@Duke: Think of Merfolk as Sligh with counters ;) BTW Merfolk Lackey into Wanderwine Prophet doesnt seem so bad ;) Anybody knows where to get more decklists from the recent tournament in Chicago?Originally Posted by whosyourdaddy
Most every creature played in Legacy would instantly be a 4-of and MVP in Merfolk if it were a Merfolk and blue.
Tarmerfolk.
Nimble Merfgoose.
Dark Merfolkonfidant.
Vodalian Dreadnought.
Spellstutter Merfolk.
Merfolk Blossom.
Merfolk are pretty bad. With the exception of Lord of Atlantis and (maybe) Cursecatcher, everything is easily replaceable with a card that they could legitimately print. Also eyes open for blue changelings.
1U for a 2/2 with a good ability or a mediocre ability and a combat ability (First Strike, Haste, Pro Red, Pro Green, Flying, Bushido, or Lifelink and I'm sure I'm missing some) would certainly find a home. They could easily print that at any time and it would make Merfolk much better.
Note how it's about -1/-1 compared to what would be considered playable for a non-blue creature.
For cuts: Anything can get the axe next to a creature like that up to Lord of Atlantis. Again: The myth that Merfolk is somehow a tight deck. I don't even get where that comes from, there's not a lot of synergy outside of "We're moro-colored" and the Tribal element.
For me Tidal warrior has both offensive and defensive tricks (Letting your thrasher go all the way via islandwalk. Slight mana delay for your opponents)
If you go for the standstill + mutavault combo for sure you'll not run rishadan ports because you'll have lots of colorless mana in the deck, now only giving you 3-4 wasteland 3-4 stifles i didn't add the tidal warrior bec it could still be used as a colorless mana. Another thing for me that doesn't fit it is the priority of casting spells would be most likely to be 1> vial 2> standstill 3> stifle. Nothing wrong with that expect you can't hit your opponents fetch lands early on and slow them down, well assuming you draw a stifle early on.
When your opponent cracks standstill more or less he has several solutions to your threat. This is just me but i think your opponent is okay letting you draw 3 cards so that he could setup his defenses killing major threats (LoA or Wakethrashers) buying him more time to control the game or to setup. Nothing wrong also in drawing 3 cards. But the longer the game gets the weaker the deck becomes but thats just me, I still have insufficient game time using the merfolk deck.
@Forbiddian
Yes your correct that Countermagic is an edge comapred to other aggro decks. But counter silvers has a similar kind of defense expect for the mana disruption. There creature aren't that big aswell compared to merfolks
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As for the contrilsh version of the merfolk deck. Just wondering why would you make contrilsh version of the merfolk deck
Last edited by _erbs_; 03-11-2009 at 02:32 AM.
Jupp, this basicly is the point. Let say that you would go for Stifle fetchland. You start, play Island go. Your opponent plays fetch, suspecting Stifle so he says go or plays another land in his hand. The point is that against a good opponent, you will never get to stifle early fetchlands. With a starthand that has Vial+Standstill, why whould you want to waste turns getting the cards out there? Unless your opponent plays Daze, just try to put them out asap. With both vial and standstill in play, unless your opponent played a monster turn 1/2 he is forced to crack Standstill, getting you 3 cards. With those 3, and a vial at 1/2, there should be no trouble outracing him, keeping your Stifles for fetchlands (even if you opponent has 1-2 lands here, keeping him off 3-4 is really really good, especially since you have Daze) and for sweepers.
If my main goal was to destroy lands, I would have played Team America or something, not folks.
If your opponent cracks Standstill and you draw 3, why does he have several solutions to your threat? And what are those? If he has STP, play a new guy. If he has EE, stifle. Can't understand your logic here.
Last edited by elof; 03-11-2009 at 03:18 AM. Reason: More to say
"Think of all we could learn from it! It's the chance of a lifetime! You must let me have it! It's a magnificent specimen!"
Scandinavian Master Legacy 2010
World champion 93/94 2013
An ideal situation is when you can strand a Brainstorm or obviously midgame after Wasteland nullify a color. If I can't do that, I generally don't try to stay open for Stifle. Although it's a ++ move, mana screwed opponents usually don't fetchland when you have U open and they even suspect you stunted your development to avoid tapping out.
Since I don't aggressively try to stay open, Stifle's not as useful for me, but staying open hasn't been a consistently solid play for me.
Uh, maybe I'm missing something, but what's your point? Slivers are not Mono-U. I'm really not following you.@Forbiddian
Yes your correct that Countermagic is an edge comapred to other aggro decks. But counter silvers has a similar kind of defense expect for the mana disruption. There creature aren't that big aswell compared to merfolks
If your opponent suspects that you pack stifle + wastelands he will never good a hand with 2 fetch or 2 non basic land becuase he fears that his lands might getted stifle non basic gets wasteland. Thus forcing him to mull to maybe find a basic or something he could work around it.
For multi colored decks its a pain for them when they are under that burden (this is just me) especially when they run lots of fetch and 1-2 basic lands only.
Im just guessing almost all decks uses fetch lands when his a combo or control a early mana disruption is bad for them. And also giving your daze longivity (well this is just a minor plus)
I know that stifle + landstill + vial can run all together but you'll loose and gain something.
If you go this route... (assuming you still use stifle and your up against multi colored decks)
landstill + vial + mutavaults chances are you have no rishadan ports, wasteland maybe..
the impact of stifle is not that big compared to
stifle + rishadan port + wasteland because all of them could hit his mana base.
If you could slow your opponent down for a certain time frame even with just 2-3 critters could bring his life to a low level that cracking a fetch will have a bigger impact on his life.
As the previous topic was about stifle to mb or sb it i guess it all depends on the player or the build for me atleast. If i was to run the mutavaults + landstill i'll drop the stifles for something else...
@Forbiddian
I was just stating that countermagic is part of the merfolks defense just like slivers, because i forgot to add the countermagic aspart of the defense of the deck in my prevoius post
Again, what's your point?
If he suspects Stifle+Wasteland, he's going to mull that (although I can't imagine ANY Legacy deck thinking their average 6 card hand is likely to have 3 land, so I can't imagine that anybody would shuffle a hand up based on "only" having two land in the starting 7; a better example would be Land+Ponder/BS or Fetchland+Mishra's Factory with a hand reliant on two colors). But even if he mulls your personal decision to run Stifle (if you so choose) did not cause that mulligan.
In fact, the ideal would be not to run Stifle+Wasteland against someone who suspects Stifle+Wasteland and to run Stifle+Wasteland against someone who doesn't suspect Stifle+Wasteland.
By running Stifle+Wasteland, you don't increase the probability of your opponent suspecting Stifle+Wasteland. And even if you did reveal Stifle (or not) by games 2 or 3 to change his expectations, you only improved your opponent's knowledge. Now he can make more intelligent decisions to your detriment.
Causing potential mulligans is not at all related to actually running Stifle+Wasteland, merely a result of the expectation of your opponent. If your opponent suspects Stifle, you're slightly better off not running Stifle. By contrast, if your opponent doesn't expect Stifle, running Stifle is slightly better than it otherwise would be.
But in general, it's hard to understand you since you often simply cap a sentence off by writing the wrong word (or horribly misspell words), and don't finish your thoughts, so I might be making a dumb strawman. Still, it's worth pointing out that your choice to run Stifle didn't cause a mulligan anymore than your determination caused you to win the die roll.
I must agree with Forbiddian as far as the spelling goes. I had a real trouble time reading that and I know my english is not top of the line (it's not my native language).
I often SB out Stifles unless I know that they are good against my opponent and never do I base this on "he has fetches". Keeping Stifles just because I can mana screew my opponent doesn't make me want to keep it in my 60 cards after SB. (However, if he has EE/Deeds/etc I will keep them)
"Think of all we could learn from it! It's the chance of a lifetime! You must let me have it! It's a magnificent specimen!"
Scandinavian Master Legacy 2010
World champion 93/94 2013
In an attempt to improve the Goblin match-up, would this be any good?
And yes, it's a Merfolk.
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's probably delicious.
Team ADHD-To resist is to piss in the wind. Anyone who does will end up smelling.
Or your mom.
sorry.
You have to look at it from a different aspect though. There are plenty of decks where mana disruption doesn't do enough. Sure, running ports over mutavault provides more land disruption, but you give up Standstill. Actually, merfolk used to run that land setup just 4 months ago, but after realizing how good mutavault is with the deck, we have almost unanimously switched. There are plenty more decks where Standstill + Mutavault is going to help more than extra Stifle/Daze + Ports.
The problem here is that many people watch your game as you play. Maybe Stifle + Wasteland can stay hidden for your first round match (but that's saying you don't hit either of these), but for sure people will be playing around it as you play on in a tournament. Maybe not with 1200+ people, but in your local metagame with 20 people, I'm sure word will spread. That makes it worse at the end of the tournament than at the beginning.
That being said, if you're making an opponent with 2 lands mulligan their hand, I would always always always put that card in my deck, whatever they're so scared of, even if you never play it.
@Skeggi:
That card actually looks pretty sweet. It's got all the cool factor of Qasali Ambusher, but might actually be usable. I'm gonna try some sideboard on MWS for a while. 1/3 isn't great, but he has a big butt and can take out first turn lackeys.
I have glanced over it once of twice but the main thing is that it's horribly weak in offense (only 1 in power) and it still doesn't block Piledriver. It doesn't block Nacatal but does however block Kird Ape. It's also good against Lackey, but other than that... does it do anything?
EDIT: It doesn't have flash so you can't surprise block anything...
"Think of all we could learn from it! It's the chance of a lifetime! You must let me have it! It's a magnificent specimen!"
Scandinavian Master Legacy 2010
World champion 93/94 2013
Merfolk needs to get Jitte going in order to beat Goblins. The only other way is to out aggro them, which isn't an easy task. If you play defensive with Legate, Piley, Siege Gang and Ringleader will kick in.
quick question since I have not seen any talk about this at all, where are the 4 brainstorms????
Most of the builds I've seen, including the one I run, don't have any shuffle effects. It seems like brainstorm would be a pretty underpowered card in this deck, especially as a four of. I wouldn't waste slots with it
You can't really count on Jitte doing the job against Gobs. All of our guys die easily to Goblin removal, and this deck has no acceleration for playing and equipping it quickly. The only time Jitte works for me vs. Gobs is when you manage to counter all their early stuff. When we both have nearly empty hands from this sort of start, and I can still protect my guy for the turn that I play and then the next when I equip/attack, it works. That actually happens from time to time, so it isn't unreasonable. But Goblins really has the goods on this deck from their own vials to mountains of removal to pro-red beaters. And Jitte is a hard solution to manage. I don't see the bad matchup situation changing with Gobs with or without Jittes.
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What do people think about Sygg, River Guide and a white splash? It's nice to give pro to Wake Thrasher to swing for the win, and the built in Islandwalk is pretty sweet too. Path/Swords becomes an option as well. To run him you might need another two lands and fetches though. Thoughts?
We been over him before a couple of pages back. Please read up on that first. Splashing white isn't wrong, but do it for Stp and Mirror Entity.
"Think of all we could learn from it! It's the chance of a lifetime! You must let me have it! It's a magnificent specimen!"
Scandinavian Master Legacy 2010
World champion 93/94 2013
In a deck with Fetchlands I presume. Probably some Counterbalances in there as well.
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's probably delicious.
Team ADHD-To resist is to piss in the wind. Anyone who does will end up smelling.
... and sideboard Absolute Law. It's been only been mentioned in passing in this thread, but as long as the deck keeps having trouble against Fire/Ice and Goblins, it's about as good a tool as you can find.
YOU'RE GIVING ME A TIME MACHINE IN ORDER TO TREAT MY SLEEP DISORDER.
Actually, Warmth pretty much PWNS Absolute Law... if you were to ask me. Not to mention I'm pretty sure Blue Elemental Blast, Hydroblast, and Chill are all better options also, and in our primary color.
I mean, honestly, is what we're worried about in the Goblins match-up really their ability to block our creatures??
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
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