MTG Salvation

Waterfront Bouncer is a card I see in a lot of lists and I'm not exactly sure why, and since I'm messing about with my list at the moment I thought I'd ask people why they run it to see if I should be running it too.

I can see the upsides of having a discard outlet which provides a stream of Unsummons whether to delay your opponent or to exploit EtB effects on your own stuff but requiring discard limits its use and the 1/1 body isn't exactly all that useful.

Thanks for the help.

I have in the past not liked this card, though after playing it in my pauper list it has started to grow on me. Discard unneeded lands, good way of helping Reanimator, and combos well with things like squee/reasmbling skeleton/bloodghast.

What Pringlesman say. Discard outlet are nice. And it combo with multiple cards. And blue could always used more creatures in its deck.

Waterfront is nice for a variety of reasons. It's a hard bounce that's fairly cheap mana wise, allowing you to cast your other spells or keep counter magic open while he sits on his heels or keeps the tempo up. Blue goes pretty nicely with both black and green, two colors that enjoy the graveyard. (Nightmare, Genesis, etc.) Lands are also cheap to pitch late game, and with a card like Life From the Loam or Land Tax to keep your hand full of them, it's a nice way to soft lock an opponent. I don't like playing it in decks with minimal graveyard interaction but are still on the slower side, as there will be times that you have to make the tough decision of "pitch this spell or take a lot of damage", but it can fit in the quicker blue decks that don't really care about what they pitch if it means they can continue to attack.

I freaking love this card. Other than Snapcaster, I think it's the best blue 2-drop in the cube. It's a discard outlet for reanimation decks, a bounce/blink enabler fot ETB decks, it's great with Sneak Attack, and even in a straight tempo build, it creates tempo advantage by locking their best threat off the table while some of your evasive creatures can beat down. It's also completely insane with Squee, Goblin Nabob. I think it's a core cube staple.

Ok thanks a lot guys, guess I'll see if I can fit him in for another test and see how he does. He was in my original list but never saw play and just landed up in sideboards. Things have changed a bit now so maybe he'll work this time round.

Pair him with Gilded Drake for even more fun.

Quote from wtwlf123

Pair him with Gilded Drake for even more fun.

Now that sounds like my kinda fun. Unfortunately I'm not sure I can justify adding the Drake to my cube, I don't think he'd be able to trade beneficially all that often. :-(

Quote from Zephyr259

Now that sounds like my kinda fun. Unfortunately I'm not sure I can justify adding the Drake to my cube, I don't think he'd be able to trade beneficially all that often. :-(

It's more of a combo piece where you have ways to play him and bounce him back to your hand. Gilded Drake/Capsize lock will end games quick, same with cards like Jace, Man-o-War, and even Venser if you want to get multiple creatures in a turn. It's not the worst as a trade most of the time, but he excels in the decks with bounce.

I guess the drake would be a pretty good poster child for the blink deck, which is something I'm trying to support more at the moment.

Waterfront Bouncer was discussed here in the Random Cube Card of the Day thread.

Don't mean to pseudo-necro this thread, but a close friend and I are having an intense discussion about Waterfront Bouncer. He says the card is garbage and should be replaced by Merfolk Looter, but I strongly disagree. He says that Merfolk Looter is playable in a generic blue deck, while Waterfront Bouncer is not. I say that the versatility of Bouncer - works well in blink, blanks removal, good against fatty.dec - more than makes up for it.

What are people's thoughts on regular Merfolk Looter vs. Waterfront Bouncer?

First, they're completely different cards. Second, I think Bouncer is better anyways. You can get looting effects elsewhere, but the combination of board control, tempo play, threat protection and even potential ETB abuse that comes from Bouncer makes it far more unique, and therefore a more irreplaceable effect.

What wtwlf123 said. Bouncer is a pretty unique and powerful card. I won't say it should be in every cube - the effect is devastating to some decks to have to deal with. But from a power and utility standpoint, it's good enough for any size cube certainly.

I like Looter Il-kor better than Merfolk Looter, but the latter is perfectly good enough for most cubes. Looting is a powerful effect. One nice thing about Menfolk is you can do it outside your combat step, so for some decks it can be the better card (dedicated reanimator).

I don't see many decks outside of dedicated reanimator decks running Waterfront Bouncer, but it's good enough in those decks because it buys them time to get the combo together while putting fatties in the yard that I'm happy to keep it in. There's nothing wrong with Merfolk Looter, because looting is a powerful effect that all kinds of decks want, but I'd be sure to add Looter il-Kor and Enclave Cryptologist first.

I love Bouncer! It's great in tempo, blink, and reanimator and not half bad in control. It's really fun with Moat so you can keep your opponent's flyer off the board.

Cheers,
rant

I agree. I don't think bouncer is only a reanimator card. The effect is extremely strong. Tossing cards you don't need to undo sometimes large amounts of mana investment on the other side of the board is worth a card in a lot of decks.

I've been enjoying waterfront bouncer + whirler rogue quite a bit. It's like a blue pack rat.

Also, most cubes don't have to support blink to get a lot of value out of the ETB triggers

Loved him in my peasant cube, love him in my 360 cube, staple at all sizes in my book.

I may be biased as I love spellshapers, and this is arguably the best of the best (unless you consider Pack Rat a spellshaper)

I realized that I only had two morphs in the cube, Den Protector and Stratus Dancer, and Stratus Dancer is useless if you can't disguise it. So Bouncer is back in, and it's awesome. Such a versatile card.

Yeah, the bouncer is still in my cube, doesn't see play a great deal but a nice option to have a lot of times.

Merfolk looters is a card on my radar but since we have enclave cryptologist, looter il-kor, Jack, Vryn's prodigy and wharf infiltrator (not been playing much if at all recentre so not tested yet) it's not needed.

I remember using him in standard next to Phyrexian Infiltrator, good times

Quote from TetzaHexloq »

I remember using him in standard next to Phyrexian Infiltrator, good times

Likewise fun with Gilded Drake.

I think my favourite thing about the bouncer is the thought of him trailing an Eldrazi Titan out in a headlock because they have been causing a scene.