MTG Salvation

Hey fellow folk! I've got a new video up on my channel with Tempest Djinn instead of Merrow Reejerey!! It was super fun. Some learning points though:

-Don't overextend into Engineered Explosives.
-Pick your battles with Spell Pierce (especially against Storm)
-Hold onto Merfolk Trickster instead of treating them like Grizzly Bears when not useful at the moment.
-Flying in a Merfolk deck is pretty sweet!
-Use one or the other of Dismember/Gut Shot....but not both!

All matches are timestamped...my pick of all 10 matches is probably Match #2 in the first league against Hardened Scales Affinity. Honorable mention goes to the Mono-Red Steam Kin match-up, which was surprisingly fast!

4-1 in the first league!

Please don't hesitate to follow me on Twitch, Twitter, and YouTube all @MoonTimeDweller. Thanks for the support folks!

https://youtu.be/VyokSCGihfI

Did some 8-Seas testing last night while every town around me is flooded due to Hurricane Florence....what else is one to do but play 8-Seas Merfolk???

https://youtu.be/HShwzWC_cS8

One more 8-Seas Twitch Stream...this one had a pretty terrible result, but taught me a lot about how healthy and fast Modern could be. I got 5 lords and 2 other critters (and a Mutavault) out by Turn 4 against Burn and it still wasn't enough to win. Incredible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq5t0sRLIl4

Rothgar13 inspired me to do a stream last night and bring back the UG list. I probably should have gotten in touch to get something closer to his list as it's got a lot more reps than mine did for sure. It did well anyway, 3-2. I did cut Merrow Reejerey even though it's one of my favorite cards in the deck and probably bonkers in the UG build. I just figured it would be easy to cut a lord to add a lord in the Merfolk Mistbinder.

Anyway, here is the video. Please like, share, comment, and/or subscribe to me on YouTube or Twitch for more content like this. Thank you for your time and support!

https://youtu.be/Xf7fpf2bLJU

Spell Queller is certainly a different look, and I like being able to deal with Supreme Verdict! I just think it might be a slippery slope...once you put 3 spirits in, then you'll add Kira, Great Glass-Spinner...then, all of the sudden, Bant Spirits! Be careful hahaha!!

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Like a lot of players recently, I've been playing against a lot of Humans and Spirits. I've found that Merrow Reejerey is the MVP in my opinion with that match-up. Especially with two out, my one drops net one mana and/or are able to tap two critters down at a time so I don't have to worry about getting a Spreading Seas.

So, all I'm saying is don't underestimate and forget about Reejerey because he's a three drop. In pairs, they are an epic source of power and advantage....even alone, they can get a lot done! Old dogs like new tricks(ters) and all, but they love the old ones just the same!!

Hey there folks, I haven't posted here in a while...but, been plugging away with our friendly but fierce underwater sea people. I think I just crossed the five year mark of playing Merfolk regularly in Modern!

Anyway, here is a video from my LIVE Twitch stream TODAY where I achieved the elusive 5-0 in a Modern League with the new M19 Rare...Mistcaller!!

Check it out, like it, give me a subscribe if you'd be so kind. I have several other decks on my channel and plan on doing much more Merfolk content. Hope y'all have a fun rest of the week.

5-0 League: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfYohJqHJyc
Follow-up League (later in the night): https://youtu.be/skLEeNBeBYA

I just wanted to point out that most of the counterspells we use have merfolk-related art and/or flavor text on them.

Unified Will - Quotation from a Lullmage and alludes to merfolk being an audience to the opponent's failure.

Negate - newest version has art with a merfolk blocking a lightning bolt with a giant shell.

Dispel - RTR version has a quotation and picture of Prime Speaker Zegana.

Spell Pierce - quotation from a Lullmage about a hole in someone's plan.

....that's pretty cool!!

Pierce in the main wins me a lot of game 1's. It's an easy card to sideboard out for 2 easy spots for more aggro or focused side agendas. Thassa is cool, but I just haven't tested enough with it to have a solid conclusion. I'm not a fan of Spellskite at all, but I see why people play it. I see it as a completely defensive card and makes for a defensive approach...and I'm totally against that with Merfolk. It's either heavy aggro or mid-range tempo in my book. But, that's just what works for me and my play style.

Quote from EterneChaos »

Oh, congrats on your top8! I was in San Diego, the only regionals over on the west coast.

I saw a few Merfolk players, I saw a U/W and 8-seas, but I only saw them before the event started. I'm not sure how they did in the swiss.

About Merrow Reejerey, I just felt that they were very awkward plays in my local meta. I'm sure it'll fair better in a more diverse meta but I just ran the Phantasmal Image in this event since it was the version I was most comfortable with at the time.

Thanks much! I noticed the lack of Regional tournaments in the west in general and was thinking it must bring the absolute best of the best to those areas. We had them spread out a bit more in the east, which allowed for mediocre players like myself to sneak in good records haha!

I totally understand going with what you are comfortable with. I did the exact same thing as many other successful Merfolk decks have had a lot more countermagic/removal/disruption than my 75...but, I seem to get by. Harbinger of the Tides is definitely one of my favorite cards as of late because of the versatility.

Merrow Reejerey is a crucial card in my deck. I play with a full set of them because it's hard to stop Merfolk if they land two Reejerey's out with two lands untapped and/or a Cursecatcher in hand to untap two lands play lords infinitely (as much as the hand allows haha!)

Reejerey comes in handy to tap my opponent's creatures/lands/Vials and on top of all that...IT'S A LORD! 12 lords in the mainboard is inherently better than 8 with a possibility of 10. I would imagine getting around Anger of the Gods was especially difficult with only 10 possible lords.

Image is still good and all, but I just don't think it's worth bringing to a big tournament like a GP or Regionals.

My local meta has a lot of aggro including Slivers, Tooth and Nail, Spirits, and Elves just to name a few. I've counteracted that by playing with 28 mainboard creatures and 2 mainboard removal spells in Dismember to make for at least 30 usable cards in Game 1 guaranteed.

Here is the list I got to Top 8 with in Raleigh at Regionals this year for any kind of reference: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=111522

Did you see much Merfolk around in your Regionals? Where were you? I saw at least a handful of Merfolk floating around, many different versions too with W/U, B/U, and 8-seas version along with my heavy-aggro version.

I'll be honest; I think the correct number of Phantasmal Images to play right now is 0. I can't even get all of the good Merfolk I want in the same 60.

Quote from MoonTimeDweller »

Basically, the matches where Spreading Seas is incredibly good...Sea's Claim makes it even better. Anything like Eldrazi, Abzan, Burn, Jund...it's very good and can be backbreaking in pairs or groups of three.

I just did a video with 8-Seas Merfolk a couple of days ago. Check it out if you'd like! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql9rGTxaL1s

Thx. I’ll watch the video when I get off. Since I’m not going to run the aether vial list anytime soon, I’m going to stick to 8 seas since my meta relies heavily on dual lands.
I made an opponent get pissed bc I trickstered his dragon.
For those who are running the budget version of the deck like me, try Jace cunning castaway. It’s a source of draw and is really nice when you can ultimate abs get the clones and do it more

If you want to avoid unfortunate mirror match happenings on MTGO, I suggest joining the FishMTG Discord channel (link here). We generally let people know when we're going to jam a league in order to avoid cannibalizing other Merfolk players' records.

Quote from MoonTimeDweller »

Spell Queller is certainly a different look, and I like being able to deal with Supreme Verdict! I just think it might be a slippery slope...once you put 3 spirits in, then you'll add Kira, Great Glass-Spinner...then, all of the sudden, Bant Spirits! Be careful hahaha!!

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Like a lot of players recently, I've been playing against a lot of Humans and Spirits. I've found that Merrow Reejerey is the MVP in my opinion with that match-up. Especially with two out, my one drops net one mana and/or are able to tap two critters down at a time so I don't have to worry about getting a Spreading Seas.

So, all I'm saying is don't underestimate and forget about Reejerey because he's a three drop. In pairs, they are an epic source of power and advantage....even alone, they can get a lot done! Old dogs like new tricks(ters) and all, but they love the old ones just the same!!

Glad to see you're open to Spell Queller. lol. I actually plan on playing spirits when I'm not playing fish. I've heard a lot of people comparing the two tribes and I'm really curious as to the differences and similarities myself, so I'm gonna start working on getting the pieces for that once I'm finished with building my Fishy Bois. Maybe we can learn something new, or even take a page from their playbook with some firsthand experience. Don't worry though, Fish is still my go-to tribe. lol. I'm not going full Danny Phantom just yet (though I am thinking about giving Selfless Spirit a try as a Heroic Intervention on a stick. I definitely think it's more of a long shot, but it won't hurt to give it the ol' college try.).

Also, preach on the Reej! After upping the amount in some sense by using Phantasmal Image I'm thinking about adding the 3rd copy of the actual card. When I was going up against the burn deck that I mentioned, I had a T1 Vial followed by T2 Silvergill and T3 Reejerey. My opponent went to Bolt the Reejerey and I vialed in Image copying him in response. Obviously, this is an optimal scenario, but the idea of being able to copy Reejerey for 2 mana seems really powerful to me.

Totally unrelated but I *really* wanna test Halimar Depths. Part of the theory behind Conclave has been that it's come-into-play-tapped drawback is partially offset by our lack of T1 plays. And one of my biggest complaints with Fish is it needs more card draw. HD isn't exactly card draw, but it does sorta filter and set up our draws. The problem is I can't figure out a reasonable way to shuffle my deck if the cards on top suck. I really don't wanna add fetches due to loss of life. I suspect this is a dead end, but figured I'd at least ask and see if anybody else has a brilliant idea for how we could potentially make the card work for us.

Reej is just too slow for me right now. When it sticks with a handful of fish it's awesome, but tapping out and watching it die to removal feels really really bad. That's part of why I've been on the Phimage plan for a while; it's a more aggressive quasi-lord that can also double up on MoW tokens, mimic a Trickster, draw a card or ambush an opposing threat.

I've been running 2x Kopala as my only 3 drops in order to at least tax targeted removal. It's definitely not as good as Kira in grindier matchups like Mardu and I'm considering maybe a split.

One downside is that playing more 2-drops leaves us a bit softer to EE, but if I'm going to run a 3cmc card I want something that has an immediate impact on board state. Whether you reach for watertrap weaver or go w/ something like Clique I just think you want more immediate interaction. I might feel different if we had a playable 1-drop at the moment, but we know we're already starting relatively slow in terms of board state, so only being able to commit 1 creature a turn without holding up mana for Spell Pierce/Dismemeber etc. just doesn't feel good to me.

I mean, let's say we don't have a vial hand. T1 we commit nothing to the board. T2 silvergill, lord or whatever. T3 we play Reej and it get's killed. That means untapping on T4 we have exactly 1 creature on the board; possibly only a 2/1. Juxtaposed to decks like Humans, Elves, Affinity, Hollow One, Spirits, etc that is just waaaaay to slow. And against big mana, combo & control we're generally better off at least playing another 2 drop and holding up 1 mana for Spell Pierce.

Basically what I'm saying is that Reej is best against slow decks with no interaction. Then we can drop it on T3 and explode on T4 and maybe have lethal on T5. I'll wait here while you guys give me a list of all the decks we face that match that description; slow and non-interactive....

My issue with Reej is that it's great when you untap with it, but to get to that point you have to spend 3 mana, do something with very little immediate impact, and not have either yourself or it die before your next untap step. It's been wonderful against slower creature decks, but against anything with too much spot removal it's pretty meh, and against anything consistently capable of killing on turn 4 or sooner, it's been a big liability. Personally I've been back and forth on keeping it in as a 2-of, and I haven't come to a conclusive opinion on whether I really need it or not. I'd say it's probably a meta call, much like our other 3-drops.

Edit: To go back to the post that sparked this though, I definitely agree he's a house against Humans. Denying blockers, denying multiple attackers in combination with Trickster, and accelerating your whole hand out in a turn or two are all great plays that can help you outrace them. That's definitely the type of matchup where I like to have the Reej around.

Absolutely. I've run 3 Reejes the whole time; they're great for ensuring you have counter mana available after casting (once you get one out, of course). They definitely make me think about advancing Vial past 2 a lot.

Reej is great. I think he's gotten kind of underestimated of late, though I do think he gets better the more aggressively you play the deck out.

I went up to my LGS today for Modern FNM, but it did not end up firing. However, I still managed to get some testing games in with a few players who came (There were only 4 of us.)

I made some adjustments to my list and decided to try some spicy tech in the form of Spell Queller.



I didn't really take detailed notes on my matches since they were mostly casual, for funsies matches. But I did make a couple of key observations...

1.)I really took Phantasmal Image for granted. I did not expect the card to perform as well as it did. I faced a guy playing mono red burn, and I expected for it to die a lot. But, it didn't. Also, I realized that since I'm playing it out after other lords anyways, it probably doesn't matter that much anyway. Also, it works really well with Aether Vial when they try to bolt one of our lords. In response I can vial the thing in and my opponent ends up wasting mana. It will need more testing before I invest in the other 2.

2.)Spell Queller performed better than I thought it would. The theory was that it would act as an extension of our interaction into our threat density. Obviously, I want to pick up some more fetches and white sources of mana for future use because 6/20 may not be enough for consistency's sake (though I was always able to cast it, funny enough). It has a few notable pros and cons...

Pros:
Flash
Flying
"Exiles" instead of "Counters" (deals with Supreme Verdict)

Cons:
Not a Fish
kind of conflicting with Vial (I found myself conflicted between raising to 3 or staying at 2 with this thing in my hand.)

A few highlights with Queller...
- Queller allowed me to stay in the game against a Soul Sisters deck. Late game my opponent had a Soul Warden, 4 Squadron Hawk, and a 6/6 Ajani's Pridemate. I topdecked a couple of Quellers and was able to use them to chump so my fish could get through for the last few hits (One of the Quellers got in a hit or two as well before it died). If I had topdecked say Deprive I would've had to scoop because there was no coming back from that one short of drawing into Master of Waves

- Queller is really good at stopping some of burn's early creatures better than our Merfolk. Goblin Guide can't swing into it. Monastery Swiftspear needs 2 prowess triggers which is rare. Sure, bolt kills it, but it kills everything else anyhow, except Master of Waves.

I really think Spell Queller has potential to be a part of our toolbox at the very least, as it provides interaction against a lot of spells without sacrificing our threat density. It definitely requires more testing though (a sample size of four matches is not sufficient. lol).

Overall, I had fun and the guy that played Soul Sisters was new to modern and had actually tried to use parts from one of his commander decks to build the deck he was going to use tonight. A few friends and I got some cards together and turned it into a pretty good starting Soul Sisters build.