Originally Posted by
thesilentpyro
For most people playing the white splash, Swords comes in in the place of the random last 3-4 slots where monoblue players shove Jitte, Echoing Truth, Threads, etc, and possibly takes the Stifle slot, which is iffy anyways. You'll notice all those things I mentioned (apart from Stifle, which is simply an iffy choice depending on the meta) are removal and sub-par to Swords, thus the 'room' comes from replacing cards which fill the same role, only worse.
Yes, Wayfarer has greater synergy, but all the rest of the slots in the deck are very tight, and it doesn't have synergy with what makes the deck win: merfolk. Yes, it has synergy with the support cards, but the deck does not focus on the support cards. If you start taking out Folk for it, you harm the integrity of the deck by lessening the density of the cards it uses to win. Mother is also good, yes, but doesn't fill a role that isn't already better filled by Kira or other blue cards, as the deck wouldn't use it for evasion, as that's a large part of what the lords are for. From this point, the two cards you named which are 'better' than merfolk if running white are not really viable choices, thus there's no reason to take out more folk to run the even less viable choices you mentioned. If anything, in the white splash, the cards you mentioned are sideboard cards, and even then not really as good as the already established cards we already use there.
You are correct; monoblue doesn't get dominated--it has decent fight against just about everything except red decks, and then blue-white isn't terribly much better in most cases. The point about nonbasic hate is a rather obvious one. However, as nonbasic hate has risen, other decks have adapted to the hate and ran less nonbasic-intensive manabases, and thus nonbasic hate has died a bit. It is still something to pay attention to, and is very meta-dependent, but even in a nonbasic hate-heavy meta, white-splash merfolk is much less nonbasic-dependent than most other decks, as eliminating a Tundra cuts you off from swords and maybe one other card in your deck, and we still run a large number of basics in the deck. I don't understand your point about the combo-hate of the deck; which cards, exactly, can mono-blue run that the white splash cannot? U/W has access to all blue cards printed, as mono-blue does, but also has access to white's arsenal.
Yes, Merfolk is probably the most 'budget' competitive deck in Legacy right now (that's why I picked it up), but that's no reason not to develop the deck as much as we can with all the cards available in the cardpool. It is a competitive deck, and should be treated as one, not as a budget or casual deck.
I've read through the basic concept of nogoyf (I have to admit I haven't spent large amounts of time reading through the thread), and I like the idea of the deck. However, it is a very different deck from Merfolk, has a very different focus, and thus encourages very different card choices. Sometimes a deck needs an outside eye to spot potential improvements, but nearly every post of yours mentions nogoyf or at least three cards that are prominent in it which do not fit merfolk's gameplan. Please listen to what everyone else in the thread is saying.
