Instant (10)
Enchantment (6)
Artifact (4)
Creature (20)
Land (20)
Sideboard
Instant (5)
Artifact (3)
Creature (7)
Hello and Welcome! Welcome and Hello! I'm very happy to bring this list to all of you, and I'm also very happy that you're reading this. Obviously Merfolk is already an established deck, so a lot of what I have to say here is going to be old news to people familiar with the deck in some form or another. The good news is that I am going to go over a couple small changes that I've made from the usual list, and I'll go over sideboard tech for some of the more common matchups. Without further ado, the deck.
Okay, so it looks like a merfolk deck. The idea here is to put out Aether Vial, so you can develop your board while keeping up mana for counter spells, and to put out any number of
Lord of Atlantis
, Master of the Pearl Trident and Merrow Reejerey to make all of your merfolk very big. You also get to cast Spreading Seas on their lands to draw a card, color-screw them and make your islandwalk work. That means 4 Aether Vial, 4 Spreading Seas and ten lords. That's the meat and potatoes in a merfolk deck, and you'd be hard pressed to find a better core. Where this deck is a little different is in the other cards. There are a few of the usual suspects missing here, namely Cursecatcher, Kira, Great Glass-Spinner and
Vapor Snag
. What did we do instead, and why?
For my deck I wanted to push the aggro a little further, but not at the cost of staying power. Ideally in your first turn you play Aether Vial, because it gets incrementally better without you having to do anything. That's the reason Tarmogoyf is such a sought after card, and why Cursecatcher got cut here. As the game progresses he gets incrementally worse! Of course your lords make him bigger and give him evasion and he looks really cool, but the same argument could be made for
Merfolk of the Pearl Trident
. I wanted something bigger for my one drop, and I got it in
Cosi's Trickster
. With all of the fetches in modern and two Ghost Quarter in our main the Trickster is a
Wild Nacatl
in blue. I've often had her as high as 4 power without the buff from the Lords, so in my opinion she's our best one drop merfolk in modern.
As I noted earlier the deck is also missing Kira, Great Glass-Spinner, why? Well, it's because she. . . He? It? Has been out-classed. Dragons of Tarkir gave us Monastery Siege which, while different, has a protection effect for our creatures. Why do I prefer the siege? Simple! Not only do we get to protect our wonderful creatures, but we can protect our Aether Vial, Spreading Seas, Mutavault and even our own faces! It also breathes new life into Spell Pierce and Mana Leak if the game goes longer, and if you don't want to protect your stuff you can just loot every upkeep for more gas. Try it out; you'll be very happy with the results.
Lastly, where did Vapor Snag go? This was actually a choice I made based on a trend I've noticed in the metagame. Modern is largely moving away from quick clocks and aggro and moving towards a more midrangey, disrupt and destroy, controlly-grindy thing. It makes sense that as the format has gotten older people have started to build into more disruption, because the decks you come up against will largely be more predictable. I elected to include Boomerang in my list in lieu of Vapor Snag for two reasons. One, it can hit any permanent including lands. Two, people are less likely to play around Boomerang than they are Vapor Snag . It's generally accepted that blue doesn't have a main board answer to non-creature permanents in modern, so you can catch them off guard with this one. That said the fact that it can bounce lands and keep your opponent off of their late game for a turn makes Boomerang a sure winner against Tron and other decks looking to hit 4 and 5 drops to win it.
Overall the deck performs very well game one against most decks in modern, game two is decided by your sideboard choices. This is how I board against some of the more common decks in modern:
- GR TRON: 2x Monastery Siege 2x Master of Waves out, 2x Steel Sabotage , 1x Phyrexian Revoker and 1x Hurkyl's Recall in
- RDW: 2x Merrow Reejerey 4x Remand out, 2x Spellskite, 2x Dragon's Claw, 2x Tidebinder Mage in.
- BOTS: 2x Monastery Siege 2x Spell Pierce out. 2x Steel Sabotage 2x Hurkyl's Recall in.
- TWIN: 2x Monastery Siege 4x Spreading Seas out, 2x Spellskite, 2x Harbinger of the Tides 1x Phyrexian Revoker 1x Dismember in.
I hope you've enjoyed going over this list, and reading up a little on my strategy. Any comments and constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.
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| Date added | 8 years |
| Last updated | 8 years |
| Legality | This deck is Modern legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 4 - 0 Mythic Rares 22 - 10 Rares 12 - 3 Uncommons 10 - 2 Commons |
| Cards | 60 |
| Avg. CMC | 1.95 |
| Tokens | Elemental 1/0 U |
| Folders | Ox's Modern Decks |
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