Are there any good ways to abuse Merchant Scroll in Modern? The format is already short on powerful tutors, and this is one that is powerful enough to have been restricted in Vintage. There have to be a few good targets in the format for this to find.
I've wondered about this myself. I think it certainly has potential, but you need a powerful enough card to get with it. The way blue decks in Modern work right now is that they chain relatively weak spells together for a cascade like effect (I don't mean the mechanic cascade, just the general meaning). For instance, Serum Visions gets Remand gets Cryptic gets a win con etc. I think a Merchant Scroll strategy would want to be much more proactive than that. Just tutoring up a remand or a cryptic seems fairly pointless. I think you'd want to find more proactive blue instants, like card draw. Remember, the appeal in Vintage was tutoring Ancestral Recall.
And no, it doesn't necessarily compete with Snapcaster. Sure, they have the same CMC, but you don't typically play Snapcaster turn 2 anyway. In fact I'd imagine it would play fairly well with Snapcaster in that you can get 2 tutors off it and each tutor target has the potential to be flashed back as well.
Sure, they have the same CMC, but you don't typically play Snapcaster turn 2 anyway.
On the other hand, can we usually play Merchant Scroll on turn two, in a sorcery speed?
I do not get your point here.
Just forget about the 2/1 body as a blocker or attacker, you can play Snapcaster in an instant speed, which gives much more flexibility in the blue deck.
The question is, suppose a deck uses 4 copies of Snapcaster, does it want more from Merchant Scroll...
I've wondered about this myself. I think it certainly has potential, but you need a powerful enough card to get with it. The way blue decks in Modern work right now is that they chain relatively weak spells together for a cascade like effect (I don't mean the mechanic cascade, just the general meaning). For instance, Serum Visions gets Remand gets Cryptic gets a win con etc. I think a Merchant Scroll strategy would want to be much more proactive than that. Just tutoring up a remand or a cryptic seems fairly pointless. I think you'd want to find more proactive blue instants, like card draw. Remember, the appeal in Vintage was tutoring Ancestral Recall.
And no, it doesn't necessarily compete with Snapcaster. Sure, they have the same CMC, but you don't typically play Snapcaster turn 2 anyway. In fact I'd imagine it would play fairly well with Snapcaster in that you can get 2 tutors off it and each tutor target has the potential to be flashed back as well.
Ancestral is one of the weaker spells you can tutor for with scroll in vintage. Tutoring for recall with merchant scroll only gives you a net gain of 1 cards (assuming Recall isn't misstepped). The best use for Merchant Scroll is to tutor for bullets to keep a lead or find an answer. Some good targets are Repeal, Fire//Ice, Dig Through Time, Fluster Storm, etc.
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Basilisk Collar? $5.00
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Still, Merchant Scroll doesn't have a place in Modern. I mean, you can play 4 Visions of Beyond in your deck if you want to (unlike Recall), which is exactly what the post-ban Jeskai Ascendancy deck does.
In combo decks, the blue instants are either redundant or rendered unusable by the addition of 1U to their mana costs. E.g. if I'm playing Cheeri0s and want more Retracts, I can play Hurkyl's Recall, which costs U less than Scroll into Retract. Or if I'm playing tier 5 Jeskai Ascendancy + mana dork + 0-mana artifact + Retraction Helix combo, I have Banishing Knack as extra copies of Helix.
When would Merchant Scroll be playable in a combo deck? Answer: if both pieces of the combo are blue instants. For example, in Legacy High Tide, both High Tide and Turnabout are instants. Oh, and you should be playing maindeck counterspells (Force of Will) too. The closest analogue in Modern is Ad Nauseam, where Mystical Teachings can get either combo piece (Ad Nauseam/Angel's Grace) or a counterspell (Pact of Negation).
There aren't many combo decks where both pieces are blue instants. I certainly can't think of one at the moment. On the other hand, if you have the less strict condition of combo pieces in your deck merely being sorceries/instants (not necessarily blue), then Peer Through Depths works. Scapeshift and Ad Nauseam both play it.
What about the non-combo decks, then? Well, for 1U you can get Snapcaster Mage, which is much more flexible, especially when you have Thought Scour to set it up.
Sure, they have the same CMC, but you don't typically play Snapcaster turn 2 anyway.
On the other hand, can we usually play Merchant Scroll on turn two, in a sorcery speed?
I do not get your point here.
Just forget about the 2/1 body as a blocker or attacker, you can play Snapcaster in an instant speed, which gives much more flexibility in the blue deck.
The question is, suppose a deck uses 4 copies of Snapcaster, does it want more from Merchant Scroll...
It depends entirely on the deck. Can I envision a deck where the answer is yes? Yes, of course I can. If there are proactive instants in the deck then yes. Or like Izzet said, in a case where 2 or more combo pieces are blue instants. But the reason Merchant Scroll isn't played in a deck like Twin or Grixis Control has nothing to do with the presence of Snapcaster. It's that Scroll is pointless in its own right in those lists.
What about the non-combo decks, then? Well, for 1U you can get Snapcaster Mage, which is much more flexible, especially when you have Thought Scour to set it up.
I was thinking along the lines of the control decks, you could use it to find whatever answers you need against whatever particular deck you're facing. For example lets say you're up against Affinity on the draw, would you rather do something like Mana Leak one of their T3 plays or would you rather spend your T2 to get Electrolyze to help stabilize on T3?
What about the non-combo decks, then? Well, for 1U you can get Snapcaster Mage, which is much more flexible, especially when you have Thought Scour to set it up.
I was thinking along the lines of the control decks, you could use it to find whatever answers you need against whatever particular deck you're facing. For example lets say you're up against Affinity on the draw, would you rather do something like Mana Leak one of their T3 plays or would you rather spend your T2 to get Electrolyze to help stabilize on T3?
The problem with that is that its sorcery speed, so you can't hold mana for a counterspell and cast it EOT for the answer you need.
With that being said I'm testing it as a 2 of in my esper control list, where it can hit Cryptic, Esper Charm, Logic Knot, Spell Snare, Think Twice and Sphinx's Rev.
I was thinking along the lines of the control decks, you could use it to find whatever answers you need against whatever particular deck you're facing. For example lets say you're up against Affinity on the draw, would you rather do something like Mana Leak one of their T3 plays or would you rather spend your T2 to get Electrolyze to help stabilize on T3?
I would play Peer Through Depths to dig for answers instead. Peer gives you the flexibility of casting another instant if you have to.
It also depends on the deck. A deck like UWR, with tons of Bolts, Helices and Electrolyzes, would not need any help finding answers to Affinity.
A lot of UR decks start with 4 Bolts and 2 Snapcaster because the combination is so potent, even more so that Scroll + Electrolyze.
I think people are rightly suggesting cards like Snapcaster Mage or Peer Through Depths as better cards in most common control shells. At the same time, Merchant Scroll is a favorite card of mine and I've also always wanted it to work in modern. I think Merchant Scroll could only make sense in a deck with some sort of toolbox of blue instant 1-ofs that are very good in contextual situations. Here are some spells that seem alright with Merchant Scroll.
Also, the Merchant Scroll does compete pretty directly with Mystical Teachings. I think they are pretty similar in power level. To want Merchant Scroll over Mystical Teachings, the deck will probably want to be comfortable playing at sorcery speed; a deck also playing Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, for example.
Merchant scroll is excellent at what it does, the problem is that very few decks want the effect that merchant scroll gives;
If we dig into what merchant scroll actually DOES, it gives us access to a (very narrow) selection of spells IMMEDIATELY for a cost of 1U. The trap lies in thinking about tutoring up blue instants because they're instants; when you think of instant as being a RESTRICTION on the cards you can tutor for, similar to enlightened tutor or fabricate, it makes a lot more sense. So, we're looking for a deck that wants to find some sort of combo piece or redundant tool, that HAPPENS to be a blue instant, AND probably generates a lot of mana in the same turn to make use of it.
The only two decks in modern that I've seen attempt that are Green Sun's Zenith (the deck, not the card), and Ritual-Gifts. Green sun's zenith utilizes heartbeat of spring style mana-doubling effects, ramp, tempo plays with remand, and land untapping effects to act like a modern version of the high tide combo deck in legacy, operating at sorcery speed similar to the way the version with candelabra of tawnos version works. They tutor out additional copies of "untap x lands" effects in the combo turn, or in the early game fetch copies of remand to buy time if the board is clear.
Ritual gifts uses gifts ungiven and a package of six different ritual effects (all singletons) in an otherwise control-heavy shell to set up a one-turn storm kill. To start their chain, they need to find ONE of the six pieces, and then resolve an EOT gifts ungiven to find 4/5 of the other pieces they need; the resulting chain on their subsequent turn by default finds the 6th piece. It plays out very much like scapeshift, as a combo-control deck that just needs to stall for a few turns and then go off; its problem (aside from the banning of seething song which killed the package entirely and made the deck significantly weaker) is that it was always basically one turn slower than scapeshift, and otherwise just slightly worse (couple more dead cards equating to a few less pieces of interaction or dig effects + just naturally being a turn slower made it not-competitive). In this deck, merchant scroll was gifts copies 5 and 6, because the gameplan required finding and resolving a gifts at some point.
The only other potential I can think of is in the pyromancer ascension deck that's pure ascenscion UR control with a combo kill, where it could find cryptics or what-have-you in the early game, or in the late game it could find an extra copy of remand to go with manamorphose for the infinite combo.
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I've always seen Merchant Scroll as a combo piece, but most of moderns combo is either too fast for the scroll to be of much use, or doesn't rely on instants to combo out. If only we had a legal high tide....
I've always seen Merchant Scroll as a combo piece, but most of moderns combo is either too fast for the scroll to be of much use, or doesn't rely on instants to combo out. If only we had a legal high tide....
in legacy's on deck check, its the only deck type using it.
most of modern's mono blue decks are just sorcery speed.
I've always seen Merchant Scroll as a combo piece, but most of moderns combo is either too fast for the scroll to be of much use, or doesn't rely on instants to combo out. If only we had a legal high tide....
With Hide Tide it would be good. Without it however there isn't deck in Modern that would really want to play it.
Replying to this comment, but mainly directed at everyone above who isn't @amal.
There is a deck in deck creation with 43k views, and 419 replies that has 17 pages discussing this strategy in modern.
I think merchant scroll is discussed for several pages in there.
I've always seen Merchant Scroll as a combo piece, but most of moderns combo is either too fast for the scroll to be of much use, or doesn't rely on instants to combo out. If only we had a legal high tide....
With Hide Tide it would be good. Without it however there isn't deck in Modern that would really want to play it.
Replying to this comment, but mainly directed at everyone above who isn't @amal.
There is a deck in deck creation with 43k views, and 419 replies that has 17 pages discussing this strategy in modern.
I think merchant scroll is discussed for several pages in there.
I used to play that deck and comment in the early pages of the discussion, found that the Scroll was very good in allowing us to run 1 Zenith and allowing to tutor for Bound//DeterminedRemand and Repeal.
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Active Modern Decks
U Tron GW Bogles RG Loam UR Blue Breach RBU Grixis Goryo BRU Grixis Delver GBR Jund GBW Junk
Are there any good ways to abuse Merchant Scroll in Modern? The format is already short on powerful tutors, and this is one that is powerful enough to have been restricted in Vintage. There have to be a few good targets in the format for this to find.
I seen Merchant scroll being played with Gifts Combo to add consistency to the deck for an end of turn 4 gifts. but to be really honest, secrum visions is prob better for most blue decks in the meta as cards in the deck are "roughly" of the same quality and there really isn't a blue card that is so powerful it needs to be tutored. Usually draw 1, scry 2 generally helps with sculpting your hand alot better than a merchant scroll from my experience
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I'm actively maintaining a comprehensive article to help explain to new cube players how some complex vintage level cards work in a cube environment. Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Another 2 CMC tutor with flash + 2/1 body.
Anything, but nothing at the moment...
Modern:
WUBRGAmulet Titan, WUBRGHuman
WUBRAd Nauseam, WBRGDeath Shadow, UBRGScapeshift, UBRGDredge
WURJeskai Nahiri, WURCheeri0s, WBGCounter Company, WRGBurn, UBRMadcap Moon, BRGJund Midrange
UBTurn,BRGriselbrand Reanimator, WGKnight Company, RGRG Tron, RGRG Ponza, XAffinity, XEldrazi Tron
And no, it doesn't necessarily compete with Snapcaster. Sure, they have the same CMC, but you don't typically play Snapcaster turn 2 anyway. In fact I'd imagine it would play fairly well with Snapcaster in that you can get 2 tutors off it and each tutor target has the potential to be flashed back as well.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
On the other hand, can we usually play Merchant Scroll on turn two, in a sorcery speed?
I do not get your point here.
Just forget about the 2/1 body as a blocker or attacker, you can play Snapcaster in an instant speed, which gives much more flexibility in the blue deck.
The question is, suppose a deck uses 4 copies of Snapcaster, does it want more from Merchant Scroll...
Anything, but nothing at the moment...
Modern:
WUBRGAmulet Titan, WUBRGHuman
WUBRAd Nauseam, WBRGDeath Shadow, UBRGScapeshift, UBRGDredge
WURJeskai Nahiri, WURCheeri0s, WBGCounter Company, WRGBurn, UBRMadcap Moon, BRGJund Midrange
UBTurn,BRGriselbrand Reanimator, WGKnight Company, RGRG Tron, RGRG Ponza, XAffinity, XEldrazi Tron
Ancestral is one of the weaker spells you can tutor for with scroll in vintage. Tutoring for recall with merchant scroll only gives you a net gain of 1 cards (assuming Recall isn't misstepped). The best use for Merchant Scroll is to tutor for bullets to keep a lead or find an answer. Some good targets are Repeal, Fire//Ice, Dig Through Time, Fluster Storm, etc.
Basilisk Collar? $5.00
Shooting down a baneslayer angel? Priceless
Still, Merchant Scroll doesn't have a place in Modern. I mean, you can play 4 Visions of Beyond in your deck if you want to (unlike Recall), which is exactly what the post-ban Jeskai Ascendancy deck does.
In combo decks, the blue instants are either redundant or rendered unusable by the addition of 1U to their mana costs. E.g. if I'm playing Cheeri0s and want more Retracts, I can play Hurkyl's Recall, which costs U less than Scroll into Retract. Or if I'm playing tier 5 Jeskai Ascendancy + mana dork + 0-mana artifact + Retraction Helix combo, I have Banishing Knack as extra copies of Helix.
When would Merchant Scroll be playable in a combo deck? Answer: if both pieces of the combo are blue instants. For example, in Legacy High Tide, both High Tide and Turnabout are instants. Oh, and you should be playing maindeck counterspells (Force of Will) too. The closest analogue in Modern is Ad Nauseam, where Mystical Teachings can get either combo piece (Ad Nauseam/Angel's Grace) or a counterspell (Pact of Negation).
There aren't many combo decks where both pieces are blue instants. I certainly can't think of one at the moment. On the other hand, if you have the less strict condition of combo pieces in your deck merely being sorceries/instants (not necessarily blue), then Peer Through Depths works. Scapeshift and Ad Nauseam both play it.
What about the non-combo decks, then? Well, for 1U you can get Snapcaster Mage, which is much more flexible, especially when you have Thought Scour to set it up.
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
Standard: lol no
Modern: BG/x, UR/x, Burn, Merfolk, Zoo, Storm
Legacy: Shardless BUG, Delver (BUG, RUG, Grixis), Landstill, Depths Combo, Merfolk
Vintage: Dark Times, BUG Fish, Merfolk
EDH: Teysa, Orzhov Scion / Krenko, Mob Boss / Stonebrow, Krosan Hero
I was thinking along the lines of the control decks, you could use it to find whatever answers you need against whatever particular deck you're facing. For example lets say you're up against Affinity on the draw, would you rather do something like Mana Leak one of their T3 plays or would you rather spend your T2 to get Electrolyze to help stabilize on T3?
The problem with that is that its sorcery speed, so you can't hold mana for a counterspell and cast it EOT for the answer you need.
With that being said I'm testing it as a 2 of in my esper control list, where it can hit Cryptic, Esper Charm, Logic Knot, Spell Snare, Think Twice and Sphinx's Rev.
It also depends on the deck. A deck like UWR, with tons of Bolts, Helices and Electrolyzes, would not need any help finding answers to Affinity.
A lot of UR decks start with 4 Bolts and 2 Snapcaster because the combination is so potent, even more so that Scroll + Electrolyze.
| Ad Nauseam
| Infect
Big Johnny.
Sphinx's Revelation is great late against discard attrition decks.
Very cheap countermagic like Pact of Negation or Dispel for Twin or Scapeshift big turns.
Hurkyl's Recall
Aetherize or Evacuation
Wipe Away against infect, twin
Esper Charm
Disrupting Shoal against very fast decks like Amulet or Burn
Also, the Merchant Scroll does compete pretty directly with Mystical Teachings. I think they are pretty similar in power level. To want Merchant Scroll over Mystical Teachings, the deck will probably want to be comfortable playing at sorcery speed; a deck also playing Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, for example.
If we dig into what merchant scroll actually DOES, it gives us access to a (very narrow) selection of spells IMMEDIATELY for a cost of 1U. The trap lies in thinking about tutoring up blue instants because they're instants; when you think of instant as being a RESTRICTION on the cards you can tutor for, similar to enlightened tutor or fabricate, it makes a lot more sense. So, we're looking for a deck that wants to find some sort of combo piece or redundant tool, that HAPPENS to be a blue instant, AND probably generates a lot of mana in the same turn to make use of it.
The only two decks in modern that I've seen attempt that are Green Sun's Zenith (the deck, not the card), and Ritual-Gifts. Green sun's zenith utilizes heartbeat of spring style mana-doubling effects, ramp, tempo plays with remand, and land untapping effects to act like a modern version of the high tide combo deck in legacy, operating at sorcery speed similar to the way the version with candelabra of tawnos version works. They tutor out additional copies of "untap x lands" effects in the combo turn, or in the early game fetch copies of remand to buy time if the board is clear.
Ritual gifts uses gifts ungiven and a package of six different ritual effects (all singletons) in an otherwise control-heavy shell to set up a one-turn storm kill. To start their chain, they need to find ONE of the six pieces, and then resolve an EOT gifts ungiven to find 4/5 of the other pieces they need; the resulting chain on their subsequent turn by default finds the 6th piece. It plays out very much like scapeshift, as a combo-control deck that just needs to stall for a few turns and then go off; its problem (aside from the banning of seething song which killed the package entirely and made the deck significantly weaker) is that it was always basically one turn slower than scapeshift, and otherwise just slightly worse (couple more dead cards equating to a few less pieces of interaction or dig effects + just naturally being a turn slower made it not-competitive). In this deck, merchant scroll was gifts copies 5 and 6, because the gameplan required finding and resolving a gifts at some point.
The only other potential I can think of is in the pyromancer ascension deck that's pure ascenscion UR control with a combo kill, where it could find cryptics or what-have-you in the early game, or in the late game it could find an extra copy of remand to go with manamorphose for the infinite combo.
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in legacy's on deck check, its the only deck type using it.
most of modern's mono blue decks are just sorcery speed.
Replying to this comment, but mainly directed at everyone above who isn't @amal.
There is a deck in deck creation with 43k views, and 419 replies that has 17 pages discussing this strategy in modern.
I think merchant scroll is discussed for several pages in there.
I used to play that deck and comment in the early pages of the discussion, found that the Scroll was very good in allowing us to run 1 Zenith and allowing to tutor for Bound//Determined Remand and Repeal.
U Tron
GW Bogles
RG Loam
UR Blue Breach
RBU Grixis Goryo
BRU Grixis Delver
GBR Jund
GBW Junk
Active Legacy Decks
BR Reanimator
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/modern/582069-merchant-scroll
I seen Merchant scroll being played with Gifts Combo to add consistency to the deck for an end of turn 4 gifts. but to be really honest, secrum visions is prob better for most blue decks in the meta as cards in the deck are "roughly" of the same quality and there really isn't a blue card that is so powerful it needs to be tutored. Usually draw 1, scry 2 generally helps with sculpting your hand alot better than a merchant scroll from my experience
Vintage Cube Cards Explained
Here are some other articles I've written about fine tuning your cube:
1. Minimum Archetype Support
2. Improving Green Archetypes
3. Improving White Archetypes
4. Matchup Analysis
5. Cube Combos (Work in Progress)
Draft my Cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/overview/d8i