I am not real sold on Augur of Bolas either. Silvergill seems better to me. Always drawing a card seems better than possibly missing when looking at the top three.
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Originally Posted by Water_Wizard
i'm still of the opinion that the olde-school 2k9 tempo builds will be better than modern pump-up a coralhelm commander builds. That means: Standstills, Echoing Truths and Stifles with 22ish merfolk and 19 land. If anything, master of the pearl trident makes the 2k9 builds better; they have access to another lord that synergizes with a tiny mana base.
I agree with most of the stuff you are suggesting. The creature base is the exact same one that I am gonna test. I am not sure you want to run 22 lands, but I do think that we need at least 14 U-producing lands now, possibly 15 to avoid mulling too many hands. I think I am gonna test something like 12 islands, 4 mutavaults, 3 caverns, and 2 wastelands. I think wasteland has lost quite a lot of its value in this deck, so while I would like to run 3 or 4, I have a hard time seing myself cutting mutavaults for it... (maybe remove 1 Island to squeeze the 3rd Wasteland in)
Do you think we should take out the wastelands to fill in more U lands? I believe someone answered this, but should we include Cavern of Souls?
Wasteland compliments the Merfolk strategy (and Vial in particular) so well that I wouldn't think of cutting them.
That said, I've seen some footage of a Merfolk player using Standstill and 8 manland (Factory on top of Mutavault), I thought that was a clever list although I'd personally stick to Wasteland.
I would not use cavern of souls. The power of merfolk is the ability to be wasteland proof. You need all the blue mana you can get with merfolk. Losing land isn't really an option.
Wow, that lord is so damn HOT. And Merfolk might rise again. Maverick is taking heavy beating from the Griselbrand.dec, and usually, Griselbrand.dec is a good matchup for Merfolk.
My new list would be:
Lands [20]
4 Wasteland
3 Mutavault
13 Island
Fish [26]
4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Coralhelm Commander
4 Merrow Rejeerey
2 Phantasmal Image
Stuff [14]
4 AEther Vial
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
2 Spell Pierce
Sideboard [15]
4 Submerge
4 Relic of Progenitus
3 Pithing Needle
2 Flusterstorm
2 Echoing Truth/Dismember
Man, that Augur of Bolas just sucks, simple as that. It's like trying to fit Snapcaster Mage in Merfolk. It will be just a 2/1 Flash, nothing more.
Let your Dredge 6 be: Narco, Narco, Narco, Bridge, Bridge, Dread Return
Augur doesn't belong in this deck. You only have what...8 instants/sorcery.
Forget it. If it said you can put a merfolk in your hand, then yes, use it. but it doesn't.
Augur fits UW tempo decks or control decks.
This was the list i was thinking of. Except the sideboard of course. And I would maindeck 2 dismembers or use standstills. Standstill should be king right now especially now that we can keep the vial at 2.
My sideboard would be 2 dismember, 3 submerges, 4 spell pierces, 3 tormod's crypt, 3 umezawa's jitte.
or add antoher image in the sideboard.
Better get your Master of the Pearl Trident pre-sale. Got mine at $20. =P
Nothing in standard holds its price...especially during pre-sale.
Oh. With this new guy, we need to play llawan again.
Remember guys, that vial isn't the only build at the moment. There's still the chalice build that could just be better at the moment then the vial option. We just need more testing time to see which is the better option now. Right now I'm trying out 4 chalice, and 4 cavern of souls, and no vial or muta vaults.
The question is, does another cheap lord improve merfolk enough to overcome snapcaster + stp or RUGs arsenal of 1cc removal?
4 swords...
3 snap casters.
you still have daze and FOW.
now you have 26 merfolks and 12 lords. I think thats plenty.
No, clearly, WotC wants us to play 24 Merfolk lords.
Also, the Chalice builds really mess with StP/Bolt/REB. With Cavern, you can even still play Cursecatcher under your own Chalice.
That was my thought process behind using chalice, I also opted for cutting all the 1 mana spells though. I think chalice may be needed right now, unless the spell count increases, which would allows augur to be used as card advantage. With augur, adept, and image, it's possible to just out card advantage a bunch of the field, but I'm not sure. I haven't put any of that in to practice yet.
If you ask me, it makes the most sense to run a Vial approach with Chalice in the SB. Vial builds tend to be better at stomping randoms and are still not absolutely terrible against many decks Chalice is great against.
Cursecatcher somewhat covers the same spot even. It does, at least, protect Lords from removal.
From there, you just need to have four other useful cards to come in with Chalice when you want it, obviously siding out Vial and Cursecatcher. For RUG you could use Submerge. Not sure what works well elsewhere.
The only issue with using a vial build and sideboarding in the chalices, would be that the land count, mainly island count, would need to be higher.
It may or may not be a huge issue. Still, running 2-3 extra lands is probably a fair trade for such a strong SBing plan. Not positive, as I have not played more than a handful of games with Merfolk in a long time, but it seems like it would work out.
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