I like the idea of putting the Jittes on mainboard, cause they are always useful.Originally Posted by Greatest Gargadon
Maybe I could play 2 pierces and 2 Jittes with other 2 pierces sideboard instead of 4 Pierces mainboard.
The main reason I cut them was after I considered their usefulness in the Burn matchups.
Theoretically Standstill should be a bomb here, but I realized they just make it pop, let us draw 3 cards, then simply proceed to win. They don't care at all about our 3 card advantage when they are a few more burn spells to kill us, cause we can't out-counter them forever. Instead, they are happy we tapped out without casting a threat or leaving mana open for a pierce.
Standstill simply slows us down in that matchup, and I really think a Spell pierce is just better than it.
And in the RUG matchup?
It's pretty useless as well, since they have more denial than us and their board state will probably be better than ours when we should cast Standstill.
Against combo we can play 12 counters and we have a pretty fast clock, so we should be in a good spot also without Standstills.
I feel Standstill right now is in most cases just a waste of 2 mana, which could be used to cast a Lord or to keep that mana open for a counter.
Since I cut standstill to play more counters/creatures my matchups have improved a lot, so I don't think I'll look back for them.
I think Reejereys are still very good, but maybe 4 copies are too many in some cases.
I wouldn't cut them completely, cause 3 Images would be too many (what if we have only them in hand with nothing to copy?) and also 3 Commanders are not the right number imho, 2 is great for both of them.
Reejerey should be 3 or 4 imho, not less cause we have no valid substitutes and we don't want to lower our creature count.
Last edited by anakyn; 10-26-2012 at 08:34 AM.
Trying to keep the OP accurate...
Has Dismember fallen out of favor for some reason?
"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."
Well it costs 4 life to avoid getting beaten by a creature dealing 2-4 damage. I never liked dismember for this reason.
- It's terrible vs burn
- It puts us in a bad position against goblins and the mirror, and maverick can just hide behind their mommies.
- The go-to creature in most control decks now a days is batterskull. Dismembering a germ token is just..it feels bad, man, they return batterskull, and then cast it again. I know i know, that we shouldn't be letting stoneforge resolve but lets be real, we won't always have the counter and there will be times where we have to bend backwards to deal with it or just straight up race.
- It is 100% useless vs combo.
I look at Umezawa's Jitte, and it:
- keeps me out of burn range
- pops goblins since their dudes are 1/1s
- is better in the mirror
- Mom can't protect her crap-faced hierarchs from jitte =P
- it is a better "worst-case scenario" against a resolved batterskull.
- you don't lose more life than an unblocked attacker would do.
- it is a headache for combo. You can stay out of tendrils range and you can pump your creatures to speed up the clock.
Jitte is a one-way ticket to value town and we're riding there in first class with those fancy towels for your head.
So I played a 24 player tournament today. Final standing 3:2. The 2 lost games were goblins. I lost both games 2:1 I've no idea what to play in sideboard against them. Any suggestions?
I have most of the pieces of this deck from last year. Everyone thinks I don't have the pieces anymore. I'm planning on bringing this deck as a surprise factor (my meta currently is Miracles/Stoneblade/Engine Combo (AnT/Spiral Tide/Elves)). Graveyard decks currently are doing bad since a couple of people are running Rest in Peace and the graveyard deck players are scared (they've switched with Storm).
With this meta, what is the best list to pilot? Should I go with Standstill? Also, I don't have two Jittes (only one). Would Sword of Fire and Ice be a good alternative? Thanks in advance!
I am convinced that WotC is "dumbing" the game because of all the stupid posts they come across on MTG-related forums
I think MD Stifle would be nice in the Meta, although I have no experience with Standstill. I would like to hear the debate between them. 1-of Jitte is definitely fine and the Sword is quite weak in Merfolk. SB Envelop is very powerful in this meta.
On the Sep 2011 Ban List Updates,
I've never heard of people using swords in Fish, you're in some uncharted territory. It could be good, but I'm a little skeptical. The power of jitte is the ability to keep the board relatively clear, the other swords don't accomplish that as well as jitte.
If burn is giving you trouble, use chill. It's like a swift punch to the jaw for red.
As for standstill, I think people are looking at it in the wrong light. I don't think we should look at it as a bomb, or some game changing thing. It is simply another part of our deck that helps us get stuff. Our creatures don't do much except pump, we don't have crazy exalted, tutoring, library manipulating, land fetching creatures. We need standstill for gas.
- It draws us cards, drawing three cards is always useful, even if you draw three lands off it, you just saved yourself three
turns of disappointment.
- If your opponent breaks it, you're 3 cards ahead, no matter what he broke it with, you now have more resources to deal with
it
- there is almost no draw back to resolved standstill when you have vial out. (T1: Island, vial. T2: land, standstill) That is just
bad news for combo and weenie decks like zoo that need to get their beats in quickly.
- You can pitch it to FOW =P
Of course playing Standstill after Vial is a bomb, but having a resolved Vial out 1st turn doesn't happen that often.
If you are on the draw they can Duress it or Spell pierce/Daze it, if you are on play they can Force it (if they are smart enough), and sometimes you just don't see it.
And when you have no Vial out, imho in most situation you prefer to cast a Lord instead of Standstill.
As any other non-land, non-vial card in our deck :D
I once ran only 3 Forces in a different deck ( which had a nice mixture of other counters and discard ) and I never had the force when I needed it. Like seriously, I decreased my chances of responding to broken stuff by 25% and I suffered from it. Never ever again I will go under 4 maindeck force in any given blue deck again - having it in the opener is just so important. Otherwise you will throw away percentages against garbage like Belcher, and who really wants that?
Also, I think you underestimate the role of Force in Merfolk. Tapping out while countering spells is the sole reason this deck is as good as it is. The only deck I can think of were I would take out more than 1 Force is Goblins ( maybe against GW as well ) and I can tell you that it def is a mistake to take them out against burn. You even play standstill, which is a perfect example for why you need to play 4 Force: Either you have an abundance of cards thanks to drawing 3 and can easily pitch something, or you will never have the time or boardstate to play standstill and can pitch the useless card to counter the opponents shenanigans.
Also, Terminus. I've heard a 1 mana wrath easily gets around the taxcounters...
Regarding 3 mana equipment ( aka swords of bla and blubb ): I don't think the deck can afford to play a 3 mana noncreature card. 21 lands without cantrips make it unlikely to consistent draw the lands in time, also some of them will waste something or get wasted. Then let's think about against which decks you would want to bring in equip: it most likely creature decks and control decks. Against creature decks Jitte should be more versatile. Against control I could see the swords shining though - they make every donk a serious threat and either get around Jace or Stop / tokens. Of course the game shouldn't go that far that you would actually need a card like that, but reality is not the magicial dream land and some games end really awkward. There are probably better tools to fight control, but boarding in swords doesn't sound that weird.
Humphrey is always correct.
Why do people still play Merfolk?
It has an incredibly hard time against Goblins, a lesser tough time against Maverick, and most often loses to Terminus. That's 60% of the DTB forum right there.
West side
Find me on MTGO as Koby or rukcus -- @MTGKoby on Twitter
* Maverick is dead. Long live Maverick!
My Legacy stream
My MTG Blog - Work in progress
That's a pretty strong argument. I'll cut a spell pierce down to 2, and up the force count to 4. I haven't been liking it too much lately.
I've never been too worried against burn because I keep an abundance of Chill in my sideboard. But I see what you're getting at, and I'm going to take your advice when I play this week.
What do you guys think of Propaganda for the goblin matchup? They can't deal with enchantments like that, it should keep them from beating us down until we can get some coralhelms up in the air.
Red decks have the best sideboard cards in format: Red Elemental Blast and/or Pyroblast for stuff like Chill, Propaganda, Jace, Counterbalance...
But with a resolved chill it costs them 3 mana, in a deck that runs 20ish lands, and 12 don't produce colors, and we have counters to make sure it resolves.
Its a lot better than saying "owell" and praying to not get roflstomped.
hello
first of all, sorry for my english!
i play form some monthes, merfolk ur,
and i think this deck need red, for don t lose almost all time against goblin or elves, and maverick too
i play just 2-3 volcanic, and i tried main bolt, and really nice, but now i paly main 3x fire-ice, and i must say, that this card is really strong, because is good for kill maybe 2 creatures, but is strong for draw 1card too,
and is very good play red, for sideboard,
i play 4x piroclasm,
piroclasm kills all goblin, elves, and mother,ranger,thalia,noble,
i think with ur,the good match up of deck, are the same, but go much better, against goblin, elves, and in general aggro!!
I agree with you that Merfolk can really use the additional burn/removal. Then I start to wonder, since I'm going UR anyways, would I be better off just playing UR Delver-Burn instead of 'Folk? Answer; probably.
Only the heroic and the mad follow mountain goat trails.
Did anybody tried carry away against stoneforge?
This is probably a question that's been answered a lot before, but I haven't found a satisfactory answer in the thread yet. Why doesn't this deck play fetchlands, just like Goblins? You don't have any way to filter out excess lands (Brainstorm mainly), and your draw spells are pretty set, making excess lands drawn at the end of the game pretty bad. Goblins would play fetchlands almost exclusively to thin the deck back in the day. Why doesn't Merfolk? Is Stifle really something that you're worried about?
We don't do this.
Super Bizarros Team. Beating everything with small green dudes and big waves.
...Thanks for your well thought-out and measured response. I was specifically asking what the reason might be for not doing it, as other tribal decks (Goblins, Elves) feel that the benefits involved in deck-thinning outweigh the potential downsides of getting a land Stifled. They did this long before they even splashed any colors.
The deck thinning property of fetchlands is a fallacy. At best, and over the course of a long game, you're only going to see 2% improvement on your draws. Goblins play fetchlands for splashes, and those are justified here too when splashing black / red. The base blue build does not want nor need fetchlands.
West side
Find me on MTGO as Koby or rukcus -- @MTGKoby on Twitter
* Maverick is dead. Long live Maverick!
My Legacy stream
My MTG Blog - Work in progress
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote