MTG Salvation

1st place report from local FNM (18 players) xpost from r/FishMTG

So we had a modern fnm and I took Fish for another spin. I've been playing it for more than a month now and I'm slowly getting the hang of a tempo deck (am previously an Elves pilot). Brought with me the following list:
MAIN
Lord of atlantis 4
Master of the pearl trident 4
Silvergill adept 4
Master of waves 4
Merfolk trickster 4
Merrow reejerey 2
Harbinger of the tides 3
Aether vial 4
Spreading seas 4
Spell pierce 4
Dismember 3
Mutavault 4
Oboro 1
Minamo 1
Wanderwine hub 4
Islands 10

SIDE
Deprive 4
Echoing truth 3
Kira 2
Tidebinder mage 2
Relic of progenitus 2
Damping sphere 2

So the sideboard is based on our local meta (storm, elves, affinity, jund, death's shadow decks, kci, jeskai control, burn and LOTS of tron variants).

The moment I saw the number of players reach 18, I knew the night's gonna be loooong.

RD1 - vs Mono Green Tron
G1 on the draw I kept a fairly workable hand with vial, spreading seas, two lands and all creatures. He managed to assemble tron on t4 even with spreading seas disruption. He dropped Ugin and killed my silvergill and one lord. I vialed another lord at end of his step and attacked Ugin with it plus a mutavault. On his t5 he played 10 cmc Ulamog and that's game.
G2 I did merfolk things with damping sphere assistance. Killed him on t6.
G3 He couldn't assemble tron quickly. He was stuck at two tron lands, two basic forests and a sanctum of ugin. I also deprived his t5 oblivion stone to seal the game. (1-0)

RD2 - vs B/G Elves
G1 on the draw I kept a questionable hand of two tricksters, 3 lands, a lord and spell pierce. He killed me at t5 with shaman of the packs.
G2 on the play I kept a one land hand with two vials, dismember, tidebinder mage, lord, and silvergill. I didn't see that second land. He also rec saged my first vial and I cannot race. Sad (1-1)

RD3 - vs R/G Tron (I first thought it's Mono Green again)
G1 I kept a very good hand. Two spreading seas, a vial, two lands, silvergill and a lord. I couldn't ask for more. This is when I found out he's running R/G. I kept delaying his tron assembly but he also kept ripping a Kozilek's Return. He has 3 mainboard. He drew them all
G2 I managed to get there with a damping sphere ripped off the top of my deck at a crucial moment.
G3 He wasn't able to assemble tron as quickly as he wants to. I also kept delaying his attempts to search up tron pieces. Gg (2-1)

RD4 - vs Grixis Death's Shadow
G1 he mulled to 5 on the play and I did merfolk stuffs. He eventually managed to "stabilize" with two death's shadow and a zombie fish at 5 life. Islandwalk is a b!tch.
G2 ended with him with two death's shadow (again) at 6 life and me with a trickster and lord in play. Opponent is tapped out. Topdecking a lord wins me the round. I ripped off an island. I was at 20 life with an island in hand. Opponent dismembers one fish, attacked with both shadows and cast battle rage on of them. Maybe I should've attacked and brought him to 3 life? My head hurts.
G3 I mulled to 6 but opponent was stuck at two lands. I kept two spell pierces. I played merfolks til he couldn't keep up with his removals and managed to kill him on t7 or t8 i think. (3-1)

RD5 - vs Humans
Before I start, let me say that I hate this deck the most right now in the current meta. People always say that Humans is the deck that Merfolk aims to be. As someone who's recently gotten in love with Fish, this really hurts. Sadly, it has some truth to it. I still wanna beat this deck to a pulp every chance I get
G1 I'm on the play with spell pierce, three lands, trickster, harbinger and a lord. I spell pierced his t1 vial (what else should I spell pierce?). This delayed him a bit and I realized he kept a one land hand with two vials. He was set back too much and couldn't race.
G2 He got the nuts of three champions of the parish. I have echoing truth in the sb and managed to keep one in the opening hand. The look on his face when I bounced his champions was priceless. He decided to just race me with mantis rider and phantasmal image targeting mantis rider. Merfolk trickster took care of the image and tidebinder mage kept the mantis rider in check. I managed to get there and alpha strike at 4 life. Gg! Despite me hating the deck, the Humans pilot is a cool guy and laughed off the echoing truth play from my side.

ENDING REMARKS
Everyone called it a night and agreed to skip the top 8 (swiss rounds finished around 1:00 am) so I managed to scrape 1st place and got quite some booster packs. I didn't open them. I knew my horrible luck with booster packs. Planning to sell them to drafting friends at 75% store price. Merfolk is still crazy powerful in the right metagame. I'm planning to win more with this deck in the future. Bigger events hopefully. To everyone who managed to read this til the end, thanks!

We had Modern Qualifier tournament today for Invitationals in December, Qualifiers are run with many different formats: Standard, Modern, Legacy, Draft... and only first from each is qualified.

I took



Decklist is unrefined for world stage but perfect for expected local meta.
GP Copenhagen, Rptq in Bologna and Croatian beaches took some regulars so only 21 people showed up, 5 rounds + top8.

After 3 rounds 2 Merfolk decks with 3:0 (1 lost game total) at the top.
I beat UR TiTi (he flipped 3 Things and I almost won but he had Bolt on top, next 2 games Waves cleaned the mess), Jeskai Ctrl (4 Pierce main were clutch for his expensive spells and he stalled on 2 lands game 2) and RG Ponza (Waves is a busted magic card).

2 Fish drew in r4 and we had options for r5 but decided to draw with our opponents because we wanted Ponza and Living End in top8.

Other Fish guy got stopped in QF by Hollow One, which he beat in Swiss, but Inquiry lottery was good for his opponent.

My QF was Jeskai Ctrl. I mulled and drew too many lands in g1. Sided out 19th land against Path deck, put antigrind cards and conservatively won g2 and g3.

SF vs another UR TiTi, I had 2 Vials (2 and 4), Waves, Lord, some tokens and 2 Mutavaults, attacked into 2 Things, he chained some spells and returned everything except my 2 Horrors so I Vialed in the Lord so Mutas can continue being unblockable. 2 flipped Things were blocked by Vialed Waves tokens and with Pierce protection I had lethal counterattack g1. G2 was all this nonsense but without Things so Islandwalk did it's thing with Kira in play.

F vs Living End, look at my decklist, this is pure nightmare for them. He resolved Ends in both games but it weren't close.

Won qualification and Karn for my troubles, while half of entry fees is going for Invitational prizes. Friend just picked up a playset of Deprive and Faerie Conclave at GP Copenhagen, so I have to find spots for them. But I am not in a hurry to change masterpiece of a list

What do you think about playing Coralhelm Commander instated Master of Waves?

I tried it for quite some time. It wasn't as good as the Master. More vulnerable to removal, and more of a mana sink to get going.

So what's the consensus on Mistcaller?

Its usage seems to lean towards combatting things like Through the Breach, Goryo's Vengeance, Collected Company and the like, but I feel like we would just combat those through the use of a counterspell suite.

That then leaves us with it combatting Aether Vial and cards that bring themselves back with their own effects, like Bloodghast, and that seems a little narrow for my liking.

It also works on Hollow One.

Unfortunately, it's a telegraphed 1-shot deal, unless you have Vial on 1. It's more like Cursecatcher, in this regard. Flash, like on Containment Priest, would have been nice.

I think it's a very meta-dependent call.

Relic already works for dealing with graveyards, especially if you can get it out early enough to keep opponent's graveyard small. Worst case, you can sac it.

Looks indeed narrow/meta depdndant at first glance. That said i'll be sure to get a playset while they'll be on the low demand. This is the kind of merfolk that i'm sure will prove useful in the,if not near, far future.

Quote from lord_darkview »

It also works on Hollow One.

Unfortunately, it's a telegraphed 1-shot deal, unless you have Vial on 1. It's more like Cursecatcher, in this regard. Flash, like on Containment Priest, would have been nice.

I think it's a very meta-dependent call.

It doesn't work on Hollow One, it only slows them down: you sacrifice it and they simply bring back Flamewake Phoenix or Bloodghast (it's a "may" ability) next turn.

I can see it in Legacy, against reanimator, but I'm not optimist for its chances in Modern.

Quote from theinsanething »

So what's the consensus on Mistcaller?

Its usage seems to lean towards combatting things like Through the Breach, Goryo's Vengeance, Collected Company and the like, but I feel like we would just combat those through the use of a counterspell suite.

That then leaves us with it combatting Aether Vial and cards that bring themselves back with their own effects, like Bloodghast, and that seems a little narrow for my liking.

It won't work against Aether Vial completely. Because of the nature of the timing, you would have to sac Mistcaller before they decide if they will put a creature into play or not. You can still do it to stall them, but you wont get them as hard as you'd like.

As I keep re-reading the cards I think this would counter, it does seem like the best you can do is stall those effects for a turn. On top of it being telegraphed, I'm not a fan.

@SpinifexV: I meant the Hollow One deck, not that card specifically.

This is not likely to be used in Legacy, as there are better answers against that deck.

I'll definitely be looking to pick up some Mistcallers for the toolbox soon, though I'm not entirely sure when I'll be jamming them. It's great against Company decks and any type of reanimator, but those are a bit down at the moment (unless you count Hollow One, which I don't, since they have plenty of hands that can present threats without the graveyard). I also don't like how it lines up vs. Aether Vial, and how it's Merfolk of the Pearl Trident against a rather large swath of decks. Hard to say.

It's not a major conflict with our Vials. You simply sacrifice Mistcaller, then activate Vial in response.

Quote from lord_darkview »

It's not a major conflict with our Vials. You simply sacrifice Mistcaller, then activate Vial in response.

It is against opponent's Vials. He can simply choose not to 'cast' the creature after the Mistcaller is sacced, even though the Vial is activated. Not wonderful.

Yeah. A 1-shot Containment Priest is less interesting.

Quote from Midnight Sun »

Quote from lord_darkview »

It's not a major conflict with our Vials. You simply sacrifice Mistcaller, then activate Vial in response.

It is against opponent's Vials. He can simply choose not to 'cast' the creature after the Mistcaller is sacced, even though the Vial is activated. Not wonderful.

Exactly. The fact that it doesn't guarantee you value in that scenario is pretty underwhelming.

So things this effectively counters/removes for 1-mana: Through the Breech, Bloodghast, Prized Amalgam, Flamewake Phoenix, Collected Company, Chord of Calling, Dread Return, Unburial Rites, Nahiri... I'm no longer convinced this is not MB material.