Hi methadron and welcome to the source. Your list is quite standard and you seems already to know that maybe you misplay at countering something. In order to give you some advice it would be useful to know about your matches.Originally Posted by methadron
thanks for your answer.
First Merfolk isnīt big in Europe, but thereīre a few guys which plays Merfolk.
I played against some random stuff, got a gamelost cause I forget the Vial at the decklist and game two the op was on 4 I had a commander on board and he topdecked a swords
Then I lost against Hive Mind. I lost the counterwar at 6 :(
Merfolk is a deck designed to prey mainly on blue decks, control decks and combo decks. This does not mean that it hasn't game against the other decks, but it's built to fight against optimized lists, so if you play against some random deck you could just loose because you are not prepared for that. If you want a deck with all-around good matchups I advise you play Maverick.
It seems your only creature was the commander: what deck he was playing? Did he killed all of your creatures or you lost them in combat? Or maybe you aggressively used Force of Will pitching merfolks and run out of gas? In some attrition matchups you may want to side out FoW because otherwise you die on card disadvantage. Anyway there is always the possibility to die on opponents topdeck, but you should play immagining your opponent is going to topdeck its best answer, in order to be prepared....
got a gamelost cause I forget the Vial at the decklist and game two the op was on 4 I had a commander on board and he topdecked a swords
...
Maybe your hand was too light on counters (and you should have mulled)? Or your opponent got a gold hand (against combo that happens sometimes)?...
Then I lost against Hive Mind. I lost the counterwar at 6 :(
Iīm not sure it doesnīt look like a deck I know and after all he told me, that he just throw some cards together.
I had a bad draw, I my starting hand was like vial, force, wasteland, island, commander, lord, spell pierce I drawed the next 2 turns only islands
I think he was just lucky to have one more counter than me. It had 2 daze, spellpierce and a force but I made the mistake to return an island for daze without getting mana to play the pierce after all. thats what I mean with missing expirience.
Iīm not sure what starting hand I wanna keep and whatīs a hand to take a mulligan?
That depends on your opponent obviously. For example a hand like your first (vial, force, wasteland, island, commander, lord, spell pierce) is very good against a combo because you have disruption (waste), counters (fow + spell pierce), acceleration (vial) and a clock (lord + commander).
However is less than spectacular against creature deck supported by removal (for example maverick), because you have too few threats (vial, fow that eats you a card and pierce which is suboptimal): I think I would mull this against maverick, specially on the draw (when vial is kind of slow).
The best thing you can do is practice this deck a lot and always use your side in test: merfolk plan is all about disrupting our opponent's plan while applying pressure, and you need to know what are the key spell you have to counter in each matchup.
yeah, thank you. I think thatīs what I need; expirence
2 Islands w/o Vial or Island and Vial are best hands in vacuum.
Then your decision depends if you scouted opponents deck or if it is second game.
Problem ih having 2 Islands in starting hand if people play only 12.
Not that I know of (and I try to look after all merfolk and ur delver results).
So I would also like to see an answer.
I think about cutting the two dissmembe for an additonal Island and one Daze.
I've been trying Merfolks for a while, and after some testing I decided to completely cut the Standstills.
I'm sad about that cause I love this card, but since I've cut them to add 2 Phantasmal image and 1 Daze mainboard, I've considerably improved my matchups against Burn and Tempo Threshold.
Adding Phantasmals and the 4th Daze to maindeck means I have 3 free slots in sideboard, which I filled with 3 Hydroblast/Blue elemental blast.
The hydroblasts of course help a lot against Burn, which is now an average/favorable matchup, while before was negative cause they could win pretty easily even against a Standstill.
I think they will also help against Goblins, but I've not tried that matchup yet.
The only doubt I still have is about adding the 13th Island (21 lands total) for 1 Reejerey, cause the main problem I experienced is not finding the 2nd Island.
Right now my list looks like this:
Lands (21)
4 Wasteland
4 Mutavault
13 Island
Creatures (23)
4 Cursecatcher
2 Phantasmal Image
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
2 Coralhelm Commander
3 Merrow Reejerey
Spells (16)
4 AEther Vial
2 Dismember
2 Spell Pierce
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
Sideboard
1 Phantasmal Image
2 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Spell Pierce
1 Hydroblast
2 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Submerge
Opinions/experiences about adding the 13th island and removing 1 Reejerey?
P.S: sry for my english, I'm italian :)
Why you play the Image MD?
Well, since I didn't want Standstill anymore, I had suddenly 3 mainboard slots to fill with something.
I decided to fill the 1st slot with the 4th Daze: since we try to be a tempo deck with some denial, a full set of Daze seemed a logic choice.
For the other 2 slots I had 2 alternatives: adding 2 Coralhelm commander to play 4 of them, or add 2 Phantasmal image:
- having 4 Commanders didn't seem too good, because they are too mana intensive and 2 of them are the right number imho
- having 2 Phantasmal mainboard, on the other hand, seemed great cause they have a lot of targets (all our lords) and we have another answer to Show & Tell and Reanimator also in game 1. Also, that way I can free some space in sideboard, which I filled with the very useful Hydroblast.
Now, my only doubt on Phantasmals is about using or not the 3rd copy in the sideboard. 3 of them maybe are too many.
I was thinking about cutting the 3rd Phantasmal from sb and adding another Spell pierce, so I can play of full set of them from game 2 against burn or combo decks.
Cut dismember from the main, it's a terrible card that does nothing. It doesn't really help having 2 of them against GW, it's a one side Flame Rift against Canadian ( and sadly you are the one side... ) and since we got a new Lord of Atlantis, we can reliable race Batterskull and don't bad outs against it. It's a mulligan against all the other real decks; it doesn't even shine against random decks because it's again either dead against them or you just beat them by having fat fishes backed up by counterspells like you usually do...
I would suggest playing more creatures. Having nearly 30 of them ( including Muta obv ) sounds like a good plan to hopefully never run out of gas. In the good ole times I was running Vendilion Clique, which I think is still a valid choice - it's not a fish but a 3/1 flyer is decent on it's own, it deals with a lot of random stuff ( Terminus, S&T, Insectile Aberration, Stone Forge , random topdecks and so on ). The sole reason to play it is that it's a threat and disruption in one, which is exactly what the deck needs. The problem is of course turning a vial to 3 or having 3 lands in play - somehow it always worked for me though. I guess I pitched it to Force whenver I wasn't able to cast it :P
Moar lords is another option - probably a 4th Reejerey and a 3rd Coralhelm. Problem is what I stated above - they don't disrupt.
I've heard there is a non merfolk Cursecatcher in RTR. I guess that guy can be decent, but not being a merfolk sometimes makes him a victim. It's only a 2 of though, so I guess def worth a try.
There are a few random options as well, like moving Jitte or Kira into main, but well, thats what they are random. I wish there was a good 1 mana burn spell in blue, Psychic Purge is a funny card in certain metas, but in the end it's just too weak.
Humphrey is always correct.
In the meantime I'm back to the 20 lands build with 4 Reejerey...
I've been thinking about that for a long time, and I came to the conclusion that you are probably right.
If we consider it's utility in the most common matchups, we can find that:
- against all kind of COMBO it's dead
- against Tempo Thresh can be useful against Delver, but taking 4 dmg immediately to destroy a 3-power creature doesn't seem too good
- against Miracles it's dead
- against Stoneblade... well, maybe here it can be of some value for killing a Stoneforge before she can put a Batterskull into play
- against Maverick it's almost dead, they also have Mother to protect from black
- against Death & Taxes can be used to kill Mangara, but they will probably have a Mother already in play, so...
- against Burn or U/R Delver it's worse than dead, it's a mulligan
- against Affinity... I don't know: it can't kill a Champion, probably it can't kill a Master of Etherium neither (it's usually played as 5/5 or more), and using it on small creature is useless; maybe can be good to kill a Stoneforge or a Revoker, but it seems almost dead also in this matchup
...what else?
I found myself sideboarding it out in nearly all matchups, and when I play against Burn it makes me lose game 1 if I draw it.
And you can't even pitch it for Force.
All in all, I'm asking myself why all Merfolks lists include Dismember.
Probably I'll cut them.
You're talking about Judge's Familiar. Yep, not being a Merfolks makes him bad in this deck imho.
To replace the 2 free slots we have from cutting dismember, we could also use a 2x Standstill again... or a 3x if we cut something else, like 1 Daze.
If we prefer following the "more creatures" plan we have some options:
- adding 1/2 Commanders seems weak, as I said earlier: they're too mana intensive
- Vendilion suffers too much from not being a Merfolk imho, and if I have to play some non-merfolk creature I prefer to go with 2x Kira mainboard, cause I find them more useful for our gameplan
- I just had a quick look at gatherer searching for all Merfolks ever printed, and the only ones that could be interesting imho are Wake Thrasher, Lullmage Mentor, Augur of Bolas and Cosi's Trickster: the 3-CC merfolks seems just too slow cause they do nothing the turn they enter the battlefield (unlike Reejerey), while the Trickster seems too situational... but Augur of Bolas can be good, what do you think? Searching for a counter (and we could also do it instant-speed with Vial) seems nice in this deck (we have about 10 targets), while the 3 in defense can help use block annoying threats like Goblin guide.
The other option is going deep on counters RUG-style, playing a full set of Daze, Force and Pierce.
All in all, I probably prefer the "full counters plan": that way I can free another 2 sideboard slots, which can be filled with the 4th grayehard-hate and the 4th Submerge.
Are there other alternatives I've not considered?
Eh, even without being a merfolk judge's familiar is still better than all of your mentioned merfolks. If you can't decide for any more creatures, run 4 Spell Pierce. The goal should be a deck as consistant as possible and 16 counters seem to be a good way to make more hands keepable.
Btw I'm waiting for Gatecrash, Simic guildleder being a merfolk could lead to a cool 1 mana hybrid merfolk... deathrite shaman style or something similar playable.
At least I pray for the long sought after 2nd catcher ;)
Humphrey is always correct.
I hope so as well.
The recent printing of Master of pearl trident maybe means they want to give something else to this tribe for standard/block decks, and 1-CC would be the best imho.
But we can't complain too much: Merfolks is already a really good deck overall :)
Btw, I think some people have already played Cosi trickster... I remember some Merfolks decks running them not much long ago.
It's very situational and I don't think I'll ever play him, but it's not completely unplayable.
If you want to keep Mono-Blue and need removal, Vapor Snag is the way. I've been doing some extensive test with it, and it's pure awesomeness.
My latest list:
Lands [20]
3 Wasteland
4 Mutavault
13 Island
Fish [25]
4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Merrow Rejeerey
3 Coralhelm Commander
2 Merfolk Sovereign
Spells [15]
4 Force of Will
4 Vapor Snag
4 AEther Vial
3 Daze
Sideboard [15]
3 Submerge
3 Spell Pierce
2 Echoing Truth
2 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
Vapor Snag is a full time walk against many decks. Against RUG it shines most, since they'll always replay that Tarmogoyf or Delver you bounced. Same against Maverick. Moreover, it deals with blockers when you can't landwalk. I've even saved my Master of the Pearl Trident from removal by bouncing it, and Vial it in again. The obviously worst target for it is Stoneforge Mystic and the can't touch me Goblin Piledriver.
I've decided to add as many lords and I can, to get full value of combat and Merrow Rejeerey triggers, so that's why those Sovereigns are there. They also pull their weight against non-blue decks with the active ability, but that's a corner case.
Let your Dredge 6 be: Narco, Narco, Narco, Bridge, Bridge, Dread Return
Thereīs no "Thank you Button" so guys thank you so much for all your help.
I've been playing a pretty standard list lately
12 island
4 mutavault
4 wasteland
4 lord of atlantis
4 master of the pearl trident
4 merrow reejerey
2 coralhelm commander
4 curse catcher
4 silvergill adept
4 aether vial
2 Umezawa's jitte
3 standstill
3 daze
3 force of will
3 spell pierce
(My meta changes literally every week, so my sideboard changes too frequently)
Jitte is so much better than dismember IMO, helps against the mirror and really helps us vs decks like maverick and goblins. I also believe cutting Standstill is a mistake, its just so good, it pseudo protects our fish and refills our hand.
Though a friend who is really good with Fish suggested I cut the reejereys and instead add 3 phantasmal image and 1 extra coralhelm commander.
His reasoning was that the vial can be kept at 2, (which is great considering every creature can be vialed in) and the image would become the best creature on the board. Reejerey's 3cmc makes him awkward with the vial (tick it up to 3 to bring him in only to have a dead vial afterwards) and casting him is hard because we want that mana open for mutavaults and standstill, spell pierce, paying for daze etc.
I understand that he can tap down blockers, or untap lands, but just how relevant is that in a format full of blue duals and access to 2 four-of lords that grant island walk?
What do you guys think?
Only 3 Force? I guess you enjoy getting kicked in the balls.
Otherwise you deck looks fine. Not sure if I agree with your friend as long as you run Jitte main... maybe the situation is more rare than I expect it to be, but it still sounds weird. The only way to find out is to test it, in theory a curve that ends at 2 doesn't sound that bad.
Humphrey is always correct.
I used to run four, but I found myself pitching more forces to forces or pitching fish to force, and I didn't like it.
I haven't missed the 4th force yet and I've faced my share of combo. And force is only worth the card disadvantage against decks that have crucial pieces. Against heavy aggro and burn decks, they usually get sided out. It's the age-old "just how good is force" debate.
At any rate, with the standstills and silvergills, I draw what I need when I need it.
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