Went 2-2 last night and punted g1 of the mirror and then lost g2 to the god draw and lost to Elves...because Elves. Hopefully we can do it at States tomorrow because I do feel pretty good about my list. Not packing Affinity hate though because I'm on the dodge camp. YOLO?
To follow this up, I was able to finish 3rd. It was 8 rounds. I went 6-0 (didn't drop a game) and double drew into T8. Beat the mirror in T8, but unfortunately lost to Jund in T4. I'll write a report later and link it here!
I finished 4-2 at my states, didn't make top8. My first loss was in round 2 to Throughthe breach/ Vengence Combo - blah. I've heard of the deck and knew how it sorta played but had never seen it in action... He turned 2 me game 1 and I couldn't do anything game 2. Second loss came in round 3, against the guy who took 2nd playing an aristocrats deck that used rally, chord, and CoCo to find his creatures. Games were very winnable but I failed to play tight enough to not die to combo games 1 & 3. Won out from there till last round where my opponent scooped to me because top 8 was locked and best we could get was 10th-11th. First time at modern states that I haven't top 8, but you can't win them all. At least I still went positive.
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Evil Beware!....We have waffles.
"In my opinion, we don't devote nearly enough scientific research to finding a cure for jerks." Calvin & Hobbes Quotes
Calvin : You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
Hobbes : What mood is that?
Calvin : Last-minute panic.
Decks I'm playing:
Modern: U Merfolk
Standard: I dislike Standard ATM
Speaking of the mirror, though... I'm thinking I have to prep for that a bit more, given that we're still enjoying an upsurge in popularity. Does anyone have any opinions one way or the other on cutting 4 Tidebinder Mage from the sideboard in favor of 2 Dismember (I don't normally run them) and 2 Hibernation? I'm figuring that Dismember has game against all of the decks oaomcg mentioned, and Hibernation can be impactful enough an effect that it makes up for not bringing a body along with it (the CMC3 worries me a bit, though). Thoughts?
Try the list I have in my signature. So far I have received almost zero feedback but trust me, this list has true potential, too bad I cannot play Magic as much as I would like to.
Hi, everyone. Brief intro: I played Merfolk a bit over the past year and a half. Mostly just small tournaments and then GP Charlotte (was not a good showing for me). I decided to take a break from it for a while, but I was brainstorming last night and came across an idea that really sparked my interest. Has anyone tried splashing Green for Collected Company and Kiora's Follower? Here is the list I drafted up last night. I'll explain a few specifics after...
Kiora's Follower: This is actually a nod to a budy of mine who has been playing merfolk for years. He included it for Vial shenanigans, and seems like it could be good; kind of a 2-drop Reejerey impression.
Coralhelm Commander/Nykthos: A nod to my first rendition of a Merfolk deck. I actually was testing a way to run Cryptic Command in the main (It's my favorite modern card and I have a playset of the textless promos with the merfolk art, so I had to). Nykthos allowed me to run it, and Coralhelm became a good place to use all that mana.
Cursecatcher/Merrow Reejerey: My first draft is missing these for two reasons. (1) In all honesty, I sold a large part of this deck after GP Charlotte, and I don't have them right now. THis is "easily" fixed. (2) Having a threshold of 2-Drop creatures makes Vial a lot better I feel.
1 land will become a 4th Aether Vial. I just don't have just yet.
So has anyone tried out anything similar to this? I read through the past 10 or so pages of this thread, and already see some things I want to change, but was wondering about viability.
People tried this when CoCo first came out - I was one of them. It's just bad - we arent in green by choice (thus hurting our manabase). Even if CoCo was blue I'm still not sure it's very good for us..our creatures don't really interact with combo decks etc - so losing our combo interaction (dismembers, counters etc) and replacing it with CoCo leaves us vunerable to combo.
I see what you are saying. Harbinger is actually WHY I decided to take the disruption from the main in this draft. It is still at least SOME disruption, and then I have more in the sb if needed. I'm intrigued to try and do a little testing with it.
Went 2-2 last night and punted g1 of the mirror and then lost g2 to the god draw and lost to Elves...because Elves. Hopefully we can do it at States tomorrow because I do feel pretty good about my list. Not packing Affinity hate though because I'm on the dodge camp. YOLO?
To follow this up, I was able to finish 3rd. It was 8 rounds. I went 6-0 (didn't drop a game) and double drew into T8. Beat the mirror in T8, but unfortunately lost to Jund in T4. I'll write a report later and link it here!
Congratulations man. Nice to see Merfolk doing good. I'm looking forward to your report.
Went 2-2 last night and punted g1 of the mirror and then lost g2 to the god draw and lost to Elves...because Elves. Hopefully we can do it at States tomorrow because I do feel pretty good about my list. Not packing Affinity hate though because I'm on the dodge camp. YOLO?
To follow this up, I was able to finish 3rd. It was 8 rounds. I went 6-0 (didn't drop a game) and double drew into T8. Beat the mirror in T8, but unfortunately lost to Jund in T4. I'll write a report later and link it here!
Congratulations man. Nice to see Merfolk doing good. I'm looking forward to your report.
i read your report but it wasn't really clear on what exactly happened with the cryptic
the trick with getting your mutavault around a cryptic is to not activate it before combat
if you activate it and then try to attack, they tap your whole team and he gets tapped with them
if you suspect a cryptic coming you move to beginning of combat and pass priority
now is your opponents chance to tap your team, if they do, you let it resolve, get priority back, and activate your mutavaults, pass priority back, then if your oppponent has no further effects you move to declare attackers
the problem is if you pass priority and your opponent does NOT cast cryptic, then you move to declare attackers and can't attack with your mutavaults (because they aren't creatures)
the other problem is that your opponent can also choose "Tap your team, Bounce your mutavault" and you can't attack with anything (except maybe another mutavault)
The thing with tap your team and bounce your Mutavault is that it can be countered by Snag or Dismember on your Muta. That is very dangerous for the opponent.
CoB, The Coralhelms are not replacing Cursecatcher. As this was my first draft, I just grabbed what I had. Once I have them again, they will be in the deck. The same is tru for the fourth Vial, Mutavault, and oddly, Kiora's Follower.
The Nykthos was to quicken the Coralhelm shenanigans, but will probably come out if (or more likely WHEN) they come out (see below for why I have not already written it off).
Also, I REALLY like those sideboard suggestions.
That being said, while I am enjoying the goldfishing of this deck, it does just seem less potent than the U or UW versions, so I will probably just keep it at one of those. I'll give it a spin in some casual games at FNM this week and see how it goes.
On the topic of UW, I just want to chime in on my position on Seijiri Merfolk that was popping in and out over the pages I read: He is just lackluster. I was very intrigued by him at first as well; he was the reason i wanted to try the UW version at all, but I always found him being cut in favor of other more useful cards. I would even prefer something like Azorius Charm over him if you wanted lifelink.
Lastly, a question: Is there anyway to deal with rogue decks in Merfolk? For example, my friend is playing a Starfield of Nyx deck in an upcoming GP with lots of prison effects and other enchantments that I just cannot think of a way around if I cannot out race him. Is Echoing Truth a prison the only way? Or do I have to overload a Cyclonic Rift off of a Nykthos (half-joking here)?
Went 2-2 last night and punted g1 of the mirror and then lost g2 to the god draw and lost to Elves...because Elves. Hopefully we can do it at States tomorrow because I do feel pretty good about my list. Not packing Affinity hate though because I'm on the dodge camp. YOLO?
To follow this up, I was able to finish 3rd. It was 8 rounds. I went 6-0 (didn't drop a game) and double drew into T8. Beat the mirror in T8, but unfortunately lost to Jund in T4. I'll write a report later and link it here!
Congratulations man. Nice to see Merfolk doing good. I'm looking forward to your report.
I'm not sure if you really want advice about it or if you are joking about what happened, but maybe its good to write it out.
The first thing:
Move to combat is indeed what the judge said: http://blogs.magicjudges.org/rulestips/2012/03/the-combat-shortcut-what-it-means-when-you-say-declare-attackers/
You were saying: “I propose a shortcut where we both pass priority without adding anything to the stack, repeatedly, until we end up with you having priority in the Beginning of Combat Step.”
This means the moment you say that you passed priority of the Begin Attack phase and all he has to do is give the final ok for the declare attackers step to happen. So if your opponent says ok, the phase goes onto the declare attackers step.
The phrase you are looking for is. "Begin combat?". That's one step earlier and gives your opponent the final call in Main 1 to jump to the next step. I never started the habit of asking to move to attacks but rather to move to begin combat simply because of Mutavault :).
Now onto Cryptic Command and Mutavault. I will only discuss the tap all creatures mode. Of course there is still the option to bounce or draw. Bouncing comes with its onw risk.
There are 3 possible outcomes and you have to mindgame here.
1) You activate Mutavault in begin Combat, then pass priority. Your opponent now has the option to play Cryptic. This ends up with you tapping all creatures, Mutavaults included.
2) You don't activate Mutavault in begin combat and pass priority. Your opponent now choses to play cryptic. After cryptic resolves and your creatures get tapped, you now have prioirty once again and can activate the Mutavaults(still begin combat phase) to attack with them in the declare attackers phase.
3) You don't activate Mutavault in begin Combat phase and pass priority. Your opponent choses to NOT play cryptic and pass as well. Double pass means switching phases to declare attackers. In this case you did not activate Mutavault before chosing with what to attack and therefore miss out on the damage Mutavaults could've done.
As you can see there is a bit of a mindgame going on, whether he has cryptic or not and if he will pull the trigger without activated Mutas or not. You can miss out on damage either way.
The deciding factors should be:
Could you need the Mana from your vaults?
Does it change the clock you need to kill him?
Edit: To make it complete. What fanatic below my post is saying is, that if he choses to tap the team and bounce my mutavault(that i could activate) i can simply kill or bounce the mutavault. The problem with that is, that with those modes, Cryptic Command is not a spell without targets but a spell with a single target. In this case once i remove the target, the spell fizzles and doesn't resolve.
Therefore my team doesn't get tapped at all.
This can not happen if the opponent choses to Tap/draw, since there are no targets at all.
Same mechanic applies with Counter/draw. If you Remand your spell, Cryptic fizzles(no draw) because the Spell doesn't have a legal target anymore.
This is a fantastic post and it cleared up any doubts I had. Cheers man!
Wow, I haven't seen the list from your sig before but I do like a lot of things about it. A few pages ago I was talking about running 2 Worship main, the interaction it has with vaults. I was also talking about using Sejiri Merfolk in the same list, looks like you've done a lot of tweaking and such. I will be using your list as a jumping off point this week, I will be sure to post some results here for you. Thanks for this reminder post, would have missed your Worshipping Tuna list without it.
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"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
Well to be fair, Harbinger entered the field afterwards. And a deck like Paul Rietls should in fact be more suited for Coco than what we ran at the time Coco got released.
I agree that it would be more suited - but still not an improvement and really not a great idea..
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Modern
Bant Eldrazi
UW Control
U Merfolk
Legacy
Merfolk
UR Delver
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other than that a strong, relatively standard list
To follow this up, I was able to finish 3rd. It was 8 rounds. I went 6-0 (didn't drop a game) and double drew into T8. Beat the mirror in T8, but unfortunately lost to Jund in T4. I'll write a report later and link it here!
Modern UMerfolkU
Legacy UMerfolkU
Standard XWhatever's GoodX
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
https://youtu.be/Xtt81eiSrNg
R1: Affinity
R2: Elves
R3: Mirror
barf
U
WUBRGPeopleGRBUW
U Turbo Turns U
UB Fae BU
WBG Aristocrats GBW
Evil Beware!....We have waffles.
"In my opinion, we don't devote nearly enough scientific research to finding a cure for jerks." Calvin & Hobbes Quotes
Calvin : You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right mood.
Hobbes : What mood is that?
Calvin : Last-minute panic.
Decks I'm playing:
Modern: U Merfolk
Standard: I dislike Standard ATM
Ouch. That's a rough draw.
Speaking of the mirror, though... I'm thinking I have to prep for that a bit more, given that we're still enjoying an upsurge in popularity. Does anyone have any opinions one way or the other on cutting 4 Tidebinder Mage from the sideboard in favor of 2 Dismember (I don't normally run them) and 2 Hibernation? I'm figuring that Dismember has game against all of the decks oaomcg mentioned, and Hibernation can be impactful enough an effect that it makes up for not bringing a body along with it (the CMC3 worries me a bit, though). Thoughts?
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
Landcronomicon
1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
4x Breeding Pool
3x Mutavault
1x Flooded Grove
5x Fetches
1x Forest
5x Island
Creature (28)
4x Coralhelm Commander
4x Silvergill Adept
4x Lord of Atlantis
4x Master of Waves
4x Harbinger of the Tides
3x Kiora's Follower
3x Phantasmal Image
2x Master of Waves
3x Aether Vial
4x Spreading Seas
4x Collected Company
2x Negate
1x Merfolk Assassin
3x Tidebinder Mage
2x Monastery Siege
2x Hurkyl's Recall
2x Echoing Truth
A few points:
Kiora's Follower: This is actually a nod to a budy of mine who has been playing merfolk for years. He included it for Vial shenanigans, and seems like it could be good; kind of a 2-drop Reejerey impression.
Coralhelm Commander/Nykthos: A nod to my first rendition of a Merfolk deck. I actually was testing a way to run Cryptic Command in the main (It's my favorite modern card and I have a playset of the textless promos with the merfolk art, so I had to). Nykthos allowed me to run it, and Coralhelm became a good place to use all that mana.
Cursecatcher/Merrow Reejerey: My first draft is missing these for two reasons. (1) In all honesty, I sold a large part of this deck after GP Charlotte, and I don't have them right now. THis is "easily" fixed. (2) Having a threshold of 2-Drop creatures makes Vial a lot better I feel.
1 land will become a 4th Aether Vial. I just don't have just yet.
So has anyone tried out anything similar to this? I read through the past 10 or so pages of this thread, and already see some things I want to change, but was wondering about viability.
Bant Eldrazi
UW Control
U Merfolk
Legacy
Merfolk
UR Delver
Thanks guys!
Here is my report for those interested:
http://www.mtghashtagdreamteam.com/?p=837
Someone want to give me a Crash course on Cryptic Command vs Combat and Mutavault?
Modern UMerfolkU
Legacy UMerfolkU
Standard XWhatever's GoodX
i read your report but it wasn't really clear on what exactly happened with the cryptic
the trick with getting your mutavault around a cryptic is to not activate it before combat
if you activate it and then try to attack, they tap your whole team and he gets tapped with them
if you suspect a cryptic coming you move to beginning of combat and pass priority
now is your opponents chance to tap your team, if they do, you let it resolve, get priority back, and activate your mutavaults, pass priority back, then if your oppponent has no further effects you move to declare attackers
the problem is if you pass priority and your opponent does NOT cast cryptic, then you move to declare attackers and can't attack with your mutavaults (because they aren't creatures)
the other problem is that your opponent can also choose "Tap your team, Bounce your mutavault" and you can't attack with anything (except maybe another mutavault)
U
WUBRGPeopleGRBUW
U Turbo Turns U
UB Fae BU
WBG Aristocrats GBW
The Nykthos was to quicken the Coralhelm shenanigans, but will probably come out if (or more likely WHEN) they come out (see below for why I have not already written it off).
Also, I REALLY like those sideboard suggestions.
That being said, while I am enjoying the goldfishing of this deck, it does just seem less potent than the U or UW versions, so I will probably just keep it at one of those. I'll give it a spin in some casual games at FNM this week and see how it goes.
On the topic of UW, I just want to chime in on my position on Seijiri Merfolk that was popping in and out over the pages I read: He is just lackluster. I was very intrigued by him at first as well; he was the reason i wanted to try the UW version at all, but I always found him being cut in favor of other more useful cards. I would even prefer something like Azorius Charm over him if you wanted lifelink.
Lastly, a question: Is there anyway to deal with rogue decks in Merfolk? For example, my friend is playing a Starfield of Nyx deck in an upcoming GP with lots of prison effects and other enchantments that I just cannot think of a way around if I cannot out race him. Is Echoing Truth a prison the only way? Or do I have to overload a Cyclonic Rift off of a Nykthos (half-joking here)?
This is a fantastic post and it cleared up any doubts I had. Cheers man!
Modern UMerfolkU
Legacy UMerfolkU
Standard XWhatever's GoodX
-Sygg, River Cutthroat
I play all Cavern of Souls decks
I agree that it would be more suited - but still not an improvement and really not a great idea..
Bant Eldrazi
UW Control
U Merfolk
Legacy
Merfolk
UR Delver