More giveaways for N.Y.S.E. Open III.  Definitely a cool piece of Magic history.

snowmageddon strikes again.  It looks like traveling tomorrow is going to be a no go, so I'm going to make the executive decision here and cancel this event tomorrow.

My vintage heart aches.  But it must be done.

FYI, this was actually several cards off from the list given in the Deck Tech. The Deck Tech was done on Friday and when I finally decided last minute on Sunday to run Merfolk back, I had to make some changes to further address the Treasure Cruise decks (which I still ended up going 0-2 against).

I think the only currently viable 3cc merfolk here are Merrow Reejerey and TNN. TNN is better for the fair decks and creature decks (assuming we can still lump Delver with Treasure Cruise in here). Reejerey is faster and better against the broken decks. Thada, Sygg and Selkie were just too situationally beneficial for me, and seemed like win-more cards.

I haven't had any consistent success with Stifle and I don't think it fits in this form of the deck currently. Maybe it could fit in a version with 4x Chalice of the Void and a focus more on disruption. Personally, I'm not going to be tinkering with such a version for the foreseeable future. For now, I only want to interact where I have to, and I'd rather have a more reliable early disruption spell like Spell Pierce or a more powerful one like Flusterstorm instead of Stifle. Also, with running 4x FoW, that's as much card disadvantage as I'd be willing to have in the deck at the moment, assuming Stifle gets used in this manner often. I understand it can be a great Wasteland, and if you want to focus more on the mana denial line, then sure. However, in the current overall field, I think Wasteland itself has lost its value and I'd even consider going down to 3x Wastelands to add another disruption spell (I would still not go below 12x Non-Cavern blue sources). Your own metagame obviously takes priority here though. Same argument against Disrupting Shoal, for the card disadvantage and its more situational use.


The 1x copy of TNN had really nothing to do with the card just coming out. The increase in TNN's in Merfolk since last year was simply a reaction to the rise of BUG Fish and X-Delver. In 2013, results aside, I still think 1x TNN was right. There were very few fair decks in the field and a ton of broken decks, which was expected, and the reason why Merfolk was the weapon of choice. I would not have wanted to play zero, as, especially in the earlier rounds, there were going to be creature decks, which I played against two of by Round 3/4. Against the rest of the field, I needed Reejerey for the speed, and I didn't want more than one less optimal 3cc guy against these decks. Depending on your current field, I think 3-4x of the appropriate combination of these two is fine.

All that being said, I've never been a person to think there's only one right way of doing something. The deck may need some further innovation to compete against Treasure Cruise. I minimized dead cards mainboard (2x Null Rod), maxed out creature count to try to overload their removal, increased removal by adding Jitte's to the side on top of the 3x Dismembers, and this still was not enough to have a favorable matchup against Delver. Maybe there's another tweak or some kind of overhaul out there. However, at the last event in my area, the above Merfolk deck may have been a great choice to play! There was a ton of decks soft to Null Rod (Big Blue, Oath, Martello Shops) and not much Delver, which I think the better builds even slow down now in order to better answer Oath (3C with Trygon at least). Although there was ~5/32 decks on Dredge. Either way, test things and let us know how it goes!

If anyone loses any matches against me tomorrow, they're doing it wrong.

My wife and daughter are going out of town for most of August. No promises, but I might actually make it out to a few of these next month.

What is the nearest airport?