It reminds me of what I just wrote on the source (for another deck):
it's important to keep in mind that consistency is itself a form of power, and increasing the power level of spells and creatures at the expense of consistency is not necessarily a net improvement. Consistency provides two unmentioned reasons why mono-white-->more traditional builds continue to do well in capable hands: (1) a deck that loses to its own inconsistency seldom does well, and (2) a pilot's depth of knowledge and experience with an older build can account for some lack of relative power compared to a newer build. Both of those factors compound their effects as the size/length of a tournament grows, hopefully for obvious reasons.
In other words, if you've been doing well with your build, run your build. At least the maindeck seems mostly the same, though he prefers Reejery over Clique and Jitte over Chalice (in general terms). If Stoneforge builds continue to decrease, 3 Images and 0 Jittes in the main to make room for other tricks should be defensible choices.
All that said, I'd love to hear other thoughts on the relative strengths of the "beef" build vs Chalice or Standstill builds.
Just from testing on Cockatrice, the 3 maindeck Chalices (Put a 4th in my side) have been putting in some serious work. The only deck it was actually just awful against for me was DnT so far. How needed is Wasteland? I know some of us mentioned a while back that the deck has some issues with too many colorless sources, but I have found some situations where I wanted it.
To illustrate, I got Karakas-Clique locked once by Miracles (I think I probably would have lost that game anyway though, he cast 3 Terminus that game) and Glacial Chasm from the Lands deck was a pain. I had him at 1 after waiting for it to kill him in Cumulative upkeep and then he just plays Zuran Orbs and then there was no way for me to win the game at that point because he got his Life from the Loam-Exploration engine going.
Is it worth the drop in consistency of blue mana to play Wastelands?
Hey everyone, long time lurker, first time poster and I have some good news! As a relatively new player to legacy the discussions in this thread have helped me immensely with the deck and I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.
After playing around with the deck for a couple months and really only playing in one tournament before with the deck (GP NJ), I decided to sleeve up merfolk and hit a tourney close by for the chance to win some dual lands(1-8 got some multiple of duals). The tournament ended up being 91 players total and I am happy to prove that merfolk is not dead by any means. I managed to get into top 8 as the first seed going 6-1 and even though I lost in top 8 I managed to walk away in 5th place and the new proud owner of 2 revised Savannahs (my first duals!). I faced a variety of decks to get there: BUG Delver, Reanimator, Storm, Omnti(lost), some kind of affinity brew, miracles and RUG Delver. Again I want to say thank you! I am glad I got to make a splash with merfolk and making the unbelievers cry.
In case anyone was wondering, here is what I was running:
Could you please tell me how was Chalice and Dazes serving you?
I am in the process of finalizing my GP deck, either Stuetzle version or very close to yours.
In my opinion you should take your chances with the Chalice. A normal stock merfolk list has never reached any consistent success but I can recall a few periods where lists with 3-4 Chalice of the Void have done well. Plus Merfolk is the perfect shell for such a card. I would run 4 personally.
To be honest, the dazes where a little weird so I'm not exactly sure how I felt about them. They almost never mattered because I never drew them during the combo match ups which upset me :smiledown:. During the RUG Delver matchup game 1, I dazed his turn one delver only to be dazed back and that eventually lead to me losing that game. Honestly, that was my mistake for getting greedy. I am more than sure that the threat of them made a difference against many decks though but its hard to quantify.
The chalices however did work. Against storm game 1 I managed to turn 1 vial, turn 2 chalice on x=1 and he just scooped during his draw step. They worked great at stalling reanimator so I could beat down and they forced Miracles/BUG to remove it. I expected lots of blue and the mainboard chalices did a great job at catching them by surprise when you played vial or cursecatcher turn 1. I think the advantage you get from having them in game 1 outways any drawback personally.
Did you like 3 chalice or do you think you'd play 4?
I think 3 was the right number, I almost always had access to it when I need it but anytime I drew a second I was not a happy camper. Having the 4th in the side is definitely worth it against things like storm.
Ah yes, I saw these lists on MTGTop8. I'm not sure how much I like the lists. I'm running something like barumun's except I'm still on Cliques mainboard. My maindeck is his except -1 Daze -1 Spell Pierce +2 Clique
I've liked Daze less and less as of late so I'm only playing 2 to keep people honest.
There's apparently small Legacy tournaments 30 minutes from me that fires every sunday so I think I'm going to try and go to that this weekend if they are open.
@barumun: Thanks for your input on that! I was also currently playing 3 Chalice and 1 in the board. I asked because Nikachu mentioned he'd play 4.
[quote from="FANAttIC »" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/legacy-type-1-5/established-legacy/aggro-tempo/179828-deck-merfolk?comment=3731"]I've liked Daze less and less as of late so I'm only playing 2 to keep people honest.
@barumun: Thanks for your input on that! I was also currently playing 3 Chalice and 1 in the board. I asked because Nikachu mentioned he'd play 4.
Definitely feels to me like the right number of Daze is 1 or 2.
Seeing Fish do so well has led me to pick the deck back up. And on top of that it lets me play the same deck in 3 different formats. So that was a plus. Congratulations on your finish, Fanattic.
You would have made top 8 if you had 4x chalice main (blindly assuming you didn't) What was your list anyway?
Found it, sixth from the bottom: http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gplil15/trial-winners-grand-prix-lille-2015-2015-07-04
My friend Ante Omrcen also won a Trials (last list, we played three in total so that was a good sign).
He lost in his first to Miracles, won the second Trials, then 7-0-2 first day (yep, two draws), then he was "ambushed" by four miracles in the row (he wasn't happy), so "only" 56th place for him.
The point of this story is I never saw Miracles anywhere near me, I would change the course of this tournament if any finalist have sat opposite me
I am starting to think that maybe I should have taken random draw so only Miracles would be my opponents...
How were the Merrow Reejerey's? I haven't really seen those played much anymore.
They were mostly a placeholder for sideboard cards, first cuts. They were never amazing, I mean, of course they pilled up sometimes with all other Lords for infinite dmg but those slots could be some other cards. All my best results were with some number of Reej in the main so I decided to be superstituous and ran them again. Don't know what to make of it.
They credited a 112th place finishing Merfolk deck as the best performing archetype but not your 20th place? What BS.
Agreed. I will write a letter to Mr. Henke.
They even had my list from Trials so there was no need to type it again.
Przemek won a GP and there was no article about Merfolk in the whole internet. There was the usual information (this guy won a GP with Merfolk, so lets talk about this Grishoalbrand deck...) but no one took a moment to spend a word or two. It's like everyone have a directive from Wizards to not push a blue Pack Rats.dec for some reason.
Congrats man! 20th at a GP is great and winning a trial is nothing to scoff at either!
I really wanted to ask, how were the following cards?
2 Wasteland (Would you play them again or would you run more or less?)
0 Daze (Did you miss it at all?)
How were the 3 Relic and 3 Flusterstorm in the sideboard?
Yeah, forgot to congratulate you on the great finish. Interesting to see no Daze and no Cliques. I thought you really liked the latter, at least. Please give us a report when you get a chance. Don't worry about matchups if you can't remember everything, but it would be nice to know how you feel about your non-staple card choices (2nd Jitte, no Clique or Daze, etc.) I imagine you run two Jittes if you think you won't often be able to copy a Stoneforge, but there were 0 copies in the top 16 so that was a good call.
Congrats man! 20th at a GP is great and winning a trial is nothing to scoff at either!
I really wanted to ask, how were the following cards?
2 Wasteland (Would you play them again or would you run more or less?)
0 Daze (Did you miss it at all?)
How were the 3 Relic and 3 Flusterstorm in the sideboard?
2 Wasteland were great (the only reason I won against Lands, twice), I wish I can find room for more but replacing colored source takes away some of consistency. It will be 2 for the near future.
This was the first tournament without Daze and I can't remember situations where I needed Daze but I had the replacement card, I have no answer to this question.
3 Relic were great and Flusterstorms was good for combo decks while I had Chalice on one. Dismembers were dissapointing and Cage was never drawn in a few matches I could use it.
Yeah, forgot to congratulate you on the great finish. Interesting to see no Daze and no Cliques. I thought you really liked the latter, at least. Please give us a report when you get a chance. Don't worry about matchups if you can't remember everything, but it would be nice to know how you feel about your non-staple card choices (2nd Jitte, no Clique or Daze, etc.) I imagine you run two Jittes if you think you won't often be able to copy a Stoneforge, but there were 0 copies in the top 16 so that was a good call.
I figured people will see Merfolk and play around Daze so I removed them :). I have no final answer if that was the right call in general but it was great for this GP.
Yes, I still like the Cliques. My best results happened when I played Reej even if he seems bland (in fact, he was the first cut after most sideboarding so that is not a high praise).
I couldn't play both so... The "problem" is that I still have the best results in legacy with him in the main, so maybe he should stay. No idea.
Yep, I didn't expect many Mystics so 2 Jitte plan worked out since most of my opponents played Delver, Pyromancer and Deathrite, which would successfully race me without the equipment, on several occasions in fact.
Anyway, I won't be writing anything to Mr. Tobi Henke since I don't use Facebook. I would appreciate if someone else could scold him
Just finished giant report in Croatian but you don't speak that so no link is necessary.
Short one for you guys
I had to win my Trials against Death&Taxes (he had Sword and Jitte both games but I raced him with many lords and Jitte), 4cc Delver (Chalice), Shardless (he may have Liliana, Golgari Charm and two other -1/-1 effects but I had enough TNNs), Lands (my 75 is actually very good against this deck, 4-1 in games in two matches), Sneak&Show (copied Emrakul for style points win).
Main event opponents:
5 Grixis (delver or control, 3-4 colors)
2 BUG
1 Reanimator (copied Griselbrand and drew many cards, OBV, I had to discard with grin on my face)
1 Omnitell
1 Lands
1 Maverick
1 Merfolk
1 Death&Taxes
Lost to Omnitell, Bug and Grixis Delver, all in the third game (he drew one more counter; he drew only 2 lands while I had 9; he played first, blindly flipped 2 Delvers even when I had turn 2 Chalice).
In general, I don't think I could have done something different in those matches or just didn't saw my mistakes.
After all this I think I will find some room for Venser or two in the board (Show with Boseiju is rough and he is good for returning stuff when Show resolves and he can return **cking Delver).
The good thing is that I won all bad matchups so there is some hope for this list.
Most of my opponents had all foil deck (as much as possible without duals), so I played against experienced players who only play their favorite. It was nice knowing that Merfolk can beat those and fun was had in destroying rich people
They credited a 112th place finishing Merfolk deck as the best performing archetype but not your 20th place? What BS.
I just found some free time to read up on Lille coverage and now I know why that mistake happened: http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gplil15/grand-prix-lilles-9-0-decklists-2015-07-05
That 112th Merfolk list is the 9-0 list from day1. They just assumed it was the best. Honest mistake.
BTW, those three guys on 9-0 decklists link are all Merfolk players, former or current. I find that interesting.
@Dyllyn
I am this __ close to making another account just to plus your comment
I normally don't post here as I don't have much to say but if any merfolk players in the Maryland/Virginia/DC area would like a chance at winning a complete set of foil worldwake cards message me and I can give you the event location and time. 1st prize is that or $800 in credit at the store with less store credit down to 8th place (and maybe 16th place if enough people sign up.) It would be on July 26th.
I'll be coming up with a decklist and SB plan so I'll be posting here more often and getting involved, but yeah wanted to have that up for anyone interested.
In other words, if you've been doing well with your build, run your build. At least the maindeck seems mostly the same, though he prefers Reejery over Clique and Jitte over Chalice (in general terms). If Stoneforge builds continue to decrease, 3 Images and 0 Jittes in the main to make room for other tricks should be defensible choices.
All that said, I'd love to hear other thoughts on the relative strengths of the "beef" build vs Chalice or Standstill builds.
2) Use the right number of each card.
3) Know your probabilities.
4) Print your deck lists; make yourself and your judges happier.
To illustrate, I got Karakas-Clique locked once by Miracles (I think I probably would have lost that game anyway though, he cast 3 Terminus that game) and Glacial Chasm from the Lands deck was a pain. I had him at 1 after waiting for it to kill him in Cumulative upkeep and then he just plays Zuran Orbs and then there was no way for me to win the game at that point because he got his Life from the Loam-Exploration engine going.
Is it worth the drop in consistency of blue mana to play Wastelands?
Modern UMerfolkU
Legacy UMerfolkU
Standard XWhatever's GoodX
After playing around with the deck for a couple months and really only playing in one tournament before with the deck (GP NJ), I decided to sleeve up merfolk and hit a tourney close by for the chance to win some dual lands(1-8 got some multiple of duals). The tournament ended up being 91 players total and I am happy to prove that merfolk is not dead by any means. I managed to get into top 8 as the first seed going 6-1 and even though I lost in top 8 I managed to walk away in 5th place and the new proud owner of 2 revised Savannahs (my first duals!). I faced a variety of decks to get there: BUG Delver, Reanimator, Storm, Omnti(lost), some kind of affinity brew, miracles and RUG Delver. Again I want to say thank you! I am glad I got to make a splash with merfolk and making the unbelievers cry.
In case anyone was wondering, here is what I was running:
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Mutavault
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 True-Name Nemesis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Cursecatcher
3 Phantasmal Image
3 Daze
1 Echoing Truth
1 spell pierce
1 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Æther Vial
3 Chalice of the void
3 Submerge
2 Pithing Needle
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 grafdigger's cage
2 mindbreak trap
1 surgical extraction
1 chalice of the void
1 echoing truth
1 Spell Pierce
I am in the process of finalizing my GP deck, either Stuetzle version or very close to yours.
The chalices however did work. Against storm game 1 I managed to turn 1 vial, turn 2 chalice on x=1 and he just scooped during his draw step. They worked great at stalling reanimator so I could beat down and they forced Miracles/BUG to remove it. I expected lots of blue and the mainboard chalices did a great job at catching them by surprise when you played vial or cursecatcher turn 1. I think the advantage you get from having them in game 1 outways any drawback personally.
Modern UMerfolkU
Legacy UMerfolkU
Standard XWhatever's GoodX
http://www.knight-ware.com/ccg/magic/tourney/06_14_2015legacy.html
Still no respect!
But we have the last laugh.
I think 3 was the right number, I almost always had access to it when I need it but anytime I drew a second I was not a happy camper. Having the 4th in the side is definitely worth it against things like storm.
Ah yes, I saw these lists on MTGTop8. I'm not sure how much I like the lists. I'm running something like barumun's except I'm still on Cliques mainboard. My maindeck is his except -1 Daze -1 Spell Pierce +2 Clique
I've liked Daze less and less as of late so I'm only playing 2 to keep people honest.
There's apparently small Legacy tournaments 30 minutes from me that fires every sunday so I think I'm going to try and go to that this weekend if they are open.
@barumun: Thanks for your input on that! I was also currently playing 3 Chalice and 1 in the board. I asked because Nikachu mentioned he'd play 4.
Modern UMerfolkU
Legacy UMerfolkU
Standard XWhatever's GoodX
Definitely feels to me like the right number of Daze is 1 or 2.
For Chalice, 3 in main, 1 in board feels right.
Goran Elez, if anybody looks at standings.
Congrats, man! Hope to see you on stream!
You would have made top 8 if you had 4x chalice main (blindly assuming you didn't) What was your list anyway?
Nice!
How were the Merrow Reejerey's? I haven't really seen those played much anymore.
Found it, sixth from the bottom:
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gplil15/trial-winners-grand-prix-lille-2015-2015-07-04
My friend Ante Omrcen also won a Trials (last list, we played three in total so that was a good sign).
He lost in his first to Miracles, won the second Trials, then 7-0-2 first day (yep, two draws), then he was "ambushed" by four miracles in the row (he wasn't happy), so "only" 56th place for him.
The point of this story is I never saw Miracles anywhere near me, I would change the course of this tournament if any finalist have sat opposite me
I am starting to think that maybe I should have taken random draw so only Miracles would be my opponents...
They were mostly a placeholder for sideboard cards, first cuts. They were never amazing, I mean, of course they pilled up sometimes with all other Lords for infinite dmg but those slots could be some other cards. All my best results were with some number of Reej in the main so I decided to be superstituous and ran them again. Don't know what to make of it.
Agreed. I will write a letter to Mr. Henke.
They even had my list from Trials so there was no need to type it again.
Przemek won a GP and there was no article about Merfolk in the whole internet. There was the usual information (this guy won a GP with Merfolk, so lets talk about this Grishoalbrand deck...) but no one took a moment to spend a word or two. It's like everyone have a directive from Wizards to not push a blue Pack Rats.dec for some reason.
Congrats man! 20th at a GP is great and winning a trial is nothing to scoff at either!
I really wanted to ask, how were the following cards?
2 Wasteland (Would you play them again or would you run more or less?)
0 Daze (Did you miss it at all?)
How were the 3 Relic and 3 Flusterstorm in the sideboard?
Modern UMerfolkU
Legacy UMerfolkU
Standard XWhatever's GoodX
2) Use the right number of each card.
3) Know your probabilities.
4) Print your deck lists; make yourself and your judges happier.
2 Wasteland were great (the only reason I won against Lands, twice), I wish I can find room for more but replacing colored source takes away some of consistency. It will be 2 for the near future.
This was the first tournament without Daze and I can't remember situations where I needed Daze but I had the replacement card, I have no answer to this question.
3 Relic were great and Flusterstorms was good for combo decks while I had Chalice on one. Dismembers were dissapointing and Cage was never drawn in a few matches I could use it.
I figured people will see Merfolk and play around Daze so I removed them :). I have no final answer if that was the right call in general but it was great for this GP.
Yes, I still like the Cliques. My best results happened when I played Reej even if he seems bland (in fact, he was the first cut after most sideboarding so that is not a high praise).
I couldn't play both so... The "problem" is that I still have the best results in legacy with him in the main, so maybe he should stay. No idea.
Yep, I didn't expect many Mystics so 2 Jitte plan worked out since most of my opponents played Delver, Pyromancer and Deathrite, which would successfully race me without the equipment, on several occasions in fact.
Anyway, I won't be writing anything to Mr. Tobi Henke since I don't use Facebook. I would appreciate if someone else could scold him
Just finished giant report in Croatian but you don't speak that so no link is necessary.
Short one for you guys
I had to win my Trials against Death&Taxes (he had Sword and Jitte both games but I raced him with many lords and Jitte), 4cc Delver (Chalice), Shardless (he may have Liliana, Golgari Charm and two other -1/-1 effects but I had enough TNNs), Lands (my 75 is actually very good against this deck, 4-1 in games in two matches), Sneak&Show (copied Emrakul for style points win).
Main event opponents:
5 Grixis (delver or control, 3-4 colors)
2 BUG
1 Reanimator (copied Griselbrand and drew many cards, OBV, I had to discard with grin on my face)
1 Omnitell
1 Lands
1 Maverick
1 Merfolk
1 Death&Taxes
Lost to Omnitell, Bug and Grixis Delver, all in the third game (he drew one more counter; he drew only 2 lands while I had 9; he played first, blindly flipped 2 Delvers even when I had turn 2 Chalice).
In general, I don't think I could have done something different in those matches or just didn't saw my mistakes.
After all this I think I will find some room for Venser or two in the board (Show with Boseiju is rough and he is good for returning stuff when Show resolves and he can return **cking Delver).
The good thing is that I won all bad matchups so there is some hope for this list.
Most of my opponents had all foil deck (as much as possible without duals), so I played against experienced players who only play their favorite. It was nice knowing that Merfolk can beat those and fun was had in destroying rich people
I just found some free time to read up on Lille coverage and now I know why that mistake happened: http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/gplil15/grand-prix-lilles-9-0-decklists-2015-07-05
That 112th Merfolk list is the 9-0 list from day1. They just assumed it was the best. Honest mistake.
BTW, those three guys on 9-0 decklists link are all Merfolk players, former or current. I find that interesting.
@Dyllyn
I am this __ close to making another account just to plus your comment
I'll be coming up with a decklist and SB plan so I'll be posting here more often and getting involved, but yeah wanted to have that up for anyone interested.
UMerfolkU
Legacy
UMerfolkU
Commander
RWBAlesha, Who Smiles At DeathRWB