Basically the deck becomes an Izzet Control deck, taking out drakes and/or electromancers for a very different game. The EFs come in against aggro on the play or against particularly grindy control mirrors where you need to outpace their Niv-Mizzet's damage. The cute part is playing Truefire and Star of Extinction. The star is a boardwipe against Selesnya matches (assuming you get that far) and just combo kills with Truefire Captain on the board. There's enough draw to make it pretty consistent you'll get them into your hand and it's just a matter of holding up protection. Probably too cute to be worth what you have to do to the land base to make it work, but pull it off just once might be worth it.
I still like the transformational plan without the cute.dec. Swap Star and Truefire for a couple of Essence Scatters, more Syncopate, or Fiery Cannonade.
Mono Blue “Tempest Djinn Tempo” hasn’t really lost or gained anything from rotation. Do you think this deck will have a place in Guilds standard?
Don't know that it isn't stronger splashing red or black for the benefits provided. I think there might be a stronger deck than this, in those colors, that just drops the Djinn because it can be tough to cast.
Do you want to be:
1. Burn deck? or control deck?
2. wizards tribal? or creatureless? or creatures?
3. Do you want to stay Izzet? or do you want to splash? or go 3 colors? (Grixis/Jeskai)
Some short notes.
If your a Burn Deck, you want to carry many low to the ground spells, and try to get card draw due to a low land count.
If your a Control Deck, you want to take advantage of card draw, but also not have too many wincons.
As mentioned, I don’t yet know. I didn’t post a specific build, but merely card options that could work in a deck like this. Whether it’s loads of burn or creature-based or control-based is still up in the air. The post is to start that discussion.
So I've been combing future standard on Scryfall and I've come up with what I think is a decent starting point for an Izzet spell slinging list. I think there's two ways to go about it, which is why there's a wide variety of cards here. Choice one has you going burn/tempo with some creatures and controlling what your opponent does just enough to kill them. It's a real skin of your teeth situation. Choice two is a more controlling, inevitability engine setup with fewer creatures and more removal/burn/draw. Knowing that we aren't yet done with previews, what looks best here? Is this something worth pursuing or does it need to be scrapped? Should it push to add black or stay at two?
Understand, this is a loose collection of ideas, not a deck - yet.
Rather than sleep, I'd play Tempest Caller. Same cost, similar effect, and it's another Merfolk. Allows for a lethal swing on a creature heavy board. I do like Swift Warden as well, I need to find a spot for him in my deck.
Anything that targets your stuff. Almost anything that uses red or black and involves the word "midrange" or "control". It's generally useless against aggro mirror or anything with blue or white.
Not seen these 2 cards mentioned, both play really well in our shell anyone who has played Merfolk a lot know that the 2 main downfalls of the deck are squishy x/1's and card draw. 1/3 for 2 is unexciting but it makes a damn good blocker vs red and a damn fine attacker with Jace around. Early days in testing but things look good so far. Im going to stream a League with my new build 11am gmt tomorrow and see how it goes if anyone want to jump onn Twitch and lend a hand / discuss
Isn't Jace's Sentinel from the Planeswalker deck? That's not remotely playable. Jace himself isn't playable. The hands down best PW for this deck is Nissa, Steward of Elements and even she is preferred in the sideboard to the main. The fact is, you just want to draw Merfolk. Anything else is weak. The deck itself, with four Silvergill, four Kumena, and four Branchwalkers, has plenty of card draw/filtering to handle anything.
If we're going deep on kumena... Throne of the God-Pharaoh? Don't know why that escaped my mind, but we're tapping merfolk down to use his ability along with swinging in and it seems like a good way to increase or do damage indirectly. Given we can tap 1, 3, or 5 merfolk, that could be a way to help close a game in a way that Tempest Caller can't actually pull off.
A lot of the time, you aren't tapping out on your turn, especially with Kumena. You'll drop counters on her, tap another merfolk to make her unblockable, then swing with just her. When you do tap out, it's on your opponent's end step, to draw cards or add counters to your team. Throne ends up a do-nothing artifact and you'd just rather have drawn a Merfolk.
I played against a merfolk midrange list using the deep root waters and it tore me up. Cards I saw in opp's list I don't see in others.
Deep root waters
Kopala made my removal rough. Spending turn 4 killing kopala let him build his board even further.
Rivers rebuke in game 1.
Spell pierce as I'm assuming a 4 of. As he countered most every sweeper I tried to play.
He won the first game on turn 8, even when I had an active scarab god. Just built his board wide with the deep root, and then rebuke into 18 on one swing. I feel like his list played to the strength of Kumena every game. All 3 modes were on display. Deck I weak to sweepers/control but packs sweepers of its own. 4 of spell pierce mainboard can do a lot of work against control.
I like Kopala in the sideboard unless Grixis Midrange/Energy becomes the dominant deck. It just has so much spot removal. Against decks like Approach or Gift, Kopala is a do nothing drop. Against Vehicles or Mono Red, it's too slow to matter.
River's Rebuke is too expensive in the main for me. I'd rather play Tempest Caller in the main and use River's Rebuke in the side for possible token decks. The main issue with RR is that, unless you can win on the subsequent alpha, they get all their ETB effects unless it's against tokens.
SaffronOlive did a pretty good build for Much Abrew and went 3-2. He makes a good point about how this deck can play:
but after playing our matches, I'm 100% convinced that Merfolk is actually a midrange card-advantage deck hiding in a traditionally aggro tribe.
With that in mind, would it be worth it to shave some room for Deeproot Waters? I think a game one Deeproot could run away with it, before the opponent has sideboarded in their naturalizes or other enchantment hate. In game two and three, we pull a bait and switch, take it out against green (or other relevant colors) in favor of Nissa or something else good in the matchup.
The combination of Deeproot Elite and Kumena mean that you can either go wide or tall. Elite means you can dump counters on Kumena herself, then tap it (or anything) to make her unblockable and swing big. Kumena lets you drop counters on everything giving you the chance to go wide. Metallic Mimic is wide only. The fact that it doesn't integrate with Silvergill Adept and Elite does make it even less enticing. It's definitely a good option, I just think there's better choices. I'm happy to be proven wrong, I have a playset I'd love to use!
I disagree Mimic has been great for me so far and the counters it provides in my Unblockable.dek plan have been invaluable. Rishkar and Verdurous Gearhulk and Vizier have all been very good too
If you're running Verdurous, Vizier, and Riskhar, you're not really playing a merfolk deck, though.
I'm trying to give myself a reason to sell my Metallic Mimics while the price is high, so I'm interested in this topic.
I like the idea that the Mimic's give the counters, but don't like the body they come in as, and the fact that they take another spot from the attackers like @d90Dennis14 mentions. Or are Mistbinders and and Elites enough?
I think they're just outside playable. The truth is, we have a shedload of good "actual" Merfolk to choose from and I don't think MM makes the cut. I'd rather have three Jade that hand out counters when they enter (sort of like a 1 mana sorcery that says "put a +1/+1 counter on target merfolk you control, create a 1/1 merfolk token) and Deeproot Elite that lets me put the token wherever I want. I also want four Kumena because they're just nuts when you have one on board. It's worth it having them in hand for when they die - it's really that essential.
As I was writing this, I knew most of this wouldn't fly, but it's good to play devil's advocate with new stuff, get some perspective.
I'm still not sure on Moment, but I agree with your analysis vs. Push. I wasn't suggesting replacing Push, though! It's just too good.
Night Market is very good, so he wasn't on the chopping block. I was considering Conquistador, but I think the 2 toughness is relevant as well as the trigger vs. the 2 power.
You'll notice I mentioned the menace, but Glint-sleeve is just super good as is. That menace does work for sure.
I missed the "if you gain life" trigger on Oathsworn. Had I not, I never would have claimed more reliability!
I play Reckoning out of the sideboard for creature heavy matchups (it's gross to sac something to Yahenni then wipe the board when your opponent has X>2 creatures out). Am I right in thinking that a creature leaving the battlefield when P/T is reduced to 0/0 is not the same as dying?
If you're just throwing together a bunch of cards you have in your collection, then go for it. But if this is intended to be a competitive deck in the vein of UG Merfolk, it's just bad. All your creatures except one are one and two-ofs which isn't good for consistency. You also don't have nearly enough creatures for a deck. Panharmonicon is bad as is Blinding Fog and Cancel. Your sideboard is full of creatures that should be in the main, though aren't an improvement over what you have, just more bodies.
4 Crackling Drake
4 Enigma Drake
4 Goblin Electromancer
Spells
4 Shock
4 Opt
4 Chemister's Insight
2 Risk Factor
4 Discovery // Dispersal
1 Fight with Fire
3 Chart a Course
4 Lightning Strike
2 Izzet Guildgate
4 Sulfur Falls
4 Steam Vents
6 Mountain
6 Island
2 Ionize
2 Lava Coil
3 Firemind's Research
3 Fiery Cannonade
3 Disdainful Stroke
2 Spell Pierce
One thing that might be fun is run a transformational sideboard that gets a little cute.
Basically the deck becomes an Izzet Control deck, taking out drakes and/or electromancers for a very different game. The EFs come in against aggro on the play or against particularly grindy control mirrors where you need to outpace their Niv-Mizzet's damage. The cute part is playing Truefire and Star of Extinction. The star is a boardwipe against Selesnya matches (assuming you get that far) and just combo kills with Truefire Captain on the board. There's enough draw to make it pretty consistent you'll get them into your hand and it's just a matter of holding up protection. Probably too cute to be worth what you have to do to the land base to make it work, but pull it off just once might be worth it.
I still like the transformational plan without the cute.dec. Swap Star and Truefire for a couple of Essence Scatters, more Syncopate, or Fiery Cannonade.
Don't know that it isn't stronger splashing red or black for the benefits provided. I think there might be a stronger deck than this, in those colors, that just drops the Djinn because it can be tough to cast.
4 Risk Factor
2 Hypothesizzle
4 Shock
3 Lightning Strike
2 Expansion
2 Spell Pierce
1 Syncopate
3 Essence Scatter
3 Negate
2 Beacon Bolt
4 Electrostatic Field
2 Ral, Izzet Viceroy
2 Primal Amulet
4 Sulfur Falls
4 Steam Vents
7 Mountains
8 Islands
As mentioned, I don’t yet know. I didn’t post a specific build, but merely card options that could work in a deck like this. Whether it’s loads of burn or creature-based or control-based is still up in the air. The post is to start that discussion.
Understand, this is a loose collection of ideas, not a deck - yet.
Card Draw
Damage
Counter
Removal/Creature Control
Creatures
Planeswalkers
Gimmicks
Rather than sleep, I'd play Tempest Caller. Same cost, similar effect, and it's another Merfolk. Allows for a lethal swing on a creature heavy board. I do like Swift Warden as well, I need to find a spot for him in my deck.
Anything that targets your stuff. Almost anything that uses red or black and involves the word "midrange" or "control". It's generally useless against aggro mirror or anything with blue or white.
Isn't Jace's Sentinel from the Planeswalker deck? That's not remotely playable. Jace himself isn't playable. The hands down best PW for this deck is Nissa, Steward of Elements and even she is preferred in the sideboard to the main. The fact is, you just want to draw Merfolk. Anything else is weak. The deck itself, with four Silvergill, four Kumena, and four Branchwalkers, has plenty of card draw/filtering to handle anything.
A lot of the time, you aren't tapping out on your turn, especially with Kumena. You'll drop counters on her, tap another merfolk to make her unblockable, then swing with just her. When you do tap out, it's on your opponent's end step, to draw cards or add counters to your team. Throne ends up a do-nothing artifact and you'd just rather have drawn a Merfolk.
I like Kopala in the sideboard unless Grixis Midrange/Energy becomes the dominant deck. It just has so much spot removal. Against decks like Approach or Gift, Kopala is a do nothing drop. Against Vehicles or Mono Red, it's too slow to matter.
River's Rebuke is too expensive in the main for me. I'd rather play Tempest Caller in the main and use River's Rebuke in the side for possible token decks. The main issue with RR is that, unless you can win on the subsequent alpha, they get all their ETB effects unless it's against tokens.
With that in mind, would it be worth it to shave some room for Deeproot Waters? I think a game one Deeproot could run away with it, before the opponent has sideboarded in their naturalizes or other enchantment hate. In game two and three, we pull a bait and switch, take it out against green (or other relevant colors) in favor of Nissa or something else good in the matchup.
If you're running Verdurous, Vizier, and Riskhar, you're not really playing a merfolk deck, though.
I think they're just outside playable. The truth is, we have a shedload of good "actual" Merfolk to choose from and I don't think MM makes the cut. I'd rather have three Jade that hand out counters when they enter (sort of like a 1 mana sorcery that says "put a +1/+1 counter on target merfolk you control, create a 1/1 merfolk token) and Deeproot Elite that lets me put the token wherever I want. I also want four Kumena because they're just nuts when you have one on board. It's worth it having them in hand for when they die - it's really that essential.
I'm still not sure on Moment, but I agree with your analysis vs. Push. I wasn't suggesting replacing Push, though! It's just too good.
Night Market is very good, so he wasn't on the chopping block. I was considering Conquistador, but I think the 2 toughness is relevant as well as the trigger vs. the 2 power.
You'll notice I mentioned the menace, but Glint-sleeve is just super good as is. That menace does work for sure.
I missed the "if you gain life" trigger on Oathsworn. Had I not, I never would have claimed more reliability!
I play Reckoning out of the sideboard for creature heavy matchups (it's gross to sac something to Yahenni then wipe the board when your opponent has X>2 creatures out). Am I right in thinking that a creature leaving the battlefield when P/T is reduced to 0/0 is not the same as dying?
If you're just throwing together a bunch of cards you have in your collection, then go for it. But if this is intended to be a competitive deck in the vein of UG Merfolk, it's just bad. All your creatures except one are one and two-ofs which isn't good for consistency. You also don't have nearly enough creatures for a deck. Panharmonicon is bad as is Blinding Fog and Cancel. Your sideboard is full of creatures that should be in the main, though aren't an improvement over what you have, just more bodies.