More musings from the Eye of Ugin or how to build a F1 race car…
Hello all again!
I never really planned to write even one article in the first place, but seeing that people actually enjoyed my first thrust at writing a MTG strategy article, I decided to write another article for my good friend KYT and to boost the number of dedicated legacy articles featured on Mana D.
Side story:
Alex Hayne, whom you readers might know as the editor and occasional writer at Mana Deprived, also the primarily antagonist of the podcast Crazy Talk, told me in person that my previous article was “well written” (no sarcastic overtone). For people who don’t know him very well, the probability of Alexander giving praise is statistically equivalent to the probability of your Pro Tour finals opponent spontaneously bursting into flames and a unicorn descending from the heavens above, carrying your champion trophy in its mouth and your oversized $40,000 check impaled on its horn.
But I digress. The confidence boost led me to brainstorm for more article ideas that coincided with my preparation for Grand Prix Providence. Taking a page out of the previous article, these were decks I had experience with (playing with or against):
-Mono-Red Burn
-Junk
-Merfolk
I absolutely hated the Junk deck. I will also never play Burn again in legacy, for reasons explained in the bonus section of the article. Now Merfolk, is another different story…
I read the Legacy Merfolk primer that William Blondon (another close friend of mine) wrote, and thought about writing a follow-up article, since I’ve been playing Merfolk with varying degrees of success. I felt that while Blondon’s article addressed the finer points of the composition of the deck, it didn’t offer many what I’d like to call as ‘pro-tips’ on piloting the deck.
It was like he explained thoroughly the details of an internal combustion engine, but didn’t really tell us how to drive a car. Also, he only provided one decklist, which might have been the Ferrari of Merfolk decks, but not truly representative of all sports cars you can drive. The goal of this article would be therefore, telling you tips of how to build your own custom F1 machine that you can take down the Grand Prix (pun intended) with.
To start out with, here is a Merfolk list that you have to follow to down to the bone:
4 [card]Cursecatcher[/card]
4 [card]Silvergill Adept[/card]
4 [card]Coralhelm Commander[/card]
4 [card]Lord of Atlantis[/card]
4 [card]Merrow Reejerey[/card]
4 [card]Aether Vial[/card]
3 [card]Daze[/card]
4 [card]Mental Misstep[/card]
4 [card]Force of Will[/card]
1 [card]Mishra’s Factory[/card]
4 [card]Mutavault[/card]
4 [card]Wasteland[/card]
13 [card]Island[/card]
(you can take at most, one card away from this list, usual suspects being the lone Mishra’s Factory, an Island, or a Force of Will)
But, “it only has 57 cards!” you protest.
The last 3 cards, is the free space that you can customize your very own machine with.
To begin with, if you check out all the Merfolk lists that topped the recent SCG Open Louisville, you will see that all the top list follow the above formula down to the bone:
Tony Payton (11th place): [2 [card]Umezawa’s Jitte[/card], 2 [card]Spell Pierce[/card], taking out 1 [card]Force of Will[/card]]
Mike Tabler (8th place): [2 [card]Merfolk Sovereign[/card], 1 [card]Sower of Temptation[/card], 1 [card]Kira, Great Glass-Spinner[/card], taking out 1 [card]Mishra’s Factory[/card]]
Andrew Sambo (16th place): [3 [card]Standstill[/card], 1 [card]Kira, Great Glass-Spinner[/card], taking out 1 [card]Island[/card]]
Unlike Blondon, who advocated staying away from [card]Standstill[/card], I hereby proclaim that like most things in Magic, there are no absolutes when building Merfolk decks.
Each of the above builds has their own merits, but they have one thing in common: that is, they are custom built to their pilot’s play style.
Alex Bertoncini, who has had tremendous success with a build featuring [card]Merfolk Sovereign[/card], [card]Sower of Temptation[/card], [card]Kira, Great Glass-Spinner[/card], but no [card]Standstill[/card], doesn’t automatically mean that he has the most optimal build of Merfolk; it simply means that he prefers a build like this and can maximize his wins with this build.
By increasing redundancy in the number of Merfolk lords, he can more consistently build a board presence, with Kira as a way to protect his board or Sower to diminish his opponent’s board. It should be fairly obvious that his build is much more aggressive, relying much more on raw power and keeping the counters to a minimum.
On the other side of the spectrum, there’s people who advocate [card]Standstill[/card]s, for example, Saito, or this very site’s and Justin Richardson, who has recently taken down a GPT and earned himself 3 byes with a Merfolk build with [card]Standstill[/card]s.
Before I go into more detail on the game plan [card]Standstill[/card] builds try to do, let me explain what [card]Standstill[/card] actually does, as it is often misunderstood by most people. Most of the time, [card]Standstill [/card]actually does this in Merfolk:
[card]Standstill [/card]
1U-Suspend X, where X is the number of turns your opponent chooses before he or she plays a spell. While [card]Standstill[/card] is suspended, you cannot play spells.
Draw 3 cards.
(X is usually 1 or 2)
That’s what [card]Standstill[/card] does most of the time or at least if you’re casting it at the right time, when you’re slightly ahead or have an active [card]Aether Vial[/card] on board.
Depending on game state, Standstill can also do the following:
1U- Draw 3 cards
1U- Each opponent draws 3 cards.
The swingy-ness of Standstills often intimidates novice Merfolk players, causing them to shy away.
In theory, the idea of [card]Standstill[/card] is quite simple: if you have pressure and ahead on board or if you have a Vial going, the opponent is forced to crack it near immediately, and you’ve basically drawn 3 cards with 2 mana, which is nearing [card]Ancestral Recall[/card] levels of absurdity. Merfolk is basically the best deck that can take advantage of [card]Standstill[/card], having access to man-lands and Vials. Landstill decks have nothing on Merfolk decks when it comes to utilizing [card]Standstill[/card]s.
On the other hand, if you draw [card]Standstill[/card] on the 20th turn while slightly behind, it is absolutely terrible, whereas if it was an extra lord in its place you might have enough power to push through and ‘get there’.
I think in the end, it really comes down to personal preference; if you’re a player confident in your play skill, usually you can appreciate drawing 3 extra cards, allowing yourself to more easily outplay your opponents.
And finally, we come down to the last build, one without extra lords or stills.
Tony Payton’s build features 2 main deck [card]Umezawa’s Jitte[/card], and 2 [card]Spell Pierce[/card] in exchange for a [card]Force of Will[/card]. This build is not nearly as popular as the other two, but if it can top 16, certainly the player had a slight idea of what he was doing.
The explanation is actually extremely straightforward; Merfolk decks traditionally have a terrible time against creature decks. Merfolk has a slower time putting out its threats, and the fishies are also much smaller in comparison with the creatures that frequent in Legacy.
Jitte changes that. Even with bigger and faster creatures, if there is a Jitte on the other side of the field, you are dominated in combat, damage races, board presence, everything. Jitte pillages your village, rapes your women, and burns all your livestock. You’d be hard pressed to beat a Jitte, maybe except with your own to legend rule the shit out of it.
Side Story from Dan ‘Dmac’ MacDonald:
“I was playing a Kamigawa limited tournament. My opponent played a Zubera. Then he played a Jitte. He equipped the Zubera with a Jitte and swung. Then I lost. Just like that, I lost.”
Basically, Jitte helps your normally horrible creature matchups tremendously. It doesn’t help your control and combo matchups, but to make up for that Payton played 2 copies of [card]Spell Pierce[/card]. It is essentially just logic at its very best.
(This is also the version I’m testing at the moment)
…and that concludes the analysis of the various possible builds of mono-blue fish.
I’ve listed the reasoning behind each build, hopefully including insight to help you build your deck.
Again, as I said before, there’s no such thing as absolutes in Magic, and there’s no “correct” build of Merfolk either. Ultimately, it’s up to you to find out what suits your play style the best, by testing each build or asking others for their input and trusting your judgment. There’s also always the factor of metagame, and if you have a good idea of your metagame, you might want to adjust accordingly.
Eugene Ho!
Bonus Segment: The Affinity Matchup
(With a special shoutout to Justin Richardson, who thinks Merfolk can never beat Affinity)
Sometimes it is just unwinnable. If you’re at a tournament playing Fish and you sit down, realize your opponent is Dmac with 4 Ravager, 4 Tezzeret, 4 [card]Master of Etherium[/card], 4 [card]Cranial Plating[/card], you might as well just concede so you can go get food and start scouting your next round opponents.
However, if your opponent is not Dmac, it’s some scrub who just copied Blake McCraken’s affinity list with no Ravagers, you’re in good shape. The match is very winnable in fact.
Don’t blink at all those little robots he vomits out turn one. Don’t get tempted to Force his [card]Thoughtcast[/card], no matter how tempting. Don’t try to “get him” and [card]Wasteland [/card]his first land, chances are he doesn’t need it and has another one in hand.
For every spell he casts, do this routine check:
Step 1: Is it a [card]Master of Etherium[/card]? If it is, skip to step 3. Is it a Plating or a Tezzeret? If yes, proceed to step 2. If it’s none of the above, go to step 4.
Step 2: Evaluate board state, can you afford to let it resolve? It no, proceed to step 3. If yes, skip to step 4.
Step 3: Counter it. If you can’t, why did you keep this hand in the first place?
Step 4: Smile and say “that’s fine”.
At some point in the game he’ll be sitting on nothing and you can start sending your 4/4s and 5/5s in. [card]Wasteland[/card] his Blinkmoth, trade his creatures with yours. At some point the Fish will lead themselves to victory.
Sometimes he has the nuts and has multiples of the previously mentioned problem spells. Shrug, and tell yourself “that’s why we play 3 games” (Shoutout to Alex Hayne), side in your sideboard hate, typical suspects being [card]Energy Flux[/card] or [card]Null Rod[/card]. If you didn’t have [card]Umezawa’s Jitte[/card] main, side them in as well.
Play your sideboard cards, watch his face drop and proceed to win.
Bonus Segment 2: Why you shouldn’t play Mono-Red Burn in Legacy
True story:
It was round 5 of the SCG Legacy Open Boston.
Game 1
I’m playing Mono-Red Burn.
I play t1 [card]Figure of Destiny[/card], t2 [card]Goblin Guide[/card] and apply the beats.
My opponent plays some [card]Volcanic Island[/card]s, then [card]Ponder[/card]s and [card]Brainstorm[/card]s.
I get him to 10 by pumping the Figure, holding 2 [card]Lightning Bolt[/card]s in hand.
He calmly plays a third [card]Volcanic Island[/card], and plays [card]Show and Tell[/card] into [card]Emrakul, the Aeons Torn[/card].
I [card]Show and Tell[/card] a [card]Mountain[/card] into play. End of turn, I tap out for a [card]Lightning Bolt[/card], but he [card]Daze[/card]s me.
At this point, I scream to myself in my head, “ONE TIME!”.
TOPDECK!!!!!!
…Mountain.
Game 2
I sided in 4 [card]Pyroblast[/card], 4 [card]Red Elemental Blast[/card] and I’m still feeling pretty confident.
My opening hand has a [card]Pyroblast[/card] so I snap keep.
Me: [card]Mountain[/card], suspend [card]Rift Bolt[/card].
Him: [card]Volcanic Island[/card], [card]Ponder[/card].
Me: [card]Rift Bolt[/card] targeting him, [card]Mountain[/card], suspend another [card]Rift Bolt[/card].
Him: [card]City of Traitors[/card], [card]Show and Tell[/card].
I blink twice. [card]City of Traitors[/card]? Who the hell plays that garbage in Legacy!?
He can’t wait and puts a card face down on the table.
Me: Wait, I have a response. [card]Pyroblast[/card] your [card]Show and Tell[/card].
Him: Return [card]Volcanic Island[/card] to my hand, [card]Daze[/card] your [card]Pyroblast[/card]”.
…..Nice Deck
Eugene Ho is a passionate MTG player from Taiwan who is looking to take his game to the next level.