Also good in the mirror: Threads of Disloyalty, Divert/Misdirection (to win counterspell wars), and the white splash (as long as you can protect one Tundra, having access to 8 spot removal spells pretty much breaks things wide open.)Originally Posted by Tacosnape
Speaking of the white splash, does anyone think it's feasible to try to work one basic Plains into the mana base for it? I would probably go down to 3 Mutavaults and 3 Wastelands to try to work it in, because it would be insane to cut a blue producer... But that seems kind of terrible. I just really hate having my splash shut down. And mana bases are probably the thing I have the hardest time with as far as deck-building, so I kind of want to hear opinions on if it could work...
For reference, the mana base I'm talking about would probably look like this:
4 Flooded Strand
2 other blue fetches
3 Tundra
3 Mutavault
3 Wasteland
4 Island
1 Plains
I don't know, it looks pretty ugly to me. Anyone want to set me on the path to enlightenment here, before I start saving up to buy Tundras?
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
For White Splash, I am going with this mana base:
6 Fetches
3 Tundra
4 Island
4 Wasteland
4 Mutavault
I don't think it is worth it to use a basic plain because the only thing that is white in MD are plows. If you want to run a more stable mana base, you can do -1 Mutavault, +1 Island.
I dunno, the one thing this deck has on NoGoyf is that it's mono blue, so you can run things like mutavault and wasteland without having to think about questions like:
blue count?
white count?
basic plains?
What if I get locked out of swords?
I actually thought the mono blue build was pretty respectable, and if you're dying to actually kill creatures for good just run jitte.
Well, you know, that, and the fact that this deck actually has a bunch of top 8's to back up its reputation...
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
Hahaha... well nogoyf doesn't have people in the thread trying to make people play merfolk all the time too...Well, you know, that, and the fact that this deck actually has a bunch of top 8's to back up its reputation...
That's not a thing of the type I was talking about obviously, but I guess that's what your winky face is for. Goblins puts up a LOT of top 8s. So would any deck if 10-15% of the meta played it.Well, you know, that, and the fact that this deck actually has a bunch of top 8's to back up its reputation...
Merfolk's a fine deck. Its strength is being mono blue. Besides nogoyf, there are other appealing options if you are willing to splash. The reason for this is you can play other creatures if you are willing to splash. People play the merfolk army because it's blue and not horrible.
But if you could, you would jump on a chance to play RMWs, wayfarers, goyfs, tombstalkers, dark confidants, etc. instead.
The strength of Merfolk isn't just the manabase. It's that it's the only deck you can play where you can run 12 creatures that both pump all your other creatures -and- grant a form of evasion. Blue Aggro has typically struggled when the opponent runs creatures, but Merfolk can tap down blockers, make guys unblockable, or Islandwalk en masse. It additionally has excellent card advantage, a package of broad, universal answers, and the ability to quickly seize tempo in the midgame with Reejerey. On top of this, it only has one color to hit and can fight mana denial and counters with Vial.
I agree with just about everything you're saying here, except I'm still inclined to like the white splash in this deck, and you seem to be saying that the mono blue version is the only one that makes sense.
I understand why it makes sense to argue against a splash on principle. If it doesn't provide anything that the deck can't do while staying mono-colored, I agree that it's unnecessary. This is why I'm not a huge fan of the green splash, because the only thing it provides that the deck can't do otherwise is Krosan Grip. Sure, you also get Goyf, but it's not as if this deck is just completely incapable of spitting out large vanilla beatsticks.
However, I think the advantage of the white splash relates especially to two things you mention: a "package of broad, universal answers" and only having to hit one color. Basically, what makes the white splash good in my testing is that it allows the deck's spectrum of answers to encompass nearly anything that could pose a problem. I think in general this outweighs the concern that the deck now has to worry about managing two colors, but I will admit it's hard to come to an optimal balance. Obviously, it depends on your metagame. The white splash is better against most aggro and aggro control, and it's worse against dedicated mana-base disruption.
EDIT: Does anyone think Oblivion Ring might be more versatile than Seal of Cleansing? Maybe I just have an unnatural love for having spot removal in this deck, but a pseudo-Vindicate seems like hot fish sex to me, potentially... Or am I just going to get the Ring destroyed most of the time?
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
My worry is that most decks that I see someone siding in seal of cleansing or oblivion ring are going to have answers to the ring. Running 1 or 2 grips, Trigons, or Pridemages maindeck is getting pretty popular. And on games 2 and 3 they will be siding anti-enchantment/artifact to combat the vials anyway. As far as creature enchantments in merfolk go, I would think stealing a creature would be better. And I don't see the point of even running seal of cleansing over disenchant. Why make their goyf bigger?
Seal of Cleansing can come down before a Counterbalance. Seal also gives you the capacity to abort your own Standstill should this ever become relevant.
It would take a lot to have to abort your own standstill. If you have a vial, you shouldn't need to do that. If you're playing against a deck that can match your manlands, you FOW standstill away and board it out g2.
Standstill is only amazing when it's 1U: draw 3 cards. It wouldn't be amazing if it also had a ton of conditions attached... which it does. The idea is that Merfolk should be able to get around these conditions.
Short version: don't play standstill if you might have to abort it by also saccing your seal of cleansing.
I don't see why you wouldn't stay monoblue though. If what DDK says about merfolks being goyf-sized is true, why would you care to swords their goyf? Just play another merfolk. Why would you want to permanently destroy enchantments and artifacts? Just bounce them, they're never coming back anyway because your creatures are goyf sized, and your opponent will die next turn. Then it's gg.
Maybe your creatures aren't really that big, but if that's true then you definitely can't afford to go splashing white and not playing 12 lords/wakethrasher. Where is there room for white/swords?
Also, if you do splash white, what happens is you'll realize wayfarer has ridiculous synergy with vials, wastelands, mutavaults, dazes, so they'll be in the list. You'll realize mother (I think I saw someone earlier addressing this anyway) is good. You'll see now you don't have enough merfolk to run a solid merfolk base, so you'll see replacement creatures like serra avenger, fathom seer, and grunts are pretty good. I'm sure you see where this is going.
The monoblue version, although perhaps worse in an average sense than the white splashed version, retains its identity by not being dominated. If your metagame has a ton of nonbasic hate, then monoblue merfolk might actually be the "fish" deck to play. You have at least as good of a combo game as nogoyf and blue/white merfolk game 1, and with the proper choice of sideboard cards you can match or beat the combo games of the U/W decks games 2-3. Your goal is to mana screw/race zoo, I dunno it seems like a pretty solid plan, and perhaps even fun to play as a bonus.
You get buried by goblins, but such is the price of wanting to cling to an archetype. You wouldn't play merfolk anyway if your metagame was goblins infested.
Finally, the last advantage of merfolk over other decks in the format is that it's cheap as dirt. It costs like ~$200? Maybe? Adding tundras and fetches costs like another $200-250.
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.
Okay, U/W obviously has *access* to strictly more than U does. But you end up running swords instead of stifles that can obviously stop combo, echoing truth that at least disrupts ETW and chrome mox, jittes that at least speed up your clock or gain life to make comboing you out tougher...
Your deck's capabilities are a function of what you actually *do* run, not what you in principle have access to. At least that seems to be a much more "realistic" model than otherwise. If it worked the other way, everybody quick! Run 5 color.
I mention NoGoyf in my posts for a reason, although I don't see what's so special about mentioning it every post. There's also mentioning it twice every post, mentioning it in half of my posts, mentioning it in 51.4353524% of my posts. I've also mentioned merfolk in every one of my posts, and in fact the splash in every one of my recent posts. Okay so fine, it's nothing special I'll assume you didn't mean to make your comment. But then it's actually quite natural to compare it to the only other UW deck that has creatures, or at least one that has had a thread recently.
I guess you misinterpretted the word "Dominate." It's a word game theorists use to mean what you probably call "To be strictly better than." Merfolk as a monoblue deck retains it's identity, in the sense that there exists a metagame in which merfolk would outperform the other two alternatives. Can you name a metagame in which UW merfolk satisfies the same? Perhaps. One where everybody packs 4x dread of night maindeck.
Merfolk players regularly complain about a shortage of blue. Why would you want your blue sources to be wasteland targets? Or even worse, chain-wasteland targets? Do you want to control mountains against dragonstompy? I mean these things are "minor" or whatever you want to think of them as, but swords is pretty minor. You only even draw it in like 50% of your games, and then some of those games creatures don't even show up, and then some of the games where creatures do show up, you would have won anyway, and some of the remaining games you will lose anyway. It's only a small fraction of games that get turned around by swords, if any.
Goblins.dec
===
4x Goblin Chieftan
4x Mad Auntie
4x Goblin King
===
3x Blood Moon
OK, not as GOOD as Merfolk I agree. But it shows that there ARE other tribes out there, y'know
=======================
On a different note; has anyone tried out UB Merfolk yet ?
+3 Sygg, River Cutthroat
+4 Inkfathom Infiltrator
Since the 2x 2/1 Merfolk of Inkfathom Infiltrator and Silveill Adept will both deal exactly 3 dmaamge (with a Lord in play); then this surely would be as powerful as 'Bob' in the merfolk deck ?
Judge Julez
...the final judgement
You don't even need a black splash to play either of those...
ゆっくりしていってね！！！
Inkfathom seems horrible, but sygg seems like it'd be the runner up if anyone decided to play a merfolk heavy build. But only after:
4 cursecatcher
4 silvergill adept
4 LOA
4 reejery
4 sovereign
2-3 wakethrasher.
IF you want to play 24 merfolk, you could fill in the rest of the slots with sygg. It's >> cosi's trickster or w/e else.
I used to play Sygg, River Cutthroat as a singleton in my vintage merfolks (along with 4xCursecatcher, LoA, Silvergill and Reejerey) but I recently changed it to Cold-Eyed Selkie. In Legacy merfolks I don't really see room for it. It ends up being dead (aka a vanilla 1/3 merfolk for UU) so many times it's not worth running it.On a different note; has anyone tried out UB Merfolk yet ?
+3 Sygg, River Cutthroat
+4 Inkfathom Infiltrator
So I've been preparing for some upcoming tournaments and since my brother and I both play out of one collection and we currently only have 4 goyfs, I've been trying to find a good, goyfless deck I can play in these events since I'm going to be giving him my zoo deck. I decided Merfolk is an archetype I'm still fairly fond of, so I ordered all the stuff I was missing (At this point just standstills, mutas, and a few random folk to round out playsets.)
This is the list I'm intending to run;
// Lands
4 [MOR] Mutavault
4 [TE] Wasteland
12 [BD] Island (3)
// Creatures
4 [SHM] Cursecatcher
4 [LRW] Silvergill Adept
2 [M10] Merfolk Sovereign
4 [LRW] Merrow Reejerey
4 [TSB] Lord of Atlantis
// Spells
2 [DIS] Spell Snare
4 [SC] Stifle
1 [PS] Rushing River
3 [NE] Daze
4 [AL] Force of Will
4 [OD] Standstill
4 [DS] AEther Vial
// Sideboard
SB: 1 [DS] Echoing Truth
SB: 2 [ZEN] Spell Pierce
SB: 3 [BOK] Umezawa's Jitte
SB: 3 [NE] Submerge
SB: 2 [ALA] Relic of Progenitus
SB: 2 [FNM] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 [ZEN] Ravenous Trap
I really like this deck. Rushing River is probably my favorite blue card, and I've found having it in this deck to be incredibly useful. I almost want to fit in another somehow, but I don't want to cut any more counters or merfolk, so there's basically no room.
This list looks interesting. I didn't reference it in the games I just played, though I always played around kira anyway. If all else is equal, I always recommend extremizing matchups. You'd much rather do 100% against 50% of the meta and 0% against 50% of the meta than 50% against 100% of the meta.
Might you consider cutting stifles in favor of 2 wakethrashers, 2 sovereigns based on the above comments?
Sovereigns were scary in the games we played. I see that standstill is actually quite easy to use in this deck, and its effect is devastating. I think each of the games you won, you got at least one standstill, and possibly chained 2 of them. That being said, standstill decreases in worth against faster decks. I guess your plan is to resign to goblins and zoo anyway though, so standstill doesn't decrease your deck's overall performance by much.
I also noticed with lots of blue, you often got to pitch a rather useless card to FOW, this is another point against the white splash, although not nearly as important as white introduces the problem of getting blue screwed by wasteland. (And white screwed obviously)
The last thing is I recommend spell pierce over spell snare. Unlike spell snare, spell pierce counters everything your deck is afraid of. Our games might have given you an unfair view of spell snare because everything I play is 2cc, but if you take a look at a more usual metagame, you'll see that things you care about that spell snare counters are:
qasali (sort of, you really should just race it)
bob (sort of, you really should just race it)
goyf (see above)
survival of the fittest
hymn to tourach
counterspell
perhaps some targetted removal, sometimes, or burn.
Spell pierce also counters these things except the unimportant ones (which you can race), and on top of that, it counters: TES, reanimator, NOPro, intuition loops, deeds, wogs, humilities, moats, everything in stax, planeswalkers, fact or fiction.
It can be argued that merfolk cannot race the green creatures proposed. (I would be surprised if it couldn't race bob. Bob helps you kill its controller before the extra cards matter.)
But Finn stated clearly in the first few pages that green creatures were not a problem and could be raced. You should concern yourself with other problems, perhaps.
EDIT: I'll repost what I had here in a while, after my deck has some results so I can do a more sound comparison and perhaps it will also be better received.
Don't trust him. Goyf alone is not as scary but if they start getting 2 goyfs or 1 goyf + 2 other creatures you really need to start crapping lords on the table to win. Green creatures are very scary, and anything along the lines of 3/3 for 1 is not a good thing. We need 4 turns to get our merfolk to 3/3s.
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