Sounds like you're boarding incorrectly. Pithing Needles and Disenchants would be better.Originally Posted by ExplosPlankton
I don't play on modo, but I know the deck. Swords shouldn't be in your sb, either maindeck or not at all. Do you run 3 Kiras main, Kira is awesome vs this deck. You beat it like every other deck, vial/standstill with counters and lords protected by kira. 3 Echoing truth in the sb is also really good vs the creatures/equipment. You wait for them to drop stoneforge, wait a turn to bring in the artificat and then equip and swing then you bounce the artifact or creature.
Them getting vial and mother is a problem, more so vial. Tough matchup
Current list:
4 Aether Vial
4 Standstill
4 Force of Will
4 Thoughtseize
3 Spell Pierce
4 Coralhelm Commander
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Cursecatcher
4 Merrow Reejerey
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Wasteland
4 Mutavault
3 Island
3 Underground Sea
3 Scalding Tarn
2 Flooded Strand
2 Misty Rainforest
SB:
4 Engineered Plague
3 Extirpate
3 Submerge
2 Nature's Ruin
1 Perish
2 Umezawa's Jitte
Card choices... yes, I omitted daze. Don't get me wrong, I love the card, however, I feel that it was just too reactive and often didn't do enough. Spell Pierce on the other hand.... is a champ.
Maindeck thoughtseize... good vs. the mirror, good vs. control, good vs. combo.... not great vs. zoo or anything with a quicker clock. I do feel the positives outweigh the negatives in this case.
I feel the rest of the cards are fairly mainstream folk choices but I welcome any criticisms of the list.
Plankton, the Death and Taxes matchup often about who gets Aether Vial. Honestly, Spell Pierce is pretty good against it for that reason. And of course, Force and Daze. It's still tough, but if you get ahead in the beginning, you can overrun him. Just remember that you are aggro.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"Politicians are like diapers. They should be changed often and for the same reason."
"Governing is too important to be left to people as silly as politicians."
"Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers."
This seems wrong, daze is not a defensive weapon. You need to resolve your vial on turn one, standstill/etc on turn 2. Daze is 100x's better then spell pierce, esp maindeck. Not to mention daze goes with your wasteland/cursecatcher package.Card choices... yes, I omitted daze. Don't get me wrong, I love the card, however, I feel that it was just too reactive and often didn't do enough. Spell Pierce on the other hand.... is a champ.
Why would you run a card maindeck that is bad vs your bad matchups? 15 one cc spells doesn't seem to good to me either..... Have you tested this list or just decided to post it?Maindeck thoughtseize... good vs. the mirror, good vs. control, good vs. combo.... not great vs. zoo or anything with a quicker clock. I do feel the positives outweigh the negatives in this case.
Last edited by SlopeeJ; 01-03-2011 at 03:29 AM.
Congrats on joining the school. Have some faith man, it's just a passing tide.
@ SlopeeJ
I have been playing the deck for the past 8 months with moderate success(3 legacy tournaments with a pretty well rounded meta and attendance at each of these events hovering around 50 people), One second place finish, another top 8 finish and the most recent, I scrubbed out. I have recently been running the 4 thoughtseize on board but generally siding them in on every match up(with exception to zoo) and I have been very pleased with their results vs. my opponents.
Ideally, you would resolve vial on turn one, followed by standstill turn two... but let's face reality, that doesn't happen every game. Also, thoughtseize is still relevant late game which daze only is in the context of a force of will pitch card.
On the zoo note, I feel any deck play will play around daze to resolve their critical spells. And it is slightly better to be proactive here as well to nab things like lavamancher, sylvan library, etc.
Thoughts? And thank you for your criticisms.
You could probably play Thoughtseize instead of Spell Pierce and get away with it, but TS instead of Daze seems horrible.
TS will make Vial-less hands better, but a hand with Vial + TS will be TERRIBLE (against most decks) compared to a hand with Vial + Daze. Merfolks need to start tempo-whoring and playing free stuff as fast as possible, and TS will often interfere with that gameplan.
Thoughtseize also has bad synergy with Standstill. If an opponent breaks Standstill by playing Deed, Humility or Moat, I'm pretty sure you'd be wishing those Thoughtseizes in your hand were Spell Pierces/Dazes instead.
PS. I rarely play this deck since it's the spawn of Satan, so this is just my theorycrafting.
Ok you guys, I recently picked this deck up for German Magic 2. Started off 3-0 then proceeded to lose 4 straight matches to Zoo *pukes*. Ok, let's be totally hardcore. If I was to devote 10 sideboard cards to that matchup (with 1-2 Kira maindeck) which cards would you advise? With eiter MonoU or Ub Saito Style?
Bonus question: who's the beatdown in Merfolk vs. Zoo?
The seven cardinal sins of Legacy:
1. Discuss the unbanning ofLand TaxEarthcraft.
2. Argue that banning Force of Will would make the format healthier.
3. Play Brainstorm without Fetchlands.
4. Stifle Standstill.
5. Think that Gaea's Blessing will make you Solidarity-proof.
6. Pass priority after playing Infernal Tutor.
7. Fail to playtest against Nourishing Lich (coZ iT wIlL gEt U!).
Merfolk is the beatdown. Zoo will win in the longer run, due to its higher card quality (Bolt>Daze, Force is a 1:2 trade, their creatures are superior...).
I think the best way to beat Zoo is running Uw Merfolk with 3-4 Stops maindeck, packing a Stoneforge Mystic + Jitte package in the board to fight Goblins, zoo and other decks like this. This also improves the shaky storm combo matchup with Meddling Mages from the board (they are awesome with Kira, Jitte isn't though).
With Ub you should run 4 Perish, 3 Submerge, 3 Blue Elemental Blast.
Mono U: 2 Threads of Disloyalty, 3 Submerge, 3 Back to Basics, 3 BeB.
Still, Mono U will not beat Zoo most of the time.
UW: 2 Stoneforge Mystic, 2 Umezawas Jitte, 1 Swords to Plowshares (3 maindeck), 2 Blue Elemental Blast, 3 Submerge.
I have zero experience with Merfolk, so everything I say has been determined solely by theory. Please keep that in mind.
-Wouldn't a couple extra lords (ie: Sovereigns) in the board be sufficient for aggro matches? They up your critter count and critter quality...
-Why are you talking about Zoo so much? Are the other MUs really so good that deck design revolves around beating just Zoo?
-Has Cosi's Trickster been given due consideration as a means to speed up the clock? (either MD or SB)
-Am I correct in assuming that Green is no longer a worthwhile splash? Without Survival, KGrip loses a lot of value (Vial>CB)
-Related note: Why do we never hear of a red splash? Bolt should help combat Zoo and REB seems hot
Referring to the art on Stasis:
@ Kikoo- What deck do you generally play? And what do you mean by spawn of Satan?
Vial + Thoughtseize in a hand is terrible?... against most decks? Which decks are you referring to here?
While I do agree with your point of the bad standstill synergy, every card has it's trade offs. I am still running 3 maindeck spell pierce so the only opportunity cost here is drawing daze vs. ts off of a standstill... given they are dropping either a deed, humility, or moat. Daze is also great if you have vial in play but not as strong if you don't because you constantly want mana for this deck to cast dudes, level up dudes, or animate manlands and using daze's alternative cost hurts the decks tempo in that regard.
On your intial point... I think spell pierce in significantly stronger than daze... and don't seem much merit in replacing it with ts... vs. replacing daze.
I just played my first legacy event with merfolk so i am not claiming to be a merfolk expert, now that that is out of the way.
Daze counters goyf
thought seize grabs it
spell pierce helps us against combo and control which are our good matchups
I'm not saying we don't use spell pierce but against aggro decks you can trade out standstill for spell pierces and be better off zoo is one hell of a problem deck for mono though.
So second thing
what splash color is best
I've been thinking of going black but what other decks can you build with underground seas as opposed to tundras
I'm a huge fan of control and merfolk seemed like the most affordable controlish deck so when i get around to buying a splash color i would like to be able to build a good control deck with those lands as time goes on. so what do you people recommend
sorry for the rambling
keep on swimming
Daze doesn't always counter goyf... don't get me wrong, I don't think thoughseize always gets it... but I think thoughtseize gets it a bit more often vs. daze.
Color splash- I have played both black and white... and while white is good for one or two key creature, black does a better job at global stuff(see e. plague, and perish) It also gives you access to things like extirpate and thoughtseize. I did try meddling mage for a while and it was ok... but I just prefer the black splash.
And if anything else... you could always sell your sea's for other blue duals and have extra left over to build whatever flavor control deck is popular. If I were to play anything else I would play scepterstill...
http://www.pastimes.net/news/2010/de...s-top-8-decks/
Look at the top list played by John Knapp. One of my favorites.
I mostly play TES and ANT, but also various Ugrx aggro-control or tempo decks. I play this deck in testing sometimes because I think it's helpful to be able to see the game through the eyes of the enemy. The Satan thing is just a joke :>
It's terrible in the sense that you have to make a decision on what to run out first. If you run out Vial and it gets FoW'd, you will look silly for not playing TS first. If you play TS first and your opponent turns out to be some kind of aggro or non-blue midrange deck, you will be behind on tempo because you have effectively time walked yourself by not playing Vial. Daze allows you to tap out much more aggressively, and most of the time there will only be one line of play for a Vial + Daze hand. My experience tells me that Merfolks need to advance their gameplan ASAP, or they will fall apart.Vial + Thoughtseize in a hand is terrible?... against most decks? Which decks are you referring to here?
Sovereigns are not too bad, I like keeping my Sovereign count to 2. It seems fish struggles most with zoo. Cats if you will. Cosi's Trickster is too reliant on your opponent shuffling their library and I reckon on fetch lands alone, they don't warrant enough a reason for it's inclusion, would rather play more Sovereigns
* Well if you nab some kind of aggro/non-blue midrange deck thoughtseize can nab an early beater... i.e. gofy, loam lion, confidant, etc. that can in essence buy back some of the "lost" or at least possible lost tempo. No?
Or perhaps md creature removal? I played path to exile for a while but didn't like the board options that white had vs. black.
Daze doesn't always counter goyf... don't get me wrong, I don't think thoughseize always gets it... but I think thoughtseize gets it a bit more often vs. daze.
Color splash- I have played both black and white... and while white is good for one or two key creature, black does a better job at global stuff(see e. plague, and perish) It also gives you access to things like extirpate and thoughtseize. I did try meddling mage for a while and it was ok... but I just prefer the black splash.
And if anything else... you could always sell your sea's for other blue duals and have extra left over to build whatever flavor control deck is popular. If I were to play anything else I would play scepterstill...
http://www.pastimes.net/news/2010/de...s-top-8-decks/
Look at the top list played by John Knapp. One of my favorites.
Thank you for the response
I checked out Scepter still it looks like a lot of fun when i get around to Jace's (my hope is they make duel decks with him)
I'll proxy it out for a bit.
And how do you go about beating zoo and goblins with mono u merfolk
It is my personal opinion that you should TRY to keep the MD mono blue and if you MUST splash for something incredible run it as a 2-3 of max in the MD.
I also think the black splash is weakest and against zoo you HARDLY want to be thoughtseizing and helping them kill you. You generally want to try to stabalize and then out tempo them with control. Unfortunately FOW is bad against zoo and gobs as well. So I'd always board that out for some blasts and spell snares. Jitte is good against goblins, but as someone mentioned before it is very slow and denys you tempo. That being said it is very difficult to beat Zoo and Goblins. Perish vs a GOOD zoo player is pretty much wasted space. I've seen good zoo players board OUT green creatures and board in more removal. Back when I tried U/B I was running 2-3 Snuff outs in the main to keep tempo. It was good in landing a standstill if they had a turn 1 creature, but I would get mana screwed quite often. Mono blue is still the most resilient even though it has a tough match against green and red.
With the white splash path is a bad idea, because it makes daze pretty bad and helps your opponent regain tempo after wasteland. Swords is way better as you can recover that life gain pretty easily. Meddling mage is not that great of a card. I think White giving leyline of sanctity is way better.
Leyline shuts off:
Discard
Tendrils (with counter backup they cannot chain it)
Burn (no more burns to the face)
Belcher
Gatekeepers/Edicts
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