MTG Salvation

I understand the concern of having too many mediocre topdecks, but in this meta obsessed with efficiency, it's a bit of an eyebrow-raiser to cut one of the major sources of positive tempo (and the occasional blowout) in Cursecatcher. I'd jam the 8 1-drops and try to goldfish those T4 kills.

Dude - check your own behaviour - anyone can come up with hundreds of brew ideas - when one "sort of" works - you can then point at it with "pride". Point is the green merfolk idea is not your idea - loads of ppl considered it - but you can claim merfolk pilferer - I guarantee that is an original.

"The world is not the same as it was, Charles..."

Rothgar is now a Kopala RiP MoW

Master of Waves is still doing all right for me, folks - Kopala just has cooler art.

Quote from tapinho »

Quote from sibin »

"The world is not the same as it was, Charles..."

Rothgar is now a Kopala RiP MoW

The tides are changing. It's time to bury Master of Waves until the day modern has been cleansed of Fatal Push.

Poor Master...if its true, he's gone FOREVER lol

I'm personally excited about UG Merfolk. It does not have a really resolved shell, however, and two issues are central to that

1. Aether Vial vs.(?) Collected Company.
Anyone who has played Spirits knows that this debate can radically effect how you design a deck. In Legacy, where FoW and other counterspells are rampant, a 4 mana instant in a non-combo deck is basically unplayable, but in Modern, it is quite good. However, CoCo really only shines where you can potentially accelerate into it on turn 3 with mana dorks. That's why Spirits ran 1 notable non-Spirit, Noble Hierarch. The GW decks are all mana ramp decks. And in Spiritss, the general consensus for play and by results happens to be that CoCo is the better build than UW Vial, in part because CoCo is card advantage, but also because there is never such a thing as a dead CoCo if you have 4 mana, whereas Vial after turn 3 is usually bad and 3 or 4 Vials is terrible because they don't turn into creatures.

Merfolk, however, also has more and cheaper Lords and for a long time absolutely needed Master of Waves, which was a huge nonbo with CoCo. Also, there was no reason to splash G for Noble Hierarch with no green creatures. Vial makes creatures uncounterable and open mana becomes unpredictable. Plus, vial is a great way to allow you to sink mana into Mutavault. Holding up 4 mana with Mutavault in play instead of attacking is often a clear signal that CoCo is in the wings, whereas it becomes an uncertainty-inducing move with a Vial ticked up to 2, 3 or 4.

Now we have 2 very good green Merfolk, however, which can make the splash make a lot of sense. They also mean that Master goes away in UG. Now the question becomes serious as to whether or not you play CoCo and maybe even if Noble Hierarch finds a place. BUT now dilemmas ensue.

a. Replace Vial with CoCo. This essentially begs for Hierarch or you have to go to 23 lands. Either way, you replace 4 Aether Vial with 7-8 cards. That means a hit to the creature count in exchange for CoCo's other advantages.

b. Run 4 CoCo and 2 Vial (recommended by Jim Davis here, and note that he goes to 23 lands anyway!) I get this, but I feel like Vial is a "4 or nothing" card and now, with the Jim Davis build, we replaced only 2 Vial with 7 cards. I don't feel like that is good.

c. Run 4 Vial and 2 CoCo. This is what Nikachu has been doing, without adding lands. So CoCo is a "nice to find piece of CA late game when we probably have 4+ lands anyway, but we still have a good chance of Vial turn 1 and maybe you CoCo away some Vials too, which is fine. He also runs a 3rd CoCo in the side for the matches where Vial is bad and clearly CoCo is better (aka vs mid-range). This only requires swapping out 2 cards for 2 CoCo, most likely where we would have had removal spells.

d. Leave CoCo alone and stay all Vial.

I am personally a fan of c or d (I really like c the best.) A and b feel like a bad density swap and #2 seems super bad, as it forces us to choose the worst deployment of Vial without ramping into CoCo.

2. How many Curse Catcher?
I think this is the only creature card, aside from Master of Waves, that could go from a 4-of to something else. I personally don't like cutting all of them, but I could see going to 2. Ole CC is just not Mausoleum Wanderer. It doesn't really improve as a counterspell no matter what and it is only as good as the Lords on the field. That said, it changes the math for combo decks, so I can't personally see going under 2.

I am also a huge fan of the sideboard options opened up by Green. I really like Nikachu's choices, though you could flex in multiple directions. Given a couple CoCo, I really, really like Reclamation sage, but maybe that isn't the best call. This is an essentially unexplored territory.

Lead the Stampede is indeed a cool idea. With Vial, spending 3 and putting multiple cards in hand that you can vial in seems good, though it does not offer board-state tricks per se. On the other hand, since Merfolk probably does fewer tricks for disruption than say, Spirits, and can tap out with Vial on the board, it loses less to CoCo than Spirits would. Also, Lead is obviously easier to cast in the deck and can still filter extra copies of Vial. If you run it, please let us know how it goes.

I think of CoCo this way, though: it is for Green creature decks what Dig Through Time is for U control: Cast it, look through a lot of cards, get the two best but possibly just not hit what you need. CoCo puts creatures on the field for 4, Dig puts two in your hand, but possibly for 2 mana, and therefore leaving you up mana to cast the two cards you took, whether counters or draw.

Lead is something I'd be more enthusiastic about testing than CoCo, to be honest. At this point, we have established that CoCo in Merfolk is a reload mechanism, since we can't accelerate it out with dorks. I think Lead does a somewhat better job of refueling than CoCo does (especially considering the high density of 2-drops in UG Merfolk makes it unlikely CoCo will cheat on mana), and it costs less. It also helps keep the land count low.

So, adding in Lead the Stampede makes me think of legacy Goblins which has Goblin Ringleader to do something similar. However, in that deck, theyre not trying to tempo/aggro their opponents out most times. I wonder if lead would be better if we're fine with Merfolk being more of a grindy card advantage deck, which it could be

Lead also plays pretty well with Vial too.

Because Watertrap Weaver and Cosi's Tricker are bad cards.

UG will either pan out or it won't. No one has enough data yet. Bant Spirits looked great, didn't really pan out. Eldrazi Tron wasn't taken seriously first Open I took it too, now it is highly tuned and a Tier 1 deck.

Argue, theory craft, make points, all important to see if UG actually coalesces into a deck. Also, UG does not make UU bad. Both could be strong, both could play differently in different metas, etc.

Quote from redtwister »

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Well said.

Quote from tapinho »

Indeed. The fact is that the U/G Merfolk is by far the superior shell. Even Nikachu said that it would take a bomb of a card from Rivals of Ixalan for him to go back to monoU. I'm sure even the purists, who in my view stick to monoU due to mainly emotional reasons, will understand the power of the Simic version very soon.

One month of data does not make it "far superior." Modern is full of random brews that come out of nowhere only to disappear after a month. UG will have to stick around for longer to see, but as of now it's only an option for fish if someone wants to be more aggressive, not a "superior" one over mono blue.

Quote from redtwister »

UG will either pan out or it won't. No one has enough data yet. Bant Spirits looked great, didn't really pan out. Eldrazi Tron wasn't taken seriously first Open I took it too, now it is highly tuned and a Tier 1 deck.

Argue, theory craft, make points, all important to see if UG actually coalesces into a deck. Also, UG does not make UU bad. Both could be strong, both could play differently in different metas, etc.

E-tron wasnt a good deck until Walking Ballista was printed - its going to take more for UG merfolk to put up consistent results

Emotional reasons - lol - UG has one top 8 - the only person being emotional is you

@IslandsAreBroken
Actually, E-Tron was a Tier 1.5 deck until people figured out to incorporate Walking Ballista (it was released weeks before it made it's way into the deck.) It made Top 4 at GPT Brisbane and was reasonably frequently a 5-0 deck on MTGO. Even after people realized Ballista was good, it was another month+ before it made it to an automatic 4-of, with very heated discussion of 2 vs. 4.

The point being, it takes a little time for a solid shell to develop, if one can develop and I don't why you seem invested in seeing UG fail.

Also, Jeremy Bertarioni is (was?) 11-3 with UG Merfolk in a tournament where 5-color humans started out 12-0. How many people would have said that deck was a bad decision 4 weeks ago? The only real changes are the Pirate and Unclaimed Territory. And who would have guessed that it wouldn't play Collected Company or any non-creature spells aside from Aether Vial?

EDIT:
3:25pm EST
12-3 and looking at Top 8 if his tie-breakers hold.

Another Top 8 for UG Merfolk. (Also lone Merfolk player to day 2)

http://www.starcitygames.com/events/211017_cincinnati.html

Another weekend with UG TOP8.

WHATS GOING ON ???? THIS IS A PANDEMONIUM LOL

Nah, remember folks, U/G is just a 'hodgepodge of laughable cards' as IslandsAreBroken said. Remember the wise words from Rothgar13: "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".

Clearly every splash is bad and this deck is awful. This gotta be just a magical coincidence, right?