Spell Pierce always helps.Originally Posted by mans0011
Having been running Spell Pierce main for a few weeks now(with no Zoo to worry about) I have to say it has been pretty useful in a lot of matchups other than just combo.
Must be nice... Do you just have an underdeveloped meta or something, or what exactly is keeping all the Zoo decks down?
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
The only person who has Zoo finished is me, at least at the moment, I think the people who it fits the playstyle of don't have the money and the people who have the money for it don't like the style of Zoo. As far as development, the budget players play either Merfolk or Dredge(although they are starting to get better cards and make more decks) and the other people run a huge array of things, but none of them built Zoo.
The current list I play is very tuned to beat combo and control as I see more of that than aggro, but here it is if anyone is interested
13 Island
3 Mutavault
3 Wasteland
4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Merrow Reejerey
3 Wake Thrasher
2 Kira, Great Glass Spinner
4 Aether Vial
4 Standstill
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Spell Pierce
I have a very good matchup against combo with this list, and also do pretty well against control after swapping Jitte/Echoing Truth slots for Kira maindeck. I usually have some graveyard hate in the sideboard to use against dredge and some Echoing Truth to deal with things like Humility, Ghostly Prison, Chalice, etc...
I have tried cutting Standstill, but in my metagame it is just the wrong choice, it is very good against TES and control strategies and I can board it out against decks it isn't quite as good at, like the mirror match.
Also, has anyone else tested out Ravenous Trap against Dredge? I think it is my favorite piece of hate against them, it has won me more games than Relic or Crypt have.
standstill has always worked perfectly for me. I think 3 is the perfect number, because i dont want to see it more than once, since if i see it once and i'm boarded nicely, i'll drop it, otherwise pitches to FoW. I always side em out against mirror, vial goblins, and UW Tempo / D&T builds, siding in the second jitte and maybe 1-2 bouncers.
Kira + Jitte has been discussed a lot, i think that althought not very synergystic its not a good reason to cut Jitte. Jitte wins every games i menage to resolve one. I mean, if we can't race our opponent by turn 4-5, and something is going wrong, we always got jitte to deal with mid/late game situations, and in mid/late game ( i mean by turn 6+) you'll always (90% of the time) hit the 4th mana to drop and equip. Now that we have coralhelm, wich is the best to carry jitte over enemy lines, i think it's just stupid not to run 2 between MD/SB Imho.
Maybe we should only go for a very aggro clock, counter their vial through Fow, Pierce is a nice addition, Daze is almost useless as everybody on the draw would cast t1 vial against us...and then bounce their SoFaI to clear a blocker. Win by turn 4/5. I mean, it IS possible, but very, very difficult to accomplish. You dont always get godhand...i'm looking for something more focused against these kind of decks, something that would be a pain in the ass just like Firespout. And keep in mind that if we dont counter their first vial, drawing all those Pierce mid game is useless.
Last edited by kiblast; 07-04-2010 at 10:22 PM. Reason: mispellings, sorry for my english! :-)
As I am planning to play in some upcoming tournaments in my area I was tooling around with a fish build with folks I commonly test with and was coming here to get some more advice.
One big question I have is how generally people sideboard for differing match ups, mainly things like Zoo, NO bant, and faeries.
From testing I am less inspired by Mutavault a lot of the time. Goblins is very rare in our meta as well.
The list I was looking at is as follows:
Lands - 20
8 Island
4 Wasteland
4 Flooded Strand
3 Tundra
1 Plains
Spells and artifacts - 16
4 Aether Vial
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Swords to Plowshares
Creatures - 24
4 Curse Catcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Coralhelm commander
4 Merrow Reejery
2 Kira, Great Glass Spinner
2 Merfolk Sovereign
Sideboard
2 Path to Exile
4 Tormod's Crypt
2 Propaganda
3 Back to Basics
1 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
3 Other cards, possibly counter magic?
I think you have three options for the 3 open sideboard slots: BEB/Hydroblast, Dispel, and Pithing Needle. Each are useful in different places:
BEB/Hydroblast stop burn spells and can get rid of problem cards like Grim Lavamancer, but they are extremely narrow outside of that role. You're not really afraid of Firespout because of how many lords you run, and Kira gives you partial protection from burn. Unless there's tons of burn in your meta, these are probably not that great.
Dispel stops most burn, targeted removal like Swords, and other random cards (Entomb, Ad Nauseam, Enlightened Tutor, other counters), but is also kind of narrow. It may be better than Daze in matchups where you don't want to set yourself back on lands (New Horizons, for example).
Needle is just a random utility card that's good to have.
I kind of disagree with how you minimize the effectiveness of Hydroblast. Granted it's a little narrow, because red just takes up its proportionate chunk of the metagame (maybe a little less than 1/5 actually), but all the cards you mentioned are a huge problem for us. To get around Firespout, we need no less than three lords on the table (putting each of them at 4 toughness). Grim Lavamancer almost singlehandedly beats this deck. Lightning Bolt on a lord is usually a huge pain in the ass. Etc.
Granted, it's a somewhat narrow piece of hate, but in an unknown meta, IMO, these are the things we need to be hating. Mind Harness is also a reasonable alternative, since there's a fair amount of overlap in the problems it takes care of, although you're basically addressing the creatures rather than the damage-based removal. Still though, it hates two colors rather than one. And on the cheap.
EDIT: Also, since Boots mentioned he might want to run countermagic in these slots, Spell Pierce should probably be mentioned.
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
BEB and Hydroblast are fine choices for the reasons you mentioned, DDK. The Blasts do also offer up a solution to the format's most popular sweeper for U.
Why wouldn't you want to run Threads instead of Harness? They are both narrow in their own ways, but Threads only eats your mana one time, where Harness gets more and more taxing.
Spell Pierce is pretty awesome, and I usually run 2-3 in my 75 of a lot of blue based decks. It answers a lot more relevant cards than Dispel does that could be a pain for this deck (Moat, Choke, Planeswalkers, etc). While Pierce isn't a hard counter, it can still push an opponent's plans off by two turns. Dispel is better against removal mid to late game though. Divert is kind of an in between of those two and randomly you can 2 for 1 opponents. But sadly, it is even more narrow because it's almost always going to be removal only, where Dispel can still hit Brainstorm and other instants.
Basically, I recommended Harness instead of Threads, because he specifically mentioned wanting to improve the Zoo matchup. I haven't tested much recently, but the theory is that stealing their creature earlier is good because they tend to come out of the gates so much quicker than us. If you can manage the heat they apply during the first few turns, your outlook for the match is gonna be better. Usually you're gonna treat the creature you steal as an expendable resource anyways, since you're just trying to sneak in damage/ set up a 2-for-1, so if you can just force them to dead their own creature asap, I would think the cumulative upkeep wouldn't end up eating too much tempo. I certainly have been known to misread data before though, so who knows.
Another point however, is that by the time you have thefor Threads, your hand is going to be somewhat emptied out anyways, and you can probably afford to sit there and soak up some mana paying the upkeep if you need to. Anyhow, this is basically just theorycraft.
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
Goyf is likely the best creature you can steal from them early on. Otherwise, you're stuck with a 1/1 (Ape, Nacatl, Lavamancer) or at best a 2/2 exalted. And keeping the Harness on is exhausting your mana that you could be using to develop your own board. That is unless you just steal them for a turn and let Harness fall off, in which case, why wouldn't you just run bounce and make them replay their threats? I imagine Echoing Truth could randomly 2 for 1 bounce. I don't know, maybe I'm not seeing the logic behind Harness clearly.
I'm not sure overloading on soft counters is what this deck wants to do. You're not fast enough, and you don't have enough mana denial, to make tons of soft counters relevant - they're good in the first few turns, yes, but most of the scary spells for this deck are pretty cheap, and anything not running islands is going to be able to interact with you much more in combat. Most decks with planeswalkers are blue, so you should be able to deal with them much better than something like Zoo or combo.
If Negate cost one and had a drawback (like bounce an Island or something), it would be the perfect card. As it is, I think there are slightly more must-counter instants than must-counter sorceries, and I like to have hard counters in those situations. You can deal with artifacts and planeswalkers with Pithing Needles, which you should have anyway (IMO).
I mean, I don't think Merfolk is that great overall, but I think you'd benefit more from having specialized hard counters than just tons of soft ones.
Not true. In my testing I've always been stuck with a threads in my hand while a KOTR, Terravore, or CC is beating me to death. I really prefer Mind Harness because you can beat them down with their huge creature for a turn or two and then finish the job with your lords if you have to.
To boil it down a bit more, for the areas larger tournaments we sit around 2-4 Merfolk decks, 1-3 Zoo, 0-1 Goblins, 1-3 Storm combo, 0-3 Lands, 0-2 Faeries, and tons of Bant colored decks, split between Horizons and NO Bant. And I suppose some counter top decks, but less than there was. Oh, and new tech for us are Hypergenesis builds.
Spell Pierce seems more universally useful, though I can see the argument made for REB. The storm decks in the area are usually defaulting to TES builds.
I agree. MH is just perfect in this role, as it turns your extra wastelands and Mutavaults in extra turns beating with a 5/6.
It's also very useful if you dropped an early Vial, as you can drop EOT Lords,beat with em AND with something else in your turn,keeping down the lifepoint of your opponent, say, for 3-4 turns, til they got back their goyf when its too late.
Plus, you can start borrowing creatures by turn 2-3, wich is great if you dont have enough critters to cast.
Last: PtE on your/their goyf/KOTR/Terravore/random beater. The next MH i draw will beat hard.
IMHO splashing black > splashing withe. for ALL the reasons you posted above, though i'm not feeling Agony Warp....i see its potential to do a 2x1...but i just dont like it.Maybe i'd rather go with diabolics to deal with marit lage/progenitus.
Did people stop running gofys in their merfolk decks? having green for grip in the board seems really good too. Or is the new level up lord better?
I disagree. Splashing withe is very hard to do since they have yet to print the blue/withe dual land, or even a withe fetch. In fact, withe isn't even a color and has 0 cards in magic the gathering. So I think splashing black is better IMHO.
People have never ran gofys in merfolk, sorry.
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