[Deck] Merfolk

[KobeBryan]

Would you like to summarize for me? I don't have the time to read 300 pages of circle-jerking to find the relevant information, especially since I'm not entirely convinced the information even is relevant anymore, given that we now have Master to make our blue matchups so much better (which is the impetus for looking to shore up our nonblue matchups), and that the metagame has shifted about 5 times in the last 6 months alone.

Even before LOA 2.0 was created, merfolk ALWAYS had an excellent matchup against blue based decks. Nothing new has changed.

The deck has problems with maverick and other red decks. How is brainstorm going to help against those decks? Especially lowering your creature count even moreso.

[SlopeeJ]

Would you like to summarize for me? I don't have the time to read 300 pages of circle-jerking to find the relevant information, especially since I'm not entirely convinced the information even is relevant anymore, .

Just test the card, it is the same reason why merfolk runs mostly free counterspells. When other decks are brainstorming we are trying to cast fish and win the game. Same goes for stifle and all the other cards that people try to put in. Merfolk with 4 of almost everything doesn't need to filter (or can't cost effectively) like other decks. That is why standstill is played, you want to swarm and draw more cards not find the right one

[pocari79]

What world are you living in where Knight of the Reliquary is a "2/2 or 1/1"? Are you not winning the game anyway, without Cursed Totem, if you have an army of 5/5s and your opponent has no Knight?

The creatures that beat you in Maverick is not the Knight. It's the multiple Moms that stall the ground and a Scryb Ranger that has virtual vigilence and just owns you if it's equipped with a Jitte. If you don't have a Cursed Totem, the Submerges just sit in your hand doing nothing and Moms and Scryb Ranger can hold your entire team back. Once you land a Cursed Totem though, all their utility creatures become 1/1s that just chump block and you can start Submerging their Knight over and over again while you attack for the win.

[TheyCallMeTim]

What's wrong with Hibernation and Mind Harness? I remember them working pretty well against Zoo. Of course, Mother of Runes beats Harness, but she loses to Hibernation everytime. Seems simple, get enough alpha strike power on the board and cast Hibernation for the win. Additionally, seems Vedalken Shackles would be a good sideboard replacement for Mind Harness, only downside being the cost.

[yutang]

Another idea to bounce in the thread - how about a mana-denial focused Merfolk list?

4 Vials
4 Force
4 Daze
4 Stifle

4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Lord 2.0
4 Merrow Reejerey

3 Spreading Seas - the controversial slot but it is better than Aquitects Will, it feeds into the mana screw theme. Against blue, we are favoured already. Against non-blue it enables Islandwalk.

4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port - replaces Mutavault
13 Island

Coralhelm removed since mana will be tied up on mana denial (Stifle, Ports). Its more control rather than bumrushing with a billion lords.

[TheyCallMeTim]

Another idea to bounce in the thread - how about a mana-denial focused Merfolk list?

My feeling is that this is ineffective in a format full of one-drops. For example: Play Trop, Delver, go. Or, Play Savannah, Heirach, go. Try it out, but you might find the trade off in consistancy and power isn't worth it.

In other news, I think I may try testing Vedalken Shackles in that 2x slot in the main where some people have been putting Jitte. Seems like a well positioned card to make that shift from early to late game people have been taking about.

[landwalker000]

If mom is really a big problem guys, then splash black and play a couple dredge of nights. You also get to play perish too!

[Finn]

The reason we all gave up on Brainstorm was the same reason we stopped using Stifle. Unlike decks with 8-16 threats and splash colors, Merfolk does not have a good chance to cast it. You want to tap all your lands for mana on every turn to maximize offense. Sure it is going to be handy quite often -its Brainstorm- but unlike multicolored decks, there aren't a whole lot of utility spells to be looking for anyway. You have threats, counters, and mana before sideboard. In the end it just slows the deck.

I brought up the idea of No Sacred Cows. I want to touch upon it again. You can say that Silvergill is so important that the deck is always better off with it, no matter what. I think I would agree...probably. Ertai's foray into replacing it with less efficient card draw is fine as a thought experiment, but even Standstill is not as good at drawing cards in this deck as Silvergill. And yet, I can not say with certainty that Silvergill is an auto-include since this new lord has been printed (and since the meta is constantly shifting at some level).

As an extreme example, let's say that a card got printed which was an exact replicate of Silvergill that just drew two cards instead of one with additional text that made you lose the game if you ever had a Silvergill on the battlefield. I think we would all decide that Silvergill was no longer an auto-include. As good as they still would be, we would ditch them. Every card that ratchets up the power level of a deck creates this same tension to a lesser degree.

Every card you add has to replace something that was an accepted inclusion up to that point. So while I believe that Silvergill, Cursecatcher, etc are all still valid, I can not say for certainty. After all, something has to give. And none of us has either testing or results to say for certain what that is yet. There are no sacred cows in Magic.

[Ertai87]

Even before LOA 2.0 was created, merfolk ALWAYS had an excellent matchup against blue based decks. Nothing new has changed.

The deck has problems with maverick and other red decks. How is brainstorm going to help against those decks? Especially lowering your creature count even moreso.

As I've said, 3 times now, the idea is that you can't win quickly against nonblue decks, since you don't have the benefit of Islandwalk. As a result, you're grinding out a long game.

In a long game, this deck has A LOT of dead cards. For example, a Silvergill Adept on turn 10 when you have no Lords out and no cards in and is not what you want to be drawing. A Spell Pierce or Daze when they have 7 land out is similarly bad. An Island when you already have 5 lands in play is terrible. And so on. The idea behind Brainstorm is to turn these late-game dead cards into real cards that do things, which allows you to grind out better against decks like Maverick.

I don't think I can make it any clearer than that, so if you still do not understand the point, I'm sorry.

The creatures that beat you in Maverick is not the Knight. It's the multiple Moms that stall the ground and a Scryb Ranger that has virtual vigilence and just owns you if it's equipped with a Jitte. If you don't have a Cursed Totem, the Submerges just sit in your hand doing nothing and Moms and Scryb Ranger can hold your entire team back. Once you land a Cursed Totem though, all their utility creatures become 1/1s that just chump block and you can start Submerging their Knight over and over again while you attack for the win.

I'm going to disagree with that. If you have 4 creatures and they have 3 Moms/Scryb Rangers, you're still attacking profitably for damage. If they have a single Knight, you're getting Abyssed every time you attack, which is not quite as good. That's not even to mention that a bunch of 1/1s does not provide them a clock, while a 7/7 is a pretty decent clock.

Also, if your Submerges are "sitting in your hand doing nothing" against a board without a Knight, you're probably doing something wrong.

Also this:

If mom is really a big problem guys, then splash black and play a couple dredge of nights. You also get to play perish too!

I'm pretty sure the 2-3 Fish players who have made T8 in the last 3 weeks at Opens with this strategy, not to mention Tomoharu Saito who won GP Columbus 2010 with this deck, know how to solve this problem.

[KobeBryan]

As I've said, 3 times now, the idea is that you can't win quickly against nonblue decks, since you don't have the benefit of Islandwalk. As a result, you're grinding out a long game.

In a long game, this deck has A LOT of dead cards. For example, a Silvergill Adept on turn 10 when you have no Lords out and no cards in and is not what you want to be drawing. A Spell Pierce or Daze when they have 7 land out is similarly bad. An Island when you already have 5 lands in play is terrible. And so on. The idea behind Brainstorm is to turn these late-game dead cards into real cards that do things, which allows you to grind out better against decks like Maverick.

I don't think I can make it any clearer than that, so if you still do not understand the point, I'm sorry.



I'm going to disagree with that. If you have 4 creatures and they have 3 Moms/Scryb Rangers, you're still attacking profitably for damage. If they have a single Knight, you're getting Abyssed every time you attack, which is not quite as good. That's not even to mention that a bunch of 1/1s does not provide them a clock, while a 7/7 is a pretty decent clock.

Also, if your Submerges are "sitting in your hand doing nothing" against a board without a Knight, you're probably doing something wrong.

Also this:



I'm pretty sure the 2-3 Fish players who have made T8 in the last 3 weeks at Opens with this strategy, not to mention Tomoharu Saito who won GP Columbus 2010 with this deck, know how to solve this problem.

Just use brainstorm then. Its your deck, go use it.

[Phoenix Ignition]

As an extreme example, let's say that a card got printed which was an exact replicate of Silvergill that just drew two cards instead of one with additional text that made you lose the game if you ever had a Silvergill on the battlefield. I think we would all decide that Silvergill was no longer an auto-include.

The only valid reason to not run Silvergill Adept in Merfolk, ladies and gentlemen.

[TheyCallMeTim]

In a long game, this deck has A LOT of dead cards. For example, a Silvergill Adept on turn 10 when you have no Lords out and no cards in and is not what you want to be drawing. A Spell Pierce or Daze when they have 7 land out is similarly bad. An Island when you already have 5 lands in play is terrible. And so on.

It's a tempo deck, such is the nature of it. Look at RUG, what do they have after turn 4? A random Sylvan Library or Fire // Ice maybe. Granted, they play Brainstorm but it filters them into a Lightning Bolt or Goyf at best while we level up a Commander and draw into 5/5's for UU. Meanwhile, Adept is a +1 CA everytime. Not even the highly regarded Brainstorm can say that.

But look, man, I get it. I tested Brainstorm in a Mono U, U/W and U/B builds. Just try it out and you might find the same thing we have. Or you could win the whole SCG Open, who knows.

[SMR0079]

As I've said, 3 times now, the idea is that you can't win quickly against nonblue decks, since you don't have the benefit of Islandwalk. As a result, you're grinding out a long game.

In a long game, this deck has A LOT of dead cards. For example, a Silvergill Adept on turn 10 when you have no Lords out and no cards in and is not what you want to be drawing. A Spell Pierce or Daze when they have 7 land out is similarly bad. An Island when you already have 5 lands in play is terrible. And so on. The idea behind Brainstorm is to turn these late-game dead cards into real cards that do things, which allows you to grind out better against decks like Maverick.

I don't think I can make it any clearer than that, so if you still do not understand the point, I'm sorry.



I'm going to disagree with that. If you have 4 creatures and they have 3 Moms/Scryb Rangers, you're still attacking profitably for damage. If they have a single Knight, you're getting Abyssed every time you attack, which is not quite as good. That's not even to mention that a bunch of 1/1s does not provide them a clock, while a 7/7 is a pretty decent clock.

Also, if your Submerges are "sitting in your hand doing nothing" against a board without a Knight, you're probably doing something wrong.

Also this:



I'm pretty sure the 2-3 Fish players who have made T8 in the last 3 weeks at Opens with this strategy, not to mention Tomoharu Saito who won GP Columbus 2010 with this deck, know how to solve this problem.

This goes out to all of you trying to figure out how to swim.

I understand Legacy has a lot to take in and you are clearly doing your home work citing Saito. I would encourage you to continue in the same vein by identifying quality experiecned posters on this forum as well as familiarizing yourself with the data such as Bertochinis' successful run with Fish a year or two ago.

One such poster is SlopeeJ aka the "Fishlord" here in Seattle. He has more experience with Fish then anyone besides Bertochini winning the NW Lotus cup twice with Fish and making Top 4 at SCG Seattle losing to the other Fish list that ended up winning the whole event. Jordan, I'm Jackson the deck designer. So when he posts take note.

Running "experiemnnts" to see if Brainstorm works in Fish is fine for your own amusement but it's not going to get you anywhere with players who have been around and know the format. There's no point in explaining and arguing the fact. If you happen to stumble upon something with an experiement that just happended to fly under the radar of a format that has been well explored by the best minds in the game, well then maybe your the next Wafa Tappo and we just don't know it yet, but more then likley your not. That being said, results speak for themselves. Prove it by placing in a large event.

The largest real challengers are non blue decks like Mavrick, and SFM Batterskull backed up with recurring removal via snap caster. Kira had been our answer to the problem of removel and the Fishlord has been running 3 with great sucess over the years. With the printing of Master and the dominance of Mavrick (which is not removal heavy) we'r no longer sold on the Kira plan. We havn't figured it out yet but there are some promising avenues, some of which have been mentioned, such as the black splash which is excellent against mavrick. Cursed Totem is also notable. Metamorph and maindeck bounce/dismmeber are options against Batterskull. I cringe at the idea of playing Aquitechts Will or something like it but, maybe with 8 island walking lords it could be a way to turn the non blue matches around.

Fish is a linear strategy for the most part, so you only have a few slots to work with that can help you gain edges in or increase your percentage against bad mathcups to a fighting chance, but if Fish starts to dominate the brainstorm mages can beat it if the threat becomes big enough.

I've been toying around with writing an article on Fish and the Legacy metagame but I'm just too busy. Ironically, I don't even play Fish - but I respect it, and play against it all the time. With the printing of Cavern of Souls, Master and the success of RUG Fish shoudl be well positioned going forward if it can answer be competitive against Mavrick and BAtterskull.

Hope some of you find this helpful.

Cheers
Sean AKA the "Grandfather"

[Infinitium]

Unlike decks with 8-16 threats and splash colors, Merfolk does not have a good chance to cast it. You want to tap all your lands for mana on every turn to maximize offense.

I approve of this message. However:

With a potential full suite of 2-mana lords in place of the 3cc ones, T1 Land, Vial T2 Land, Fish T3 Land, BS Fish looks like a better way to curve out than T1 Land, Vial T2 Land, Fish T3 Land, Fish.

Not having played the deck for any lenght of time myself, I've never seen Reejery's ability to tap down blockers as paramount to the deck's offense. As for the acceleration aspect, the only times I've seen this utilized effectively is if the deck has either kept a -very- slow hand or have Vial + Standstill (the deck really shouldn't have 3+ fish on hand turn 4 otherwise).

[SupREME-10]

Some really great discussion going on about the Fishheads. I love it, so thanks a lot guys.

I think that Rejeerey does warrent 4x slot and Coralhelm can go down to a 2x in the deck with the other 2x in the Side for certain matches. Vs Blue you can simply dump the Dismember's if your running them and bring those Coralhels in to help boost your aggro Islandwalk.

I still like Kira, but she is SD for sure as removal seams to be less and less recently.

As some of you might have seen, I have be testing 3x Rejeerey with 3x Coralhelm recently and honestly the 4-2 split has been showing better results (On MWS, and Kitchen table vs Gauntlet decks). Now I have only done some 25-ish games with my 2 versions of the deck but so far the 4-2 split is showing better results in any match that might go any length of mid range grind as the Tap/Untap effect is simply better in certain ways than the Flying.

Anyway, those are my thoughts; but I have also been trying 2x Cavern of Souls with only 3x Wasteland in the deck and 1 less Island -- no significant change thus far; but vs Control there is an edge that you loose vs Maverick (seams to be a weird but almsot even trade, so I would call that user-opponent dependant for now).

I am scheduled to run more games tomorrow, but in my area, the Fishheads are actually resurfacing fast, so Mirror Match might become an issue to deal with again as well.

Llawan....

PS, I have not tried EE or Cursed Totem; but I will leave that to others as I don't want to test too many variables all at once.

[dsck]

Not having played the deck for any lenght of time myself

It shows.

[Anfylion]

In a long game, this deck has A LOT of dead cards. For example, a Silvergill Adept on turn 10 when you have no Lords out and no cards in and is not what you want to be drawing. A Spell Pierce or Daze when they have 7 land out is similarly bad. An Island when you already have 5 lands in play is terrible. And so on. The idea behind Brainstorm is to turn these late-game dead cards into real cards that do things, which allows you to grind out better against decks like Maverick.

I think you're missing the point. We are a TEMPO deck who tries to dominate the board, in the early game with a lot of cheated fish, and FOWing the enemys threat. We are looking for a quick Alpha Strike,

If the game stretches over 10 turn, the quality of our cards decreases dramatically, so you will not find an answer on brainstorm


Here are the death draws, on a stalled board vs. Maverick, in T10:


Phantasmal Image
Cursecatcher
Lord of Atlantis
Master of the Pearl Trident
Merrow Reejerey
Force of Will
Daze
Spell Pierce
Aether Vial
Cavern of Souls
Mishra's Factory
Islands

I was merciful by not including Coralhelm Commander (who is easily resp, with GSZ--> Scryb ranger, Maze of Ith, STP) ...

[wortwelt]

Just throwing this out there.

We've been experimenting with fish yesterday and tried a build with upped creature count (26). When you try to force the tempo game too hard, fish seems to become a worse RUG Delver style deck. Hence, we tried to overload on threats and use a little less permission.
We played 4 of eack LoA & LoA2.0, plus 2 Phantasmal Image to copy him. Islandwalk was paramount. We consider using Tidal Warrior, since it enables Alpha Strikes and fixes your Mana. We also tried Cosi's Trickster, since it beats a little harder than Cursecatcher.

[SMR0079]

Just throwing this out there.

We've been experimenting with fish yesterday and tried a build with upped creature count (26). When you try to force the tempo game too hard, fish seems to become a worse RUG Delver style deck. Hence, we tried to overload on threats and use a little less permission.
We played 4 of eack LoA & LoA2.0, plus 2 Phantasmal Image to copy him. Islandwalk was paramount. We consider using Tidal Warrior, since it enables Alpha Strikes and fixes your Mana. We also tried Cosi's Trickster, since it beats a little harder than Cursecatcher.

We beleive the increased creature count is the way to go. 24 Fish and then either Kira, Metamorph, or Image. What ever you do, don't cut Cursecatcher. It's what gives you game against combo, esepcially in a creature heavy build. Trickster is not playable in Legacy. Island walking may be worth a couple side board slots, but not Tidal WArrior becasue it has to untap and is thus vulnerable to removal.

[Ertai87]

Alright, so it seems like the general feeling is "we'll lose the long game if we have to". I guess that's fair. I am really not comfortable having a distinctly sub-50% Maverick matchup, though, and I am completely flummoxed as to how to beat that matchup without a nut draw. Is Aquitect's Will actually the way to go? That card looks godawful, but it might actually be what needs to be done. It's also pretty sick with Merrow Reejerey.

As for what to cut, I'm not sure if I want to use a maindeck slot or a SB slot. In the main, it would be Daze; I hate where that card is positioned in the metagame right now, and any hand with a Daze and no Vial feels godawful. Cutting Daze also makes Caverns better, which improves the RUG (and, to an extent, Reanimator and Sneak/Show) matchup. In the side...well, my sideboard is old so I don't even know if it's still good anymore. I probably need to reconstruct it completely.

I refuse to dig as deep as Spreading Seas requires. I just won't play that card ever, period. As for Tidal Warrior, I know it sounds stupid, but it dies to removal. I don't want my crucial game-ending spell to die to removal.