Legacy Affinity - good 'nough?

So I have this metagame which seems to be sort of ruled by three or four decks -

CounterTop (sword of the meek win con)
Merfolk
43lands
Iona Reanimator

...and so yeah, trying to get back into Legacy after spending a little time away. First tourney I go to, what do I break out? Fucking Sorcery speed High Tide combo. Guess who cried himself to sleep that Thursday. Fuck.

So yeah I thought about it and, no I'm not an amazing metagamer but, it seemed like Affinity should have a good match-up against all these decks. So I brought it to the next tourney and did reasonably well, but Merfolk is still just stupid fast and controlling and plays a fuckton of Lords to make their guys huge. OMG. Never did face CounterTop or Iona - two decks I was sort of gunning for - but unless I'm horribly wrong it seems like I have natural hate built into the deck for those weasels. CounterTop probably doesn't much care for countering 7cmc robots, and I suppose if worse came to worst I could throw in BROOOODSTAAAR but that seems really, really bad.

Brief dissertation of my matches that day:

(1) Dark Depths

First game I lose to the shitty combo, Marit Lage is big. Second game he gets no gas, Maelstrom Pulses some things but in the end Master of Etherium comes over for big damage. Third game we both get mana screwed and he's got Confidant out and it's killing him, it finally deals him like 13 damage over several turns and I'm feeling pretty good about that, until the Wastelands ruin my mana base, Confidant starts flipping over lands and Marit Lage enters the battlefield - I'm not *too* worried because (a) I got a 'thopter to block for a turn (b) I could probably swing around it (c) my sideboard was incomplete when I registered so I threw in, of all things, SNAKEFORM and I totally sided them in, so if I live another turn I can make Marit into a snake and kill it with a Ravager, but instead dude plays another Maelstrom Pulse and I lose my lowly Thopter. Oh wells.

(2) random control.dec with Angels and shit

Even in game 2 when he sides in tons of Disenchants and Abolishes and stuff, I drew billions of Thoughtcasts and ran him over. Not much to say, weird matchup with like old control shell of Force/Counterspell/StP/Wrath and then... hmmm, Lightning and Exalted Angel. Oh and Urza's Rage, wtf.

(3) Doomsday combo

Game 1 he tries to go off and instead decides to randomly Tendrils me for 12 life and then Meditate. Yeah, Meditate after both the Doomsday AND the Tendrils - he lost on his draw step, or would have if he hadn't scooped. Game 2 I bring in Pyrostatic Pillar and Tormod's Crypt, and play both in the first two turns. Later he says he could have won around either one, but not both, and certainly not while dealing with all my robots.

(4) Merfolk

Oh fuck. Merfolk deck, you are fast and unrelenting. First game I lose to tons of guys while I mulligan to 5 and never draw anything worthwhile. I side in my REBs and get ready for the next game, but they totally don't matter as I mull the first hand, and even though I get a fairly decent first turn (artifact land, Springleaf Drum, Thopter, Frogmite) he Dazes a Ravager and the Aether Vial he played the first turn let him just bowl me over with huge Lords. Man that deck plays a lot of Lords :(

So here I am trying to come up with answers to the Merfolk dilemma. Volcanic Fallout seems like it'd just randomly savage me back if I didn't have my fatties/Ravager out, and it also seems like it would not be enough damage since most of them turn into x/3's pretty quickly. I'm honestly wondering if Disciple of the Vault is still good in this deck, since between Master of Etherium and Cranial Plating I should really just be swinging for hundreds of hit points - Disciple is best when he's either explosive or methodical, and usually the methodical thing happens when I'm scrambling for answers, ie already losing.

A scan over at deckcheck.net didn't reveal anything super tech so I figured I'd pose the question, or rather, pose it as a two-parter..

(a) Does Affinity seem like a good enough choice given the meta I describe?
(b) What the shit does Affinity do about Merfolk?