[Deck] Merfolk

[GUnit]

Spell pierce is the bee's knees against combo.

[SJUD]

Because of the extremely small sample size of large tournaments it is true that your method might prove more useful. Over the long run I think it would be better to look at the best performing decks that have had consistent results (such as Bertoncinis greeen splash). Of course we won't be able to get a lot of data because of the small amount of Legacy tournaments.

Also I havn't made any claims about what cards are better or worse in Merfolk yet. I've just said that you're discounting Top 8's and are not trying to explain why one of the premier Merfolk players chooses the green splash.

Your analysis is very good but there are other factors in play besides the cards. Player skill is a very big factor as you can hand a tier 1 deck to a bad player and they will 0-2 drop. I would like to know the amount of mono u and white vs green splashes at these SCG tournaments if you have the data.

[SJUD]

Here's the list I've been using the past couple of months to great success. It's getting much harder to win now with the decline of cb/top in my meta and the increased presence of zoo, goblins, and burn. Merfolk is also a deck that shows up big or not at all at our tournaments.

Maindeck: (60 Cards)
13 Island
4 Wasteland
3 Mutavault

4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Aether Vial
4 Standstill
3 Echoing Truth
2 Umezawa's Jitte

4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Merrow Reejery
3 Wake Thrasher

Sideboard: (15 Cards)
4 Threads of Disloyalty
4 Hydroblast
4 Relic of Progenitus
2 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
1 Echoing Truth


Best card in the deck is Echoing Truth and the worst card is Jitte. I've been thinking of swapping Jitte and Kira but havn't had much time to test lately. There's a tournament this weekend so I still have time to change some stuff around.

[DukeDemonKn1ght]

I disagree 100%. Has this ever happened to you? We have enough of a clock to force them into bad positions, and can seal the deal with a Standstill. Spell Pierce is awesome against combo.

No, this hasn't actually ever happened, I still haven't given maindeck Spell Pierce a shot. I'm woefully behind in my testing duties. Anyhow, glad to hear it's better than I estimated it might be.

[Forbiddian]

Because of the extremely small sample size of large tournaments it is true that your method might prove more useful. Over the long run I think it would be better to look at the best performing decks that have had consistent results (such as Bertoncinis greeen splash). Of course we won't be able to get a lot of data because of the small amount of Legacy tournaments.

Your analysis is useless, regardless of the number of events, because looks mainly to the popularity of the deck, not how well the deck is actually doing. It's obvious that you don't understand this... or anything, perhaps.

I'm discounting Top 8s because the data are corrupted, not because I think the data could never be useful. The data are corrupted by the number of decks in the metagame. Popular decks are much more likely to make a top 8 than an unpopular deck. Popular card choices are much more likely to make a top 8 than unpopular card choices.

How is this not getting through to you?

If I had a full metagame breakdown, I'd obviously use a different method -- but I don't, so I'm using the best method available. Incidentally, even if I had a full metagame breakdown, I still wouldn't look at the number of top 8s or top 16s, I would look at the positions for all players available.

Also I havn't made any claims about what cards are better or worse in Merfolk yet.

Nice dodge. Your analysis sucks. I pointed out exactly why it's useless theoretically, and even gave a real-life example where your analysis falls on its ass. And anyway, the whole POINT of this analysis is to evaluate which cards are better or worse. If you can't make a claim, you've completely failed.

I've just said that you're discounting Top 8's and are not trying to explain why one of the premier Merfolk players chooses the green splash.

Just reporting the data: The green splash has been less effective than mono-blue and much less effective than Uw.

Feel free to speculate on the mental health of "one of the premier Merfolk players," and why he chooses to play a variant of Merfolk that is not successful, historically. Either way, if anything, having a good player trying out the green splash should systematically BENEFIT the green splash, and the data still show that it's worse.

Your analysis is very good but there are other factors in play besides the cards. Player skill is a very big factor as you can hand a tier 1 deck to a bad player and they will 0-2 drop. I would like to know the amount of mono u and white vs green splashes at these SCG tournaments if you have the data.

Oh my god. I don't even know where to begin. Nothing in this paragraph is relevant at all to the discussion. I'm not claiming to look at player skill, so I didn't isolate that variable. I discussed, in my post and at-length, possible reasons why more-skillful players would favor certain cards and other confounding variables, but I didn't speculate as to the magnitude of that gain.

The green splash is, according to my thinking and yours, systematically favored by more skillful players than the more accessible mono-blue variant, and yet it has still performed worse.

No, I don't have better data. I discussed that. If I did, I would obviously use a better meta-analysis (still not yours).

[tivadar]

Actually by only considering Top 8, I think you remove some of the player skill bias. Presumably bad players, even with good decks, aren't going to T8. The players in the T8 at reasonably sized tournaments are all good players. Looking at how they perform once they're there seems like a good metric to me.

However, the one bias of this analysis is it's going to look primarily at how good decks do against other good decks in the format, and not against the field. Like it or not, to *get* to top 8, you have to go through... well, bad decks/random junk. Granted, this will typically be easier. However, this may bite you in some cases, where you have a highly meta-dependent deck.

[DukeDemonKn1ght]

So, does anyone remember my idea (a couple pages back) about trying out Engineered Explosives as a possible sideboard card for the Uw version of this deck?

I'll admit I haven't tried it out yet. (These days I read TheSource a lot more than I actually playtest, which is probably making my brain soft.)

But the line of reasoning is that, along with 4 StP and 4 PtE, Engineered Explosives could help us try to blow out the Zoo matchup. We could use our point removal and counterspells to try to make them overextend into playing a lot of their one drops, then blow them all up and swing into them with our army of two and three drops. The plan would be to side out Vial and leave in Cursecatcher, as far as our one drops. Catcher stays because he's good at saving us a little bit of tempo on their removal spells, and he's a warm body that can get big with lords in play. At the very least, he's a chump blocker. I don't know if anyone considers Aether Vial very important in the Zoo matchup, but I personally don't, it enables neat tricks but it just seems too slow compared to their clock. The first things I usually board out in this matchup are Vial and Standstill (but perhaps someone can convince me that taking out Vial is not correct).

So does anyone think this would work? I'm just looking for opinions, and I don't think anyone's responded to the idea yet...

[Phoenix Ignition]

At its best it can blow up 2 cost creatures for 4 mana or 1 cost creatures for 3 mana. If you'll read my post on why losing tempo in the race against zoo is bad, you'll see that this is horrible.

Furthermore, it's not an all-purpose board cleaner. You can't blow up their KotR's, and most of the time you have your own 1cc and 2cc shit to worry about. 2 for 1ing them doesn't happen much in the same cmc, as their creatures are spread very well across the 3 costs. If you do get a game where you can pull this off and actually get a 2 for 1 without blowing your own stuff up, chances are good they swung with those creatures and have your life to a point where you can just get burned out.

The reason white splash is good is because you trade 1 mana and 1 card for 1 creature who is equal to or greater than 1 mana investment for them. EE does not put up good figures here.

Zoo especially would be a terrible place for this sideboard card. They're a 2 pronged deck that has a ton of reach burn when their creatures don't go the distance. Stopping only one aspect of the deck is not enough to beat them unless you can do it really early. I would rather run Back to Basics and submerge against them than EE. EE could be good against stax or maybe combo or something, but against Zoo it seems just flat-out horrible.

[Curby]

How about Chalice of the Void for 1 on turn 2? Shuts down at least 16 spells of theirs, or almost half of their nonland deck. You've got counters for Pridemages. They can still Grip (if they side it in, but would they side it in when expecting only vials and standstills?), but it might buy you some time. Any thoughts?

[Tacosnape]

Summary of Merfolk.thread:

1. Discussion on how to beat Zoo that inevitably leads to "Merfolk is dead."
2. Mindless statistics.
3. Discussion on splashes.

I'm eagerly awaiting any conversation topics on how to beat close matchups, because I'm feeling pretty good about Merfolk's ability to face anything that's not a Zoo/Sligh variant right now.

And for those of you who aren't splashing and aren't playing Echoing Truth, try this card out. I think it's often misplayed in the deck, being used overaggressively and not often enough as a one-time trap card designed to get a final swing through, and I like how many games it steals against every random matchup ever, from Stax to Enchantress to Landstill to Belcher.

[Curby]

So from your post:

1. We're dead against zoo/sligh.
2. We can be confident against everything not in 1.
3. We should talk anything not covered in 1. and 2., which leaves ... nothing?

What specific MUs do you want to talk about? We've been trying to come up with solutions to our problems, and Zoo's the largest one on that list.

[DukeDemonKn1ght]

How about Chalice of the Void for 1 on turn 2? Shuts down at least 16 spells of theirs, or almost half of their nonland deck. You've got counters for Pridemages. They can still Grip (if they side it in, but would they side it in when expecting only vials and standstills?), but it might buy you some time. Any thoughts?

Chalice has put up some decent placings in tournaments, if I recall my Deckcheck correctly. I think it's mostly been used as a tool against Storm combo, and I can't really speak to how well it works, but it has shown decent numbers in the past.

I could see Chalice being decent against Zoo if you're running a Mono-Blue list. Personally though, I think it's going to be better against combo decks. But the plain fact of the matter is, if you're using White, there's no way in hell that you're going to want to trade your ability to run 8 removal spells in game two for the chance that you might have a Chalice in your opening seven. Not against Zoo anyways.

@Phoenix: Yeah, you've convinced me EE isn't really right for this deck's sideboard... Not my best idea in a while.

[dyzzy]

And for those of you who aren't splashing and aren't playing Echoing Truth, try this card out. I think it's often misplayed in the deck, being used overaggressively and not often enough as a one-time trap card designed to get a final swing through, and I like how many games it steals against every random matchup ever, from Stax to Enchantress to Landstill to Belcher.

Agreed, Echoing Truth is perhaps my favorite card in the deck. I've never played against Enchantress, Landstill, or Belcher, but the one time I played against Stax I only won because of Echoing Truth bouncing his prison effects for one final swing (and in one case, bouncing two O-Rings that were both holding Silvergill Adepts, that one was pretty fun). I really should fit in a third one into my list some time...

[KillemallCFH]

And for those of you who aren't splashing and aren't playing Echoing Truth, try this card out. I think it's often misplayed in the deck, being used overaggressively and not often enough as a one-time trap card designed to get a final swing through, and I like how many games it steals against every random matchup ever, from Stax to Enchantress to Landstill to Belcher.

If it's being used in this capacity (which I agree it should be), wouldn't Rushing River get the nod over it? I don't see bouncing 3+ things with E-Truth coming up often (tokens aside), and being able to bounce two troublesome permanents regardless of whether or not they share a name seems a lot more useful than being able to bounce a horde of Goblins back to the warrens in the stray Belcher/TES matchup (which you should be beating handily anyways).

[Curby]

If it's being used in this capacity (which I agree it should be), wouldn't Rushing River get the nod over it? I don't see bouncing 3+ things with E-Truth coming up often (tokens aside), and being able to bounce two troublesome permanents regardless of whether or not they share a name seems a lot more useful than being able to bounce a horde of Goblins back to the warrens in the stray Belcher/TES matchup (which you should be beating handily anyways).

You won't often be bouncing 3+ things. But if you are, Echoing Truth is the only way to get there.

If you're bouncing one thing, Echoing Truth costs less.

If you've bouncing two things that have different names, then Rushing River can do it but costs a hell of a lot more than 1U. So it really comes down to what's it worth to bounce two permanents with different names, and whether that's enough to overcome every other case in which Echoing Truth is superior. (Well, OK there's Spell Snare.)

[Phoenix Ignition]

If it's being used in this capacity (which I agree it should be), wouldn't Rushing River get the nod over it? I don't see bouncing 3+ things with E-Truth coming up often (tokens aside), and being able to bounce two troublesome permanents regardless of whether or not they share a name seems a lot more useful than being able to bounce a horde of Goblins back to the warrens in the stray Belcher/TES matchup (which you should be beating handily anyways).

Rushing River costs 3 though. That's a huge difference when you play Standstill. In all of my testing with Echoing Truth, one of it's best uses has been bouncing that Tarmogoyf (or other equally scary creature) at the end of their turn, and then dropping a Standstill on my turn. It pretty much forces their hand in giving you +3 cards. I think the biggest difference is that the 2 cost is just that much better when we play at such a fast tempo. It also does bounce double Goyfs more often than my opponents would like to admit, since every deck's strategy against us is to just lay down creatures to match or overrun ours.

Edit: Ninja Ninja Ninja Ninja Ninja Ninja Ninja Ninja Ninja Ninja

[KillemallCFH]

You won't often be bouncing 3+ things. But if you are, Echoing Truth is the only way to get there.

If you're bouncing one thing, Echoing Truth costs less.

If you've bouncing two things that have different names, then Rushing River can do it but costs a hell of a lot more than 1U. So it really comes down to what's it worth to bounce two permanents with different names, and whether that's enough to overcome every other case in which Echoing Truth is superior. (Well, OK there's Spell Snare.)

Well, I'm not sure can really be considered "a hell of a lot more" (though I'll admit that one mana certainly can be significant enough to make a big difference). We're discussing its use as an alpha-strike enabler, in which case losing a land is pretty irrelevant.

EDIT:
@Phoenix: Concerning a play with Standstill like you described, Echoing Truth is definitely a lot better. I was just discussing in terms of pushing through those final points, which admittedly might be too narrow a scope considering the many other times in which Echoing Truth is more useful.

[Tacosnape]

The 1-mana difference for Echoing Truth is too huge. Echoing Truth just flows much better. And just because I -can- use Echoing Truth as an alpha strike enabler doesn't mean I always will want to. Sometimes I just need to bounce something fast. Sometimes I'm going to want that extra mana the same turn to drop something else, and sometimes I'm going to not want to lose the land. And sometimes I'm going to need to execute my bounce spell when I'm stuck at 2 lands either from not having drawn any more or from having lost Wastelands to use and/or Mutavaults to removal.

And the bouncing of a token horde can make all the difference in the world, as can being able to bounce a pair of obnoxious Tarmogoyfs for a mere 2 mana.

[dan who?]

I've been playing with maindeck echoing truths and have really enjoyed them. My meta is more aggro so I feel a white splash would probably benefit me more (I plan on building and testing this later) but the echoing truths have been so helpful in bouncing those problem cards to get me that extra swing for damage or that extra turn. It has also help me by bouncing permanents early on or those bombs that I can't counter (I'm seeing a lot of reanimator recently so it helps there) to disrupt my opponent, or worse case scenario I can pitch it to force.

[Forbiddian]

Please see my old post, it's been updated.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...postcount=2822



Here's a synthesized decklist based on the data I saw. It's all the best-performing cards mashed together.

I think you have to pick between Dreadnought, white splash, and green splash. I like how Kira and Dreadnought work together. Seems pretty broken to me. Then you bring in a bunch of diverts game 2 (or just open with them, who cares?). It seems like Merfolk are just a backdrop, though.

4x Cursecatcher
4x Lord of Atlantis
4x Silvergill Adept
2x Merrow Reejerey
4x Phyrexian Dreadnought
3x Kira, Glass Spinner

4x Daze
4x Force of Will
4x Stifle
1x Trickbind
2x Echoing Truth

4x Aether Vial

12x Island
4x Mutavault
4x Wasteland

Sideboard:
4x Divert
3x Threads of Disloyalty
1x Jitte
3x Relic
3x Back to Basics
1x Mind Harness