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Quote from Fulca »

Anyone got feedback with running x4 Chalice, main or side, instead of usual counterspells ?

Counterspells are definitely a requirement in my post-ban meta. Chalice of the Void is still very good in a meta filled with Burn, Zoo, Storm, and possibly some other decks ( if Delver is still around in your area, for example ).

Personally, I had two mainboard, two sideboard during the Delverdemic, and post ban ran four in my sideboard for a bit, but... I'm not hugely impressed with it lately. I honestly think it will start falling in price considerably soon. I will keep playing two, as the decks it shuts down, it really shuts down, but otherwise? It's just okay.

You're definitely correct in taking out the expensive Master of Waves. Merfolk becomes entirely reactive against infect. But that's okay, because we have some of the best incidental answers in modern. When sideboarding against infect, I bring in everything that is relevant. With your sideboard, you need to bring in the extra vapor snag, all of the spell pierces, and both spellskites. These are all premium answers to infect.

They are light on land and depend on pump spells (spell pierce punishes them here).

They rely on creatures to be pumped and deal damage. Dismember and Vapor Snag very often result in 2 for 1-ing (or better!) your opponent, as well as setting them back a turn or two. It feels pretty great to remove a creature before it gets +4/+4 with a kicked Vines of Vastwood.

Being able to block Inkmoth Nexus is not a good enough reason to bring in the extra Kira. A) She costs three, so it's probably too late in most cases. B) Infect packs a LOT of ways to make their creatures unblockable. Spreading Seas is a much more effective way to combat Inkmoth.

With your 75 card list, here is what I would do:
-3 master of waves
-1 Merrow Rejeerey
-2 Kira
+2 Spellskite
+3 Spell pierce
+1 Vapor Snag

I love my matchup against Infect, and so should you. We are huge favors, I think. Just make sure to play around Vines of Vastwood and Dispels when you can.

Okay, I just read back a few pages and realized people may want more details than my previous post about how to play against the Infect decks. So here you go!

1) Some information about Infect decks. The basic premise of the deck is to have a small creature with infect push through 10 damage by any means. The most common cards they use to deal infect damage are Glistener Elf, Inkmoth Nexus, and Blighted Agent. The rest of the deck is composed of spells that either temporarily pump or protect (or both!) their infect creatures for VERY little mana. Efficient spells like Vines of Vastwood, Apostle's Blessing, Mutagenic Growth, Groundswell, and Might of Old Krosa can force through a good amount of damage out of nowhere. Here is a list from Hall of Famer Jon Finkel if you want an example.

***Note that two of the three creatures that deal infect are things merfolk cannot block! Blighted Agent is unblockable, and Inkmoth Nexus has flying! Lots of players include the card Distortion Strike just to make sure their infect creatures can't be blocked. If your opponent offers a trade, it's probably best to just go with it, even if they have a pump spell... trading a merfolk for a pump spell is a good deal in most cases for this matchup!***

2) Tools we have to defeat infect.

a. Removal

Dismember and Vapor Snag are stellar in this matchup. Because the Infect deck relies upon using their cards and mana to target their creatures, removing their target results in huge tempo losses for our opponent. Imagine your opponent plays a turn two Blighted Agent... on turn three, they play Might of Old Krosa in their main phase and attack... you're holding a dismember, but they have mana open, so you play it safe... you don't block with your cursecatcher... before damage happens, they cast a Mutagenic Growth and a Groundswell... if you Dismember their creature, they just lost the creature AND three other cards... and you took ZERO poison. Even if they get their creature back from a Vapor Snag, they lost their turn and some cards.
Now, most infect players will not be that aggressive, and will try to hold up more ways to protect their creatures with cards like Vines of Vastwood or Dispel. But at some point they kind of have to go for the win. Remember, we are developing our own board. Our deck can be pretty fast, and the infect deck deals itself a lot of damage with its lands and the use of phyrexian mana. If your opponent wants to be able to hold up Vines of Vastwood and go for the win, they will need to wait at least a couple turns. By that time, if you can hold up more than one removal spell, they pretty much have no chance.

-PRO TIP- If you are planning on using a Dismember or a Vapor Snag to get rid of an infect creature, and you suspect your opponent has Vines of Vastwood, DEAL WITH IT AFTER COMBAT IF YOU CAN... If you try to bounce or kill the creature before combat damage is dealt, the pump from Vines of Vastwood will just result in more infect damage getting through. Remember, we usually have the time to just react to the infect player's spells; taking a few poison damage is not the end of the world. If your opponent is happy to just hit you for 1 or 2 poison a turn, don't force the issue and risk losing a battle that could have been avoided! The person who fires second in this duel usually comes out victorious!

There is no shame dealing with an infect creature on your own turn if you have to... if they only have one threat, killing/bouncing it on your turn means it can't attack you next turn... Worst case scenario, they don't get the pump effect from the Vines of Vastwood they burned protecting their creature.

b. Counter-magic / Permisison

The counterspells in merfolk decks are very well positioned against infect because they run so few lands. Spell Pierce will likely trade for an important pump spell, buying you the precious time for your merfolk to destroy your opponent. Cursecatcher is also fantastic in this matchup, as their important cards are almost all instants and sorcery spells. The combination of efficient counterspells and cursecatcher make it very easy to win the battles you get into over your Dismember or Vapor Snag

c. Other cards

-Spreading Seas deserves an honorable mention. Inkmoth Nexus makes up roughly 30% of the infect creatures in your opponent's deck. It is very difficult and expensive for an opponent to stop a Spreading Seas from neutralizing their Nexus. And sometimes your opponent will be tight on green mana, so hitting a forest can just give you a free win.

-Spellskite is a great answer to the pump spells your opponent plans to use on their creatures. Let me just say, using an Aether Vial to drop in a Spellskite and steal an opponent's Vines of Vastwood is one of the greatest feelings ever! As always with the card, just keep in mind that not all spells your opponent will use can be redirected to your Spellskite.


So there you are (Mer)folks! Just pick your battles wisely, and you should be favored in this matchup. Obviously, there are many cards you may play in your 75 that can also be relevant (i.e. Chalice of the Void set to one is usually just game), but as far as the stock merfolk deck is concerned, the cards I discussed above are highly effective against infect when used properly. Questions? Comments? Concerns? Feedback? Let me know! If there is anything else you think I should be more clear about, just ask!

I run 1 Kira main and 1 in the side since she is useless against Abrupt Decay and my meta is filled with the stupid card -_- I love her to death, but yeah

Spreading seas can take them off green, their entire method of pumping. If you feel comfortable doing so, go ahead and seas a basic forest or a dual land. If you force them to swing with a 1/1 glistener elf or just animate their inkmoth that gives you another turn, another draw, another combat step when they could have just groundsweeled or Krosa'd to make the race that much shorter.

I have to agree with Spellskite, I had some practice with the card when Infect was more played and I might come back to it. As has been said now, do not fear infect. They look scary but if you answer the right cards they just fold to us in under 5 turns.

Thanks for the encouragement, y'all. I'll try to do more detailed write-ups in the near future. As far as your other questions go, I'll get back to you later tonight after work.

If you don't have a vial in play you need to play slowly, wait for them to announce all their pumps before Snaging or pierce their bigger spells like groundswell or krosa. I find Muta is great for putting in pressure since the colorless mana does nothing to help keep threats up and if you aren't staring at a blighted agent you can flood the board with threats, if they have distortion strike, you know for game 2 but it isn't super common.

I main 4 vapor snags and 1 dismember in the side, but I have been considering bringing it up to 2. I run 2 seas in my main and 2 in the side because I hate getting a hand with 2 or more seas, it has worked well for me since pre-ban the format was so blue heavy. I will probably up it to 3 with 1 in the side now that Abzan is more dominant. I keep them up for when they finish announcing their spells, once they tap out or go for it I will snag them. If I see a Blighted Agent I check my board, if I have no lords out when they go to attack I will usually just let them go for it, I won't race them. If I have 1 lord or more I will snag it since the race is a lot closer. This is a gut feeling personally, I have made some wrong calls but with Agent it is tricky.

It depends which 2 creatures, if one is unblockable I will typically snag it and block the other. If they are both unblockable, then it is probably game 2 at that point. I would have drawn no seas, low snags, and not even counters to impact things and they would just run wild. An Agent and an Inkmoth is a problem period even if they only have blue mana.

If they are slow rolling I will usually snag them. How many cards are in their hand? Which land do they have untapped? These are all judgement calls as every game is different. If I have 1 island and 2 mutas, there is almost nothing I can do without a vial. A lot of it is judgement pure and simple, we are currently only talking about what their board looks like.

My current problem when playing infect is if they are B/G with abrupt decay since vial and kira are basically useless at that point or if they are playing G/U and not having any action until Agent comes out. Glistener Elf is not a threat, we can chump it, dismember it, snag it, even if they have distortion strike we can still counter it. If their plan is to win off Glistener alone the threat level is average at best. I would rather see a turn 2 Agent than a turn 2 Abrupt Decay every round

Infect and burn are both about how comfortable do you personally feel? How much life are they at? What is in your hand? What have they already played? Both decks can explode out of nowhere if you let them or just have a terrible draw. If they have a win, it doesn't matter how good our hand is or what they play. Even if we get vial out turn one if we don't have a cursecatcher it could be over turn 2.

Turn 1 we play an island and a vial. Our hand is 3 lords, muta, and a spreading seas. They play a forest and a Glistener.
Turn 2 we play our muta and cast seas on their forest, draw a spell pierce. They play a forest play might of Krosa and pay 6 life for 3 Mutagenic growths to win.

We were on the play, should we have mulled down to 6 to see a cursecatcher, a snag, or a spell pierce? If not do we go down to 5? Then do we go down to 4 just to see one of those? Did we keep because we could blow them out on turn 3? Should we have kept the mana up to animate muta and block despite not having a 3rd land in hand? Or were they just going to win regardless? I really don't mean to be a downer or anything, but we can just prepare as much as we can and hope for the best, that's part of magic.

Quote from Nikachu_ »

Is anyone good at spreadsheets or data? I was toying with the idea of taking each card and then giving it an evaluation something like this:

0 - Useless
1 - Poor
2 - Playable/good half the time (play/draw dependant)
3 - Good
4 - Hoser

This sounds suspiciously close to what's referred to as "The Elephant Method."

The basic approach is, for each matchup, list out the perfect 60 against that deck. Then, after you've got every matchup sorted, pick out the 75 unique cards common across everything, then decide on the best 60 from there.

The cool thing about this method, is you get a complete sideboarding plan as a side effect. That said, it's a fair amount of work. Zvi Moshowitz talks about it here.

If you are hoping to 2 for 1 a Infect player then you are sadly mistaken or playing against a newbie.

Merfolk has 0 play against Infect unless you're running something bizzare like 8 removal.
1) We probably won't have removal, and they know that.
2) We have to use removal on our turn or we will get o for 1'd (they have more protection than we have removal).
3) Their clock is 2-3 turns faster than ours even if they play slow.

Become Immense / Wild Defiance / Blessing means GG for us.

Sadly it's one matchup that you just hope to win, but won't and there's no amount of sideboard cards that can fix it (Chalice and Gutshot?) Gutshot is the best card vs Infect btw.

I used to think infect was winnable with a well placed removal but lately I played a couple of games against the version with Become Immense / Wild Defiance / Blessing and got destroyed time after time trying to play my removal on their turn. I came to the same conclusion as you that I should just play my removal on my turn (as pathetic as that sounds). Also with Noble Hierarch, it's tough to get them with spell pierce.

Yes - you should definitely play removal on your turn. This is a fundamental rule when playing against Infect. If they respond by pumping, say in response to dismember than that's fine - that's one/two pump spells that wont hit you for poison. If they respond with blessing than so be it - they would have done that anyway when attacking in response to removal anyway. If you have a second piece of removal/bounce, optimally bounce, you may cast it in there next turn with the expectation that they wont have a blessing - cast it after they've played pump spells and in declare blockers - basically 2 for 1 enough times and you are looking in ok shape for the win.

I stand by what I said before. I've played some very skilled players running infect. Their protection spells do not always vastly outnumber our answers. Check out these notable Infect lists from MtgTop8.com. They run approximately 6 mainboard spells (usually Vines of Vastwood and Apostle's Blessing) that protect their infect creatures. Most merfolk lists have around 4 or 5 removal/bounce spells with Vapor Snag and Dismember. So it's pretty close in that regard. Except we have MUCH MORE permission spells to counter their protection spells! Not to mention they have to fire first, using their mana to lower their defenses.

I am with casualG on this, if we both have 2 mana up there are so many outs against Blessing or Vines. Snag and Dismember, Snag and Pierce, Snag and Swan Song, Dismember and Pierce, etc...they are much more locked on resources than we are even without vial. I have always mained 4 Snags and it has gotten me out of too many jams to ever cut 1 from the main. I can post my list, but it is still in testing.

All of you are forgetting that, except for Blighted Agent, Tidebinder Mage is a removal spell as well since infect will run almost no spells to take the Mage out. At the Pro Tour Tyler Hill ran 1 Dismember Main decked and 1 Sideboard, Jon Finkel ran none. That makes 7-8 removal spells easy to maindeck.

Actually, Inkmoth Nexus would not be hit by Tidebinder either, but still.

Uhm they usually only run one green infect, the little 1/1 elf. Infect is BUG now.

Infect is a decent matchup for us. Sometimes they just have it and you´re dead, but we have all the tools needed to stop them

It was so good at the pro tour because it is good against abzan. They run a crapton of redundancy so discard doesn´t hurt too much, and they often get enough time to reload and try again if they get blown out. Compared to Abzan however, Merfolk has a much faster clock, and if they don´t have it immediately they are dead. Because of how the deck functions, bounce spells are basically just as powerful as actual removal like Abrupt Decay, and we have plenty of blockers, can shut down nexus with spreading seas and glistener elf with tidebinder

I'd say it's a slightly favoured matchup, especially if you sideboard Chalices. But it is definitely not a freeroll and if you don't respect every single draw they get they can two- or even oneshot you out of nowhere

They also run Viridian Corrupter which turns off Vial as well as gets rid of Chalice, it also allows them to keep the creatures coming, Also remember you can tap down a Noble Hierarch with Tidebinder Mage to keep them off mana. That is 3 targets for tidebinder, obviously Glistener Elf is the desired target, but you have to judge if it is worth saving if they have a Hierarch out already.