MTG Salvation

The problem with Stroke is that when you have it in hand there is always this Anger or Stone (Breach and Tron) that wrecks us.
Too narrow for me.

Yeah, my gripe with Disdainful Stroke is that it misses the sweepers we care most about. Flashfreeze and Unified Will can catch them.

Hi Fish Players,

For the past few months, I've been working on a Google Sheet that I've used for aggregating match data and learn more about our matchups.

You can find it here.

As you will see, there's a page for entering data and two pages for parsing that data. I've already entered some data (I haven't been religious about entering—I'll try to improve!).

I'm hoping that over time we can use this resource to learn more about matchups we're seeing, how to sideboard, and the like.

If you have suggestions or notice any bugs, please let me know.

Thank you!

My meta has Valakut, Trons, Jund, Lantern Control and Dredge....maybe its time to bring back my Seas Claim for the side

My meta has Valakut, Trons, Jund, Lantern Control and Dredge....maybe its time to bring back my Seas Claim for the side

Quote from CoBTyrannon »

It would be nice to give the result with the individual matches. XOX/LWL or LossWinLoss.
That way we could also determine how our chances are preboard and afterwards. How much a matchup gets worse or better for us once we have sideboarded.
It's a minor change for a lot more Information.

Thanks for the feedback! Could you explain that a bit more? I'm not sure I quite understand your suggestion. The Matchups tab does show our winrate for each game and an overall match winrate.

Are you asking for a "Postboard Winrate" that shows our aggregate winrate for all post-boarded games?

Or are you asking for an "Overall Winrate" by matchup. That would = Total # Game Wins / Total # Games.

With the bannings is Merfolk good again??

Never stopped.

I'm not going to believe that Push is a big factor until I actually see decks start mainboarding it. Regardless, I usually don't worry too much about 1-for-1 removal. If some of these faster decks are slowed down by even a turn or two it gives us an opportunity to gear more towards things which actually are a problem like big-ramp and combo. That's where Clique looks to still have an advantage over Kira; not only do you play with perfect information the ability to pluck that 1 big troublesome card is going to be yuge.

I'm wondering whether those Gut Shots might need to turn back into Recalls.

All I see is praise for Clique (and I love her in my legacy Merfolk), but she never did anything in Nikachu videos (more praise) that other cards like Kira or Reej wouldn't do.
No doubt a powerful card, but we are doing alright without those in both formats (JtMS, Snappy, Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain...), we have no need for that stuff.
Then again, since you are all so eager to adopt random flyers in your decks, I am playing 4 Smuggler's Copter this Sunday and will loot my heart out
The tournament is low level so I can live with the "risk". They will join Mutavaults in the laugh-at-Anger-Verdict-Ugin team rooster.
The report of that catastrophe will be here in a week.

Quote from FANAttIC »

All I see is praise for Clique (and I love her in my legacy Merfolk), but she never did anything in Nikachu videos (more praise) that other cards like Kira or Reej wouldn't do.
No doubt a powerful card, but we are doing alright without those in both formats (JtMS, Snappy, Brainstorm, Ponder, Preordain...), we have no need for that stuff.
Then again, since you are all so eager to adopt random flyers in your decks, I am playing 4 Smuggler's Copter this Sunday and will loot my heart out
The tournament is low level so I can live with the "risk". They will join Mutavaults in the laugh-at-Anger-Verdict-Ugin team rooster.
The report of that catastrophe will be here in a week.

Damn, I can't wait!

Our opinion on Clique in Modern is different and that is ok.

I just want to touch on

Quote from Motto82 »

Merfolk isn't well positioned at all in Legacy

which is completely opposite of mine.
The last Legacy GP was won by a slow, midrange, Islands deck with 4 TNN and 4 FoW, which has a good matchup against Miracles and Delver.
Top8 of that tournament are decks we would like to play against, except the usual D&T.
If everybody plays Miracles, Delver and this new kid on the block Leovold, then I can't see a better time to play Merfolk than now.

My opinion on Push is that I don't really care. If it gets played I will have Kiras and even Mimics for Elementals. Sky is not falling and Waves will continue crushing their shores.

Musings on Legacy aside, I must confess that this Vendilion Clique experiment interests me. It's certainly a card that helps against some bad matchups (snatching a Titanshift opponent's payoff card sounds like a very powerful play, for instance).

In other tests, I've recently moved to the 8-Seas version of the deck on MTGO by replacing my sideboarded Tidebinder Mages for Sea's Claims, and I must confess it's exceeding my expectations. The MTGO competitive league metagame is packed with Burn, Jund, and Tron, and the Claim excels against all of those decks. So far I've been getting steadily positive results with it (no 5-0s, though I have come close with a 4-1).

Last note: I'll update the tier listings, since we (finally) got our December update last week.

On this, I agree.

Quote from rothgar13 »

Musings on Legacy aside, I must confess that this Vendilion Clique experiment interests me. It's certainly a card that helps against some bad matchups (snatching a Titanshift opponent's payoff card sounds like a very powerful play, for instance).

In other tests, I've recently moved to the 8-Seas version of the deck on MTGO by replacing my sideboarded Tidebinder Mages for Sea's Claims, and I must confess it's exceeding my expectations. The MTGO competitive league metagame is packed with Burn, Jund, and Tron, and the Claim excels against all of those decks. So far I've been getting steadily positive results with it (no 5-0s, though I have come close with a 4-1).

Last note: I'll update the tier listings, since we (finally) got our December update last week.

I'm very glad that you're testing this out, Rothgar13!
I like the look of your list quite a bit.

I have noticed our dwindling meta-share and haven't understood why this card isn't being taken more seriously as it alleviates so much pressure on our deck. Coupled with Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, decks like Jeskai, Grixis, Jund, Junk, Burn,etc have no chance.. Honestly, the trickiest matchup for me lately, besides Affinity/Elves ofc, would strangely be Tron. A savvy Tron player, like the ones at my lgs, will respond to the Enchantments post-sb with Enchantment hate like Nature's Claim, or if I can't race fast enough they will wipe the board with Oblivion Stone on t5 and it's usually downhill from there unless I have a Mutavault online already. This has lead me to want to start packing some Chalice of the Void in the SB for matchups where I don't want the Sea's Claim, and so I can also switch gears when OTP vs OTD. Tectonic Edge is another option I would consider running to help vs Tron and GR Valakut. Definitely open to everyone's ideas/techniques!

For 2017 I'm going to begin logging my matches more vigorously to show more of you guys why to bother running Sea's Claim. This card is literally the nuts for us, and by playing it for as long as I have I am confident that I have seen many interactions that aren't always obvious, so I'll do my best to bring my findings here. I'm over here racking up prizes and points every time I play and just want the same for all of you guys.
I have had to back off of MTG a bit the past few months but I am back in now and committed to seeing our archetype continue to improve. We are still a fantastic deck, Fatal Push doesn't scare me one bit, and 2017 looks to be a phenomenal year for us.

Much love to the Fish community!

Bring in Dispels against Tron. They have a fair amount of instants nowadays. I've caught bunches of Nature's Claims, Blessed Alliances, and Path to Exiles with it, and it's all but won me the game in those situations.

Quote from Cowology »

I'm not going to believe that Push is a big factor until I actually see decks start mainboarding it.

Quote from HagraSharpshooter »

That's the thing: I see Push as more of a SB card than MB and even so, it will likely be coming in to replace other removal.

if you guys don't think that fatal push is going to be played in the maindeck of several archetypes you're crazy or in denial.

I think it's going to be a maindeck card, but it's not going to be an auto 4-of in its colors the way Bolt is. There's some stuff that it doesn't catch, it only catches some things conditionally, and it can't go upstairs. It also is going to be replacing spells that kill our guys anyway. I expect it to be played plenty, but I don't think it's going to shift any matchups for us in dramatic fashion.

In other news, I finally broke through and 5-0'd an MTGO Modern Competitive League with Merfolk! The evidence is below. Here's my decklist:



I faced Jund (2-1), Temur Midrange (2-0), a Bant Hexproof brew (2-1), Living End (2-0), and Abzan (2-0). Some observations below:

1. I never sided in Spellskite. Meta conditions may be pointing toward Kira, Great Glass-Spinner right now.

2. Relic of Progenitus and Sea's Claim were both tremendously useful. There's a lot of BGX out there.

3. Goldfishing aggro kills will win you games against rogue brews.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with it, and I'm really feeling like 8-Seas is the way to go right now.