Originally Posted by Jona
@Jona: Are you also running four Mental Misstep in the main?
@Both: Has the self-inflicted loss of life been manageable?
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
Dismember's way better than Sower in some combo matchups. It's stronger against NO Rug, in that it'll keep a green guy off the board. It'll hit Painter. It'll hit Metalworker against MUD, if you consider that combo. Etc.
And so far I've found the life loss completely manageable.
Dismember is exactly the sort of card Merfolk has been looking for: a main deck removal spell for the mono-blue variants. It answers Grim Lavamancer, Stoneforge Mystic (so they can't sneak in equipment), Tarmogoyf of nearly any common size (3/4 or 4/5), Tombstalker, and even Peacekeeper.
Best part is that it gets around the opponent's Mental Missteps.
I have been playing dismember and it does shine against certain deck, such as Team America and the stoneforge decks mainly because they don't run a lot of creatures. Dismember is okay vs zoo, where forcing, mm and dismember can do a lot of damage to yourself and it still doesn't solve the problem of them bolting all your creatures. I would rather have submerge vs zoo (maybe Team America as well) but it is only good vs decks with forests. As others have mentioned, it is great vs peacekeeper, artifact creatures, LLawan, stoneforge/batter skull jank etc
I still want kira main, to good vs control/junk/Team America/Lavamancer
I think that without Sowers, there is no reason to have 21 land. Taco, you should cut a Muta for another Dismember. I bet two is the right number, too. You don't want to draw two or three of these in a game very often.
EDIT: and I have to ask this question: Which card is better in this deck now...Force of Will of Mental Misstep? I am leaning towards Misstep.
"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."
@Finn: There's plenty of reason. The main is that Coralhelm Commander is a mana-greedy bitch. If I thought I could justify it, I'd kick up the land count to 22. This deck still very often likes to hit 4 land in the first ten cards or so, especially if one or two of them are Wasteland and Mutavault. But given that Mental Misstep and Dismember essentially make me able to dedicate almost all of my colored mana to going on the offense, I get by with 21. If you feel risky, sure, cut a land for a second Dismember. But I want my quad of Vaults in there, especially with Landstill on the rise. I like knowing that if I have any guy down, my chances of hijacking a Standstill are pretty solid.
@Drago: Funny that you mention the thing about Stoneforge, because before Batterskull I'd have argued that I'd usually much rather wait for them to drop the equipment and pay the equip cost before using Dismember to seize mad tempo. Now with Stoneforge basically being Aether Vial on a stick, the option to keep Batterskull off the table seems much stronger.
@Slopee: Ha! Strangely it never occurred to me that this kills Llawan. Sucks that you'll still have to replay/re-level your guys, though, but if you've got a Llawan of your own, it's still totally worth it.
I'm not a Batterskull-hype-r. I don't think the card is better than most Swords or Jitte with any deck packing a decent amount of creatures. However, the pros are saying that Batterskull just rapes Fish. I have a hard time believing this. Anyone have any testing experience?
Force of Will due to being able to answer any threat the opponent casts. MMS is good but won't stop bombs.
HOWEVER, if you were thinking of dropping FoW... I would suggest Spell Snare in it's place. MMS and SS hit the 1-2 CMC range and Daze can hit the more expensive spells. SS and MMS have very good synergy together as it makes it very hard for the opponent to play their CMC spells around your spells. If they play something cheap with mana open, you have hard counters for the cheap spells. If they try to avoid those and play something larger, you have Daze for it.
Batterskull is supposedly pretty decent with Stoneforge Mystic: mystic can drop it for 2 mana and get you a 4/4 w/ lifelink and vigilance. If you try to remove the Batterskull, it can bounce itself back to the owners hand to avoid the removal. If you try to simply remove the token, you could either equip it to something else or just bounce it and have the stoneforge replay it.
Solution? Kill/counter the Stoneforge to avoid such shenanigans. The opponent will be forced to pay 5 for Batterskull, which is easy to Daze by that point. Also, paying 5 mana to cast it and having to keep 3 open is massive tempo loss.
Note that Pithing needle will only stop the equip and bounce effect of the batterskull. It will not stop the germ token from being made.
Or, heh, if you're that concerned about Batterskull, you could always run Vodalian Illusionist or Reality Ripple or some other phasing card in sideboard, phase out the Germ token, and make Batterskull cease to exist. Phasing is the archnemesis of Living Weapon.
Oh, that would be fun.
Anyway, have a small local tournament tomorrow. I'll be playing Tacosnape's list, with 3 Dismember in place of the 2 Sovereigns plus Sower.
I have some questions on playing merfolk. I took merfolk to a local tourney recently, and went 0-3 drop. (Having never played it before, but still). By far my worst legacy tourney ever. I played 2x against NOPRO Elves and once against TA.
Against elves I found it extremely hard to stop NO from resolving. The games went like this:
1st game vs elves
1) He beats me down with lords and finishes with NOPRO.
2) I get some beatdown going, I manage to win this one with Coralhelm despite a Choke and a Progenitus which comes a turn too late.
3) I beat him down to one (at one point I do not attack with a Cursecatcher, because I wanted to have something to stop NO, he had Priest and a Llanowar in play to block, but I think he might not have blocked). Then he manages to stall and guess what, kills me with Progenitus again.
2nd game vs elves
1) I beat him a bit with a Coralhelm, the turn before he would die he topdecks Ezuri, makes all his dudes huge and kills me.
2) I open with Jitte on turn 2, which he destroys with Corrupter. I play a second Jitte turn 3, which he Pithing Needles. I get behind on the board and eventually die again to NOPRO.
Both games I sided in 2 Jittes, 3 Dismember.
Now is this an abysmal matchup or am I just playing this deck totally wrong? I never felt I had the cards to stop NO from resolving. This gives me the impression that if the deck has difficulty stopping NO, it will also have difficulty stopping other bombs like Ringleader, or Jace?
Btw the list I played was all the standard cards, no standstills, 2 sovereigns and 1 Sower.
Needs more goyfs.
Ah, Merfolk versus Elves. My favorite matchup.
First off, it's not a good matchup. It's not abysmal, though, and it's quite winnable. But you can't screw up your plays. And nine times out of ten, you will. And even when you're analyzing it in hindsight, you may not figure out what you did wrong.
If you don't ever have a counter for Natural Order, my wager is that you counter too aggressively. There are no hard and fast rules as to what to counter when in Merfolk. Every time an Elf Lord hits play, you have to ask yourself if you're still okay if it hits. How many lords do you have? Will you win if you wait and counter the next Lord? Ditto for a Priest of Titania. How dangerous is it? How many cards are in the opponent's hand? Etc. There are even rare times you may want to let a Natural Order hit if you think you can overwhelm the opponent by instead countering their next blocker.
If you err on the side of aggression, do it with Mental Misstep. Elves starts way faster than you. If you Misstep a Llanowar or a Fyndhorn, this is a pretty good start to keeping their tempo from crushing you.
Also, don't assume Daze is always terrible in this matchup. You obviously want to ditch it on the draw, but on the play it might be better than some of your clunkier cards.
You mean Force of Will, right? I can't remember any games where they only had 4 mana and not much, much more. Or at least 1 more. Between Archdruid, Priest, and the mana dorks they can ramp up quickly. Daze always felt fine the first 2 turns, but afterwards it was craptastic.
Green decks seem to be pretty popular and they also tend to be more difficult matchups. Which is why I'm fond of the Black splash in Merfolk. I really like Perish.
As a player of NO Elves, it depends on your draw. CCommander is awesome here; Misstep as well, because the deck needs its turn 1 dork, otherwise, their draws are about as aggressive as yours, and not much more so. If you go turn one Misstep dork, daze their two drop, then you're in good shape.
Or my personal favorite hyper-narrow Batterskull hoser-- Manriki-Gusari. Still probably not worth any sideboard space, but with Stoneforge Mystic on the rise, I'm totally picking up a set of this jank-ass oddity. I just like how it basically says "Nice $20 Squire, dipshit." (Honestly, its best application is probably as a one-of to break Stoneforge mirrors, but I'm not gonna go propagate that information on any threads to give some decks I don't play hot new tech.)
Bless your heart, we must consider Blue/White Tempo's strategy and win percentages in an entirely different deck thread. -4eak
I know someone, who will love this tech :DOr my personal favorite hyper-narrow Batterskull hoser-- Manriki-Gusari. Still probably not worth any sideboard space, but with Stoneforge Mystic on the rise, I'm totally picking up a set of this jank-ass oddity. I just like how it basically says "Nice $20 Squire, dipshit." (Honestly, its best application is probably as a one-of to break Stoneforge mirrors, but I'm not gonna go propagate that information on any threads to give some decks I don't play hot new tech.
Kenjawn, Mutator of Cells
:16:- (See, now Erratic Explosion's a deck)
Legendary Creature - Horror
Haste, Hexproof, Double Strike, Trample
Kenjawn, Mutator of Cells is indestructible.
Permanents you control can't be sacrificed or copied.
Whenever Kenjawn, Mutator of Cells attacks, defending player gets liver cancer (This effect doesn't end at end of turn.)
13/13
Rofl @ Manriki-Gusari. Seems good in a Stoneforge mirror, but probably not here.
Anyway, for the second week in a row I took down my local tournament undefeated. Played the following:
13 Island
4 Mutavault
4 Wasteland
4 Aether Vial
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
3 Daze
2 Dismember
4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Coralhelm Commander
4 Merrow Reejerey
2 Merfolk Sovereign
SB: (Too lazy to go get my cards across the room, so I -think- this is what I ran)
1 Dismember
3 Spell Pierce
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Surgical Extraction
2 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Daze
2 Pithing Needle
2 Energy Flux
I beat Elves round one, Burn round two, Welder MUD round three, and U/B Reanimator round four. In the top 4 I beat burn again and split with Reanimator. I dropped a total of one game in all this, which was to Welder MUD demonstrating that when given a turn two choice of dropping a Silvergill Adept or dropping Pithing Needle when the opponent has a Lightning Greaves, Silvergill Adept is -not- the right choice. Oopsie. It ended up with Sundering Titan landing and keeping me off Energy Flux. Ironically, no matter what I Needled, it'd have disrupted things. It involved a Welder, Greaves, and a Forgemaster.
Elves I won by virtue of having a Mental Misstep both games for turn one Elves, and a timely Dismember game two for some big guy. Burn I flooded with Cursecatchers and Dazes (And Jitte on one game. Hee.) Welder Mud was counters and guys game one with a timely Dismember on Lodestone Golem, Needle on Voltaic Key only for him to Top into two more sealed by Energy Flux game three. Reanimator involved two incredible Cursecatcher-and-Counter hands. Game three was interesting for getting a Cursecatcher Mental Misstepped with a second in hand, then when he tried to Animate Dead Jin-Gitaxias, the exchange was Surgical Extraction, Daze, Daze your Daze, Force Surgical, Force your Force. Fun stuff.
Conclusions were this:
1. Dismember is a complete monster in this deck. Seriously. You've got to pick this up.
2. Spell Pierce is similarly amazing as a sideboard card, and I bring it in against anything where Lots of Guys and Free Counters is a worse strategy than One Guy and Tons of Disruption.
3. I didn't for one second regret not maindecking the fourth Daze. The boarded one always came in on the play, and the rest usually came out on the draw (Except against Reanimator, where it, the Pierces, and the yard hate all came in for 8 Merfolk Lords.) That said, I went 1-4 in die rolls tonight, so measurement of Daze here could be inaccurate.
So was the Surgical Extraction just to give you the edge against Reanimator? Also, can you elaborate on point #2?
Are you talking about my irrational love for Kamigawa? haha
On a more serious note, nice list, Taco. How important do you feel the Sovereigns are? I'm currently just running the fourth Daze and the third Dismember in these slots. Moving the Daze to the board seems like a nice move, but I'm actually never unhappy to see Dismember. Together with Mental Misstep it lets me actually win most of my Zoo matches right now and I honestly don't see any reason to run anything else than Merfolk right now except for maybe NO RUG which seems to be slightly better against Merfolk.
Also, I find your sideboarding very interesting. Do you board out Lords often? And if you're doing so, which ones do you keep in? I guess Coralhelm Commanders and two Merrow Reejereys?
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