A Can of Mono-Blue Merfolk @$$-Whupery

[the_lord_shaper]

   It's been a while since Merfolk saw any magic love lately. I thought I would revive my old Merfolk thread with a few new Merfolk deck ideas I had. But too much time has passed for that little thread. Now for some Merfolk awesomeness. Well for starters, we got a new Merfolk with Core 10, and she's hot yo! Merfolk Sovereign, its nice to finally see a new Merfolk, its been a while. She's a new lord, so she pumps every man-fishie up and can make target Merfolk unblockable. Sovereign is neat but overall she probably isn't better then Reej. or Lord. Any-ho on to my new mono-blue deck list.

A Can Of Mono-Blue Merfolk @$$-Whupery

Creatures: 20
4 Lord of Atlanits
4 Merrow Reejerey
4 Merfolk Sovereign
4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergil Adept

Instants and Socercy: 15
4 Fore of Will
4 Daze
2 Misdirection
1 Ancerstral Recal
1 TimeWalk
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Echoing Truth
1 Hurkyl's Recall

Artifacts: 7
4 Null Rod
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Sapphire

Land:18
3 Polutted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
2 Muta Vaults
6 Islands

Side Board:
3 Spellsnare
3 Curfew
3 Energy Flux
3 Relic of Progenitus
3 Tormod's Crypt

    Well, this deck is really simple honestly. You use your light disruption to hold off your opponent, then kill them with a beefy army of Mer-peoples. I know this deck has a lot of creatures in it, 20..well really 22 if you count the vaults. And it has 12 lord effects in it, but overall it works amazingly well. You almost always win by turn 5 or 6. Basicly turn one you drop catcher. Then turn 2 you play null rod. Turn 3 you play a lord, from here you just play lord effects. The damage get pretty absurd very fast.

    Here's how the above approach works in damage numbers;
turn 1,0 damage
turn 2, 1 damage
turn 3, 2 damage
turn 4, 6 damage
turn 5, 12 damage

  So you would win turn 5. Even if you faced counter spells you should be able to Misdirect, Daze, or Force them. Just make sure to use Sovereigns, and Adepts ( only if you have no other Merfolk in your had) as your number one pitch targets for Force and Misdirection. Also, this my sound kind of stupid for most players, but make sure you play your Merfolk lords before combat. Its a simple yet powerful deck. You should be able to just steam roll aggro, beat most Tezz decks before they can stabilize, and kill storm before they can kill you. But...and sadly there is a big but to this deck...dredge and oath are your worst match-ups. That's why so much of the side board is usurped by those two decks. You don't have stifle vs. dredge which make this harder, and against oath, mono-blue doesn't offer anyway to destroy oath other then bouncing it and countering it later.

   Well I hope you guys liked my deck. I will post another more tradition mono-list here shortly. By the way did I mention how awesome the artwork on Merfolk Sovereign is yet, well if I haven't, IT'S AMAZING!!!!!! I would put up a pic, but I couldn't figure out how to do so...so yeah...

[LennoxLewis86]

Longs main idea is basically playing bomb after bomb while landing the Duress in between somewhere. The idea is that it needs to Duress away either Rod or FoW and try to resolve a bomb. This needs to be countered and the next bomb will follow.
Sure you can double waste a land and manage to bring in a Rod as well making it hard for the combo player to come back. But in my experience you can't set up a clock with creatures while disrupting them with Strips, counters, Rod ALL at the same time. Once you've tied down Long then it will try to recover and most of the time it needs only one bomb to do that. If you allow it to recover 4 turns while beating him down in a hurry it will most likely end up in a topdeck.. and a loss for Fish.
Null Rod can be played around by using Tolarian Academy and Rituals, Long decks often have Spirit Guides to give extra colors while TPS often has more maindeck bounce.

My point is that it is tough to win a topdeck battle with stormdecks when you have a good board position. Stormdecks are able to eek out a win at the last second and it only needs one or two lands to start things off. On top of that you have to consider the times where storm just wins g1/g2 easily because it plays that many broken cards. The more disruptive creatures you have, the better your chances.

I couldn't really say if it is any good against other decks but I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be as hard for me (Long) as you make it out to be. I suppose aggro is easy because you'll end up having bigger creatures while being able to counter the most annoying creatures they cast. But not only Ichorid and Oath kills you. Tez should be able to beat you as well. It can stall easily by countering important stuff while bouncing some creatures while drawing some cards and suddenly... Vault Key win.
I'd recommend tinkering around in the creature department because there are many other creatures (in other colors) that can be used and disrupt a little more instead of focusing on beats. I think the main core of sorceries/instants looks solid. The creatures could really use more disruption though.

[ErkBek]

8 3-drops is a few too many. 8-10 lords is plenty.

Games where you don't land Null Rod seem like they'd be tough to win.

An off color mox seems better than Lotus Petal.

You mentioned a couple times about being a turn 5-6 kill, what about fitting in 4 Remands for Time Walking? (-3 Merfolk Sovereign, -1 Echoing Truth)

[Bone]

If interested here is my most recent decklist...

Creatures
4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
3 Merrow Reejerey
3 Riptide Pilferer
4 Silvergill Adept

Spells
1 Brainstorm
3 Daze
1 Echoing Truth
4 Force of Will
2 Hurkyl’s Recall
1 Misdirection
3 Null Rod
3 Standstill
3 Stifle

Mana
3 Flooded Strand
8 Island
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mutavault
3 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland

Perhaps -1 Hurkyl's Recall +1 Merrow Reejerey depending on metagame

And yeah... I miss Recall, Walk and Lotus... but I got the Sapphire tough...

Works very good

[ErkBek]

That's looking a little better. The Stifles seem nice for providing some extra disruption. You need to play 4 Null Rods though.

[the_lord_shaper]

    I understand that this deck lacks the traditional disruption for merfolk, that being stifle really. And on paper it looks like it has too many lord-effects and not enough disruption, but really test the deck 1st and you'll be surprised. This deck easily gets around counters with its many pitch spells and dazes. One thing that is being forgotten here is that all the lords equal a fast clock which in turn is a version of disruption, in that it forces your opponent to hastily come up with a win condition, and that being probably Tinker. Tinker by the way isn't so great against this deck, the island walking mer-people are usually bigger then a Inkwell most times. Also, Long isn't really am issue anyway, it isn't played much, but for this deck I do have daze, null rod, and curse catcher. As for Tezz, this deck crushes it so easily it isn't funny. But I do agree that oath is a major problem for any mono-blue version of fish, as is dredge too. Again guys, just because this looks weird doesn't mean it's bad, magic players tend to be too closed minded when it comes to decks lately.

[madmanmike25]

Has anyone considered Sygg, River Cutthroat?  Seeing as how 3 dmg should be easy to inflict, its almost like a merfolk Dark Confidant for UU.

I  just realized Cold-Eyed Selkie is also a merfolk and could draw an insane amount of cards with islandwalk and +1/+1's.

Good luck,
Mike

[the_lord_shaper]

Has anyone considered Sygg, River Cutthroat?  Seeing as how 3 dmg should be easy to inflict, its almost like a merfolk Dark Confidant for UU.

I  just realized Cold-Eyed Selkie is also a merfolk and could draw an insane amount of cards with islandwalk and +1/+1's.

Good luck,
Mike

Sygg is awesome for sure. I had an older merfolk thread, http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=37720.0. where in it I made a U/B merfolk list that used two of him. He is very good indeed, but he doesn't fit while into the deck I made here. Think of this deck almost as a goblin-like deck, but with counters. I do think Sygg belongs as a two of, in most traditional merfolk lists. Selkie would be explosive in this for sure, so maybe 1 to 2 will be added in place of sovereigns.

[Elfrago]

Hi!
IMHO Bone's creatures are better than those you're playing Shaper. Sovereign is a bit too slow and the deck can live with 8 lord. Yup 8, I would fit in another Reejery. The Pilferer is nice too and adds some extra distruption (someting this deck needs!).

On the other hand I like your spell configuration more than Bone's one. Plenty of cheap distruption and 4 Null Rod. I woul try to squeeze in a Gush maybe in place of the fourth Pilferer. Standstill and stifle IMHO do not make the cut becouse often you're going to tap out in the early game.

Muta's are nice but in their place I would try to squeeze a few more off-color moxes, becouse the deck lacks turn 1 play aside from catcher.

[LennoxLewis86]

Selkie would be a great addition. 2 of them and you can still keep a high number of lords in there (8-10 like ErkBek mentioned earlier)
I would say 8 so you can make some extra room for say.. Stifles? 18 creatures is fine I guess.

[the_lord_shaper]

Ok, so here's a mono-blue merfolk list that is much more standard then the one I purposed to begin with. It's a very heavy mana denial package.

Creatures: 16
4 Lords
4 Cursecatcher
2 Tidal Warrior
3 Merrow Reejerey
3 Slivergil Adept

Instants and Socery: 18
4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
3 Daze
4 Stifle
1 Brainstorm
1 Merchant Scroll
1 TimeWalk
1 A-Call
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Echoing truth

Mana Denial: 6
4 Null Rod
2 Back to Basics

Mana Sources: 20
1 Black lotus
1 Mox Sappire
1 Lotus Petal
3 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
6 Islands

Sideboard: 15
3 Curfew
3 Spellsnare
3 Energy Flux
1 Hurkyl's Recall
3 Relic
2 Tormod's Crypt

   The only two cards in this deck that hasn't seen play in a while are tidal warrior and back to basics(B2B). Tidal is here because he turns one land into a basic island, so that land loses all abilities like a one land version of magus of the moon. You can use tidal during your opponents upkeep to keep them off colors as well. He's also a additional one drop that you can play after both Reej and B2B are out to tap non-basic lands. That's also the reason behind B2B being included, with Reej you can force your opponents to tap their lands and never let them untap.

[Troy_Costisick]

With 1 Hurkyl's in the main, another in the side, along with 3 Engery Flux, is that much artifact hate necessary?  Especially since you're playing your own Null Rods.  It would seem that you have one or two open slots in your sideboard.  Maybe a couple Sowers or Gilded Drakes to shore up your aggro/Oath matchups would be nice.  Also, do you miss having Mystical Tutor?

Peace,

-Troy

[Bone]

It would seem that you have one or two open slots in your sideboard.  Maybe a couple Sowers or Gilded Drakes to shore up your aggro/Oath matchups would be nice.

Just wondering. What are your toughts on Threads of Disloyalty compared to the cards you mentioned?

[the_lord_shaper]

With 1 Hurkyl's in the main, another in the side, along with 3 Engery Flux, is that much artifact hate necessary?  Especially since you're playing your own Null Rods.  It would seem that you have one or two open slots in your sideboard.  Maybe a couple Sowers or Gilded Drakes to shore up your aggro/Oath matchups would be nice.  Also, do you miss having Mystical Tutor?

Peace,

-Troy

    The fluxs and recalls are in there for stax mainly, also to have an extra recall handy vs. Inkwell. Slots could be opened up for more aggro hate. But I honestly wouldn't use sowers, threads, or drakes. This is going to sound odd, but I would use Ice Cages from  Magic 2010. Besides jitte, nothing else is used in the format that targets creatures without stealing, removing, or destroying them.
    Also about Mystical, I had to cut something for the stifles and B2B in the deck. Mystical was just one of the more easier cards for the deck to live without. Merchant scroll can grab everything that mystical can, expect for time walk.