I'm not a fan of the green splash at all but this looks fun at least. Wouldn't it be more worth the painful mana base if we ran Collected Company? Another card no one mentions is Kiora's Follower which ramps into Company turn 3
I'm not sure about adding fetchlands and breeding pools. I liked the white splash in some lists because it also came painfree with wanderwine hub. Not cracking fetches is a great edge against burn and valakut decks (and a minor win against leonin arbiter decks). I'm not sure CoCo is worth it, because it feels fairly slow for our deck. Having only -potentially- Kiora's Follower to ramp into it feels veeeery iffy as well.
I suppose it is worth testing it out if someone feels compelled to, but for the moment I will run the list above (I also think CoCo doesn't make our bad matchups much better). I was also thinking about brewing a 'Bant' Merfolk list, essentialy to have access to path (and maybe stony silence on SB).
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It would definitely be cool to try! The reason I'm not into a splash could be because of how much higher I rate harbinger and master of waves then you do. I don't like running less Than four of either and prefer cutting rejerrey in their place for interaction/Kira/clique/copter. Adding a color make both significantly worse . We definitely agree about being excited for kopala though. I can see running out some number of both him and Kira because the removal is all over the meta right now.
I don't like running more than 20 lands. This deck is at risk for flooding already, because it doesn't have good mana sinks and Aether Vial lets us cheat on mana. Your proposed list doesn't fix that problem. If anything, explore cards incentivize ticking the land count DOWN, since it's easier to find the lands you need. Your lack of mainboard interaction is also concerning - without Dismember and Harbinger of the Tides, you're going to struggle mightily against any creature deck in Game 1, in addition to combo decks relying on creatures like Storm and Company (and given your sideboard, you will likely struggle postboard as well). Your underestimation of Harbinger in particular suggests that you have misconceptions on how this deck works - it's not aggro, it's tempo, which means you need to be prepared to take the control role against fast aggressive decks like Affinity and Burn. Saying you "tuned for Affinity" while not including Harbingers (or any way to interact with their flyers in the maindeck) is bewildering, to say the least. Trying for a painless manabase is admirable, but it also means you will struggle to cast your G creatures - you need 14 G sources to reliably cast Kumena's Speaker on curve, and you need 13 for Merfolk Branchwalker. Consult Frank Karsten's seminal article for details.
Hibernation is pretty poor against the current versions of Collected Company decks, as they can respond by floating infinite G and recasting their entire team if they have the combo (and if they don't have the combo, you should be spending your mana on developing your board and beating face as fast as you can before they do). It also hits your green guys, if you didn't notice. 1 Dispel and 2 Spell Pierce are woefully insufficient to even stand a chance against the likes of Ad Nauseam and Storm postboard (the Relics help in the latter case, but do nothing for the former). In short, I don't think the deck as presented is very good. I think it has fundamental construction flaws beyond the sub-optimal nature of the G splash, and I'd really like to know why you think it will make the deck faster, as I don't really see how that would be the case (the T4 kill relies on Lords, and you have no more Lords than any other list).
I wouldnt play either of those merfolk if they were U - let alone massacring your mana base to incorporate them - just because WOTC prints new cards doesnt mean you have to play them in modern..
Otherwise, with that many lands you could even play Collected Company. In every case, The UG list seems more consistent and fast
While I'm happy to see people trying out new things, I feel a need to point out that two colors is never "more consistent" than monochromatic. Never.
It may be faster, but none of the decks shown yet has evidenced that either.
If you do splash green though, Collected Company is something that should definitely be considered. No question there.
Noble Heirarch and Birds of Paradise are interesting, but well off our aggro theme. We want our acceleration to also be able to punch when push comes to shove. What you need is a version of Avacyn's Pilgrim that's a Merfolk and produces U instead of W. That would be a significant thing.
I don't like running more than 20 lands. This deck is at risk for flooding already, because it doesn't have good mana sinks and Aether Vial lets us cheat on mana. Your proposed list doesn't fix that problem. If anything, explore cards incentivize ticking the land count DOWN, since it's easier to find the lands you need.
Disagree. The idea here is that we mitigate flooding by drawing more cards with branchwalker. Please notice that the average CMC of that decklist is ~1.8. Given that the recommended land count is something between 21 and 22. Read this artcile for reference: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/brewer-s-minute-how-many-lands
Your lack of mainboard interaction is also concerning - without Dismember and Harbinger of the Tides, you're going to struggle mightily against any creature deck in Game 1, in addition to combo decks relying on creatures like Storm and Company (and given your sideboard, you will likely struggle postboard as well). Your underestimation of Harbinger in particular suggests that you have misconceptions on how this deck works - it's not aggro, it's tempo, which means you need to be prepared to take the control role against fast aggressive decks like Affinity and Burn. Saying you "tuned for Affinity" while not including Harbingers (or any way to interact with their flyers in the maindeck) is bewildering, to say the least.
Disagree again. This deck is supposed to be faster and hit stronger than other creature decks. The only reason why we might want to interact is if they are creature-combo decks, hence making them stronger in that sense. Aside from that, we should be able to ignore what our opponent is doing most of the time while killing them in the meanwhile. Besides, what kind of interaction against the aforementioned decks harbinger of the tides provide? I've played 4 hurkyll's recall against affinity once upon a time and struggled to beat them in the tempo game, certainly bouncing one of their dudes, even if equipped with plating, isn't doing much better. Same for burn, you don't save yourself by bouncing a swiftspear or goblin guide, but by killing them faster. Tell me please how dismember is helping you in such matchups? The card is 4 points of damage to our face. If I'm a burn player I'm actually happy to see the opponent doing that to himself. You can't tailor your sideboard against everything, I chose some matchups and stuck to them, I really don't think our deck needs more help killing other creature decks because it is already good at that.
Trying for a painless manabase is admirable, but it also means you will struggle to cast your G creatures - you need 14 G sources to reliably cast Kumena's Speaker on curve, and you need 13 for Merfolk Branchwalker. Consult Frank Karsten's seminal article for details.
So... I have 12 sources to get those cards and you think that is bad? I can do as someone suggested and add a couple botanical sanctuns to solve this 'problem'. Regardless, I think you could go without the sanctum since you don't necessarily always need to cast speaker on one (if you have a cursecatcher, for instance, you play that instead).
Hibernation is pretty poor against the current versions of Collected Company decks, as they can respond by floating infinite G and recasting their entire team if they have the combo (and if they don't have the combo, you should be spending your mana on developing your board and beating face as fast as you can before they do). It also hits your green guys, if you didn't notice. 1 Dispel and 2 Spell Pierce are woefully insufficient to even stand a chance against the likes of Ad Nauseam and Storm postboard (the Relics help in the latter case, but do nothing for the former). In short, I don't think the deck as presented is very good. I think it has fundamental construction flaws beyond the sub-optimal nature of the G splash, and I'd really like to know why you think it will make the deck faster, as I don't really see how that would be the case (the T4 kill relies on Lords, and you have no more Lords than any other list).
Hibernation: they can only float infinite mana if you don't bounce devoted druid in responde to vizier. Why wouldn't you do that? You can also board away some of the green guys? What is you suggestion for CoCo decks? Hibernation also hits elves, which are usually faster than us. Dispel and pierce: Yes, I'm not adding dispel and pierce to combat the decks you mentioned, but to combat control decks as I said. And, as I said, your sideboard can't be tailored for everything. What would you change in the sideboard to improve the matchups against storm and nauseam without crippling yourself against dredge, living end, affinity, tron, etc? Why the 'sub-optimal' nature of the green splash? It is almost a free splash, if not entirely free. Yes, you will lose one game in one-hundred due to drawing awkwardly, but to say that the splash is suboptimal given that the new cards seem STRONG additions to the deck is just... guessing? To be fair, I didn't test them either,so they may be not as good as they seem, but I'm not claiming it is not a good splash without testing it. Finally: the deck is faster because the curve is lowered. Yes, the fastest kill can still happen only turn 4, but you will kill more often in earlier turns since you're not playing slow spells like master of waves. Master is not bad, but it is not for the current metagame in my honest opinion. That's all. I will address the other posts later.
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Disagree. The idea here is that we mitigate flooding by drawing more cards with branchwalker. Please notice that the average CMC of that decklist is ~1.8. Given that the recommended land count is something between 21 and 22. Read this artcile for reference: https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/brewer-s-minute-how-many-lands
That's just not how Turbo Xerox theory works. The more ways you have to find lands, the fewer actual lands you need, especially when you have little to no ways to use them efficiently once you're hellbent (and you don't - none of us do). I'll take Frank Karsten's math over SaffronOlive's any day, and according to him 20 lands is just right for this deck (you might even be able to get away with 19, thanks to the cantrips). As a Merfolk pilot with thousands of matches of sanctioned competitive matches on MTGO (and God-only-knows how many on paper), I can tell you that going over 20 lands will almost certainly result in having more lands than you can actually do productive things with in the midgame, which is how Merfolk loses.
Disagree again. This deck is supposed to be faster and hit stronger than other creature decks. The only reason why we might want to interact is if they are creature-combo decks, hence making them stronger in that sense. Aside from that, we should be able to ignore what our opponent is doing most of the time while killing them in the meanwhile. Besides, what kind of interaction against the aforementioned decks harbinger of the tides provide? I've played 4 hurkyll's recall against affinity once upon a time and struggled to beat them in the tempo game, certainly bouncing one of their dudes, even if equipped with plating, isn't doing much better. Same for burn, you don't save yourself by bouncing a swiftspear or goblin guide, but by killing them faster. Tell me please how dismember is helping you in such matchups? The card is 4 points of damage to our face. If I'm a burn player I'm actually happy to see the opponent doing that to himself. You can't tailor your sideboard against everything, I chose some matchups and stuck to them, I really don't think our deck needs more help killing other creature decks because it is already good at that.
Dismember is bad against Burn, certainly, but thanks to cards like Harbinger of the Tides (which bottlenecks their mana if cast at sorcery speed, or erases attacks if Vialed/flashed in) and Master of Waves (which often wins the game on the spot), our Game 1 against the deck is good enough to get away with a dead card, which you will obviously side out. These are the dangers of cutting the cards you did - you have fundamentally changed how the deck functions, and not for the better. Against Affinity, Dismember is painful, but it beats taking lethal infect damage or 10+ regular damage from a loaded-up flyer, and it certainly beats letting your opponent untap Steel Overseer or Master of Etherium. Harbinger is important against Affinity because it provides a body to pressure the opponent with in addition to buying you time. These are all well-established things that have borne out by the testing of hundreds of Merfolk players. You can try to race those decks if you want. You will lose.
The point about being supposed to be faster than other creature decks simply isn't true - we're a medium-speed, high-power, high-resilience creature deck. We can't match up to the raw velocity of Affinity, Elves, Goblins, or Zoo, and we likely never will. What we have is the ability to interact, and the ability to defend ourselves against interaction. That's our competitive advantage.
So... I have 12 sources to get those cards and you think that is bad? I can do as someone suggested and add a couple botanical sanctuns to solve this 'problem'. Regardless, I think you could go without the sanctum since you don't necessarily always need to cast speaker on one (if you have a cursecatcher, for instance, you play that instead).
Yes, I think it's bad, because tempo is important for this deck, and unreliable mana is the quickest way to fall behind on tempo. Speaker's effectiveness in particular wanes the longer you wait to cast it (Branchwalker, on the other hand, holds steady value more or less throughout the game). However, if your goal is to curve out and kill on Turn 4 (and if you don't, you are strictly worse than the classic Merfolk list), your mana needs to be as smooth and efficient as possible.
Hibernation: they can only float infinite mana if you don't bounce devoted druid in responde to vizier. Why wouldn't you do that? You can also board away some of the green guys? What is you suggestion for CoCo decks? Hibernation also hits elves, which are usually faster than us. Dispel and pierce: Yes, I'm not adding dispel and pierce to combat the decks you mentioned, but to combat control decks as I said. And, as I said, your sideboard can't be tailored for everything. What would you change in the sideboard to improve the matchups against storm and nauseam without crippling yourself against dredge, living end, affinity, tron, etc? Why the 'sub-optimal' nature of the green splash? It is almost a free splash, if not entirely free. Yes, you will lose one game in one-hundred due to drawing awkwardly, but to say that the splash is suboptimal given that the new cards seem STRONG additions to the deck is just... guessing? To be fair, I didn't test them either,so they may be not as good as they seem, but I'm not claiming it is not a good splash without testing it. Finally: the deck is faster because the curve is lowered. Yes, the fastest kill can still happen only turn 4, but you will kill more often in earlier turns since you're not playing slow spells like master of waves. Master is not bad, but it is not for the current metagame in my honest opinion. That's all. I will address the other posts later.
Everything you said about Hibernation can be done better by Echoing Truth - costs less mana to hold up, has 0 friendly fire issues, buys you the turn you need against the threat in question, and is better against the field. The proposal to take out green creatures to make Hibernation work is particularly bewildering, given that most non-dork green creatures in CoCo decks have useful ETB effects that you don't want to give them a redo on, and that you're going to need to pressure them in order to win (and all of your green creatures are early drops meant to pressure the opponent). You combat CoCo decks by disrupting early then aggroing hard - those Spell Pierces need to be Negates (because their ability to ramp makes "tax" counterspells bad), and Ceremonious Rejection needs to be prominently involved in your sideboard for Affinity/Eldrazi/Tron.
As for your comments on the splash... please see Nikachu's video series on splashing colors in Merfolk (I'm specifically linking the one for G, but he did one for every color). If that's not enough for you, check out Corbin Hosler's stab at it. This is well-trod ground, and we know that all of the splashes are sub-optimal from the testimonials of players who have tried it and found wanting. Also, adding a couple of 1-drops does not inherently make the deck significantly faster - Merfolk's T4 kills come from double/triple Lord and 1-2 other attackers. That can be anything from a Cursecatcher to a Silvergill Adept to a Harbinger of the Tides. Your deck looks more like a Zoo deck than theirs, and I don't mean that as a compliment - Zoo is gone from the competitive meta, in part because vanilla beaters are something this metagame is well-tuned to beat.
I also think you massively underestimate Master of Waves - it's very difficult for many decks to remove, especially with a Kira, Great Glass-Spinner on the battlefield. It usually wins the game on the spot against Burn, and the likes of Shadow need to basically find a Revolted Fatal Push on the spot or die (spoiler: they usually don't, because otherwise they would have died to your other creatures earlier in the game).
My conclusion is that you're inexperienced in the format, and that is leading you to draw erroneous conclusions as to what the deck does and does not need. Commander experience in particular translates poorly over to 60-card constructed. You can test your deck if you like, but I think you'll find that you won't be any faster, and thus your deck will be strictly worse than the classic shell (which is classic for a reason).
That's just not how Turbo Xerox theory works. The more ways you have to find lands, the fewer actual lands you need, especially when you have little to no ways to use them efficiently once you're hellbent (and you don't - none of us do). I'll take Frank Karsten's math over SaffronOlive's any day, and according to him 20 lands is just right for this deck (you might even be able to get away with 19, thanks to the cantrips). As a Merfolk pilot with thousands of matches of sanctioned competitive matches on MTGO (and God-only-knows how many on paper), I can tell you that going over 20 lands will almost certainly result in having more lands than you can actually do productive things with in the midgame, which is how Merfolk loses.
First, that turbo xerox theory is talking about decks with mainly cantrips and way to find lands. All our cards that search other cards cost TWO mana, not ONE. That is a huge difference from a deck with brainstorms, ponders and gitaxian probes, even if the xerox rule also applies to two-mana cards. I agree that with vial we might get away with playing fewer lands, but you're missing my point. If we have more lands we increase the chance of having lands on top of our deck and having Branchwalker be actual card advantage (and not merely card selection). That land that you would draw and 'flood' you is now on your hand, and you will draw a real card the next time. Not only that, but regarding Frank Karsten's article, I will just quote this part:
20 1.12-1.44 Low-curve deck – You need 2 lands on turn 2 (98.3%) but would like 3 lands on turn 3 (79.6%) for some 3-drops
21 1.44-1.76 Aggro deck – You need 2 lands on turn 2 every game (98.8%) but would like 3 lands on turn 3 (82.3%) for several 3-drops
22 1.76-2.08 Aggro deck – You need 2 lands on turn 2 every game (99.2%) but would like 3 lands on turn 3 (84.7%) for several 3-drop
First, notice how his math is not different from the article I sent you. Our deck was in the 1.8 range of CMC, so we SHOULD be playing 22 lands according to this. Now, notice also the difference between needing 2 lands EVERY game and just 'needing' two lands. We need every game. Now, you might say the difference between hitting 2 lands by turn 2 with 20 and 22 is small. I agree. The difference between hitting 3 lands on turn 3, however, is not small at all. Why we might need 3 lands though? Playing only 6 3-mana spells? Simple, we have more one drops now, and we can double spell more often. Hitting 3 lands helps our tempo plan. Hitting 4 is also not bad because we can double lord or lord + merfolk cantrip or any variation of stuff. The difference of hitting 4 lands on turn 4 with 20 (65.8% / 55.2% - draw/play) and 22 (73.9% / 63.7% - draw/play) lands in your deck is gigantic. Playing more than one spell a turn is essential for tempo decks. Yes, you played thousands of matchups. How many did you play with branchwalker and speaker? Zero, I assume.
Dismember is bad against Burn, certainly, but thanks to cards like Harbinger of the Tides (which bottlenecks their mana if cast at sorcery speed, or erases attacks if Vialed/flashed in) and Master of Waves (which often wins the game on the spot), our Game 1 against the deck is good enough to get away with a dead card, which you will obviously side out. These are the dangers of cutting the cards you did - you have fundamentally changed how the deck functions, and not for the better. Against Affinity, Dismember is painful, but it beats taking lethal infect damage or 10+ regular damage from a loaded-up flyer, and it certainly beats letting your opponent untap Steel Overseer or Master of Etherium. Harbinger is important against Affinity because it provides a body to pressure the opponent with in addition to buying you time. These are all well-established things that have borne out by the testing of hundreds of Merfolk players. You can try to race those decks if you want. You will lose.
The point about being supposed to be faster than other creature decks simply isn't true - we're a medium-speed, high-power, high-resilience creature deck. We can't match up to the raw velocity of Affinity, Elves, Goblins, or Zoo, and we likely never will. What we have is the ability to interact, and the ability to defend ourselves against interaction. That's our competitive advantage.
I don't get your point about dismember. It is bad against burn. We already have 5 sideboard slots for affinity, 6 if you want to include echoing truth. Why do you need dismember again? You should be able to counter all of affinity's payoff spells with a ceremonius rejection on 1, even on the draw, unless they have a crazy opening involving mox opals. Regarding Harbinger: what does it do against Tron? Storm? Living End? Dredge? Control decks? I can see it being good against eldrazi and death's shadow, and situationally good against affinity. It is definitely mediocre against burn. By the time it hits the board on 2 you already got hit by a hasty creature at least once, and the cost to replay the creature is very small, smaller than harbinger himself. He is neat with vial, sure, but that's about it. I think harbinger is a clear metacall. Sure, if you want, you can cut the Kopalas and 2 lands and have a list with Harbingers, no problem. I'm willing to see how that goes. But I think you are grossly overestimating the value of such a situational card. You have no idea if I will lose or win because the cards in my deck simply never existed before lol. The fact that you so confidently say that is astonishing.
Yes, I think it's bad, because tempo is important for this deck, and unreliable mana is the quickest way to fall behind on tempo. Speaker's effectiveness in particular wanes the longer you wait to cast it (Branchwalker, on the other hand, holds steady value more or less throughout the game). However, if your goal is to curve out and kill on Turn 4 (and if you don't, you are strictly worse than the classic Merfolk list), your mana needs to be as smooth and efficient as possible.
Okay, I will add the sanctuns then, problem solved.
Everything you said about Hibernation can be done better by Echoing Truth - costs less mana to hold up, has 0 friendly fire issues, buys you the turn you need against the threat in question, and is better against the field. The proposal to take out green creatures to make Hibernation work is particularly bewildering, given that most non-dork green creatures in CoCo decks have useful ETB effects that you don't want to give them a redo on, and that you're going to need to pressure them in order to win (and all of your green creatures are early drops meant to pressure the opponent). You combat CoCo decks by disrupting early then aggroing hard - those Spell Pierces need to be Negates (because their ability to ramp makes "tax" counterspells bad), and Ceremonious Rejection needs to be prominently involved in your sideboard for Affinity/Eldrazi/Tron.
Sure, so we play echoing truth instead of hibernation, problem solved for CoCo decks, maybe against elves too. I absolutely disagree with spell pierce vs negate. We are a tempodeck, you said yourself, the difference between two mana for a hard counter and one for a soft one is enourmous. If the opponent wants to wait until having SIX mana sources to cast CoCo around spell pierce, then be my guest. By that time we should have pressured him enough that he won't have such a chance. Negate is muuuch clunkier than pierce in our deck, just seems like a bad card overall, I would only consider for the tron matchup, but we now have rejections for that.
As for your comments on the splash... please see Nikachu's video series on splashing colors in Merfolk (I'm specifically linking the one for G, but he did one for every color). If that's not enough for you, check out Corbin Hosler's stab at it. This is well-trod ground, and we know that all of the splashes are sub-optimal from the testimonials of players who have tried it and found wanting. Also, adding a couple of 1-drops does not inherently make the deck significantly faster - Merfolk's T4 kills come from double/triple Lord and 1-2 other attackers. That can be anything from a Cursecatcher to a Silvergill Adept to a Harbinger of the Tides. Your deck looks more like a Zoo deck than theirs, and I don't mean that as a compliment - Zoo is gone from the competitive meta, in part because vanilla beaters are something this metagame is well-tuned to beat.
My God. You know that the splashes and links that you sent are from fundamentally different decks, right? Having green mana symbols on your cards don't make all the splashes the same. Nikachu is playing with CoCos and noble hierarchs, nowhere to be seen on my list. NOBODY has EVER played with Ixalan merfolks, do you realize how crazy it is to call this splash bad without testing it first? What's worse, calling it bad on the grounds that a fundamentally different deck did worse than the 'classical' version of the list. How many merfolk players can give you testimonials of their matches using kumena speaker and branchwalker? I will tell you - zero. Because the cards weren't released yet. There NEVER was a one-drop two-power merfolk ever printed, and branchwalker can work as pseudo-4-extra copies of our best card - silvergill adept. How can you say that the splash will be bad? You have no way to know.
I also think you massively underestimate Master of Waves - it's very difficult for many decks to remove, especially with a Kira, Great Glass-Spinner on the battlefield. It usually wins the game on the spot against Burn, and the likes of Shadow need to basically find a Revolted Fatal Push on the spot or die (spoiler: they usually don't, because otherwise they would have died to your other creatures earlier in the game).
My conclusison is that you're inexperienced in the format, and that is leading you to draw erroneous conclusions as to what the deck does and does not need. Commander experience in particular translates poorly over to 60-card constructed. You can test your deck if you like, but I think you'll find that you won't be any faster, and thus your deck will be strictly worse than the classic shell (which is classic for a reason).
I've been playing magic since Onslaugh, not only commander. Merfolk is the modern deck I have played the most with, I merely pointed out that modern isn't my primary format of choice. You are now sketching specific scenarios where master of waves is good. I don't disagree it is a good card. AS SOON as it came out on Theros I tested a list with 4 copies of it, and I did like it, but the format is not only faster, but the answers are different. Master of Waves, no matter how you try to slice it, still is a 4-mana spell that can be clunky in our hand. I much rather test a list without it than with it and see how it goes.
All that said, here is a list that adapted to some of your criticism (not always constructive):
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i really think that if you want to play merfolk branchwalker and no master of waves (it makes sense), then the curve is low enough with a lot of cantrips that you can play less than 20 lands +4 aether vials. The 20 lands are usually there because you want to hit 4 on turn 4 for Master of Waves (and you normally have 8 CMC2 cantrip spells, here they are 12)
I'd use 18 lands+vials or (better) 19 lands + 4x Noble Hierarch
Otherwise, with that many lands you could even play Collected Company. In every case, The UG list seems more consistent and fast and with less holes in terms of matchups, but lacks the finishing power of Master of Waves and risks taking a bit of damage from lands (you can avoid it with Cavern of Souls and Unclaimed territory, if you don't play coloured spells like CoCo, vapor snag etc.), so that burn becomes more even than before (but you still can dedicate some SB slots, like Life goes on and stuff)
In my opinion there is room to work with this, obviously every direction you take there are consequences for your choices (pros and cons), but as long as you live with them it's cool
I agree with your assessment that there are certainly pros and cons in abandoning the classical list over the UG list. I'm willing to see many different combinations and tests, and I can see dropping unclaimed territory to play breeding pool and fetch lands so as to also improve our sideboard with cards like natural state (as someone posted here). I agree that the U/G list seems faster and more consistent, but of course we will only find that out with further testing.
I think the questions now is 'should we run breeding pool and fetchlands?', 'should we add CoCo? If so, mainboard or sideboard?' and 'Does branchwalker change the amount of lands we could play in the deck? If so, should we play more or less?'. I'm curious to see the answers to these questions. And, of course, to see if the new cards are an improvement over the 'classical' list, a different take, or a downgrade.
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Karsten's math includes lands in the average CMC, unlike Saffron's. That means Merfolk falls into the 1.12-1.44 CMC category, which prescribes 20 lands. You can go ahead and test your list if you want - I don't expect you to do well, and at this point I've said my piece as to why. Prove me wrong - none of the other splash attempts have, and I don't expect yours to be an exception.
Funny that you bring up the "new tools" argument in the same post as one alluding to mono-U Merfolk's flaws, which you have not articulated in detail - none of those "new tools" address any of Merfolk's flaws. We're already really good at applying steady pressure and at grinding away with card advantage pieces. None of the tools in question address our weaknesses to flyers, sweepers, and resolved artifacts/enchantments, all of which are things we know are within the purview of G's part of the color pie. I don't have an inherent bias against splashing colors in the deck - I'm just looking for the proper payoff to do so, and it hasn't shown up yet. But again, if you want to jam a purely creature-based aggro deck without any semblance of interaction, go ahead and do so - you won't do well, and you shouldn't be surprised when you don't. Slivers players have been trying exactly that for years.
Funny that you bring up the "new tools" argument in the same post as one alluding to mono-U Merfolk's flaws, which you have not articulated in detail - none of those "new tools" address any of Merfolk's flaws. We're already really good at applying steady pressure and at grinding away with card advantage pieces. None of the tools in question address our weaknesses to flyers, sweepers, and resolved artifacts/enchantments, all of which are things we know are within the purview of G's part of the color pie. I don't have an inherent bias against splashing colors in the deck - I'm just looking for the proper payoff to do so, and it hasn't shown up yet. But again, if you want to jam a purely creature-based aggro deck without any semblance of interaction, go ahead and do so - you won't do well, and you shouldn't be surprised when you don't. Slivers players have been trying exactly that for years.
The deck resulting of the splash doesn't need to address our flaws and weaknesses. It just has to be better than the current iteration of the deck. I believe it is, you believe it isn't. There is just no way to settle without tons of testing. Your argument that 'I see no reason to splash the new tools' based on the fact that they don't address old problems skips the entire point as to why I said the new tools might be good:
They make our deck a better deck.
Now, that statement might be false, but I'm willing to check it out. I feel like more one drops and more cantrips on MERFOLK bodies are a pretty reasonable inclusion to the deck. Maybe the guy with a profile picture of master of waves isn't the most unbiased of players to judge the effectiveness of the card.
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My profile picture is irrelevant. I'd happily change it to a Lord of Atlantis or a Master of the Pearl Trident in a second - Master of Waves just happens to have more evocative art in my opinion. I am a Spike, and my primary concern is winning. Until you can prove that your variant is stronger against the field than the classic list, in the classic list I trust. The Master's stock is currently trending down, but nothing really has the "army-in-a-can" punch that it has, so it's still the best option available. That said, I did propose the idea of a Merfolk list employing Kira, Vendilion Clique and Kopala, Warden of Waves instead of the Master on this very thread. You must have missed that.
@Ashiok, I feel like you're forgetting there are other decks out there besides Burn, Druid Combo, and Affinity. Sure, Dismember is bad against Burn, but its pretty good against Druid Combo, not half bad against Affinity, it's fine against Death's Shadow, Eldrazi Tron, Death and Taxes, BGx. Having some interaction with Merfolk is pretty important since we aren't as fast as Elves, or Affinity. If we get hung up a bit and stonewalled by a Tasigur, having an option to clear the path is great.
Harbinger is going to have its hit and miss matches, but I think it's actually pretty good against Burn. The way burn wins is by getting to a point where they can cast two spells a turn. If you can bounce an attacker and create an extra blocker that will trade with most of their creatures, that's a pretty big swing in our favor. This also forces them to choose between throwing a burn spell at our face or redeploying their creature. Slowing their game plan down is how we beat them. We don't race them, we make them play at our tempo. In other match ups it bounces any big fatty trying to beat us down, and it has flash against control decks.
Spell Pierce in the board over Negate is a big mistake. Post board games tend to go long which means we usually get the two mana to cast Negate. It also means the opponent will have two extra mana to pay for Spell Pierce. If you're worried about Coco decks, isn't Dispel just a better answer anyway? Those decks are 32 creatures and 8 instants. There is no target for Spell Pierce that isn't an instant. And if you run in to something like storm, they have 8 creatures to reduce the cost of their instants and sorceries, against a valakut deck, they're going to have enough land on the board to pay for spell pierce a couple times over, against UW control, the game is going to go to turn 10 or 15 and when they pay 6 to drop Gideon with 6 more mana open I'd at least like to make them have counter magic for my Negate rather than letting them pay two. I think if you want to run Spell Pierce it's much better off in the main board.
I understand your logic of trying to get underneath everyone and aggro them out. It shows in your build by your reduced curve, but in games two and three your opponents are going to force you to go long and I don't see your build as it stands as having much of a long game. You mention that "This deck is supposed to be faster and hit stronger than other creature decks." But you know that's just not the case. That's why we lose to Affinity and Elves and this is why we need interaction to beat other strategies. We aren't as fast as Affinity and Elves so we need to disrupt our opponent and work the tempo of the game in our favor.
The Master is fantastic at recovering from sweepers - it's 4 power at the absolute minimum, and it can pump Vaults and produce extra tokens if you have Seas out. I've won many a game against control decks using that as my follow-up. And to be honest, I would say the reason why we crush Burn and Shadow is BECAUSE of the Master - it's not win-more, it's helping us win. Until we get something actively better against the matchups in question (or as good while providing points elsewhere), he's the default. Hopefully we do - I'd love an on-tribe Spell Queller, even if I had to splash for it.
I will address your points referecing the last list I posted, adapted to address some of the criticism of rothgar13 (linked in one of my responses to him).
The matchups you mentioned where dismember is good:
affinity - we have 4 ceremonius rejections, 2 echoing truths and 1 hurkyl' recall. I assume that is plenty of interaction to deal with them.
eldrazi tron - all the hate we are using against affinity applies against eldrazi tron
death's shadow - we have lords that provide islandwalk as a way to dodge stone walls. I also think this is an example of a matchup where negate is infinitely worse than pierce. Shadow is usually playing with 2~3 mana on board, their spells are incredibly efficient. Trying to hold two mana against them - instead of just one - is a very real cost.
death and taxes and b/gxs decks - our creatures are just synergistically bigger and hit harder than theirs. We also deploy our creatures faster (typically death and taxes has more 3-drops than we do, same goes for B/Gx decks). That is precisely the kind of matchup where we should tempo out our opponents.
My new list incorporates the 4 harbingers. I remember playtesting them once Origins came out. My conclusion is that they were very hit or miss, a typical sideboard card, but maybe the format has changed enough where it isn't just a dead card in most matchups. I will test them mainboard, if they seem good, sure, they stay. Otherwise I'll look for other options and maybe keep a couple on the sideboard.
Dispel doesn't hit anger of the gods, typical sweeper of u/r/x control decks. It is also much less versatile against a number of other cards, such as ensnaring bridge out of lantern control, or liliana of the veil out of jund, etc. Point here being: spell pierce is not just for CoCo. My list does not intend to go the long game against control decks. I know that merfolk can keep the gas rolling against control decks sometimes, but I don't think the advantage of countering a spell late game with negate is worth the inclusion over the much cheaper spell pierce. You need to be applying pressure for that negate to be good late game,if you just counter your opponent spell without pressure that doesn't mean you're in a better spot. I can see a list where you run pierce mainboard, but for now I'm gonna leave it at the sideboard.
Regardless, why don't you see the build having much of a long game? Because I removed master of waves? As I see it, branchwalker is a card that makes our long game better, generating advantage/selection. I do mention that this deck is supposed to be faster than other creature decks because it is. Of course there are faster creature decks like affinity, elves and zoo. I hope that echoing truths, harbinger and a proper sequencing of spells can help on dealing with such faster decks. If harbinger is going to be good in anything, it is going to be good against creature decks. I saw rogarth's point and yours, and now I'm changing the list to fit them.
In any case, let me ask you something: if you disagree with my choices (from the last list), what would you change? What would you remove to play dismember? Would you put it mainboard or sideboard? Do you think the green cards are worth testing or not?
Thanks for the feedback and constructive criticism.
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I advise against siding in Pierce vs. Shadow, personally. It was disappointing in the matchup when I had it in the main, precisely because their spells are all so efficient. Their removal is also usually at instant speed, so Dispel is mostly just better in that matchup. I wouldn't use Shadow as a frame of reference for Negate vs. Pierce, as I don't recommend siding either card in.
I will address your points referecing the last list I posted, adapted to address some of the criticism of rothgar13 (linked in one of my responses to him).
The matchups you mentioned where dismember is good:
affinity - we have 4 ceremonius rejections, 2 echoing truths and 1 hurkyl' recall. I assume that is plenty of interaction to deal with them.
eldrazi tron - all the hate we are using against affinity applies against eldrazi tron
death's shadow - we have lords that provide islandwalk as a way to dodge stone walls. I also think this is an example of a matchup where negate is infinitely worse than pierce. Shadow is usually playing with 2~3 mana on board, their spells are incredibly efficient. Trying to hold two mana against them - instead of just one - is a very real cost.
death and taxes and b/gxs decks - our creatures are just synergistically bigger and hit harder than theirs. We also deploy our creatures faster (typically death and taxes has more 3-drops than we do, same goes for B/Gx decks). That is precisely the kind of matchup where we should tempo out our opponents.
All of these cards you mention come in post board. Dismember is a flexible game one option that can be boarded out or subsidized with hate out of your board.
Against Shadow it is not uncommon to not have island walk turned on. Their deck is packed with removal and discard so just because they have islands does not mean you will get a lord to stick. Post board I probably wouldn't want Pierce or Negate against them. Their spells are too efficient to be tagged by pierce since they are nearly all one mana, and this is a shot against Negate in this match up too as it will almost always trade down or at parity for mana. I would probably bring in Relics and a couple Dispel and I'd be more than happy to see a Dismember to deal with one of their x/5s.
Against bg and death and taxes, our creatures do have more synergy, but that doesn't mean I want to let them beat me down with a Tarmogoyf if they're keeping my board under control or let death and taxes have free reign with an Eldrazi Displacer. This is why having some interaction is important.
My new list incorporates the 4 harbingers. I remember playtesting them once Origins came out. My conclusion is that they were very hit or miss, a typical sideboard card, but maybe the format has changed enough where it isn't just a dead card in most matchups. I will test them mainboard, if they seem good, sure, they stay. Otherwise I'll look for other options and maybe keep a couple on the sideboard.
Harbinger can be hit or miss, but it's a card that at the very least your opponents need to be aware of. I don't have a lot to say about Harbinger except that a lot of its value may remain unseen since it shows up in the form of holding back an opponents attack.
Dispel doesn't hit anger of the gods, typical sweeper of u/r/x control decks. It is also much less versatile against a number of other cards, such as ensnaring bridge out of lantern control, or liliana of the veil out of jund, etc. Point here being: spell pierce is not just for CoCo. My list does not intend to go the long game against control decks. I know that merfolk can keep the gas rolling against control decks sometimes, but I don't think the advantage of countering a spell late game with negate is worth the inclusion over the much cheaper spell pierce. You need to be applying pressure for that negate to be good late game,if you just counter your opponent spell without pressure that doesn't mean you're in a better spot. I can see a list where you run pierce mainboard, but for now I'm gonna leave it at the sideboard.
I know Dispel isn't going to hit the listed cards, that's why I'm saying you run both Negate and Dispel. Lets assume we'll bring in the appropriate counters games two and three. I'd argue the exact opposite of what you're saying for Negate to be good. You don't need to apply a ton of pressure to make it good, in fact you want to pace out your threats and play around Anger to force them to cast it later in the game to give you time to draw the counter. Your opening hand isn't always going to have Negate or Pierce in it so you don't want to unload your threats all at once. This slows the game down and gives each side a chance to establish their mana base strengthening the power of Negate and weakening the power of Spell Pierce. As fare as Lantern goes, you have Rejection, Truth, Recall and Negate is good too. That deck is the epitome of the long game so your cards better be good toward the end. As far as Liliana decks, I'm not too keen on loading up with counters as they tend to pick the threats out of your hand before they come down. I lean more towards threat density.
Regardless, why don't you see the build having much of a long game? Because I removed master of waves? As I see it, branchwalker is a card that makes our long game better, generating advantage/selection. I do mention that this deck is supposed to be faster than other creature decks because it is. Of course there are faster creature decks like affinity, elves and zoo. I hope that echoing truths, harbinger and a proper sequencing of spells can help on dealing with such faster decks. If harbinger is going to be good in anything, it is going to be good against creature decks. I saw rogarth's point and yours, and now I'm changing the list to fit them.
I see value in Branchwalker, but not enough to skew our mana base. Master of Waves is a must answer threat which stretches your opponents removal throughout the game. It's 4 power across two threats after a sweeper and it pumps Mutavault if you have one on hand, it also wins through board stalls if you don't have island walk. What other creature decks are you referring to that Merfolk is faster than?
In any case, let me ask you something: if you disagree with my choices (from the last list), what would you change? What would you remove to play dismember? Would you put it mainboard or sideboard? Do you think the green cards are worth testing or not?
Honestly, if you're going to play green I think it best to cut Vial and play the more powerful Collected Company, but then you probably want to run Noble Hierarch and this really starts to skew the deck. I think some type of interaction main is necessary. You could trim a Rejeery and a Harbinger for a couple Dismember. I think the green cards are worth testing, but I'm siding with Rothgar that I don't think they're going to give you the results you're looking for. Merfolk has been tuned and tuned again, to the point that a card really has to earn a place to fit in. I'm not saying Branchwalker is bad, but I don't see it being better than anything we already have, especially since it requires adding a second color.
Thanks for the feedback and constructive criticism.
Glad to have the discussion! I know its easy to discredit new cards that come along, and they really should be given their fair shot, but a card is really going to have to wow me for it to earn a place in the deck.
Dismember: So we should play dismember as a 2-of because it is flexible? Disagree. Dismember is a dead card against a good part of the meta. You said to remove reejerey and harbinger to deal with shadow's threats, both of which are creatures that do precisely that while also being merfolk. Reejerey can tap a blocker and harbinger bounce an attacker or a blocker that was tapped by reejerey. Not to mention that dismember can be stubborn denialed while reejerey and harbinger cannot. I'm certainly not afraid of tarmogoyfs, and if opponent can kill all my threats and still clock with a tarmogoyf then good for him I suppose. Other high-impact cards like Knight and Displacer we will just have to outrace or interact with harbinger, that's why I agreed to put it back in the deck. Dismember to me is at most a sideboard card, and I don't see it in the current meta being all that useful.
Dispel: What instant spells are you keen to counter from the control deck? Path? Bolt? Cryptic command to tap-bounce? That we can beat with sheer threat density. Not to mention we have vial to play around anger already. Bridge and Liliana are example of cards that pierce hits and dispel does not. There are a multitude of other cards (discard spells, planeswalkers in general, sorcery-based removal such as dreadbore, damnation, etc. etc. etc.). The argument here is pierce has more available targets and versatility than dispel, hence why I choose pierce.
Negate: your suggestion of measuring the pace of our threats against anger seems particularly bad. Of both decks, the one that has the advantage late game is always the control deck, we do not. Trying to sandbag cards can only be done effectively in particular situations, so I don't 'measure' my threats, I dump them and ask to the opponent 'do you have a way to deal with that? Else, you die'. Pierce is useful here because if you have it it is guaranteed extra-protection and security for a cheaper cost. Trying to brawl on the late game with control decks is not a desirable scenario. Not to mention many U/W/x control decks just play supreme verdict, which laughs at the face of the negate we're holding up at a higher tempo-cost.
Branchwalker and mana base skewing: please tell me why is the mana base skewed? We can play almost of our creatures with all of our lands, with the exception of mutavaults (same problem for the 'classic list') and islands for the green creatures (however, we're running 16 ways of putting those creatures on board, which I'm told by rogarth is more than enough to do it reliably - 14 for a 1 drop and 13 for a 2 drop, according to Frank Karsten). The argument for mana base skewing is only valid for the sideboard cards, since we now have only 8 blue sources to cast our blue spells. Regarding that, I have two things to say: 1) that won't be a problem most of the time, because generally we don't need to have the mana for those spells right away, we can develop our board early game and have greater chances of drawing a blue source with our 8 cantrip creatures to help. The exception here is affinity, where we might need to mulligan a bit more aggressively, but I'm fine with that. 2) The second part of the answer is simple: the list isn't definitive. If we actually need more blue sources we can drop the unclaimed territories and go with fetchlands and breeding pools, to see how that goes. That not only will guarantee us hitting the blue source for the sideboard cards, but will also provide us with the option of playing better sideboard cards like the already mentioned Natural State, Life Goes On, etc. Which option is better? Don't know, testing is needed.
Regarding CoCo and Noble Hierarch: I will not presume that I know that these cards aren't great in a list with the green merfolk from Ixalan, but I will disagree with you that they are an inclusion in our deck, especially over vial. Vial is busted, and our objective is to play aggressively the early game. I can see CoCos from the sideboard for a grindier matchup, but I want to first test the list as is and see how the merfolk play out. CoCo has the EXACT same problem as Master of Waves, in being a powerful but slow card.
Master of Waves: yes, I know he is at least 2 bodies for 2, the problem is that if the opponent kill him all the extra bodies that he brought also die. I'm not sold on the argument of 'our opponent wont have any removal left for master once we drop him'. I can see so many scenarios where we play master and opponent goes -> crack fetchland -> snap + push and we just get destroyed. I don't see how playing such an unreliable threat for such a high CMC cost is worth at the moment.
Creatures decks that we are actually faster: bant eldrazi, most vizier decks, humans, kiki-chord, most hatebears decks and most CoCo decks. Some of these decks have a combo plan that, sometimes, can be faster than us if undisrupted. However, normally, we are faster than them.
Your skepticism (and rogarth's): I'm actually a bit saddened to see how repellent some people from this thread are to the idea of testing new cards and new possibilities. The absolute disregard that I received from some of the members here because I was trying to make the deck better is just astonishing and disappointing. Especially given the certainty that some people have that cards that we never played before just are not going to be good. Remember that Master of Waves and Harbinger, cards that are so incredibly beloved at the moment, were also question marks in regards to their competitive viability in our deck. It is super ironical that people can't see that this might happen again with Ixalan Merfolk just because they have a green mana symbol on the casting cost. The splash might not work. In that case, we lose absolutely nothing, the deck just stay as is. If it works, we have much to gain to make the deck better, and maybe even tier 1. That's all that I have to say, besides thanking you again for this back and forth.
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I play mostly Elves and Mefolk as my second go to deck, so im not a expert on the deck as most of the others here. But my biggest thing on the land base you posted is that you are so very vulnerable to blood moon. Like to the point that I think you almost lose to it if its resolves turn two or three. And I don't think its a card you can completely ignore in modern. Burn and Affinty variations are even playing with it currently.
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I suppose it is worth testing it out if someone feels compelled to, but for the moment I will run the list above (I also think CoCo doesn't make our bad matchups much better). I was also thinking about brewing a 'Bant' Merfolk list, essentialy to have access to path (and maybe stony silence on SB).
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I don't like running more than 20 lands. This deck is at risk for flooding already, because it doesn't have good mana sinks and Aether Vial lets us cheat on mana. Your proposed list doesn't fix that problem. If anything, explore cards incentivize ticking the land count DOWN, since it's easier to find the lands you need. Your lack of mainboard interaction is also concerning - without Dismember and Harbinger of the Tides, you're going to struggle mightily against any creature deck in Game 1, in addition to combo decks relying on creatures like Storm and Company (and given your sideboard, you will likely struggle postboard as well). Your underestimation of Harbinger in particular suggests that you have misconceptions on how this deck works - it's not aggro, it's tempo, which means you need to be prepared to take the control role against fast aggressive decks like Affinity and Burn. Saying you "tuned for Affinity" while not including Harbingers (or any way to interact with their flyers in the maindeck) is bewildering, to say the least. Trying for a painless manabase is admirable, but it also means you will struggle to cast your G creatures - you need 14 G sources to reliably cast Kumena's Speaker on curve, and you need 13 for Merfolk Branchwalker. Consult Frank Karsten's seminal article for details.
Hibernation is pretty poor against the current versions of Collected Company decks, as they can respond by floating infinite G and recasting their entire team if they have the combo (and if they don't have the combo, you should be spending your mana on developing your board and beating face as fast as you can before they do). It also hits your green guys, if you didn't notice. 1 Dispel and 2 Spell Pierce are woefully insufficient to even stand a chance against the likes of Ad Nauseam and Storm postboard (the Relics help in the latter case, but do nothing for the former). In short, I don't think the deck as presented is very good. I think it has fundamental construction flaws beyond the sub-optimal nature of the G splash, and I'd really like to know why you think it will make the deck faster, as I don't really see how that would be the case (the T4 kill relies on Lords, and you have no more Lords than any other list).
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
Bant Eldrazi
UW Control
U Merfolk
Legacy
Merfolk
UR Delver
While I'm happy to see people trying out new things, I feel a need to point out that two colors is never "more consistent" than monochromatic. Never.
It may be faster, but none of the decks shown yet has evidenced that either.
If you do splash green though, Collected Company is something that should definitely be considered. No question there.
Noble Heirarch and Birds of Paradise are interesting, but well off our aggro theme. We want our acceleration to also be able to punch when push comes to shove. What you need is a version of Avacyn's Pilgrim that's a Merfolk and produces U instead of W. That would be a significant thing.
Modern: Merfolk UU // Green Devotion GG // SkRed Red RR
Legacy: Death & Taxes WW // Burn RR // Death's Shadow Delver UB
Commander: Brago UW // Karlov WB
Disagree again. This deck is supposed to be faster and hit stronger than other creature decks. The only reason why we might want to interact is if they are creature-combo decks, hence making them stronger in that sense. Aside from that, we should be able to ignore what our opponent is doing most of the time while killing them in the meanwhile. Besides, what kind of interaction against the aforementioned decks harbinger of the tides provide? I've played 4 hurkyll's recall against affinity once upon a time and struggled to beat them in the tempo game, certainly bouncing one of their dudes, even if equipped with plating, isn't doing much better. Same for burn, you don't save yourself by bouncing a swiftspear or goblin guide, but by killing them faster. Tell me please how dismember is helping you in such matchups? The card is 4 points of damage to our face. If I'm a burn player I'm actually happy to see the opponent doing that to himself. You can't tailor your sideboard against everything, I chose some matchups and stuck to them, I really don't think our deck needs more help killing other creature decks because it is already good at that.
So... I have 12 sources to get those cards and you think that is bad? I can do as someone suggested and add a couple botanical sanctuns to solve this 'problem'. Regardless, I think you could go without the sanctum since you don't necessarily always need to cast speaker on one (if you have a cursecatcher, for instance, you play that instead).
Hibernation: they can only float infinite mana if you don't bounce devoted druid in responde to vizier. Why wouldn't you do that? You can also board away some of the green guys? What is you suggestion for CoCo decks? Hibernation also hits elves, which are usually faster than us. Dispel and pierce: Yes, I'm not adding dispel and pierce to combat the decks you mentioned, but to combat control decks as I said. And, as I said, your sideboard can't be tailored for everything. What would you change in the sideboard to improve the matchups against storm and nauseam without crippling yourself against dredge, living end, affinity, tron, etc? Why the 'sub-optimal' nature of the green splash? It is almost a free splash, if not entirely free. Yes, you will lose one game in one-hundred due to drawing awkwardly, but to say that the splash is suboptimal given that the new cards seem STRONG additions to the deck is just... guessing? To be fair, I didn't test them either,so they may be not as good as they seem, but I'm not claiming it is not a good splash without testing it. Finally: the deck is faster because the curve is lowered. Yes, the fastest kill can still happen only turn 4, but you will kill more often in earlier turns since you're not playing slow spells like master of waves. Master is not bad, but it is not for the current metagame in my honest opinion. That's all. I will address the other posts later.
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That's just not how Turbo Xerox theory works. The more ways you have to find lands, the fewer actual lands you need, especially when you have little to no ways to use them efficiently once you're hellbent (and you don't - none of us do). I'll take Frank Karsten's math over SaffronOlive's any day, and according to him 20 lands is just right for this deck (you might even be able to get away with 19, thanks to the cantrips). As a Merfolk pilot with thousands of matches of sanctioned competitive matches on MTGO (and God-only-knows how many on paper), I can tell you that going over 20 lands will almost certainly result in having more lands than you can actually do productive things with in the midgame, which is how Merfolk loses.
Dismember is bad against Burn, certainly, but thanks to cards like Harbinger of the Tides (which bottlenecks their mana if cast at sorcery speed, or erases attacks if Vialed/flashed in) and Master of Waves (which often wins the game on the spot), our Game 1 against the deck is good enough to get away with a dead card, which you will obviously side out. These are the dangers of cutting the cards you did - you have fundamentally changed how the deck functions, and not for the better. Against Affinity, Dismember is painful, but it beats taking lethal infect damage or 10+ regular damage from a loaded-up flyer, and it certainly beats letting your opponent untap Steel Overseer or Master of Etherium. Harbinger is important against Affinity because it provides a body to pressure the opponent with in addition to buying you time. These are all well-established things that have borne out by the testing of hundreds of Merfolk players. You can try to race those decks if you want. You will lose.
The point about being supposed to be faster than other creature decks simply isn't true - we're a medium-speed, high-power, high-resilience creature deck. We can't match up to the raw velocity of Affinity, Elves, Goblins, or Zoo, and we likely never will. What we have is the ability to interact, and the ability to defend ourselves against interaction. That's our competitive advantage.
Yes, I think it's bad, because tempo is important for this deck, and unreliable mana is the quickest way to fall behind on tempo. Speaker's effectiveness in particular wanes the longer you wait to cast it (Branchwalker, on the other hand, holds steady value more or less throughout the game). However, if your goal is to curve out and kill on Turn 4 (and if you don't, you are strictly worse than the classic Merfolk list), your mana needs to be as smooth and efficient as possible.
Everything you said about Hibernation can be done better by Echoing Truth - costs less mana to hold up, has 0 friendly fire issues, buys you the turn you need against the threat in question, and is better against the field. The proposal to take out green creatures to make Hibernation work is particularly bewildering, given that most non-dork green creatures in CoCo decks have useful ETB effects that you don't want to give them a redo on, and that you're going to need to pressure them in order to win (and all of your green creatures are early drops meant to pressure the opponent). You combat CoCo decks by disrupting early then aggroing hard - those Spell Pierces need to be Negates (because their ability to ramp makes "tax" counterspells bad), and Ceremonious Rejection needs to be prominently involved in your sideboard for Affinity/Eldrazi/Tron.
As for your comments on the splash... please see Nikachu's video series on splashing colors in Merfolk (I'm specifically linking the one for G, but he did one for every color). If that's not enough for you, check out Corbin Hosler's stab at it. This is well-trod ground, and we know that all of the splashes are sub-optimal from the testimonials of players who have tried it and found wanting. Also, adding a couple of 1-drops does not inherently make the deck significantly faster - Merfolk's T4 kills come from double/triple Lord and 1-2 other attackers. That can be anything from a Cursecatcher to a Silvergill Adept to a Harbinger of the Tides. Your deck looks more like a Zoo deck than theirs, and I don't mean that as a compliment - Zoo is gone from the competitive meta, in part because vanilla beaters are something this metagame is well-tuned to beat.
I also think you massively underestimate Master of Waves - it's very difficult for many decks to remove, especially with a Kira, Great Glass-Spinner on the battlefield. It usually wins the game on the spot against Burn, and the likes of Shadow need to basically find a Revolted Fatal Push on the spot or die (spoiler: they usually don't, because otherwise they would have died to your other creatures earlier in the game).
My conclusion is that you're inexperienced in the format, and that is leading you to draw erroneous conclusions as to what the deck does and does not need. Commander experience in particular translates poorly over to 60-card constructed. You can test your deck if you like, but I think you'll find that you won't be any faster, and thus your deck will be strictly worse than the classic shell (which is classic for a reason).
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
First, notice how his math is not different from the article I sent you. Our deck was in the 1.8 range of CMC, so we SHOULD be playing 22 lands according to this. Now, notice also the difference between needing 2 lands EVERY game and just 'needing' two lands. We need every game. Now, you might say the difference between hitting 2 lands by turn 2 with 20 and 22 is small. I agree. The difference between hitting 3 lands on turn 3, however, is not small at all. Why we might need 3 lands though? Playing only 6 3-mana spells? Simple, we have more one drops now, and we can double spell more often. Hitting 3 lands helps our tempo plan. Hitting 4 is also not bad because we can double lord or lord + merfolk cantrip or any variation of stuff. The difference of hitting 4 lands on turn 4 with 20 (65.8% / 55.2% - draw/play) and 22 (73.9% / 63.7% - draw/play) lands in your deck is gigantic. Playing more than one spell a turn is essential for tempo decks. Yes, you played thousands of matchups. How many did you play with branchwalker and speaker? Zero, I assume.
I don't get your point about dismember. It is bad against burn. We already have 5 sideboard slots for affinity, 6 if you want to include echoing truth. Why do you need dismember again? You should be able to counter all of affinity's payoff spells with a ceremonius rejection on 1, even on the draw, unless they have a crazy opening involving mox opals. Regarding Harbinger: what does it do against Tron? Storm? Living End? Dredge? Control decks? I can see it being good against eldrazi and death's shadow, and situationally good against affinity. It is definitely mediocre against burn. By the time it hits the board on 2 you already got hit by a hasty creature at least once, and the cost to replay the creature is very small, smaller than harbinger himself. He is neat with vial, sure, but that's about it. I think harbinger is a clear metacall. Sure, if you want, you can cut the Kopalas and 2 lands and have a list with Harbingers, no problem. I'm willing to see how that goes. But I think you are grossly overestimating the value of such a situational card. You have no idea if I will lose or win because the cards in my deck simply never existed before lol. The fact that you so confidently say that is astonishing.
Okay, I will add the sanctuns then, problem solved.
Sure, so we play echoing truth instead of hibernation, problem solved for CoCo decks, maybe against elves too. I absolutely disagree with spell pierce vs negate. We are a tempodeck, you said yourself, the difference between two mana for a hard counter and one for a soft one is enourmous. If the opponent wants to wait until having SIX mana sources to cast CoCo around spell pierce, then be my guest. By that time we should have pressured him enough that he won't have such a chance. Negate is muuuch clunkier than pierce in our deck, just seems like a bad card overall, I would only consider for the tron matchup, but we now have rejections for that.
My God. You know that the splashes and links that you sent are from fundamentally different decks, right? Having green mana symbols on your cards don't make all the splashes the same. Nikachu is playing with CoCos and noble hierarchs, nowhere to be seen on my list. NOBODY has EVER played with Ixalan merfolks, do you realize how crazy it is to call this splash bad without testing it first? What's worse, calling it bad on the grounds that a fundamentally different deck did worse than the 'classical' version of the list. How many merfolk players can give you testimonials of their matches using kumena speaker and branchwalker? I will tell you - zero. Because the cards weren't released yet. There NEVER was a one-drop two-power merfolk ever printed, and branchwalker can work as pseudo-4-extra copies of our best card - silvergill adept. How can you say that the splash will be bad? You have no way to know.
I've been playing magic since Onslaugh, not only commander. Merfolk is the modern deck I have played the most with, I merely pointed out that modern isn't my primary format of choice. You are now sketching specific scenarios where master of waves is good. I don't disagree it is a good card. AS SOON as it came out on Theros I tested a list with 4 copies of it, and I did like it, but the format is not only faster, but the answers are different. Master of Waves, no matter how you try to slice it, still is a 4-mana spell that can be clunky in our hand. I much rather test a list without it than with it and see how it goes.
All that said, here is a list that adapted to some of your criticism (not always constructive):
// 4 Artifact
4 Aether Vial
// 32 Creature
4 Kumena's speaker
4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Merfolk Branchwalker
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Harbinger of the Tides
4 Merrow Reejerey
// 4 Enchantment
4 Spreading Seas
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Mutavault
4 Unclaimed Territory
4 Botanical Sanctum
4 Island
// 2 Creature
2 Kopala, Warden of Waves
// 4 Artifact
4 Relic of Progenitus
// 9 Instant
4 Ceremonious Rejection
1 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Echoing Truth
2 Spell Pierce
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
I think the questions now is 'should we run breeding pool and fetchlands?', 'should we add CoCo? If so, mainboard or sideboard?' and 'Does branchwalker change the amount of lands we could play in the deck? If so, should we play more or less?'. I'm curious to see the answers to these questions. And, of course, to see if the new cards are an improvement over the 'classical' list, a different take, or a downgrade.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
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:
They make our deck a better deck.
Now, that statement might be false, but I'm willing to check it out. I feel like more one drops and more cantrips on MERFOLK bodies are a pretty reasonable inclusion to the deck. Maybe the guy with a profile picture of master of waves isn't the most unbiased of players to judge the effectiveness of the card.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
Harbinger is going to have its hit and miss matches, but I think it's actually pretty good against Burn. The way burn wins is by getting to a point where they can cast two spells a turn. If you can bounce an attacker and create an extra blocker that will trade with most of their creatures, that's a pretty big swing in our favor. This also forces them to choose between throwing a burn spell at our face or redeploying their creature. Slowing their game plan down is how we beat them. We don't race them, we make them play at our tempo. In other match ups it bounces any big fatty trying to beat us down, and it has flash against control decks.
Spell Pierce in the board over Negate is a big mistake. Post board games tend to go long which means we usually get the two mana to cast Negate. It also means the opponent will have two extra mana to pay for Spell Pierce. If you're worried about Coco decks, isn't Dispel just a better answer anyway? Those decks are 32 creatures and 8 instants. There is no target for Spell Pierce that isn't an instant. And if you run in to something like storm, they have 8 creatures to reduce the cost of their instants and sorceries, against a valakut deck, they're going to have enough land on the board to pay for spell pierce a couple times over, against UW control, the game is going to go to turn 10 or 15 and when they pay 6 to drop Gideon with 6 more mana open I'd at least like to make them have counter magic for my Negate rather than letting them pay two. I think if you want to run Spell Pierce it's much better off in the main board.
I understand your logic of trying to get underneath everyone and aggro them out. It shows in your build by your reduced curve, but in games two and three your opponents are going to force you to go long and I don't see your build as it stands as having much of a long game. You mention that "This deck is supposed to be faster and hit stronger than other creature decks." But you know that's just not the case. That's why we lose to Affinity and Elves and this is why we need interaction to beat other strategies. We aren't as fast as Affinity and Elves so we need to disrupt our opponent and work the tempo of the game in our favor.
BLiliana, Heretical HealerB| |GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
GWBDoom Plane EnchantressBWG
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
I will address your points referecing the last list I posted, adapted to address some of the criticism of rothgar13 (linked in one of my responses to him).
The matchups you mentioned where dismember is good:
affinity - we have 4 ceremonius rejections, 2 echoing truths and 1 hurkyl' recall. I assume that is plenty of interaction to deal with them.
eldrazi tron - all the hate we are using against affinity applies against eldrazi tron
death's shadow - we have lords that provide islandwalk as a way to dodge stone walls. I also think this is an example of a matchup where negate is infinitely worse than pierce. Shadow is usually playing with 2~3 mana on board, their spells are incredibly efficient. Trying to hold two mana against them - instead of just one - is a very real cost.
death and taxes and b/gxs decks - our creatures are just synergistically bigger and hit harder than theirs. We also deploy our creatures faster (typically death and taxes has more 3-drops than we do, same goes for B/Gx decks). That is precisely the kind of matchup where we should tempo out our opponents.
My new list incorporates the 4 harbingers. I remember playtesting them once Origins came out. My conclusion is that they were very hit or miss, a typical sideboard card, but maybe the format has changed enough where it isn't just a dead card in most matchups. I will test them mainboard, if they seem good, sure, they stay. Otherwise I'll look for other options and maybe keep a couple on the sideboard.
Dispel doesn't hit anger of the gods, typical sweeper of u/r/x control decks. It is also much less versatile against a number of other cards, such as ensnaring bridge out of lantern control, or liliana of the veil out of jund, etc. Point here being: spell pierce is not just for CoCo. My list does not intend to go the long game against control decks. I know that merfolk can keep the gas rolling against control decks sometimes, but I don't think the advantage of countering a spell late game with negate is worth the inclusion over the much cheaper spell pierce. You need to be applying pressure for that negate to be good late game,if you just counter your opponent spell without pressure that doesn't mean you're in a better spot. I can see a list where you run pierce mainboard, but for now I'm gonna leave it at the sideboard.
Regardless, why don't you see the build having much of a long game? Because I removed master of waves? As I see it, branchwalker is a card that makes our long game better, generating advantage/selection. I do mention that this deck is supposed to be faster than other creature decks because it is. Of course there are faster creature decks like affinity, elves and zoo. I hope that echoing truths, harbinger and a proper sequencing of spells can help on dealing with such faster decks. If harbinger is going to be good in anything, it is going to be good against creature decks. I saw rogarth's point and yours, and now I'm changing the list to fit them.
In any case, let me ask you something: if you disagree with my choices (from the last list), what would you change? What would you remove to play dismember? Would you put it mainboard or sideboard? Do you think the green cards are worth testing or not?
Thanks for the feedback and constructive criticism.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
Legacy: Merfolk U; Shadow UB; Eldrazi Stompy C
Pauper: Delver U
Vintage: Merfolk U
Primers:
All of these cards you mention come in post board. Dismember is a flexible game one option that can be boarded out or subsidized with hate out of your board.
Against Shadow it is not uncommon to not have island walk turned on. Their deck is packed with removal and discard so just because they have islands does not mean you will get a lord to stick. Post board I probably wouldn't want Pierce or Negate against them. Their spells are too efficient to be tagged by pierce since they are nearly all one mana, and this is a shot against Negate in this match up too as it will almost always trade down or at parity for mana. I would probably bring in Relics and a couple Dispel and I'd be more than happy to see a Dismember to deal with one of their x/5s.
Against bg and death and taxes, our creatures do have more synergy, but that doesn't mean I want to let them beat me down with a Tarmogoyf if they're keeping my board under control or let death and taxes have free reign with an Eldrazi Displacer. This is why having some interaction is important.
Harbinger can be hit or miss, but it's a card that at the very least your opponents need to be aware of. I don't have a lot to say about Harbinger except that a lot of its value may remain unseen since it shows up in the form of holding back an opponents attack.
I know Dispel isn't going to hit the listed cards, that's why I'm saying you run both Negate and Dispel. Lets assume we'll bring in the appropriate counters games two and three. I'd argue the exact opposite of what you're saying for Negate to be good. You don't need to apply a ton of pressure to make it good, in fact you want to pace out your threats and play around Anger to force them to cast it later in the game to give you time to draw the counter. Your opening hand isn't always going to have Negate or Pierce in it so you don't want to unload your threats all at once. This slows the game down and gives each side a chance to establish their mana base strengthening the power of Negate and weakening the power of Spell Pierce. As fare as Lantern goes, you have Rejection, Truth, Recall and Negate is good too. That deck is the epitome of the long game so your cards better be good toward the end. As far as Liliana decks, I'm not too keen on loading up with counters as they tend to pick the threats out of your hand before they come down. I lean more towards threat density.
I see value in Branchwalker, but not enough to skew our mana base. Master of Waves is a must answer threat which stretches your opponents removal throughout the game. It's 4 power across two threats after a sweeper and it pumps Mutavault if you have one on hand, it also wins through board stalls if you don't have island walk. What other creature decks are you referring to that Merfolk is faster than?
Honestly, if you're going to play green I think it best to cut Vial and play the more powerful Collected Company, but then you probably want to run Noble Hierarch and this really starts to skew the deck. I think some type of interaction main is necessary. You could trim a Rejeery and a Harbinger for a couple Dismember. I think the green cards are worth testing, but I'm siding with Rothgar that I don't think they're going to give you the results you're looking for. Merfolk has been tuned and tuned again, to the point that a card really has to earn a place to fit in. I'm not saying Branchwalker is bad, but I don't see it being better than anything we already have, especially since it requires adding a second color.
Glad to have the discussion! I know its easy to discredit new cards that come along, and they really should be given their fair shot, but a card is really going to have to wow me for it to earn a place in the deck.
BLiliana, Heretical HealerB| |GTitania, Protector of ArgothG
GWBDoom Plane EnchantressBWG
Dismember: So we should play dismember as a 2-of because it is flexible? Disagree. Dismember is a dead card against a good part of the meta. You said to remove reejerey and harbinger to deal with shadow's threats, both of which are creatures that do precisely that while also being merfolk. Reejerey can tap a blocker and harbinger bounce an attacker or a blocker that was tapped by reejerey. Not to mention that dismember can be stubborn denialed while reejerey and harbinger cannot. I'm certainly not afraid of tarmogoyfs, and if opponent can kill all my threats and still clock with a tarmogoyf then good for him I suppose. Other high-impact cards like Knight and Displacer we will just have to outrace or interact with harbinger, that's why I agreed to put it back in the deck. Dismember to me is at most a sideboard card, and I don't see it in the current meta being all that useful.
Dispel: What instant spells are you keen to counter from the control deck? Path? Bolt? Cryptic command to tap-bounce? That we can beat with sheer threat density. Not to mention we have vial to play around anger already. Bridge and Liliana are example of cards that pierce hits and dispel does not. There are a multitude of other cards (discard spells, planeswalkers in general, sorcery-based removal such as dreadbore, damnation, etc. etc. etc.). The argument here is pierce has more available targets and versatility than dispel, hence why I choose pierce.
Negate: your suggestion of measuring the pace of our threats against anger seems particularly bad. Of both decks, the one that has the advantage late game is always the control deck, we do not. Trying to sandbag cards can only be done effectively in particular situations, so I don't 'measure' my threats, I dump them and ask to the opponent 'do you have a way to deal with that? Else, you die'. Pierce is useful here because if you have it it is guaranteed extra-protection and security for a cheaper cost. Trying to brawl on the late game with control decks is not a desirable scenario. Not to mention many U/W/x control decks just play supreme verdict, which laughs at the face of the negate we're holding up at a higher tempo-cost.
Branchwalker and mana base skewing: please tell me why is the mana base skewed? We can play almost of our creatures with all of our lands, with the exception of mutavaults (same problem for the 'classic list') and islands for the green creatures (however, we're running 16 ways of putting those creatures on board, which I'm told by rogarth is more than enough to do it reliably - 14 for a 1 drop and 13 for a 2 drop, according to Frank Karsten). The argument for mana base skewing is only valid for the sideboard cards, since we now have only 8 blue sources to cast our blue spells. Regarding that, I have two things to say: 1) that won't be a problem most of the time, because generally we don't need to have the mana for those spells right away, we can develop our board early game and have greater chances of drawing a blue source with our 8 cantrip creatures to help. The exception here is affinity, where we might need to mulligan a bit more aggressively, but I'm fine with that. 2) The second part of the answer is simple: the list isn't definitive. If we actually need more blue sources we can drop the unclaimed territories and go with fetchlands and breeding pools, to see how that goes. That not only will guarantee us hitting the blue source for the sideboard cards, but will also provide us with the option of playing better sideboard cards like the already mentioned Natural State, Life Goes On, etc. Which option is better? Don't know, testing is needed.
Regarding CoCo and Noble Hierarch: I will not presume that I know that these cards aren't great in a list with the green merfolk from Ixalan, but I will disagree with you that they are an inclusion in our deck, especially over vial. Vial is busted, and our objective is to play aggressively the early game. I can see CoCos from the sideboard for a grindier matchup, but I want to first test the list as is and see how the merfolk play out. CoCo has the EXACT same problem as Master of Waves, in being a powerful but slow card.
Master of Waves: yes, I know he is at least 2 bodies for 2, the problem is that if the opponent kill him all the extra bodies that he brought also die. I'm not sold on the argument of 'our opponent wont have any removal left for master once we drop him'. I can see so many scenarios where we play master and opponent goes -> crack fetchland -> snap + push and we just get destroyed. I don't see how playing such an unreliable threat for such a high CMC cost is worth at the moment.
Creatures decks that we are actually faster: bant eldrazi, most vizier decks, humans, kiki-chord, most hatebears decks and most CoCo decks. Some of these decks have a combo plan that, sometimes, can be faster than us if undisrupted. However, normally, we are faster than them.
Your skepticism (and rogarth's): I'm actually a bit saddened to see how repellent some people from this thread are to the idea of testing new cards and new possibilities. The absolute disregard that I received from some of the members here because I was trying to make the deck better is just astonishing and disappointing. Especially given the certainty that some people have that cards that we never played before just are not going to be good. Remember that Master of Waves and Harbinger, cards that are so incredibly beloved at the moment, were also question marks in regards to their competitive viability in our deck. It is super ironical that people can't see that this might happen again with Ixalan Merfolk just because they have a green mana symbol on the casting cost. The splash might not work. In that case, we lose absolutely nothing, the deck just stay as is. If it works, we have much to gain to make the deck better, and maybe even tier 1. That's all that I have to say, besides thanking you again for this back and forth.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
I play mostly Elves and Mefolk as my second go to deck, so im not a expert on the deck as most of the others here. But my biggest thing on the land base you posted is that you are so very vulnerable to blood moon. Like to the point that I think you almost lose to it if its resolves turn two or three. And I don't think its a card you can completely ignore in modern. Burn and Affinty variations are even playing with it currently.