Yeah, I've never tought Merfolk wasn't a viable option, but in the last year I struggled to see a reason to play my beloved pet-deck (from the legacy standstill era, something like 10 years ago) over other better positioned tribes (AKA Spirits).
Today with the canopies and the much needed card selection from benthic biomancer, we are less likely to flood and force of negation will be a premium tempo play; a play that Spirits will make less consistently for multiple reasons:
1) their lands don't double up as threats, while we can play up to 8 (unlikely, at the moment 5 to 6 seems to be the right number) cyclers and 4 manlands: a minus 1 in a spirit shell is much more punishing.
2) they play from 11 to 18 non-blue spells, and more lands, so the forces are less likely to be active.
Now the matter on the other premium tribe, humans, is much more complex
. They use to lose from spirits but have fairly good mups across the board, the fact is that they gain ALMOST nothing from the new set, except maybe from the pseudo kira changeling wich is surprisingly underwhelming in the nowadays field.
All these things together brought hope to my little shattered fish player's heart and might be the factors to a second merfolk rising.
I'm sorry for my bad english.
I don't necessarily think Humans and Spirits are better positioned than we are, honestly. I play all 3 decks, and Merfolk holds up better against decks like Tron and Phoenix than either of the other tribes, and those decks are very much at the forefront of the current metagame. UW Control is also doing pretty well, and we're better than Humans there as well in my opinion. Force and Canopy lands will definitely help, though.
I'm doing pretty well without either of those cards, though they will of course help.
On the subject of MTGSalvation's closure and what that means for the primer, I'll be migrating the information over to a Google document. Please be patient, as some reformatting will be required during the transition.
I've been playing around with (proxies of) Force of Negation and Unsetteled Mariner with quite interesting results so far. Looking at your Simic list makes me want to give this one a go:
I might want to make space for the extra seas since this list isn't getting the extra from Mistbinder, but at the same time First strke and Lifelink might just do it to let them through or force the opponent to chump.
I think UW Merfolk is worth experimenting with again thanks to Mariner, but Sejiri Merfolk is just too weak a card. Note that it requires a Plains, so unless you specifically have Hallowed Fountain on the battlefield, it's just a plain old 2/1 for 2, which is unacceptably bad. I'd run more Lords, Sygg, River Guide, or a useful planeswalker (splashing white gives us access to Teferi, Time Raveler, which I think is pretty good) instead.
With a white splash you might want some PtE in the 75, and Force of Negation in the mainboard. That's too Strong.
Path has been bad for our Seas plan for a long time; giving the opponent extra basic lands rarely is a net-positive for a true tempo deck. See Nikachu's video on the topic for details.
I'm doing pretty well without either of those cards, though they will of course help.
On the subject of MTGSalvation's closure and what that means for the primer, I'll be migrating the information over to a Google document. Please be patient, as some reformatting will be required during the transition.
I'm going to start with 4 main, and see how that goes. I don't anticipate running fewer than 4 copies given how much fast stuff currently inhabits the format. The main question to me is main or side.
We're running 2 in the sideboard. Literally every blue deck in the format is going to play this card. Winning counterspell wars is good, and Flusterstorm wins pretty much any counter war it's involved in (and the few that it doesn't usually involve another Flusterstorm). Modern Storm also doesn't run hand attack, so pulling it in that matchup is lights out (not that I expect Storm to be much of a deck now that this is in the format, but still).
I ran it out for a test last night, and I came to a similar conclusion. We have better options against Tron and control, and the likes of Titan decks and other decks relying heavily on tutors aren't quite common enough to justify its inclusion. It's a handy card to keep in mind should the metagame context change, though. I'd recommend picking them up and keeping them in the tacklebox.
I'm certainly going to test it, but it won't be at the expense of Relic. We'll always be in the market for cheap graveyard hate. However, search hate that can double as extra graveyard hate sounds pretty good. Venser isn't as good as he normally is in my list now that I don't have 4s to justify setting my Vial on, so maybe I'll swap it out and see what happens.
Meddling Mage naming their wincons while Freebooter/Thalia/Sin Collector mess with their ability to ramp is generally pretty punishing in my experience. Alternatively, growing some Champions/Lieutenants past Anger range and beating their brains in has also worked for me. My sideboard plan is Sin Collector/Kambal in, Reflector Mage out.
Yep. I've been increasingly skeptical of my ability to hit 4 lands on curve (so much so that I'm currently testing Merrow Reejerey over Master of Waves in the current Bolt-light environment), and Cryptic doesn't do you much good if you can't cast it. There are some other corner-case concerns in favor of Venser - for example, Supreme Verdict out of UWX Control.
Why would you run either, to be honest? Knight of Autumn and Deputy of Detention have you covered on artifact/enchantment hate, and they're CoCo-friendly.
Yep. You can find the link on the first page.
Thanks, GrimDucky. We'll do one last writeup soon.
I don't necessarily think Humans and Spirits are better positioned than we are, honestly. I play all 3 decks, and Merfolk holds up better against decks like Tron and Phoenix than either of the other tribes, and those decks are very much at the forefront of the current metagame. UW Control is also doing pretty well, and we're better than Humans there as well in my opinion. Force and Canopy lands will definitely help, though.
I think UW Merfolk is worth experimenting with again thanks to Mariner, but Sejiri Merfolk is just too weak a card. Note that it requires a Plains, so unless you specifically have Hallowed Fountain on the battlefield, it's just a plain old 2/1 for 2, which is unacceptably bad. I'd run more Lords, Sygg, River Guide, or a useful planeswalker (splashing white gives us access to Teferi, Time Raveler, which I think is pretty good) instead.
Path has been bad for our Seas plan for a long time; giving the opponent extra basic lands rarely is a net-positive for a true tempo deck. See Nikachu's video on the topic for details.
On the subject of MTGSalvation's closure and what that means for the primer, I'll be migrating the information over to a Google document. Please be patient, as some reformatting will be required during the transition.
Definitely testing that. Not sure whether it'll be main or side, but I think it's an upgrade to Spell Pierce.