@Bathickey I'm curious to know what you didn't like about the standard merfolk build. Now I realize that this doesn't mean a whole lot considering my local meta game doesn't include jund, splinter twin, and some big T1 archetypes, but I've played many series against friends and local players playing UR delver, melira pod, mono blue tron, RG tron, affinity, burn, infect, living end, restore balance and WB tokens and to date I've only lost one series which I feel was due to a bad error in gameplay. I've found the build to be incredibly powerful and is often capable of pulling wins out of nowhere. What kind of stuff don't you like about it?
The decks that I know exist in my universities meta or will once the cards arrive are jund, scapeshift, UWR control, melira pod, living end, burn, girselbrand reanimater, GW hatebears, and a gruul aggro deck and hopefully others as today is the first official club meeting.
I'm not sure if I should stay mono U and just mainboard some relics or if I should Try switching to UW to test mainboarding rest in piece, sejiri merfolk, and PtE and giving me access to better sideboard options.
I'm probably going to try replacing the snapcasters with relics and see if that is good enough. Hopefully I don't have to change the deck too much as I like how it is at the moment.
Interesting. My recommendation would be to drop your tectonic edges altogether or drop them to a 2-of because I think cavern of souls would work wonders. It would hurt UWR pretty hard and would make life much more difficult for scapeshift since as far as I know that deck survives by relying on counterspells.
I honestly think merrow reejery is a card almost every merfolk deck should be playing as a 4-of. With two in play, which isn't infrequent with 4 of them and 3 phantasmal image mainboard, you can sort of combo off on turn 4 and dump an obscene amount of merfolk from your hand at once.
I would give a look into the OP's decklist since that one has a good amount of mainboard hate for the decks in your meta and is still pretty powerful.
I've tried the OP's list and didn't really like it. When playing it I often felt like I was drawing into multiples of spellskite when it was totally irrelevant, drawing into relic of progenitus when it was irrelevant, and leaving copies of thirst for knowledge and mana leak/remand in my hand because I couldn't afford the time to cast either without aether vial. I'm thinking about playing remand because originally I only had mana leak and I think remand will be much better.
I'm far from an expert on this archetype, but my opinion is that the only spells above 3cmc that are playable are ones you can play off of vial. 1cmc counters/disruptors are the best for the deck, but 2cmc cards that can waste an opponent's turn, such as remand, and of course spreading seas are also very playable. Anything that doesn't fit into either category, in my opinion, either goes in the sideboard or is too slow. I could be off considering I haven't really experimented too much with decklists but this is what I've found so far.
@BatHickey Have you tried playtesting your build against really fast aggro? I feel like the more control you put in the deck the worse you lose to decks like affinity that literally come down to an aggro race.
Chalice of the void did some amazing work. Both my first round and the finals were against affinity and a turn 1 chalice for zero single-handedly won me the game. Other decks in my local meta that I know chalice is good for include RG tron, burn, and living end. Chalice of the void has actually been my favorite sideboard spell because in MUs where it's good it almost instantly wins the game.
Echoing truth is good against BW tokens and there is a player who plays that in my meta.
Kira is an amazing card. I have won almost every game when I draw her. In fact last night I lost a game where I intended to tick up an aether vial to 3 but missed the trigger, drew Kira, and died to a path to exile. Spellskite is great as a 2-of because it keeps you from being flooded by them when you want merfolk and while spellskite is totally defensive Kira can do some beating down occasionally. As I understand it spellskite is also good as a disrupter against many decks and I run an extra copy in the sideboard for a few matchups like that but there aren't any twin, infect, or boggle decks in my meta so that rarely enters the equation.
It's possible that vapor snag is good but just bad in my local meta. The decks that exist in my local meta include: RG tron, Affinity, Burn, BW tokens, UR Delver, Hatebears and Living End and is apparently pretty soon to include another Fish deck and Melira pod. I guess where I don't feel 100% confident is in the sideboard and the 7 non-creature spells currently mainboard. The seas, vials, and creatures all seem great, but I don't know how I feel about the spell pierces and vapor snags. Spell pierce is great but as a three-of in the mainboard I'm not really sure and vapor snag doesn't feel good as a 4-of. I've been thinking about coralhelm commanders and a few more counterspells as cards in the place of vapor snags main-board.
EDIT: Played with a friend playing Living End today and went 3-1 winning all 3 games post-board off the back of chalice of the void.
I got two additional Mutavaults from winning the tournament so I replaced the Cavern of Souls with them since I think the Aether Vials are good enough to get around countermagic. The spell pierces feel really good but I'm iffy on the Vapor Snags since I felt like I was boarding them out almost every game. Thoughts?
This is an idea I had for a sideboard card. How would anger of the gods work as a sideboard card? The biggest problem I see is reliably getting the double red, however when you get it you can wipe your opponents board of creatures, all of them are exiled so they won't come back with living end, and it's at 3 cmc so you won't cascade into it on accident. Living end seems to already have a pretty solid MU against aggro decks, however it feels like a card that's not bad as a one-of in the sideboard. Thoughts?
So how exactly do we go about beating tron decks? Hand disruption in sideboard is good, but is it worth it to have additional side-board options specific to tron? Playing tectonic edges is sort of out of the question due to gatekeeper.
Seems good!
The only thing I would be concerned about is only having 22 lands with 3 Falkenrath Aristocrats, and Olivia is very mana intensive too.
I tried having 23 and found I was getting too much mana more often that not. The way I see it I don't need to have aristocrat hit the board Turn 4, I just need to have her as an option so I can drop her whenever I hit the 4th land.
As for Olivia I think she needs to go but not sure what to put in her place. I don't feel like I could handle a B/W token deck if it started building up much of a board. What would you suggest?
This is what I'm running at the moment. Once thoughtseize comes out in theros and hopefully becomes affordable I'll add some into the sideboard. Would substitute more fetchlands and a third liliana in the sideboard but they are a bit too expensive at the moment.
As for maindeck, cutting the discard seems to have greatly streamlined the deck. With the Captivating Vampires and enough creature fuel you can get really quick kills. I really like having Falkenrath Aristocrats since they represent an actual threat when topdecking and can survive boardwipes. Also has great synergy with Kalastria Highborn and Bloodghast. Feast of blood, though not as good as terminate, I feel is a nice touch to mitigate lifeloss when playing lacerators.
Suggestions? I don't feel 100% sure about the sideboard but I feel like the maindeck is about as good as it's going to get unless wizards makes a new vampire.
@Gypsyhummus - I am more or less pre-sideboarded against Affinity so it isn't a problem for me.
They can kill me a turn faster than I can kill them, but I have a lot of removal to slow them down. Since they have almost no removal, a Captivating Vampire can really take over and allows me to have a far superior late game, especially post board with the Nighthawks.
This is what I am playing...
Compared to previous lists I have cut Dark Confidant, Aether Vial, Faithless Looting and the main deck discard.
Confidant is an amazing card, without a doubt. But, I can't do much with the human body and taking a turn off to draw more vampires and play them later isn't part of my game plan. It is good value but too slow.
Vial is good, but doesn't help cast Gatekeeper and requires less lands, meaning less landfall triggers for bloodghast.
Looting is good, but I don't have anything insanely powerful to draw into that makes up for the tempo loss.
Discard is good, but it is another tempo loss, in a lot of match ups I would always board it out and the non-creature combo decks are pretty uncommon/inconsistent.
The extra burn makes sure Noble/Lacerator are able to punch through and is a huge advantage in match ups that focus on the board like Pod, Jund and Affinity. In match ups where I need the discard, like UWR, Scapeshift and Tron, I compensate by having a very tight curve and burning them out game 1, then boarding the discard in afterwards.
I like this list and think it's the best direction to take the deck in, however I'm starting to question the use of bloodghast. I feel like the only reason to play bloodghast is if you have a sacrifice synergy with falkenrath or seer.
Maybe I'm playing this wrong, but every time I use bloodghast as a regen'ing beater rather than a piece of a sac synergy, it becomes the creature my opponent wants to block the least. As a result, I either have to hold back all my other creatures or accept the fact that I'm going to lose every other creature to combat before him.
For that reason I'm starting to feel like you should play bloodghast with a sac synergy or not at all. Maybe replace with pulse tracker for a bit of reach?
Yeah, I think I just sideboarded wrong against affinity. I should have sideboarded to make my deck defensive and I didn't really think about it at the time. I'm pretty broke atm but working on getting one last aristocrat and definitely running it when I can. Thank you very much for the advice!
Hey, posting again since I've changed up my decklist. Would like more advice. Some straight upgrades I just can't afford would be fetch lands and confidant, but those aside, how does it look? Good enough to take a event at my LGS maybe?
Would really love some advice on what to change. I played against a guy running a crazy fast affinity beatdown deck that completely destroyed me. I can chalk up one game to playing a little poorly but the other two games we played I just felt helpless. Starting to think that sideboarding nighthawk might not be too bad to stabilize in matchups where I'm clearly on the defensive, but wouldn't really know what to take out for him. Also, I see someone added in phyrexian arena in the absence of Bob. Would you guys recommend the same in my case?
So I'm a fairly new player and the first deck I made was vampire tribal that I've since been refining to make modern competitive. Currently I'm running this list and, aside from mana problems, it's been running pretty well.
What I need, however, are some suggestions on what I should sideboard and also some suggestions on what to change in the mainboard. I don't have much of any experience in the format and so I don't know what to look out for, but so far it seems that affinity and token decks are particularly difficult.
I'm trying to keep the deck from being too expensive, but I'm willing to spend if it's necessary.
Interesting. My recommendation would be to drop your tectonic edges altogether or drop them to a 2-of because I think cavern of souls would work wonders. It would hurt UWR pretty hard and would make life much more difficult for scapeshift since as far as I know that deck survives by relying on counterspells.
I honestly think merrow reejery is a card almost every merfolk deck should be playing as a 4-of. With two in play, which isn't infrequent with 4 of them and 3 phantasmal image mainboard, you can sort of combo off on turn 4 and dump an obscene amount of merfolk from your hand at once.
I would give a look into the OP's decklist since that one has a good amount of mainboard hate for the decks in your meta and is still pretty powerful.
I'm far from an expert on this archetype, but my opinion is that the only spells above 3cmc that are playable are ones you can play off of vial. 1cmc counters/disruptors are the best for the deck, but 2cmc cards that can waste an opponent's turn, such as remand, and of course spreading seas are also very playable. Anything that doesn't fit into either category, in my opinion, either goes in the sideboard or is too slow. I could be off considering I haven't really experimented too much with decklists but this is what I've found so far.
Echoing truth is good against BW tokens and there is a player who plays that in my meta.
Kira is an amazing card. I have won almost every game when I draw her. In fact last night I lost a game where I intended to tick up an aether vial to 3 but missed the trigger, drew Kira, and died to a path to exile. Spellskite is great as a 2-of because it keeps you from being flooded by them when you want merfolk and while spellskite is totally defensive Kira can do some beating down occasionally. As I understand it spellskite is also good as a disrupter against many decks and I run an extra copy in the sideboard for a few matchups like that but there aren't any twin, infect, or boggle decks in my meta so that rarely enters the equation.
It's possible that vapor snag is good but just bad in my local meta. The decks that exist in my local meta include: RG tron, Affinity, Burn, BW tokens, UR Delver, Hatebears and Living End and is apparently pretty soon to include another Fish deck and Melira pod. I guess where I don't feel 100% confident is in the sideboard and the 7 non-creature spells currently mainboard. The seas, vials, and creatures all seem great, but I don't know how I feel about the spell pierces and vapor snags. Spell pierce is great but as a three-of in the mainboard I'm not really sure and vapor snag doesn't feel good as a 4-of. I've been thinking about coralhelm commanders and a few more counterspells as cards in the place of vapor snags main-board.
EDIT: Played with a friend playing Living End today and went 3-1 winning all 3 games post-board off the back of chalice of the void.
4x Cursecatcher
4x Silvergill Adept
4x Lord of Atlantis
4x Master of the Pearl Trident
3x Phantasmal Image
2x Spellskite
4x Merrow Reejery
1x Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
4x Aether Vial
4x Vapor Snag
3x Spell Pierce
3x Spreading Seas
LANDS(20)
2x Mutavault
2x Tectonic Edge
2x Cavern of Souls
14x Island
3x Chalice of the Void
2x Dismember
2x Hurkyl's Recall
2x Relic of Progenitus
2x Echoing Truth
1x Pithing Needle
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Spellskite
1x Spreading Seas
I got two additional Mutavaults from winning the tournament so I replaced the Cavern of Souls with them since I think the Aether Vials are good enough to get around countermagic. The spell pierces feel really good but I'm iffy on the Vapor Snags since I felt like I was boarding them out almost every game. Thoughts?
I tried having 23 and found I was getting too much mana more often that not. The way I see it I don't need to have aristocrat hit the board Turn 4, I just need to have her as an option so I can drop her whenever I hit the 4th land.
As for Olivia I think she needs to go but not sure what to put in her place. I don't feel like I could handle a B/W token deck if it started building up much of a board. What would you suggest?
4 kalastria highborn
4 bloodghast
4 stromkirk captain
4 captivating vampire
4 stromkirk noble
4 gatekeeper of malakir
3 vampire lacerator
3 falkenrath aristocrat
SPELLS (8)
4 lightning bolt
2 terminate
2 feast of blood
4 blood crypt
4 dragonskull summit
4 blackcleave cliffs
1 verdant catacombs
1 graven cairns
2 cavern of souls
6 swamp
4 vampire nighthawk
4 inquisition of kozilek
2 olivia voldaren
2 liliana of the veil
3 rakdos charm
This is what I'm running at the moment. Once thoughtseize comes out in theros and hopefully becomes affordable I'll add some into the sideboard. Would substitute more fetchlands and a third liliana in the sideboard but they are a bit too expensive at the moment.
As for maindeck, cutting the discard seems to have greatly streamlined the deck. With the Captivating Vampires and enough creature fuel you can get really quick kills. I really like having Falkenrath Aristocrats since they represent an actual threat when topdecking and can survive boardwipes. Also has great synergy with Kalastria Highborn and Bloodghast. Feast of blood, though not as good as terminate, I feel is a nice touch to mitigate lifeloss when playing lacerators.
Suggestions? I don't feel 100% sure about the sideboard but I feel like the maindeck is about as good as it's going to get unless wizards makes a new vampire.
I like this list and think it's the best direction to take the deck in, however I'm starting to question the use of bloodghast. I feel like the only reason to play bloodghast is if you have a sacrifice synergy with falkenrath or seer.
Maybe I'm playing this wrong, but every time I use bloodghast as a regen'ing beater rather than a piece of a sac synergy, it becomes the creature my opponent wants to block the least. As a result, I either have to hold back all my other creatures or accept the fact that I'm going to lose every other creature to combat before him.
For that reason I'm starting to feel like you should play bloodghast with a sac synergy or not at all. Maybe replace with pulse tracker for a bit of reach?
4x dragonskull summit
1x graven cairns
4x blood crypt
4x blackcleave cliffs
2x cavern of souls
1x verdant catacombs
2x cavern of souls
7x swamp
Creatures (23):
4x Bloodghast
4x Kalastria Highborn
4x Stromkirk Captain
4x gatekeeper of malakir
4x stromkirk noble
3x falkenrath aristocrat
4x inquisition of kozilek
4x lightning bolt
4x terminate
2x Liliana of the Veil
2x Olivia Voldaren
2x Slaughter Games
2x Shatterstorm
3x Duress
3x Rakdos Charm
3x Arc Trail
Would really love some advice on what to change. I played against a guy running a crazy fast affinity beatdown deck that completely destroyed me. I can chalk up one game to playing a little poorly but the other two games we played I just felt helpless. Starting to think that sideboarding nighthawk might not be too bad to stabilize in matchups where I'm clearly on the defensive, but wouldn't really know what to take out for him. Also, I see someone added in phyrexian arena in the absence of Bob. Would you guys recommend the same in my case?
4 bloodghast
4 kalastria highborn
4 gatekeeper of malakir
4 stromkirk captain
4 vampire lacerator
3 vampire nocturnus
4 lightningbolt
4 terminate
Soceries - 4
4 inquisition of kozilek
Planeswalkers - 2
2 liliana of the veil
Lands - 23
4 blood crypt
4 dragonskull summit
4 blackcleave cliffs
4 graven cairns
7 swamp
What I need, however, are some suggestions on what I should sideboard and also some suggestions on what to change in the mainboard. I don't have much of any experience in the format and so I don't know what to look out for, but so far it seems that affinity and token decks are particularly difficult.
I'm trying to keep the deck from being too expensive, but I'm willing to spend if it's necessary.