Now that Delver isn't everywhere anymore, I want to try playing 4 Standstill in the 75, just to see how it does. With this constraint, how do you all think the deck should be built?
If you want to play around with Standstills you need to go back to the old full-tempo lists with 4x wasteland or the landstill variant with 4 mishra's factory (in addition to the mutavaults, of course). You need 3-4 dazes and can't play chalice. Chalice is bad in two ways with Standstill - it competes directly in slots with Standstill, and is a bad draw off of standstill when you need disruption you can use immediately. This need to play Daze also mandates 12 islands (maaaybe 11 but that's pushing it), which means you can't play Cavern. This is me basically describing the evolution of the deck in reverse.
Not running Chalice or Cavern naturally makes you *much* weaker against Miracles and is at best a wash vs. grixis delver (which is still out there in full force). It's also probably a wash vs. eldrazi, with the *factory* version actually being the stronger build vs. them and not the wasteland one. This is probably rather strange with the traditional wisdom saying that wasteland is very strong vs. them (and it *is*), but the thing about their giant pile of 2-mana lands is that they often only need 1 use to do busted things. The extra body and the pump ability provided by Factory is often better for managing complicated combats.
Sooo yeah I still very much do not like Standstill but it's probably valuable for you to fool around with it and experience the positives and negatives yourself.
Cutting the Faerie Macabre for something that is not also grave hate is very dangerous. The places in your board you can seriously mess around with are the drake, 1 jitte, 1 BtB, and the 2 submerge.
Don't try too hard to win against goblins. It's just not worth weakening your deck against other stuff to make a practically unwinnable matchup marginally less unwinnable (but still really really really bad). If you find that you just can't avoid goblins consistently.. then sorry, merfolk is just the wrong deck to bring to the room. When I first started playing legacy, I was in a similar position against our local D&T player (who has now moved away), he was the best player in the room so it was unavoidable to face him if I did well. Even though it was objectively wrong for me to play merfolk at that time, it was the only deck I had, and the experience of playing against him so often did a lot to really improve my game.
It's a mild form of hate, better at annoying Dredge and Reanimator than Tarmogoyf (and Gurmag Angler (and Deathrite Shaman (and Grim Lavamancer (and Riftstone Portal (and cards with Delirium and Threshold))))). Preventing them from having a graveyard is always better than preventing them from doing things with their graveyard.
This time I adjusted my list to have a little big more game against Infect. Also running the 1-of Daze in the main over Jitte, just to mix it up and make people in my LGS play around it against me when it won't be in my deck. I never drew it though. Next time I'll bring one of those 4 Daze lists!
Round 1 vs Goblins (0-2)
G1: On the play I open with island, go. I choose to answer his T1 Lackey with Echoing Truth-->TNN figuring this is safer than planing to block with a Lord because of Tarfire and Warren Weirding. Unfortunately, his T2 is double Lackey. I make my TNN and he suicides one of his Lackey into it to put Matron on the table. This in turn gets him a Piledriver which he casts with Cavern. I try to counter-attack with double Lord but he Tarfires one while the other is on the stack. He then untaps, Gempalm the second lord, swings for 7 and put enough goblins on the board for a lethal Piledriver attack on the next turn.
SB: +1 Warping Wail, +2 Dismember, +1 Jitte, +1 Pithing Needle*, -4 Chalice of the Void, -1 Vendilion Clique
*Goblins is a horrendous matchup and we need variance to go our way somehow to win. I figure Pithing Needle on Vial to screw him is one way to make this happen. But Needle can always name Krenko or Sharpshooter. I'm not desperate enough to bring in Back to Basics!
G2: This game I mull to 6 and he mulls to 5. My hand is Dismember, Warping Wail, TNN, Phantasmal Image, Mutavault, Island. I like my chances! Turns out my opponent has no T1 play either. T2 I make Silvergil revealing TNN so he Ports my Mutavault on T3, denying me the mana to summon the infamous Merfolk Rogue. His T4 is Matron for Piledriver so I make my TNN on my T4 and put him to 15 with Silvergil. He then goes Warchief, Piledriver, swing with Piledriver + Matron for 3 unblockable dmg. TNN eats Matron. On my turn I decimate his board with Dismember + Warping Wail. The score is 10-13. Back to my opponent he again makes Warchief + Piledriver (!) and attacks me to 8. Now here I have a critical decision to make. My hand contains 2 Phantasmal Images and I have 3 Island and a Mutavault to cast them. I opted to make 2 TNN and swing with one, leaving 2 TNN and a Silvergil on D, figuring (a) he needs to swing with Piledriver + 4 Goblins to kill me, and (b) I have lethal on the crackback. Given that he had only 2 cards in hand and 4 mana, I think this gamble favors me. I lost that bet however because he went "cycle Gempalm on Silvergil into Lackey+Prospector" and this is 8 dmg exactly. The other lines involve copying Warchief or holding up Muta to keep the Piledriver in check but it's not clear at all that one of these lines is strictly better because the main way my opponent will trump the line I took involves Matron (ex: Matron into War Marshal), but Matron also trumps all the other lines. Additionally, the slower lines are more likely to lose to Ringleader, which is what he is most likely holding imo.
Round 2 vs hyper casual deck (2-0)
So, as he explained to me after the match, this guy was playing a mono red deck trying to assemble Desperate Ritual + Lava Spike + Izzet Guildmage + 6 mana. You cast Lava Spike, then you splice the ritual onto it and you copy this "boosted Lava Spike" with the guildmage. As the copy resolve, you get the mana to copy the original spell again. Voila.
Round 3 vs Grixis Delver (2-1)
G1: For a while I think he's on Shardless BUG because he starts slow with a pair of DRS fetching Underground and Trop but I hold on to my Chalice until I know for sure. Eventually he fetches Volc and starts bolting. Chalice gets Forced but then I start dropping a lot more lords than he can handle.
SB: -4 Force of Will, +2 Dismember, +1 Warping Wail, +1 Umezawa's Jitte.
G2: Here the Grixis deck just does its thing and it is me who is overwhelmed: DRS into Young Pyro with Force for my Dismember, Delver + slew of tokens joins the fray, etc.
G3: Your typical "Chalice 1, I win." game.
Note: G3 he made no attempt at hiding that he was siding out 4 cards. Unless you're trying to next level your opponent, I think you should be more subtle with your SB-ing when you're playing with Daze.
Round 4 vs UWR Delver
G1: He Ponder-shuffles on T1 then on T2 we trade Forces over a Chalice on 1. He scoops in frustration his hand of Bolts and Swords.
SB: I really wasn't sure what to side out against this. +1 Back to Basics, +2 Dismember, +1 Pithing Needle, -4 Cursecatcher (didnt't feel like doing the Jitte thing, lol)
G2: That was a pretty intense game. I led with Vial into Lord, and his first non durdle-y play was a TNN on T3. On my T3, I made a Silvergil and copied his TNN. T4 he made Jitte but had no 4th land to equip, so I got in quite a bit of dmg before the Jitte went active, making another Silvergil and a Clique in the process. Clique revealed Force, Daze, Meddling Mage, Delver and I let him keep it all. Long story short, after his Jitte took out my Lord, our creatures traded and his life was oscillating btw 3 and 1 due to Jitte and TNN. The critical point in the game was when 2 of his 3 lands were tapped and I put Back to Basics on the stack. At this point, Jitte had pretty much stabilized because he was at 2 with a Meddling Mage on Echoing Truth against my TNN + Mutavault. He was going to net +1 life a turn until he could alpha with the counters. Instead he envisioned the worst case scenario and chose to Force, going down to 1 and slowing down his plan by a whole turn effectively. Personally, I like the middle ground of Dazing here, just to virtually untap a land. So I ended up wining because I topdecked a Lord and swung which forced him to use 2 of his 3 Jitte counters to kill the Lord, then block the Muta but then TNN is exactly lethal.
Round 5 vs Jund (1-2)
G1: He oponent wins the roll, looks at his 7, sighs, then says "We'll try it, unconvinced" and leads Taiga, go. So of course I waste no time wasting his Taiga. He dropped a Grove and proceeded to get land screwed and scooped. One more game win and I'm locked in for top 4!
SB: +2 Dismember, +1 Warping Wail, +2 Back to Basics, +2 Submerge, +3 Relic of Progenitus, -4 Aether Vial, -4 Cursecatcher, -1 Force of Will, -1 Chalice of the Void (I wanted to try Chalice against Jund because I know they usually bring in a large number of blasts)
G1: A very strange game. Neither of us had any business. Interestingly, my opponent thought Merfolk was the match to bring in Surgical Extraction. Then he started using Abrupt Decay on my Relics. Frustratingly, I was unable to capitalize on the weirdness as I drew 7 basic Island into double Back to Basics before he finally Bloodbraided into Liliana.
G2: Amazingly, this game was much of the same. I kept a 6 with Silvergil, Force, Master, Relic, Chalice, Wasteland. I ended up drawing and cycling my 3 relics in the early turns of the game to find a colored mana source. Meanwhile I had to pitch Master to Force a Sylvan Library on T2. The Silvergil ended up getting Hymned and the only creature I saw for the rest of the game was a Clique (promptly surgically extracted of course).
I've been liking Daze a lot, but running them means I had to cut down on Cavern of Souls. In my testing, my Merfolk haven't been getting countered often, especially with Aether Vial, so I'm not unhappy about having to cut them. Only time I really want Cavern is when I'm up against Miracles. I've been liking Spreading Seas and the one extra Wasteland in the side, because I've been playing against a lot of Lands / Punishing Jund / Eldrazi.
What are some other good SB options against Eldrazi?
Eldrazi is not a concern. We're both fundamentally stompy decks, but we've got more and better interaction for them than they have for us. That said, Dismember is the best sideboard card against them.
I don't like Day's Undoing at all. If you want card draw, just play a JTMS. TNN does a very solid Moat impression and chalice protects him from red blasts, so it's actually pretty difficult for decks to take him down (and especially the decks where you would want to side him in).
Hey Tuxdev, want to share any insights you have on our deck? Specifically vs Death & Taxes? My local shop has multiple D&T players, 2 regular maverick players, some storm now and then, and BUG decks consistently, also ofc there is Eldrazi.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"It's not a matter of deserving. It's a matter of strength. The power to hold versus the power to take."
-Sygg, River Cutthroat
Yeah so that is my current plan, I have just been trying to iron out some additional ways to make the match-up more favorable whether through lines of play or construction.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"It's not a matter of deserving. It's a matter of strength. The power to hold versus the power to take."
-Sygg, River Cutthroat
The #1 card to have in your sideboard vs. D&T is Null Rod. It shuts down several crucial lines of play, particularly the most devastating lines they have against us (mostly involving SoFaI). I generally agree with Magicman's advice. Matchup is very hard.
I'm sad to make this recommendation, but in that kind of meta with so many nonblue fair stoneforge decks around, Merfolk is the wrong deck and you should not play it. Even the BUG decks are a big problem due to meta splash damage, as they'll want to play more Toxic Deluge than usual with so many fair creature decks in the room.
If you're still wanting to press forward despite the odds, I think Warping Wail is a solid option to consider. I know I tried and cut it from my own build, but like I've said, it was not due to the power of the card itself. Wail is especially good vs. D&T while still being relevant in almost every matchup in some way. Another thing to think about is to make an extremely hard meta-read and shave/cut Cursecatchers. I've been fooling around with Tidal Warrior lately with decent success and your meta looks extremely prime for it, that's what I'd recommend replacing the Cursecatchers with. Merrow Reejerey is also good against nonblue decks and the "hand dump" that it can enable is one of our best ways to steal wins out of nowhere that we desperately need.
A couple of niche options that I've tried is Razorfin Hunter and Leech Bonder. 4x caverns and vials makes the red mana requirement for Hunter not at all an issue. These guys can help contain the board while still being feet on the ground when you want to be aggressive and don't need their abilities, rather than a purely reactive card like Wail is.
Magicman657 and Tuxdev, you two are real bosses! I'm at a clear disadvantage if I run the traditional Merfolk lists for sure, so I really appreciate the input!
I also have Burn currently, and I'm just a few City of Traitors short of Eldrazi so I'll be expanding my Legacy options a bit. I could pretty easily get Infect and/or UR Delver going, too. I am a true Blue believer in the Fish, however, so I'll focus on it for now.
Null Rod is a house, I'll be picking up a few of those asap. Until I acquire them, I will likely run a Manriki-Gusari sb, seems really good here. Tidal Warrior is something I was planning on going with, it definitely adds a new element to the deck that sounds like it would help a whole lot. Warping Wail will be in my 75, funnily enough I hadn't thought about it vs D&T, though.. Way better than a Daze in that matchup lol Cutting some number of Cursecatchers feels like blasphemy, but it may well be the best move in my meta.
Leech Bonder and Razorfin are ones I'll keep in my back pocket for now until I get some more data in, but I can definitely see how they could round out your options a bit.. Razorfin in particular could be really tilting haha
Last time I boldly anounced that I was going to play 4 Dazes at my LGS's september Legacy montly. I chickened out at the last minute and only put 2 in my deck. But this time around I drew them a lot.
Round 1 vs Miracles (2-0 on the play)
G1: I T1 Vial into T2 Chalice while he uses his T1 to Ponder. I thought I had this in the bag but a T3 Mentor from him made thing interesting. However, he then blindflips Terminus on his next draw step and opts to pays W (!). His best bet was surely to dump his hand of cantrips into the Chalice and try to race.
G2: My opponent plays T1 Ponder and T2 Counterbalance (!). I'm sure the devastating T2 Chalice of last game is fresh in his memory and there's a decent chance that there's a 2 on top. However, there is also a high probability that my opponent has a way to put a 2 on top next turn so I take my chances and put a Chalice on the stack with a casting cost of 2. It resolves and my opponent's only sign of resistance after this came in the form of a hardcast Terminus to which I replied with Echoing Truth on my TNN + eot Clique and that's all she wrote.
After the match, my opponent said he's had great sucess with the deck in the past but that he was rusty with it, and also that he had never played the Merfolk matchup before.
Round 2 vs UB Omnishow (2-0 on the play)
Essentially, this is the mono U Omnishow deck with a black splash for Lim-Dul's Vault. This guys also had some maindeck Thoughtseizes and Divining Tops.
G1: I start by putting 2 Vials into play while my opponent is busy cantripping. These soon produce 3 Silvergil Adepts while my opponent is still just durdling. With some help from his fetchlands, I have my opponent on 13 when he Thoughtseizes me to see Lord, Lord, Image, Clique. He scoops upon realizing he can't stop 3 4/3 Silvergils from attacking him next turn.
G2: I keep a slow hand with lots of permission. On T3 he has Island, Island, Ancient Tomb on the board and plays a cantrip. "I know it, it's gonna happen...." Show and Tell? Daze! He tries again later and this one is met with Warping Wail. The critical turn comes when I put Vendilion Clique on the stack and my opponent responds with Brainstorm. I Force Brainstorm (pitching Force) and my opponent punts badly by Forcing the Clique (pitching Cunning Wish)...which was cast off of Cavern of Wizards (!) :/ So he shows me his 1 card hand of "Omniscience" and I let him keep it (!). This is very dumb because my opponent just invested his whole hand into protecting this Omniscience and he has a Top in play so he knows the top of his library. Sure enough, Omniscience is Shown into play on the next turn but by then he's at 2 life and he has nothing better to do but flip Top to cast Lim Dul's Vault which does nothing 'cause he then has no more ways to draw. Missplay, don't get punished. This is how I roll.
Round 3 vs ANT (2-0 on the play)
G1: Duress is cast T1 revealing Cursecatcher, Cursecatcher, Force, Force, Island, Island, Vial. Apparently the 2 Cursecatchers were too oppresive for my opponent's poor draws because he scooped a few turns later without a fight.
Having not played Legacy since the last monthly, I failed to realize Duress means my opponent is on Storm (!), so I sideboarded "in the dark" for some random combo deck.
What I would have done had I put my opponent on ANT: +1 Spell Pierce, +1 Warping Wail, +1 Clique, +3 Relic, +1 Cage, -4 TNN, -2 LoA, -1 Master.
G2: I again assemble a board with 2 Cursecatcher along with some Lords putting up serious pressure. Meanwhile an early Probe from my opponent sees I am holding Force. After some durdling from my opponent, I feel he is close to assembling all the pieces he needs and I choose to use my Force on a Brainstorm before it's too late. Despite all the cantripping, my opponent is on only 2 lands when he makes his first move and throws an Infernal Tutor at my Cursecatchers. I bite and counter because this usually means they're gonna fetch a second LED or Ritual and then the Cursecatchers are useless. Next turn my opponent has a third land and casts Cabal Ritual (with Threshold) holding Island up. I use my second Cursecatcher to take away his U and he draws into oblivion with Ad Nauseam from 7 life.
Round 4 vs Aggro Loam with Burning Wish (2-0 on the draw)
According to my opponent, it used to be common for people to play Aggro Loam with 4 Burning Wish. Nowdays these have been replaced with more Bobs, Abrupt Decays and Sylvan Libraries.
G1: My opponent Mulls to 5 but has T2 Bob and I can't bounce my only permanent fast enough to trade it for Daze. His hand has nothing else of note but he manages to get a nice draw engine going with Loam + 2 cycle lands. This ends up being too slow for my army of True Names as I Force a Knight.
G2: Poor chap mulls to 5 again but he's got more game this time. T3 Liliana eats my Silvergil. T4 he drops Library and I discard Clique to Liliana. Eot Clique #2 takes Lilly #2 from this hand leaving him with only 1 nonland card in hand. Clique eats Lilly and more fishes join the party. He Wishes for Toxic Deluge and casts it on the next turn but I have triple TNN in hand to rebuild and topdeck the Dismember for his Knight right on cue. So yea. Who needs library manipulation?
As the only 4-0 player I am top seed cutting to Top 4 but I have to leave.
This is my impression as well. My record against them is 2-11 and I suspect the actual odds of winning are worse than this. It is by far our worst matchup and we just have to hope to (a) draw our sideboard cards and that (b) their draws line up well against our hate. Then we have to repeat this feat, this time on the draw. :/
Just accept that you can't beat them. Not even the Saito route of 2011 would do work nowadays. Elves just poses too many problems and can attack on too many different axis. You can't race them, because you are rather slow at building up a board and they don't run any islands (and even if they do, they have Quirion to put them back) and you can't counter there shenanigans because they have either too much redundancy or Cavern of Souls. Chalice doesn't work, their spells are quite varied these days and Green Suns + Natural Order give them too many outs. Engineered Plague and others are just too slow, once you get these down they can easily tutor up an answer or they just Decay it and rebuild anyway. Just hope to dodge it. Elves is one of the few decks in Legacy that Merfolk just can't beat.
Eh, it's a bad matchup but I don't think it's THAT bad. You will have some games where you have no chance, but some where you can win and sometimes you can get the match. It's in the 20-30% range at least, I'd say. Chalice won't shut them out of the game, but it can sometimes slow them down enough to allow you to become the beatdown (you cannot be control against them, you have to find a way to get a tempo advantage). Force of Will can be used against a GSZ or Natural Order, and if you can survive long enough to put a Jitte on a True-Name Nemesis, you can win that way. Will that happen every time? No. Will a good/great draw from Elves beat pretty much anything from Merfolk? Probably. But you can definitely win the matchup SOME of the time. That said, if you expect to face Elves multiple times in a tournament, this deck is not going to be the ideal choice.
Sorry, but no. It's an unfavorable matchup, but nowhere close to the 20-80 miracles vs. 12-post style horribleness. It's more like 40-60 at worst with Chalice and 30-70 without Chalice. Personally, I've actually had even-to-slightly-favorable results against Elves somewhat recently. There's zero margin for error and you need to have an extremely solid understanding of what they are capable of, but that's the case for any bad matchup.
Elves cannot actually attack from as many angles as you believe they can, especially if there's a chalice down. What matters the most is to not Just Lose to a fast Natural Order, from that point there's lots of angles we can take to squeeze out a win. Not every GSZ or Glimpse is a must-counter, and it's crucial to recognize when you should and should not counter them. If we want to talk fair side of the game, our fair game utterly crushes their fair game.
Not running Chalice or Cavern naturally makes you *much* weaker against Miracles and is at best a wash vs. grixis delver (which is still out there in full force). It's also probably a wash vs. eldrazi, with the *factory* version actually being the stronger build vs. them and not the wasteland one. This is probably rather strange with the traditional wisdom saying that wasteland is very strong vs. them (and it *is*), but the thing about their giant pile of 2-mana lands is that they often only need 1 use to do busted things. The extra body and the pump ability provided by Factory is often better for managing complicated combats.
Sooo yeah I still very much do not like Standstill but it's probably valuable for you to fool around with it and experience the positives and negatives yourself.
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Don't try too hard to win against goblins. It's just not worth weakening your deck against other stuff to make a practically unwinnable matchup marginally less unwinnable (but still really really really bad). If you find that you just can't avoid goblins consistently.. then sorry, merfolk is just the wrong deck to bring to the room. When I first started playing legacy, I was in a similar position against our local D&T player (who has now moved away), he was the best player in the room so it was unavoidable to face him if I did well. Even though it was objectively wrong for me to play merfolk at that time, it was the only deck I had, and the experience of playing against him so often did a lot to really improve my game.
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2) Use the right number of each card.
3) Know your probabilities.
4) Print your deck lists; make yourself and your judges happier.
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This time I adjusted my list to have a little big more game against Infect. Also running the 1-of Daze in the main over Jitte, just to mix it up and make people in my LGS play around it against me when it won't be in my deck. I never drew it though. Next time I'll bring one of those 4 Daze lists!
4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
3 Phantasmal Image
4 True-Name Nemesis
2 Vendilion Clique
Artifacts
4 AEther Vial
4 Chalice of the Void
12 Island
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Mutavault
1 Wasteland
Instants
4 Force of Will
1 Echoing Truth
1 Daze
1 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Wasteland
1 Warping Wail
2 Back to Basics
2 Dismember
3 Relic of Progenitus
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Submerge
1 Pithing Needle
Round 1 vs Goblins (0-2)
G1: On the play I open with island, go. I choose to answer his T1 Lackey with Echoing Truth-->TNN figuring this is safer than planing to block with a Lord because of Tarfire and Warren Weirding. Unfortunately, his T2 is double Lackey. I make my TNN and he suicides one of his Lackey into it to put Matron on the table. This in turn gets him a Piledriver which he casts with Cavern. I try to counter-attack with double Lord but he Tarfires one while the other is on the stack. He then untaps, Gempalm the second lord, swings for 7 and put enough goblins on the board for a lethal Piledriver attack on the next turn.
SB: +1 Warping Wail, +2 Dismember, +1 Jitte, +1 Pithing Needle*, -4 Chalice of the Void, -1 Vendilion Clique
*Goblins is a horrendous matchup and we need variance to go our way somehow to win. I figure Pithing Needle on Vial to screw him is one way to make this happen. But Needle can always name Krenko or Sharpshooter. I'm not desperate enough to bring in Back to Basics!
G2: This game I mull to 6 and he mulls to 5. My hand is Dismember, Warping Wail, TNN, Phantasmal Image, Mutavault, Island. I like my chances! Turns out my opponent has no T1 play either. T2 I make Silvergil revealing TNN so he Ports my Mutavault on T3, denying me the mana to summon the infamous Merfolk Rogue. His T4 is Matron for Piledriver so I make my TNN on my T4 and put him to 15 with Silvergil. He then goes Warchief, Piledriver, swing with Piledriver + Matron for 3 unblockable dmg. TNN eats Matron. On my turn I decimate his board with Dismember + Warping Wail. The score is 10-13. Back to my opponent he again makes Warchief + Piledriver (!) and attacks me to 8. Now here I have a critical decision to make. My hand contains 2 Phantasmal Images and I have 3 Island and a Mutavault to cast them. I opted to make 2 TNN and swing with one, leaving 2 TNN and a Silvergil on D, figuring (a) he needs to swing with Piledriver + 4 Goblins to kill me, and (b) I have lethal on the crackback. Given that he had only 2 cards in hand and 4 mana, I think this gamble favors me. I lost that bet however because he went "cycle Gempalm on Silvergil into Lackey+Prospector" and this is 8 dmg exactly. The other lines involve copying Warchief or holding up Muta to keep the Piledriver in check but it's not clear at all that one of these lines is strictly better because the main way my opponent will trump the line I took involves Matron (ex: Matron into War Marshal), but Matron also trumps all the other lines. Additionally, the slower lines are more likely to lose to Ringleader, which is what he is most likely holding imo.
Round 2 vs hyper casual deck (2-0)
So, as he explained to me after the match, this guy was playing a mono red deck trying to assemble Desperate Ritual + Lava Spike + Izzet Guildmage + 6 mana. You cast Lava Spike, then you splice the ritual onto it and you copy this "boosted Lava Spike" with the guildmage. As the copy resolve, you get the mana to copy the original spell again. Voila.
Round 3 vs Grixis Delver (2-1)
G1: For a while I think he's on Shardless BUG because he starts slow with a pair of DRS fetching Underground and Trop but I hold on to my Chalice until I know for sure. Eventually he fetches Volc and starts bolting. Chalice gets Forced but then I start dropping a lot more lords than he can handle.
SB: -4 Force of Will, +2 Dismember, +1 Warping Wail, +1 Umezawa's Jitte.
G2: Here the Grixis deck just does its thing and it is me who is overwhelmed: DRS into Young Pyro with Force for my Dismember, Delver + slew of tokens joins the fray, etc.
G3: Your typical "Chalice 1, I win." game.
Note: G3 he made no attempt at hiding that he was siding out 4 cards. Unless you're trying to next level your opponent, I think you should be more subtle with your SB-ing when you're playing with Daze.
Round 4 vs UWR Delver
G1: He Ponder-shuffles on T1 then on T2 we trade Forces over a Chalice on 1. He scoops in frustration his hand of Bolts and Swords.
SB: I really wasn't sure what to side out against this. +1 Back to Basics, +2 Dismember, +1 Pithing Needle, -4 Cursecatcher (didnt't feel like doing the Jitte thing, lol)
G2: That was a pretty intense game. I led with Vial into Lord, and his first non durdle-y play was a TNN on T3. On my T3, I made a Silvergil and copied his TNN. T4 he made Jitte but had no 4th land to equip, so I got in quite a bit of dmg before the Jitte went active, making another Silvergil and a Clique in the process. Clique revealed Force, Daze, Meddling Mage, Delver and I let him keep it all. Long story short, after his Jitte took out my Lord, our creatures traded and his life was oscillating btw 3 and 1 due to Jitte and TNN. The critical point in the game was when 2 of his 3 lands were tapped and I put Back to Basics on the stack. At this point, Jitte had pretty much stabilized because he was at 2 with a Meddling Mage on Echoing Truth against my TNN + Mutavault. He was going to net +1 life a turn until he could alpha with the counters. Instead he envisioned the worst case scenario and chose to Force, going down to 1 and slowing down his plan by a whole turn effectively. Personally, I like the middle ground of Dazing here, just to virtually untap a land. So I ended up wining because I topdecked a Lord and swung which forced him to use 2 of his 3 Jitte counters to kill the Lord, then block the Muta but then TNN is exactly lethal.
Round 5 vs Jund (1-2)
G1: He oponent wins the roll, looks at his 7, sighs, then says "We'll try it, unconvinced" and leads Taiga, go. So of course I waste no time wasting his Taiga. He dropped a Grove and proceeded to get land screwed and scooped. One more game win and I'm locked in for top 4!
SB: +2 Dismember, +1 Warping Wail, +2 Back to Basics, +2 Submerge, +3 Relic of Progenitus, -4 Aether Vial, -4 Cursecatcher, -1 Force of Will, -1 Chalice of the Void (I wanted to try Chalice against Jund because I know they usually bring in a large number of blasts)
G1: A very strange game. Neither of us had any business. Interestingly, my opponent thought Merfolk was the match to bring in Surgical Extraction. Then he started using Abrupt Decay on my Relics. Frustratingly, I was unable to capitalize on the weirdness as I drew 7 basic Island into double Back to Basics before he finally Bloodbraided into Liliana.
G2: Amazingly, this game was much of the same. I kept a 6 with Silvergil, Force, Master, Relic, Chalice, Wasteland. I ended up drawing and cycling my 3 relics in the early turns of the game to find a colored mana source. Meanwhile I had to pitch Master to Force a Sylvan Library on T2. The Silvergil ended up getting Hymned and the only creature I saw for the rest of the game was a Clique (promptly surgically extracted of course).
4 Silvergil Adept
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Phantasmal Image
4 True-Name Nemesis
4 Aether Vial
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
1 Echoing Truth
12 Island
1 Cavern of Souls
4 Mutavault
3 Wasteland
2 Tormod's Crypt
1 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Back to Basics
2 Spreading Seas
2 Dismember
2 Flusterstorm
1 Day's Undoing
1 Misdirection
1 Wasteland
1 Day's Undoing
I've been liking Daze a lot, but running them means I had to cut down on Cavern of Souls. In my testing, my Merfolk haven't been getting countered often, especially with Aether Vial, so I'm not unhappy about having to cut them. Only time I really want Cavern is when I'm up against Miracles. I've been liking Spreading Seas and the one extra Wasteland in the side, because I've been playing against a lot of Lands / Punishing Jund / Eldrazi.
What are some other good SB options against Eldrazi?
I don't like Day's Undoing at all. If you want card draw, just play a JTMS. TNN does a very solid Moat impression and chalice protects him from red blasts, so it's actually pretty difficult for decks to take him down (and especially the decks where you would want to side him in).
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-Sygg, River Cutthroat
I play all Cavern of Souls decks
Yeah so that is my current plan, I have just been trying to iron out some additional ways to make the match-up more favorable whether through lines of play or construction.
-Sygg, River Cutthroat
I play all Cavern of Souls decks
I'm sad to make this recommendation, but in that kind of meta with so many nonblue fair stoneforge decks around, Merfolk is the wrong deck and you should not play it. Even the BUG decks are a big problem due to meta splash damage, as they'll want to play more Toxic Deluge than usual with so many fair creature decks in the room.
If you're still wanting to press forward despite the odds, I think Warping Wail is a solid option to consider. I know I tried and cut it from my own build, but like I've said, it was not due to the power of the card itself. Wail is especially good vs. D&T while still being relevant in almost every matchup in some way. Another thing to think about is to make an extremely hard meta-read and shave/cut Cursecatchers. I've been fooling around with Tidal Warrior lately with decent success and your meta looks extremely prime for it, that's what I'd recommend replacing the Cursecatchers with. Merrow Reejerey is also good against nonblue decks and the "hand dump" that it can enable is one of our best ways to steal wins out of nowhere that we desperately need.
A couple of niche options that I've tried is Razorfin Hunter and Leech Bonder. 4x caverns and vials makes the red mana requirement for Hunter not at all an issue. These guys can help contain the board while still being feet on the ground when you want to be aggressive and don't need their abilities, rather than a purely reactive card like Wail is.
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I also have Burn currently, and I'm just a few City of Traitors short of Eldrazi so I'll be expanding my Legacy options a bit. I could pretty easily get Infect and/or UR Delver going, too. I am a true Blue believer in the Fish, however, so I'll focus on it for now.
Null Rod is a house, I'll be picking up a few of those asap. Until I acquire them, I will likely run a Manriki-Gusari sb, seems really good here. Tidal Warrior is something I was planning on going with, it definitely adds a new element to the deck that sounds like it would help a whole lot. Warping Wail will be in my 75, funnily enough I hadn't thought about it vs D&T, though.. Way better than a Daze in that matchup lol Cutting some number of Cursecatchers feels like blasphemy, but it may well be the best move in my meta.
Leech Bonder and Razorfin are ones I'll keep in my back pocket for now until I get some more data in, but I can definitely see how they could round out your options a bit.. Razorfin in particular could be really tilting haha
-Sygg, River Cutthroat
I play all Cavern of Souls decks
4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
3 Phantasmal Image
4 True-Name Nemesis
1 Vendilion Clique
Artifacts
4 AEther Vial
4 Chalice of the Void
12 Island
4 Cavern of Souls
3 Mutavault
2 Wasteland
Instants
4 Force of Will
1 Echoing Truth
2 Daze
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Warping Wail
2 Back to Basics
2 Dismember
3 Relic of Progenitus
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Submerge
1 Pithing Needle
1 Spell Pierce
Round 1 vs Miracles (2-0 on the play)
G1: I T1 Vial into T2 Chalice while he uses his T1 to Ponder. I thought I had this in the bag but a T3 Mentor from him made thing interesting. However, he then blindflips Terminus on his next draw step and opts to pays W (!). His best bet was surely to dump his hand of cantrips into the Chalice and try to race.
SB: +1 Jitte, +1 Warping Wail, +1 Clique, +2 Dismember, +1 Needle, -4 Cursecatcher, -2 Daze.
G2: My opponent plays T1 Ponder and T2 Counterbalance (!). I'm sure the devastating T2 Chalice of last game is fresh in his memory and there's a decent chance that there's a 2 on top. However, there is also a high probability that my opponent has a way to put a 2 on top next turn so I take my chances and put a Chalice on the stack with a casting cost of 2. It resolves and my opponent's only sign of resistance after this came in the form of a hardcast Terminus to which I replied with Echoing Truth on my TNN + eot Clique and that's all she wrote.
After the match, my opponent said he's had great sucess with the deck in the past but that he was rusty with it, and also that he had never played the Merfolk matchup before.
Round 2 vs UB Omnishow (2-0 on the play)
Essentially, this is the mono U Omnishow deck with a black splash for Lim-Dul's Vault. This guys also had some maindeck Thoughtseizes and Divining Tops.
G1: I start by putting 2 Vials into play while my opponent is busy cantripping. These soon produce 3 Silvergil Adepts while my opponent is still just durdling. With some help from his fetchlands, I have my opponent on 13 when he Thoughtseizes me to see Lord, Lord, Image, Clique. He scoops upon realizing he can't stop 3 4/3 Silvergils from attacking him next turn.
SB: +1 Spell Pierce, +1 Warping Wail, +1 Clique, -3 TNN.
G2: I keep a slow hand with lots of permission. On T3 he has Island, Island, Ancient Tomb on the board and plays a cantrip. "I know it, it's gonna happen...." Show and Tell? Daze!
Round 3 vs ANT (2-0 on the play)
G1: Duress is cast T1 revealing Cursecatcher, Cursecatcher, Force, Force, Island, Island, Vial. Apparently the 2 Cursecatchers were too oppresive for my opponent's poor draws because he scooped a few turns later without a fight.
Having not played Legacy since the last monthly, I failed to realize Duress means my opponent is on Storm (!), so I sideboarded "in the dark" for some random combo deck.
SB: +1 Spell Pierce, +1 Warping Wail, +1 Clique, -3 TNN
What I would have done had I put my opponent on ANT: +1 Spell Pierce, +1 Warping Wail, +1 Clique, +3 Relic, +1 Cage, -4 TNN, -2 LoA, -1 Master.
G2: I again assemble a board with 2 Cursecatcher along with some Lords putting up serious pressure. Meanwhile an early Probe from my opponent sees I am holding Force. After some durdling from my opponent, I feel he is close to assembling all the pieces he needs and I choose to use my Force on a Brainstorm before it's too late. Despite all the cantripping, my opponent is on only 2 lands when he makes his first move and throws an Infernal Tutor at my Cursecatchers. I bite and counter because this usually means they're gonna fetch a second LED or Ritual and then the Cursecatchers are useless. Next turn my opponent has a third land and casts Cabal Ritual (with Threshold) holding Island up. I use my second Cursecatcher to take away his U and he draws into oblivion with Ad Nauseam from 7 life.
Round 4 vs Aggro Loam with Burning Wish (2-0 on the draw)
According to my opponent, it used to be common for people to play Aggro Loam with 4 Burning Wish. Nowdays these have been replaced with more Bobs, Abrupt Decays and Sylvan Libraries.
G1: My opponent Mulls to 5 but has T2 Bob and I can't bounce my only permanent fast enough to trade it for Daze. His hand has nothing else of note but he manages to get a nice draw engine going with Loam + 2 cycle lands. This ends up being too slow for my army of True Names as I Force a Knight.
SB: +1 Clique, +2 Dismember, +2 Submerge, +3 Relic, -4 Cursecatcher, -4 Chalice.
G2: Poor chap mulls to 5 again but he's got more game this time. T3 Liliana eats my Silvergil. T4 he drops Library and I discard Clique to Liliana. Eot Clique #2 takes Lilly #2 from this hand leaving him with only 1 nonland card in hand. Clique eats Lilly and more fishes join the party. He Wishes for Toxic Deluge and casts it on the next turn but I have triple TNN in hand to rebuild and topdeck the Dismember for his Knight right on cue. So yea. Who needs library manipulation?
As the only 4-0 player I am top seed cutting to Top 4 but I have to leave.
Keep on posting these!
-Sygg, River Cutthroat
I play all Cavern of Souls decks
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
This is my impression as well. My record against them is 2-11 and I suspect the actual odds of winning are worse than this. It is by far our worst matchup and we just have to hope to (a) draw our sideboard cards and that (b) their draws line up well against our hate. Then we have to repeat this feat, this time on the draw. :/
It was starting to feel like we fell off the map completely.
Eh, it's a bad matchup but I don't think it's THAT bad. You will have some games where you have no chance, but some where you can win and sometimes you can get the match. It's in the 20-30% range at least, I'd say. Chalice won't shut them out of the game, but it can sometimes slow them down enough to allow you to become the beatdown (you cannot be control against them, you have to find a way to get a tempo advantage). Force of Will can be used against a GSZ or Natural Order, and if you can survive long enough to put a Jitte on a True-Name Nemesis, you can win that way. Will that happen every time? No. Will a good/great draw from Elves beat pretty much anything from Merfolk? Probably. But you can definitely win the matchup SOME of the time. That said, if you expect to face Elves multiple times in a tournament, this deck is not going to be the ideal choice.
Elves cannot actually attack from as many angles as you believe they can, especially if there's a chalice down. What matters the most is to not Just Lose to a fast Natural Order, from that point there's lots of angles we can take to squeeze out a win. Not every GSZ or Glimpse is a must-counter, and it's crucial to recognize when you should and should not counter them. If we want to talk fair side of the game, our fair game utterly crushes their fair game.
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