Testing brackets with Merfolk combos
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on April 7, 2025, 5:15 a.m. by legendofa
I just finished detailing this deck.
Clear Waters
Commander / EDH
10 VIEWS
It has an infinite turns combo with redundancies. Wanderwine Prophets + Deeproot Pilgrimage + Merfolk Sovereign
It has land denial. Opposition + Seedborn Muse, Quicksilver Fountain
It has a game changer. Grand Arbiter Augustin IV
It has multiple relevant tutors. Forerunner of the Heralds, Idyllic Tutor, Merrow Harbinger, Seahunter, Sterling Grove
By all measures, this deck falls under Bracket 4. But I think it better fits Bracket 3, because Wanderwine Prophets is the most expensive card. It simply can't compete with decks whose individual cards are worth more than this whole thing, or decks with six game changers and "I win" combos that land on turn 3. It just isn't up to that level. The turns combo in particular is slow and highly telegraphed, since Prophets needs to survive a turn cycle before it can go off.
So where does this fall? Bracket 3? Low-end Bracket 4? The fuzzy gray area in the middle? Would you accept a Bracket 3 match with potential infinite turns and land locks?
hyalopterouslemur That's fair, and I'm going to push this up to Bracket 4.
One of the things I'm still trying to figure out is, what does "optimized" actually mean in the context of brackets? Like, looking around this site and others, a lot of Bracket 4 decks have land bases worth several hundred dollars, high-speed combos or locks, and a general expectation to be well on the way to winning by turn 5, when this deck is still getting set.
I don't really feel like this deck is as optimized as it could be. It just has a couple of lock combos and the means to find them. It's Bracket 4 on the basis of oppression and "un-fun-ness", not power, at least in my opinion. Should I add a few more game changers to make it more solidly Bracket 4?
April 12, 2025 3:35 p.m. Edited.
Rhystic Study, Smothering Tithe, Enlightened Tutor, Fierce Guardianship, Force of Will, Survival of the Fittest, Tundra, Tropical Island... Even without the lands, that's a few hundred dollars' worth of optimization to not change the bracket.
April 12, 2025 3:46 p.m. Edited.
Minor epiphany and reframing: my infinite turns combo is exactly the same philosophy as Godo, Bandit Warlord + Helm of the Host (legal in Bracket 3 pods everywhere), and might actually be more fragile. The differences are that I'm drawing a card between attacks, and Prophets needs to deal combat damage while Godo just needs to attack.
April 12, 2025 7:11 p.m.
hyalopterouslemur says... #6
I was lucky. I started playing back when duals were under $100. If I'd known Magic would be around this long, I would've invested in even more duals.
FWIW, you can just use pain lands or shocks or something like that instead of OG duals. The most important thing is that they don't enter tapped. Though with pain lands, you can't Nature's Lore, Skyshroud Claim or Farseek into them.
I have found that mana bases tend to be where most of my money goes. Well, if I had to buy OG duals and Gaea's Cradle and Serra's Sanctum and the like today, that would be where most of my money would go. I'll give you an example: My Ghave, Guru of Spores deck
https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/ghave-guru-of-spores-aristocrats-1/?cb=1744497806
costs $3.2K at Card Kingdom. The mana portion of that costs some 40 times what the non-mana portion costs.
April 12, 2025 7:56 p.m.
hyalopterouslemur Yeah, I've noticed that in a lot of my decks. The Merfolk deck does have the shock and pain lands, so really the next step up is the ABUR duals.
I actually had to make a rule for myself that if the deck isn't supposed to be at least fringe competitive in whatever format it's in, the most expensive land has to be worth less than the most expensive nonland. Saves a lot of agonizing about how much to invest in a given deck without switching full mana bases from deck to deck, and I have a lot of casual lists on here.
hyalopterouslemur says... #2
Mass land denial and infinite turns are by themselves enough for Bracket 4. I do think five tutors is still Bracket 3, though? But it's definitely Bracket 4.
Like, mass land denial, I'm not even comfortable putting Aura Shards + Mycosynth Lattice in my Bracket 3 decks.
(As an aside, I really wish WotC would just put all extra turn cards save for Final Fortune and the like in Bracket 4. You're either chaining them or doing a bad blue Explore; there is no middle ground.)
April 12, 2025 3:11 p.m.