Quote Originally Posted by Rico Suave View Post
I posted this because I think there is a really valuable lesson to take from it. It's a shame that most of the target audience for this article are going to be put off by the tone. It's not a surprise that people don't like being called bad.

The basic concept is to play a stable mana base. For this point, the author in the article is spot on. There is no substitute for playing a healthy mana base and it pays incredible dividends. I could go on about specifics, but it seems this thread has resorted to one giant flame-fest and nobody cares about the actual point anymore, which is unfortunate.
To paraphrase what a friend of mine often say:

"You may be talking about the best phylosphy there is, but if you yell with your dick in hand no one will ever listen you"

Calling Merfolk bad is like calling all the old Sligh/RDW decks bad. They were deck that preyed on the non-existance of mid-game power in the magic days of old. Nowadays in the modern standard a deck like RDW would just be stupid because there is no wasteland anymore and people play 3/4 lifelink for 3 making your 2/1 for R just bad. WotC even reprinted Lightning bolt for this very reason.

Also, i don't understand the point of "healty manabases". If those "bad manabases" make your deck better against everything but merfolk, i'd gladly play the bad manabase. With modern creatures, there's just no way a deck based on mana-disruption alone can prey on the meta. Merfolk can do this to an extent just for a variety of reasons, but still.