MTG Salvation

As a concept, I kind of went with guys who tap for good value mixed with a bunch of mass untappers. The ability to draw several cards in a turn rotation or pump all my guys up from my commander seemed kind of nice and diverse. I kind of went half in on anthem merfolk but mostly I liked the ones that would give me evasion and play before my commander could be played.

This list is still rather rough and I still haven't finished filling in the lands yet.



Some cards I am considering:
Sylvan Library - its a good card, I just felt like I had potentially good enough draw that I started cutting things.
Hadana's Climb - it would be an excelent mana dump and give an alternate wincon.
Survival of the Fittest - some of the creatures are more important / relevant than others.
Worldly Tutor - more tutor options.
Craterhoof Behemoth - its a beast but I freaking hate him.
Inundate - it seems like potentially a useful tempo sweeper.
Genesis Wave - big value but it seems maybe winmore.
Extra Turns - they are just good and they give more tempo. I just hate always resorting to them.
Slinn Voda, the Rising Deep - it costs like a billion mana but..... I like the effect on kicking it.
Hardened Scales - I like the idea of stacking deep counters but it still seems really situational given what kind of setup I need to start stacking counters. The effects to let me untap during opponents untap steps give me more value than this does.

Well, the cards for this list should show up tomorrow for me. I had some adjustments I wanted to make to the list though after giving some thought to a few things:

DECK CHANGE:

• Stonybrook Angler -> Scavenging Ooze I realized that I wanted a little more access to grave hate in here and while Scooze is not on creature type, the fact that it works so well with Seedborn Muse / Awakening not to mention is easier to tutor kind of convinced me to include him.
• Explore -> Exploration I like Explore but Exploration fits the curve better with playing my commander on curve and if I do spin up some good draw I like the repeated ability to play additional lands.
• Quest for Renewal -> Survival of the Fittest I was thinking more about quest and the time to spin it up (aka needing to play 4 creatures after casting it) felt like it was just going to feel too slow. I felt that instead having the versatility of Survival which can get me one of my creature untappers felt more natural.

Hopefully I can spin up some games with this deck next week. It looks like an interesting and different kind of list so I am looking forward to seeing how it plays. One of my buddies suggested a new name for this thread so shamefully I am taking up his terrible thread name for this list "Tap Dat Bass" lol.

Playing with the list a little as I got my order for the cards yesterday.

• Kopala, Warden of Waves -> Merfolk Mistbinder I gave it some thought and spot removal doesn't seem like it is really my chief concern for this deck. On top of that, Kopala only slows spot removal down rather than actually seeming to deter it much. My concern right now seems more towards sweepers and so I felt like swapping it out for a faster lord who contributes better to swarm.
• Merrow Harbinger -> Prime Speaker Zegana really I am not too fond of the 4 mana tutor merfolk to topdeck effects. I decided for now to keep Forerunner of the Heralds of the two given that it can actually get fairly large on its own. I felt that self buffing was better than a slight evasion that I might give out en mass anyways. I have some reluctance with Prime Speaker mainly in that most of my creatures are not that big naturally but I decided that even drawing 3-4 cards seemed somewhat acceptable enough given that its an on creature type draw effect.
• Exploration -> Arcane Denial I gave it some thought and decided to cut back on some of my ramp for now. My curve seems acceptable and where I really tend to like Exploration is in decks that have bigger bursts of draw rather than a spread out consistant draw like this deck. I am not even really that sure how well this deck will draw yet so for now I wanted to cut back on tempo ramp. More counter magic should be helpful though.
• Pir's Whim -> Bane of Progress I like the idea of tutoring Cradle / Nykthos but ultimately they are just nice and I don't know how important they will be for this deck. I had been wanting to get a little more control options for this deck and I have really always loved bane in green decks especially when having sufficient tutors for him.

I contemplated if I wanted something like Ixidron as well but for now I will hold off. It is something that could be handy to have access to but its yet another creature that isn't a merfolk.

I managed to play two games last night. The first one went kind of slow and I used counter magic to keep a few things at bay. I did end up eating a Darksteel Mutation that turned my commander into an insect with no abilities which did suck. I managed to come through off the back of Cyclonic Rift + Blackblade Reforged to salvage it. It seemed like I wanted to push my draw a bit harder though as I found that I preferred to pump my merfolk rather than draw cards with them. My draw outside of my commander's ability wasn't enough though so I need to bump it a bit so here goes with some changes. Game two I curved 5 fish + Awakening by turn 5 and won the game 2 turns later.

• Burgeoning -> Sylvan Library - I do like Burgeoning and it could come back but I didn't have the draw to make it work here yet. I had wanted to make room for the library and so it seems like a good swap.
• Survival of the Fittest -> Brainstorm - I did see survival a few times and almost every time I had the same feeling which was that I found I was already playing my creatures out so sometimes I would get it and have like no creatures left in hand. It also felt a little slow paying 1GG to swap to the next creature that first time. I am going to swap it for a bit of cheap card advantage and Brainstorm has been good for me in the past.
• Stolen Identity -> Explore I still like the idea of Stolen Identity but really I just wanted cheap draw / ramp and so I like this swap for now. Maybe later I will try to come back and revisit it but for now I need to work on the fundamentals.
• Empress Galina -> Treasure Cruise - Empress is slow and it felt like I was always hesitant to play her given how much of a target she is and how long it takes to be able to use her. I am not really using my graveyard at all I realized so it seemed like a good place to maybe test out some delve draw effects.
• Forerunner of the Heralds -> Dig Through Time - Forerunner is not a good tutor and its not a very good creature nor is it card advantage. I am not really using my yard for much of anything so it seemed like a good way to use it to get some deep digging card advantage.
• Merfolk Mistbinder -> Fact or Fiction - the lack of the evasion that the other lords give was noticed. I didn't really have a reason to want to tutor this merfolk over the others and while it could be tutored off of Green Sun's Zenith its not really what I want. MORE DRAW!

So, this is more or less me just jacking up the draw in the deck and cutting some of the slower cards. My creature count is down a bit but upping the draw should hopefully offset and make that ok. As it stood I had too much reliance on my commander to do too many things and I hope this will let things flow a little more naturally.