creatures at instant speed. Basically I won Games 1 and 3 because I resolved a vial and lost game 2 because my vial got needled. He kept on clearing the board but I had so many creatures that he couldn't get rid of all of them.

1-0 (2-1)

Round 2 - Falco (Esper Stoneblade)

Game 1 was pretty insane as my hand was 2 islands, 1 cursecatcher, 1 lord of atlantis and 3 master of pearl trident. Felt like I needed to keep this hand because that's a lot of islandwalkers. I felt like one thing that he did wrong was that his first stoneforge he fetched a sword of fire and ice and then with the second stoneforge he fetched a batterskull. Maybe he should have done it in the opposite order but it was a bit too late as when he vialed in the batterskull and equipped it with a sword, he couldn't gain enough life to offset the unblockable damage. Game 2 was pretty similar as well except that I only had one master of pearl trident but he was stuck on just two lands and couldn't cast anything except for stoneforge and get in batterskull. Again, I was able to race a batterskull with all my islandwalking merfolk.

2-0 (4-1)

Round 3 - Mark (Reanimator)

This was pretty much a blowout. Game 1 he was able to reanimate an early Blazing Archon but I was able to resolve a Phantasmal Image the next turn. I asked him if he can still win without attacking and my way to win was to deck him. He said that he can still win and I knew that he maindecked a Tidespout Tyrant but I kept on playing so he can show me the tyrant. he was able to reanimate the tyrant and then bounced image and my flying commanders and then died. Game 2 I figured he's on the show and tell plan but I had to bring in the faeries anyways. He ended up able to resolved his 2nd show and tell on turn 4 and brought in the blazing archon. My only hope this now is to either resolve a phantasmal image to stall or resolve to sower and kill him in my next
attack phase. Unfortunately, couldn't draw either and lost in 4 turns.

2-1 (4-3)

Round 4 - Donnie (Esper Stoneblade)

Game 1, he was stuck on two lands but had 3 plows. Fortunately, I had a bunch of creatures and just overwhelmed him. Game 2, he was land flooded but was able to cast all of his bombs. Fortunately, I had two vials in play with no lands since he blew up my only island and I ended up vialing in multiple reejereys and at the very end, he had a stoneforge equipped with a jitte with two counters back on block and was at 4 life. I had a vial on 3, a vial on 2, 2 reejereys in play, 2 islands and a wasteland in play and an image in hand. I managed to draw a commander and that was pretty much game as i cast the commander to tap his stoneforge. Attacked with my reejereys. He
used the counters to gain 4 life and I vialed in the image copying reejerey to attack for 8 for the win. Go reejereys!!!

3-1 (6-3)

We then split top 4 so each of us got $100 credit which was pretty awesome. I felt the deck was really strong and I loved the fact that I had so many lords. I can't really imagine cutting any of the creatures and the most disappointing card maindeck were the Jittes but I think I can't get rid of them since if an opposing jitte resolves I pretty much just lose if i don't have an overwhelming force. I also wouldn't want to run more than 2 images as I had some hands where I had a Silvergill in hand with an image and yeah. COMBO!!!!

In the future, if there's going to be a bunch of goblins or elves, I might need to splash black for perishes and plagues as I doubt the mono blue version of any merfolk deck has a chance against goblins especially now they all play 4 cavern of souls so you can't counter their ringleader or matrons. I also wish I could fit some bounce spell in the sideboard but I wouldn't know what to take out.

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Originally Posted by pocari79

Quick tournament report. Went to a small legacy tournament this past Sunday at Heroic Dreams in Pickering. There were 14 players and I decided to play merfolk.

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Given up on the Maverick dream?

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Originally Posted by CookedChestnuts

Given up on the Maverick dream?

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yeah, gave up on that like a month ago. Switched to nic fit recently but it felt too weird. you'd blow up the world and then play draw go and end up losing. besides, with everybody playing some sort of deck with islands, merfolk with 8 lord of atlantis seemed like a good call.

Great report thanks.

Congrats on the Store Credit, get a dual land with it if you don't have your 40, at least they don't drop in value.

Just threw together Brainstorm Fish, just as a thought experiment to see what would happen. Seems to be not godawful, but I haven't done a ton of testing with it. If anyone wants to join me in this project, here's the first draft I threw together:

3x Cursecatcher
8x Lord of Atlantis
2x Phantasmal Image
4x Coralhelm Commander
4x Merrow Reejerey

4x Force of Will
4x Daze
3x Standstill

4x Aether Vial

8x Blue fetchlands
4x Island
4x Mutavault
4x Wasteland

Some reasoning behind the card choices:

1) Note the 0 Silvergill Adept. This is on purpose. Silvergill's inclusion in the "regular" builds is as a card advantage source for the deck. In this build, that responsibility falls to the Brainstorm + Standstill combination, allowing the creature base to be a bit more streamlined along the "mono-Lord" plan.

2) 4 Daze, 0 Spell Pierce. Spell Pierce is better against combo, Daze synergizes better with Brainstorm. Since I wanted to play Brainstorm, I decided to sacrifice percentages in my combo matchup for what should be, in theory, a more consistent deck, which shoul provide higher percentages across the board.

3) 4 Islands, 8 Fetches. I've found that the "flooding out" number of lands for Merfolk is somewhere between 5 and 6. 1 Mutavault + 4 Islands is the border, so I decided I never want more than 4 Islands; I'm thus not playing more than 4 Islands. The 8 fetches are to provide an illusion of the standard 20 lands by allowing me to find the 4 Islands when I need them, and being useful (with Brainstorm) when I don't.

4) 3 Cursecatcher. I've always hated Cursecatcher in this deck, but took it as a necessary evil as a tempo play. I needed 1 slot to cut to add other stuff, so I cut the card in the deck I hated the most. Again, not sure this is a correct choice, but it's what I did. It might be correct to play only 7 Lord of Atlantis, or 3 Coralhelm Commander, if you want the full set of Cursecatchers.

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Originally Posted by Ertai87

Just threw together Brainstorm Fish, just as a thought experiment to see what would happen. Seems to be not godawful, but I haven't done a ton of testing with it. If anyone wants to join me in this project, here's the first draft I threw together:

3x Cursecatcher
8x Lord of Atlantis
2x Phantasmal Image
4x Coralhelm Commander
4x Merrow Reejerey

4x Force of Will
4x Daze
3x Standstill

4x Aether Vial

8x Blue fetchlands
4x Island
4x Mutavault
4x Wasteland

Some reasoning behind the card choices:

1) Note the 0 Silvergill Adept. This is on purpose. Silvergill's inclusion in the "regular" builds is as a card advantage source for the deck. In this build, that responsibility falls to the Brainstorm + Standstill combination, allowing the creature base to be a bit more streamlined along the "mono-Lord" plan.

2) 4 Daze, 0 Spell Pierce. Spell Pierce is better against combo, Daze synergizes better with Brainstorm. Since I wanted to play Brainstorm, I decided to sacrifice percentages in my combo matchup for what should be, in theory, a more consistent deck, which shoul provide higher percentages across the board.

3) 4 Islands, 8 Fetches. I've found that the "flooding out" number of lands for Merfolk is somewhere between 5 and 6. 1 Mutavault + 4 Islands is the border, so I decided I never want more than 4 Islands; I'm thus not playing more than 4 Islands. The 8 fetches are to provide an illusion of the standard 20 lands by allowing me to find the 4 Islands when I need them, and being useful (with Brainstorm) when I don't.

4) 3 Cursecatcher. I've always hated Cursecatcher in this deck, but took it as a necessary evil as a tempo play. I needed 1 slot to cut to add other stuff, so I cut the card in the deck I hated the most. Again, not sure this is a correct choice, but it's what I did. It might be correct to play only 7 Lord of Atlantis, or 3 Coralhelm Commander, if you want the full set of Cursecatchers.

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No silvergill adept...NEXT

So, with all the hulabaloo around the new Islandwalker Lord and no one is actually testing Aquitect's Will? Tidal Warrior? Either may not solve Maverick single-handidly (KotR beats both), but they do answer Mom-stalls and have the added perk of fixing your manabase somewhat against blue decks. Anyhow, anyone actually sat down with the cards? I'm curious.

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Originally Posted by Ertai87

1) Note the 0 Silvergill Adept. This is on purpose. Silvergill's inclusion in the "regular" builds is as a card advantage source for the deck. In this build, that responsibility falls to the Brainstorm + Standstill combination, allowing the creature base to be a bit more streamlined along the "mono-Lord" plan.

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You forgot the part where it allows you to swing with a creature which, if blocked, trades with the blocker almost always and profitably without reducing the lord count on board or costing you a card.

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Originally Posted by Infinitium

So, with all the hulabaloo around the new Islandwalker Lord and no one is actually testing Aquitect's Will? Tidal Warrior? Either may not solve Maverick single-handidly (KotR beats both), but they do answer Mom-stalls and have the added perk of fixing your manabase somewhat against blue decks. Anyhow, anyone actually sat down with the cards? I'm curious.

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I think now the there's Master of the Pearl Trident it's probably viable to play some cursed totems in the sideboard against Maverick now as you should be able to have more and bigger creatures than them and sure, not being able to level up Commander sucks but them not being able to activate any abilities on all their creatures is way more of a plus. It's like you'll have an army of 4/4s or 5/5s against their 2/2s or 1/1s.

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Originally Posted by Tammit67

You forgot the part where it allows you to swing with a creature which, if blocked, trades with the blocker almost always and profitably without reducing the lord count on board or costing you a card.

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It seems you do not understand the purpose of this experiment. The idea is that the deck, as it stands, has a very good short game. If you draw well within the first 10-15 cards of your deck, you are very well set up to play a good game. The problem is, if the game goes much deeper than turn 5-6, you can very quickly go from a dominating position to a position where you find yourself dominated. This is particularly true against nonblue decks (which Silvergill Adept is incidentally horrid against; these are the decks which play white and/or black removal spells to blow up your Lords, turning Silvergill into the cantripping Goblin Piker that it is). The idea behind this experiment is to shore up the nonblue matchups by allowing the deck to smooth out its draws going long, rather than go for an immediate gameplan. As a result, Silvergill Adept is not really what this version of the deck wants to be doing.

The point of the experiment is that, with Master of the Pearl Trident, we now have 8 ways to win against the blue decks. We do not need additional help to beat the blue decks anymore, because we're playing a deck full of unblockable 5/5s against them. What we need to do (imo) is build the best deck to beat the nonblue decks, which, as I see it, is to build a deck that doesn't fold to a Knight of the Reliquary backed up by non-Islands.

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Originally Posted by pocari79

I think now the there's Master of the Pearl Trident it's probably viable to play some cursed totems in the sideboard against Maverick now as you should be able to have more and bigger creatures than them and sure, not being able to level up Commander sucks but them not being able to activate any abilities on all their creatures is way more of a plus. It's like you'll have an army of 4/4s or 5/5s against their 2/2s or 1/1s.

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What world are you living in where Knight of the Reliquary is a "2/2 or 1/1"? Are you not winning the game anyway, without Cursed Totem, if you have an army of 5/5s and your opponent has no Knight?

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Originally Posted by Ertai87

Hm? Profitably trades with the blocker almost always? I think that depends on your definition of "profitable", as what might be profitable in raw card-advantage terms (which is probably what you're trying to argue) is not necessarily "profit" in real-game terms. As an example, do you consider a 2/1 Silvergill Adept trading for a 1/1 Veteran Explorer out of Nic Fit? Do you count it "profitable" if the Explorer just chump-blocks? Personally, I don't think either situation is considered "profitable" in the context of the matchup, even though you are up in terms of card advantage.

As for "trading almost always", I'd be interested in what basis you use to back that statement up. As an example, do you consider a Noble Hierarch blocking Silvergill out of Maverick in your data sample? Do you consider Knight blocking Adept? Do you weigh those two possibilities equally?



What world are you living in where Knight of the Reliquary is a "2/2 or 1/1"? Are you not winning the game anyway, without Cursed Totem, if you have an army of 5/5s and your opponent has no Knight?

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If you are able to find one card out of 10000 cards to argue, there really isn't a point to continue to discuss this topic. It seems to me that you are pretty adamant in running silvergill-less build. Just run brainstorm in that spot

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Originally Posted by Avatar of Shadow

If you are able to find one card out of 10000 cards to argue, there really isn't a point to continue to discuss this topic. It seems to me that you are pretty adamant in running silvergill-less build. Just run brainstorm in that spot

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I'm actually not adamant about anything; I'm trying to inject life into the discussion by suggesting another method with which to attack the format. As I said when I first suggested the experiment, I don't know if it's good, and it very well might not be. I'm interested in finding out whether it's good or not, however, rather than dismissing it out of hand. If you would like to continue to circle-jerk around the same 60 cards from now until the end of time, that's fine; however, if that's the case, I see no reason to have a thread about the deck at all. If you simply want to state "these are the 60 cards you should play, so just play those 60", you can reduce this 300-page thread into a single post, lock it, and be done with it, since the deck is probably never going to evolve from its current state without a major strategic overhaul.

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Originally Posted by Ertai87

I'm actually not adamant about anything; I'm trying to inject life into the discussion by suggesting another method with which to attack the format. As I said when I first suggested the experiment, I don't know if it's good, and it very well might not be. I'm interested in finding out whether it's good or not, however, rather than dismissing it out of hand. If you would like to continue to circle-jerk around the same 60 cards from now until the end of time, that's fine; however, if that's the case, I see no reason to have a thread about the deck at all. If you simply want to state "these are the 60 cards you should play, so just play those 60", you can reduce this 300-page thread into a single post, lock it, and be done with it, since the deck is probably never going to evolve from its current state without a major strategic overhaul.

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Do you know why we have professors and teachers? Its so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel again.

If you go back to one of the first 300 pages, people have already tested, discussed brainstorm extensively.

Sure a new merfolk may interject some new life for discussion and may replace a core card, but this is not the case.

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Originally Posted by Avatar of Shadow

Do you know why we have professors and teachers? Its so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel again.

If you go back to one of the first 300 pages, people have already tested, discussed brainstorm extensively.

Sure a new merfolk may interject some new life for discussion and may replace a core card, but this is not the case.

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Would you like to summarize for me? I don't have the time to read 300 pages of circle-jerking to find the relevant information, especially since I'm not entirely convinced the information even is relevant anymore, given that we now have Master to make our blue matchups so much better (which is the impetus for looking to shore up our nonblue matchups), and that the metagame has shifted about 5 times in the last 6 months alone.