MTG Salvation

4-0 at a ~20 person tournament last weekend with this list ... I'm still working on transitioning a budget mono-U devotion list into modern merfolk:



Not bad for a sub-$100 build. I have been tinkering with kira / siege ratio and I like the 1 kira / 2 siege I used this last weekend. I am also enjoying playing with skywatcher and coralhelm; they did some work in a couple of games against B/G/x. I feel the level up is necessary in my current build since I haven't gotten mutavaults yet, and I want something to do with my mana if I don't have something to cast during my turn.

I played against: jund (2-1), soul sisters (2-1), abzan (2-0), and B/W Tron (2-1).

I play a very budget friendly mono black affinity. I'm pretty sure with sideboard it's under $50.



This won't win any big tournaments, but I've never gone 0-X with it at the LGS, and usually do pretty well. The removal helps a lot with the modern meta around me. I always have creatures to hit with my removal spells.

I have a friend who plays at a different shop and plays a mono red version. I'm pretty sure he runs about the same creatures (probably not the legionnaire), but just puts in burn where I have removal. I know he runs 4x Shrapnel Blast, 4x Galvanic Blast, and 4x Lightning Bolt. Other than that, not totally sure, but that would be another possible budget build for you.

Hey guys, I'm new to the merfolk scene, but have been having some good results (a few 4-0 and a decent number of 3-1 at the local modern events I go to). I go to a store that does unsanctioned modern and allows proxies (for extra tourny registration $) so everybody is pretty much running tier 1 and 2 decks.

I just wanted to contribute my list to the discussion since it's not a normal merfolk build ... it's mainly me starting to gradually add merfolk into a mono-U standard deck:



So far, I've had very favorable matches against: Burn, Tron, BGx, Affinity, and Delver. I have had so-so performance against Twin, Scapeshift, Amulet, and Infect. Bogles and UWx Control have been pretty sad, but there's only a couple people who play those where I play, so meh.

I know my build is currently super budget, but it has some cool interactions that people might want to explore more since they'd have access to more expensive cards to patch some of the holes in this build. I've been liking the 2 Kira + 2 Monastery Siege synergy. It shuts down a lot of the non-sweeper removal of my guys. I have also enjoyed the 2 Grand Architect + 2 Master of Waves synergy. In games where I have a Grand Architect out, most people scoop to the MoW resolving all those 3/2s that can't simply be answered by pathing MoW. The card draw/filtering provided by any/all of: Thassa, Intelligence, Bident, Siege feels a little dirty sometimes, especially with the unblockable/flying dudes.

So yeah, I'm clearly not doing anything format-breaking (especially on my budget), but I figure if I'm doing pretty well with this budget merfolk-devotion deck against people playing top tier decks, maybe some people who are better deckbuilders than I could see if they can brew up something more solid. Maybe this style of merfolk just a dud though, haha, but at least I'm throwing it out there.

Both stompy and Tron can be ported into modern. Not sure what tron you play, but the modern trons, like in pauper, have vastly different styles: combo (R/G) vs control (any of the blue variants).

Assuming you wanted to play different decks than what you play in pauper, didn't want to play a B/G/x midrange, wanted to start at $250-300, add $100 / month, I'd probably go with:

aggro: Gruul zoo sans goyf to start with. Run 4 wooded foothills 4 stomping ground and just 1 ofs sacred foundry and temple garden. A solid list will probably put you in that $250-300 budget right away. Eventually upgrade into the goyfs as you go along, and if you feel like it, go full naya zoo with the rest of the fetches / shocks. If you stay Gruul zoo, finish out the playset of goblin guide. Either way you should have it finished within a year.

combo: I'd try U/R Twin, starting with the bare bones of the land, combo, and control pieces for the initial $250-300. As you keep with the additional $100 / month, add in cryptic command, vendilion clique, additional snapcasters you didn't get at first, and upgrade whatever sideboard you're using (blood moon, spellskite, etc...)

control: I'd recommend mono black infect. It's pretty fun (I play it on cockatrice). You can definitely get a solid list for $250-300 (even with sword of feast and famine), then just buy 1 Liliana each month until you're done in 4 months. It won't win you a GP, but it's definitely solid and will put up results at the LGS level.

Some other ideas:

Burn (aggro) - you can start off mono red for probably around $200, then splash white/green as you sink more $ into it.
Infect (aggro/combo) - could even start mono green for $100ish (mostly due to the inkmoths), then go blue for a few hundred more as you add in the hierarchs, fetches, shocks, etc... optionally add black later too.
Delver (aggro/tempo) - could start off mono-blue for probably $50 then if you like it sink the extra $ for red and possibly splash a third color as you finish the deck.
BW tokens (midrange) - you could start with modern event deck for like $65 on amazon and the whole (finished) deck can probably be made in the $250-350 range with shocks/fetches/thoughtseizes.
Merfolk (aggro/tempo) - pretty sure the creatures/spells are somewhere around $100 then you've just got the mutavaults/caverns/vials to add, which would put you in the $250-500 range depending on how many of each you run and what you throw in the sideboard.
8-rack (control) - you can build a solid deck without Liliana easily within the 200-500 range and add her later as you put more $ into it.
Storm (combo) - pretty sure this is still a pretty budget friendly deck.
Slivers (aggro) - they're a thing now ... certainly not top tier, but definitely not a joke either. Can easily be built with about the same budget as merfolk.
Soul Sisters (aggro/lifegain) - as far as I know, the finished deck is in the $200 range.

Some stuff at the top of your budget range:
Hexproof (aggro/combo) - not 100%, but I think the whole thing can be made for under $500, there isn't a ton that's super expensive; leyline and coronet are the only cards that come to mind that are pricey.
Affinity (aggro/combo) - also pretty sure you can make this for around $500 too, the main money card is the mox opal. Not sure how expensive sideboards usually are for robots though, so it might put you over $500 there.
Amulet Bloom (combo) - another one I think is somewhere in the $500 range.

How's the brewing going?
Have you gotten the 60 together yet?
Playtested at all?

Elvish Spirit Guide
Simian Spirit Guide
Lotus Petal
Manamorphose
Immolating Souleater
Mutagenic Growth
Double Cleave

^ Can do some janky stuff that might work in with what you already have.

land, fast mana, souleater, strobe, pump
land, fast mana, souleater, berserk, pump
land, land, fast mana, souleater, cleave, pump

I'm sure there are loads of ways adding any number of those increases the T2 combo count.

My wife has a similar list to this. She loves treefolk and she actually does pretty well with it at the local level. She often goes 3-1 with the occasional 2-2 and 4-0. It is a surprisingly stable deck.



This thing is clearly not going to win a big event, but it can more than hold its own at a LGS. Debra has no trouble finishing "in the money" enough to keep a nice buffer of store credit so that she plays these tournaments for free and has fun. I've piloted it a few times too, although not nearly as much as she has.

Just some notes about some matchups:

Delver: game 1 is a toss up depending on how early delver(s) flip and/or if they can get an early pyromancer to stick and make loads of chumps. Post-board the matchup is pretty favorable.

Affinity: game 1 is a loss, like many of affinity's match-ups. Running 8-9 SB cards that hose affinity makes the match pretty favorable.

Burn: game 1 is usually 75% win. Treefolk are pretty wall-like so simply dropping a T1 harbinger shuts down swiftspear and guide. You can usually out-race them. Post-board, rancor and warhammer come in. Naturalize usually comes in if they play with eidolon. A lot of the mid-game that card can just be ignored since you're either dropping in stuff that doesn't trigger eidolon, or guys are being thrown in via leaf-crown.

GBx: it's kinda funny, the longer this goes on, the more advantage treefolk has. Most GBx players feel that's how their deck goes, but treefolk certainly has the late-game. All GBx has is goyf and rhino ... which seems like a pretty solid late-game, but when they're staring at 9/9 indestructable dungroves, they just don't seem that tough. Post-board it's still pretty even, but you can needle/beast Lilly for a while, relic their goyfs, windstorm their spirits, rancor your dungrove, etc... overall it's a close matchup, but if you can keep the tempo going and get some value out of your harbingers, leaf-crowns, storytellers, ulvenwalds, etc... then you'll probably out-grind them.

Twin: tough game 1 matchup and probably the worst overall matchup. An early mwonvuli can keep them off double red sometimes. Your ulvenwald probably won't survive to help with any of their creatures. Post-board it's quite a bit better. Graveyard hate helps shut down snapcaster. The enchantment hate, needles, and beast within are solid for the combo.

Overall, this deck is pretty solid against some of the big matchups: GBx, Twin, Affinity, Burn.

Some of the harder matchups (at least that Debra and I have experienced) are some of the fringe / tier 2 decks:
*I haven't played against merfolk, but Debra has and it's often turned out 2-1 with Merfolk winning games 1 and 3. They just out-tempo and there's not a whole lot in our current board that helps.
*There's some soul sisters variant running around our shop that is almost unwinnable. They can gain tons of life, beat with their ascendants, chump with hawks, grab stuff up again with elixir of immortality, ghostly flicker / windborn muse us out of pressuring them with alpha strike ... it's just a match that neither of us have ever won with Treefolk (I win against them all the time with my infect deck).
*8 rack / pox has given Debra a lot of trouble. Not sure what the deck actually is since I haven't played against it yet, but it's some sort of MBC with smallpox, 8-rack, shimian specter, surgical extraction, and loads of discard. She hates playing against that one since it's pretty slow and she usually isn't able to do anything other than watch the guy play solitare.
*she almost always loses first game to infect. Post-board it's 50/50, but that doesn't give that favorable an outlook for a best-of-three match when you're down game 1.

I do think the mainboard Spellskite vidailcj is running is a good idea. I'll have to look into trading for it and putting it in Debra's deck. I think it would help out with quite a few of her unfavorable opponents. I'm glad to see people working on this deck. We've had loads of fun with it at the local level, so if nothing else, it's certainly not a joke/casual deck, but I would like to keep tweaking it a bit and see how much better it can become.

You might want to try slivers and go for a kinda budget land setup:

What you already have:
4 Aether Vial

Basic Sliver Package:
4 Crystalline Sliver (idk $10 each?)
4 Predatory Sliver (very cheap)
4 Muscle Sliver (cheap)
4 Sinew Sliver (cheap)
2 Galerider Sliver ($5 each?)
2 Winged Sliver (pretty cheap)

Land (I'm trying to be very budget friendly):
4 Cavern of Souls ($20 each but pretty much necessary)
4 Sliver Hive ($5 each?)
4 Treva's Ruins (cheap ... I like this one since you can tap the land you're pulling back first)
4 City of Brass (or other fast rainbow land you can use for non-creature spells)
8 Basic Forest/Island/Plains (depending on the rest of your spells/slivers/sideboard)

The other 12 cards (any of the following):
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Eladamri's Call (tutoring any slivers)
Green Sun's Zenith (tutoring green lords or harmonic sliver into play)
Harmonic Sliver (recommended)
Plated Sliver
Manaweft Sliver (can be tutored if you need mana fixing)
Sentinel Sliver
Talon Sliver
Quick Sliver
Counterspell
Daze
Spell Pierce
Muddle the Mixture (counter or tutor for a 2cmc sliver you need)
Brainstorm
Ponder
Gitaxian Probe
Cunning Wish
Glittering Wish
Living Wish

That's just stuff off the top of my head. The vial "sweet spot" is 2 for slivers, that's why I included the galerider/winged split and why Muddle the Mixture is a possibility.

Sideboard:
any of the above spells / slivers + standard stuff (Pithing, Tormod/Relic, Krosan, Torpor, etc...)