[Deck] Merfolk

[b4r0n]

If you were to splash a color, you could make the Goblins matchup much easier. White or green provide some pretty good options (Sygg/Absolute Law in white, Goyf in green) but that means that you have to change your manabase accordingly.

[Rood]

Ever tried E-plague in the sideboard for Goblins lol? Maybe that could work. Also good against Elves and Faeries.

[Jujuhawk]

If you were to splash a color, you could make the Goblins matchup much easier. White or green provide some pretty good options (Sygg/Absolute Law in white, Goyf in green) but that means that you have to change your manabase accordingly.

Seems like it's just better to just have 4/5 UBlasts, and pray they don't draw the stones. I have 5 blasts mostly because of burn(/goyfsligh) anyway. I think the manabase is so stable that there's no real reason to wreck it.

[_erbs_]

Absolute Law is nice or other white enchantments but the problem is that since the deck don't run brainstorm or other cantrips (just guessing) the adds of getting it is slim.

I think its much better to boost the decks aggro power rather than splash color. The dreadnought is a nice idea or a couple of shapesharer for more lord effects or of a copy of dreadnought

[Elvish-Champion]

My favourite list is:

12 Island
4 Mutavault
3 Wasteland

4 Aether Vial
3 Standstill
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 lord of Atlantis
4 Merrow Rejeerey
4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Spellstutter Sprite
2 Vendillion Clique
2 Umezawas jitte
2 Wake Trasher



What do you think about that?
Pls send me some suggestions to improve my build

[Nekrataal]

Honestly, I'm not even sure if bringing in 3 Blue Elemental Blast, 2 Hydroblast would be enough against Goblins.

I can tell y'all from testing on MWS a bunch, playing Merfolk at GP Chicago (albeit using a list with no dedicated red hate in the sideboard-- maybe a mistake in retrospect), and having looked everywhere for a solution, Goblins is the closest thing there is to a "Roll over and die" match-up for this deck.

I've found that a big deficiency of Merfolk in general is its tendency to have bad-to-terrible match-ups against other decks that seek to abuse Aether Vial (although I have to imagine we could take Death and Taxes at least ( ), haven't tested against them yet.) I've gotten beat by Meathooks, random "good stuff" Aether Vial decks, and although I've gotten a couple random game wins, I have never won an entire match-up versus Goblins.

Goblins is literally such a terrible match-up for us that I got all excited when someone proposed Sapprazzan Legate a while ago.

EDIT: Probably my best idea on the subject of beating Goblins (and not an idea that's mine originally) is to pack 3 or 4 Phyrexian Dreadnought and one copy Trickbind (as Stifle backup) in the sideboard. This isn't quite "hot tech against Goblins" specifically, but it seems like one of the most solid ways for this deck to have a good generalized sideboard strategy for beating other Aggro decks that are simply quicker than we are.

I found that the best remedy for curing your Goyfsligh and Goblin matchup is exactly THIS (Dreadnought). You have a fair chance of pulling the trick Turn 2 or 3 or buy some time before you do it. It surely is a surprise game 1 because these days both decks do not pack Artefact hate main usually. Game 2 though you have to expect 3 Krosan Grip. So either you have to be really fast or really lucky or do the trick twice. UNfortunately Meroflks do not have a CB/Top to provide more protection against Grip.

[xsockmonkeyx]

4 Mutavault
4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Spellstutter Sprite
2 Vendillion Clique

Riptide Laboratory might be a cool addition with all those Wizards. Not sure how practical it would be though.

[Jujuhawk]

Riptide Laboratory might be a cool addition with all those Wizards. Not sure how practical it would be though.

Very. Gaudenis Vidugiris played 3 in his day 2 list, and it seems totally insane. Keeping vial @ 2, with riptide lab/SSprite seems very unfair.

[Elvish-Champion]

Maybe, but i think that u have to beat the enemy very fast so that you don't have enough time to riptide these casters.
But good idea i will test it for some matches

[georgjorge]

I found that the best remedy for curing your Goyfsligh and Goblin matchup is exactly THIS (Dreadnought). You have a fair chance of pulling the trick Turn 2 or 3 or buy some time before you do it.

Just mentioning...according to the MWS Statistical Analysis, you have a 30 percent chance to get Stifle + Nought, and an 8 percent chance to get Vial + Nought + Nought, on or before turn four. Those don't exactly add up, so I'd say the overall chance for a turn four Nought is about 35 percent.

[bokepa]

This is what i've runnning with good success:

12 Island
3 Riptide Lab
3 Wasteland
3 Mutavault

4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
3 Silvergill Adept
4 merrow Reejerey
3 Spellshutter Sprite
3 Selkie Hedge-Mage

4 Aether Vial
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
3 Standstill
3 Stifle

SB
3 BEB
2 Hydro
2 Relic
2 Tormod
1 Stifle
1 Standstill
3 Echoing Truth
1 Mutavault


I would really like to get 4 of all, but thats imposible.

You can keep vial at 3 or at 2 depending on the situation. Remember you can bounce your own creatures to save em from combat!!

Getting attacked by 2 goyfs, vial selkie in: bounce one and block the other to just return it to your hand with lab is priceless.

SB needs more tuning i know.

[Troin]

Hi everyone!
This is my first post at the source so i'd like to start it presenting myself (now that I still have a chance). I am Troin, i've been playing merfolks for a very (VERY) long time and I'd like to share my experiences with merfolks for the past.... 14 years? Yes i know that might sound somewhat *NOT TRUE* but let me tell you the story before you decide,as i'd like to share my experience with all of you.

My experience with merfolks started when my brother and I played Magic for the first time. 4th edition had just been released ( back in april 1995 ) and my brother and I were learning to play the game. I was roughly about 8 years old so you can imagine what kind of magic we used to play. The thing is a few years later, when we had nearly forgotten about magic he had designed a deck... well , not a deck really, it was very casual but I could never win it. It must have been something like this:

4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Manta Riders
4 Tidal Warrior
3 Lightning bolt
X Thundermare
X Counterspell
2 Lightning
and so on... it was an deck i really got into. I never got to beat him and became obsessed with the idea of running a merfolk deck.

Years passed and I kinda forgot about magic until all of a sudden they became extremely popular in my school. (I guess I had something to do with it because I left a few of the cards to a friend of mine who told an other friend who told an.... ) I had forgotten about merfolks and had a very rapid elf deck with titania's priestess, river boa and recycle. It was kinda fun deck. But i got somewhat bored of always winning with it to the kids in my class (who by that time played rebel decks, and green stompys who couldn't beat me). So i decided to go on to something more casual... (just imagine how poor the level was back then ) and I remembered my brother's deck. By that time i knew cards like Force of Will and Morphling (my favorite creature card by then) existed. so I designed my first merfolk deck, which must have been something like this:
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Manta Riders
4 Tidal Warrior
4 Merfolk looter

4 Force of Will
4 Counterspell
4 Forbid
4 Arcane Denial

3 Morphling
4 Brainstorm ?
21 lands?

the deck was stolen a few years later by someone i trusted...
and that deck did pretty well. I never bought the force of will, they were very expensive at that time so I used proxies. I remember I could have bought them to a guy who sold very cheaply at the time by 1000 pesetas, which are roughly about six euros today, but I bought the morphlings instead, and I didn't wan't to spend money on dual lands. Legacy yet didn't exist, so it was more kind of an "old extended" deck which is pretty similar to the format today. Again i must insist this was all casual, non tournament playing nor nothing . But i really liked the deck and this idea would help me a lot to develop new skills and new decks in the future. By this time planeshift had just been released, and I fell in love with Meddling mage. (tho i never bought them because they were very expensive... lol now i have one DCI Foil :P)

time passed again and I kind of forgot about magic until i entered college and saw 2 people playing magic. I thought to myself "hey!! I could play again !!" and brought my green elf deck (which by the way had been lost over the years and I had only a little part of it, so I had to reinvent and proxify it :P).

I suddenly got involved with an ongrowing magic playing community which grew rapidly and better every day. I decided to make my elvish deck real, so I bought a few savannah (now I DID have money) and started to create an elvish "competitive" deck. I went to a tournament thinking I was going to win everybody because my deck was soo good and strong and comboed sooo rapidly... i won't enter into details of what the deck had, but i used glimpse of nature and staff of domination.

Obviously i lost 3 rounds in a row after winning my first match. So i discovered that deck wasn't stable nor powerful. I got a bit depressed with it and thought of many ways to improve it until on the next tournament i played i made top 8. yet i lost against landstill and I thought this wasn't enough.

So i started to think about it. ¿How could my deck get any better? And i ended up quitting the deck and started to plan my own deck. I remembered the old merfolk ideas and with some money the idea came out by it's own! I started to test it with some friends and it worked really really well. By that time Solidarity, Goblins and 3hold were the clear winners in legacy. My decklist must have been something like this.

4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Galina's Knight
3 Tidal Warrior
3 Merfolk Traders
4 Aether Vial
4 Force of Will
4 Swords to plowshares
4 Standstill
4 Daze
3 Umezawa`s jitte
3 stifle

4 Mishras factory
4 Wasteland
.... and something else. i remember having energy flux and meddling mage on sideboard.

The deck worked really well. I learned many tricks with aether vial and standstill, which gave me killing advantages on the game. I learned the advantages of using standstill and aether vial as well as it's disadvantages.

i went to a serious tournament with a friend of mine who played an expensive foil very well played Turboland and.... GOT FIRST in it with him!!! both of us reached to the top. And it was quite a big tournament. about 59 people playing and i won against pikulas, burn, goblins, goblins, fish ... I loved that tournament, it was probably the best tournament I have ever played and when both of us reached the final... it was astonishing.

i made top 8 on several other smaller tournaments and then the format started quickly evolving so I decided to swap to a normal fish with spiketail hatchling, meddling mage, ninja of the deep hours and so on. the basics were the same, but it grew better because i didn't need a lord of atlantis to win.

I then built myself a solidarity deck, which did poorly, i started playing extended, first with tog, then with trinket angels, then with tron and currently i am still using tron :P, but that's another story.

in legacy I built myself a counterslivers deck when planar chaos came in. It looked so familiar to merfolks, but this time I had 2 creatures that pumped the other kids. I realised how important this was and wished some day they reprinted an other lord of atlantis ( time would prove my wishes to come true!).

the thing is i did well with counterslivers, tho the mana base was slightly worse. I was about to win a tournament when they stole that deck from me.. DAMN, i've lost so many decks to thiefs.... I also got my solidarity deck stolen somehow at the valencia pro tour, but that's another story.

I quit magic for a short time, i wasn't planning on wasting more money on it. I started playing extended without a will to play legacy... at all.

until lorwyinn came in... and I saw Merfolk Merrow Reejerey with glittering eyes and thought to myself "what if??"

So i tried to test legacy decks in MWS. First 4c landstil which i found to be boring, then 3hold which i found very expensive... Then a sort of DreadCombo which focused ONLY on playing stifle + Dreadnought. (long before dreadstills started to appear).

and I always wondered "what if I built myself a merfolk deck?"
my friends told me it would be crap, and that aggro at the time must have had tarmogoyf or goblins goblins goblins.

I started testing, firstly a legacy adapted version of an extended merfolk version I was testing, wich counterbalalance + sensei's divining top. This deck didn't work quite well so i looked at the early goblin versions I used to play against, and decided I could build a deck that did exactly the same. So i started pulling and pulling ideas. I created an exact match. For every goblin I tried to find an exact merfolk or a nearly as good as blue card. I got the idea that wasteland + rishadan port + stifle could really fuck things up for my oponents. (and it does). I realised aether vial was supreme and that I could match or nearly match goblin warchief with merrow reejerey. A few tests later I thought of the deck as good enough and started buying all the cards. My first testings against some friends of mine were quite disappointing. Then I went to my first tournament and...

http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=20010

yes! I won it! It helped me so much having played merfolks earlier on to start realizing so many gameplays, like not playing aether vial on turn one against 3hold to stifle their first land, or not fighting a counterwar over an aether vial and use my fows to protect my lord of atlantis and merrow reejerey. Back then I didn't manage to get my rishadan port so I used mishra's factory. Which did the job pretty well. I found them to be astonishingly more powerful than mutavaults

http://www.deckcheck.net/list.php?creator=Juan+Vilar

those are some of the lists I played later on. until the last version of it which as a small white splash for sideboarding.

i learned many tricks and that is the deck i now use with extremely good results. With it i've won a Mox Jet, a Mox Emerald, a Mana drain, 200 euros 4 tarmogoyfs and i'm currently the champion of the Alcantarilla anual legacy tournament, which is one of the most importants in the south of Spain.

Why am I boasting about these triumphs? Don't get me wrong! The thing is what i learned with merfolks is that it's not only about the deck you play, but how carefully you play your spells. With merfolks you cannot commit mistakes. The good thing about merfolks is there are really no competitive cards that can screw you up as a sideboard (other than merfolk assassin and I doubt i'll ever see anyone playing that shit). But there are many decks that can pull you around if you fool with your countermagic. Never underestimate your enemy with that.

What I realised is that merfolks play better (at least in spain) if you bother the other person's mana base. That's why tidal warrior, stifle or rishadan port are always my favourite cards to play. I also realised You cannot play without wastelands.

And finally i realised blue is not exactly the best color to sideboard. For instance, i see many people using back to basics in their sideboard. But normally this is not useful. Why? decks that could be killed using btb are mainly landstill, 3hold, the fear, team america and maybe loam. Those decks you don't need to sideboard in order to win, as they normally are slightly a GG when playing against them.

Your merfolks are very very fragile, when playing against experienced players, you have to be very careful, your lord atlantis will be blown up to fractions if you countered that first tarmogoyf. keep your countermagic and instead of avoiding them to play tarmogoyf with counterspells, be creative, wastelands, tidal warriors and rishadan ports (if you use them, i strongly suggest you do) are a good way of avoiding the green mana from being "green mana" on their first turns.

there are so many things i'd love to discuss with merfolks.
here's my list
// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
4 [ON] Flooded Strand
3 [MM] Rishadan Port
2 [ON] Polluted Delta
2 [B] Tundra
4 [P2] Island (3)
4 [TE] Wasteland

// Creatures
2 [EVE] Wake Thrasher
4 [LRW] Silvergill Adept
3 [SH] Tidal Warrior
4 [EVE] Cold-Eyed Selkie
4 [SHM] Cursecatcher
4 [U] Lord of Atlantis
4 [LRW] Merrow Reejerey

// Spells
4 [DS] AEther Vial
4 [NE] Daze
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [SC] Stifle

// Sideboard
SB: 3 [FNM] Circle of Protection: Red
SB: 3 [B] Swords to Plowshares
SB: 3 [WL] Serenity
SB: 3 [PS] Meddling Mage
SB: 3 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus

something I also learned is that many people side "hidroblast" or BEB vs red. I am not very sure, but in my meta, 80% of the chance I play vs red decks and I loose. Hidroblast isn't enough. I rather go for definitive lock killing cards like circles of protection or serenity.

Sideboarding is something very important. It's not about "how many cards you can sideboard" but about "how many cards can you take away from your deck to sideboard without noticing it!" White is an incredible splash for this deck.

And one last thing... Fetchlands. ALWAYS use fetchlands, they really really make the difference!!

well, i gtg, but i'll share some other opinions later on this week.
hope you enjoy!! cya!!

[Jujuhawk]

Cold-Eyed selkie seems clunky and slow. Especially with fetches (missing 3rd land drops, etc.) I think this deck can't use them because it opens you up to stifles on the draw, and you don't have cantrips to make up for the low land count becoming lower from fetching.

[Media314r8]

Just mentioning...according to the MWS Statistical Analysis, you have a 30 percent chance to get Stifle + Nought, and an 8 percent chance to get Vial + Nought + Nought, on or before turn four. Those don't exactly add up, so I'd say the overall chance for a turn four Nought is about 35 percent.

This seems just absolutely terrible. As both a goblins and a merfolk player, (goblins more often and for a longer period, admittedly) by turn four goblins will have found a way to get a tin street hooligan or a goblin tinkerer (just the worst for you) to kill your naught. Fortunatly for you, tin street must be cast to kill naught, so you can counter it, but a vialed in tinkerer will really put a damper in your parade, completely invalidating your standstills, (by killing your vials) ending the naught plan, and acting as a sit-around force spike for your relics. Almost all mono R, Rg, Rb, and Rgb play at least one tin/tinkerer main, and possibly stingscourger in mono and Rg. I would not waste sb space on something that just *might* get there and could be stopped dead by a vialed-in critter in a deck with four d tutors and 4 fact or fictions.

I speak from experience with goblins: give up the nightmare MUs, (like combo for goblins- unwinnable outside of a fast prowled squad or a T3 godhand) and dedicate your SB slots with improving your other, winnable MUs.

[AcidFiend]

How does Port go against Goblins? I can't see it working really..

Either you play guys and don't have mana for port/counters, or you leave yourself open and 'hinder them' for a couple of turns, probably taking some small beats as well. Meanwhile they can get around mana issues with Lackey/Vial. And its just another non-basic to be wastelanded/Price of Progress/Blood Moon.

[Nekrataal]

Just mentioning...according to the MWS Statistical Analysis, you have a 30 percent chance to get Stifle + Nought, and an 8 percent chance to get Vial + Nought + Nought, on or before turn four. Those don't exactly add up, so I'd say the overall chance for a turn four Nought is about 35 percent.

Maybe but this of course ADDs to the already low chance of about 20%. So if we define this 35% as a win, then we would be about 55%. And Please keep in mind, that I can bring in more enablers Game 2. Come into play Goblins usually pose no problem because you should of course have more counter backup then they have artifact hate game 1. Game 2 though is different because Grip is bad news. Honestly I havent tested a lot against Goblins because it is almost not relevent in my meta and I also do not dedicate specific SB cards like Propaganda. However I have tested A LOT against Boros and Goyfsligh and the matchup is greatly improved with Dreadnoughts. For you have about 2-3 free slots in the general Merfolk build the Noughts usually fit in if you are willing to play 4 Stifle. My sideboard is expecially dedicated to maximize the possibliity of playing a Dreadnought as early as possible with a Merfolk non-dedicated Nought build compared to Dreadstill or Dreadfolk. After having tried a lot of card choices Noughts have been the only means to really improve the above mentioned matchups significantly. Kira, Blasts, Chills didnt do the trick.

[memnarch]

Check out this merfolk banner I made!

[Troin]

vs goblins port is especially useful if, and only if, they didn't manage to get aether vial on the firs turns. Their CMC 3 like warchief ,matron, sharpshooter, and cmc 4 like goblin piledriver makes this especially annoying for all of them :-). Your Dazes become so good in this pairing.

ofc if they got aether vial out it's pretty much a useless card.

[memnarch]

Chill is good vs red. I have had much success. Especially teamed up with mana denial. Being half control if you board in 4 they will start stacking up and make things very difficult even for burn. Honestly now days I'm thinking about boarding that AND hydroblast/blue elemental blast. Red is definitely your enemy.

[johanessen]

Im testing this sideboard (monoblue with mana denial)

4 Disrupt (mainly against combo, but is ok against any decks, especially when tidal warrior-MDx2 is useless)
4 Submerge. (AggroLoam, Threshold, Rgb goblins. Nice sinergy with Standstill)
2Hydroblast+2Red Elemental Blast (Burn, Gobbos, Some kind storm, Dragon stompys and such, Self explanatory)
3 Relic of Progenitus. (Thresh, Aggroloam, Ichorid, Survival, Maybe Geddon stacks, etc)

I'd like to include Umezawa Jitte and Mind harness. Maybe i change 2+2 for the 4 submerge, but 4 submerge speeds the deck quite a lot.

Thoughts.

BTW Main Deck is;

// Lands
3 [MOR] Mutavault
3 [TE] Wasteland
2 [MM] Rishadan Port
12 [B] Island (2)

// Creatures
4 [SHM] Cursecatcher
4 [A] Lord of Atlantis
4 [LRW] Merrow Reejerey
4 [LRW] Silvergill Adept
2 [EVE] Wake Thrasher
2 [SH] Tidal Warrior

// Spells
4 [NE] Daze
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [OD] Standstill
4 [DS] AEther Vial
4 [SC] Stifle

// Sideboard
SB: 4 [IA] Hydroblast
SB: 4 [WL] Disrupt
SB: 4 [NE] Submerge
SB: 3 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus

I'm not sure about Rishadans Port but they "combo" with wake trasher