Auriok Champion is pretty tough to deal with (Engineered Explosives or ambushing it with a Snapcaster Mage if it dares to attack are probably your best bets on that front), but Leylines don't strike me as especially bothersome. You should be able to fend Dredge off long enough with postboard Angers and Surgicals to find your Shadow and muscle through them.
I'm still on Looting. I tried playing without it for a time, and I was displeased with the results. A sneaky thing about GDS is that some of your cards become dead in the mid-to-late game (life total dips too low, run out of fetchable lands, etc.), and Looting can help you cash those cards in for gas.
Bauble is good in that it lets you really drill down on the land count. I'd have to play at least 1 more land if I didn't have it.
...Are you new to Merfolk or something? We have had years of success against Burn decks by buying time with counters/Harbingers/what have you, then slamming the Master to turn the corner. We are not short on ways to buy time against Burn, and having a finisher they can basically do nothing about is how you slam the door shut. Ditto for Shadow - the number of cards they play that actually kill it are limited and they have to answer it immediately, or they just die. There's a lot of value to having a haymaker-type card that overwhelms the opponent, which is why Merfolk players make the manabase concessions to play it, and have for years. All of us have dabbled in Master-less lists in the past; they're not as effective. The only metagame hostile to him is one in which combo and big mana dominate, so tapping out for a 4-drop is untenable. That's not where we are right now.
That site you quoted is also most definitely inaccurate; there's no mention of Phoenix decks, which until last week were the consensus most popular deck in the format (they arguably still are now, it's just that it's not obviously the case).
1) UG variant is in bad shape, yes. Our aggro game has been increasingly been less efficient than the competition's, so our ability to play defense with cards like Merfolk Trickster and Harbinger of the Tides has become more important.
So has our game plan changed? Are we holding back threats more so as to not over extend?
Over-extension matters less than it did in the past - fewer decks run sweepers. It's just that interacting with the opponent early is oftentimes more important than advancing our own gameplan. Tempo is a variant of aggro-control, and right now the metagame conditions dictate we lean a bit more toward the control side.
Regarding Kopala... I don't think we're quite seeing enough BGX to justify his presence. The top 4 decks in the format right now are Grixis Shadow, UR Phoenix, Dredge, and Burn (not sure where you're getting UWX Control or BGX being that high, Shoebaccha), and Master of Waves is awesome against all of them (they all rely on red removal and/or are soft to a true go-wide strategy).
1) UG variant is in bad shape, yes. Our aggro game has been increasingly been less efficient than the competition's, so our ability to play defense with cards like Merfolk Trickster and Harbinger of the Tides has become more important.
2) Connected with the above point, Master of Waves is a fantastic way to turn the corner, and his immunity to red removal has become more important than it has been in a long time. Great card right now, and I gladly run 4.
3) I think we're doing pretty well of late. After shaking off a bit of a rough variance stretch, I've been doing fairly well for myself, and other pilots are experiencing quite a bit of success on Magic Online. A metagame where Phoenix decks, Grixis Shadow, and Burn are popular is very kind to the Fish.
Honestly, hard to say. I've been on a bit of a rotten stretch of late, and it makes it hard to evaluate any of the cards when you draw 1 land per game (or 8) with not much in between.
Not gonna lie, I'm currently testing Cursecatcher again, in part because after a while, I felt the cheap interaction was a bit lacking. Others are still on the Ben train, but I'm currently on the fence, as is Nikachu after he gave them a go.
The 17-land lists I saw when I was building up the list weren't cutting the 2nd Crypt. Instead, they lowered the fetch count from 12 to 10. I feel like 10 fetches is the way to go - I don't really want more.
I've been treating Hollow One much like any other creature deck - they're heavily geared toward dealing damage to us, so you can cut down on the things on that we use to damage ourselves (Street Wraith and Thoughtseize) and just stuff the deck full of removal (Abrade and Kommand in particular, as they can take down a Hollow One). Toss in some Surgicals to keep the Bloodghasts and Phoenixes off your back, and you're good to go. It's been pretty successful for me so far, but I will grant that my reps with the deck are still somewhat limited.
The bad matchups for Humans as far as I can tell from my experience piloting the deck seem to be GX Tron (you can win this, but you need them to stumble or have the right mix of disruption + clock), Dredge (find hate or die, basically), and UWX Control (picks the synergies apart, and Humans doesn't have much in the way of reload mechanisms). Many other matchups are close, so it's hard to tell who's favored one way or the other, which is one of the deck's selling points - you have game against most things, it's up to you to make the most of it.
We've been testing Benthic Biomancer, and I must say that I'm impressed. I was initially skeptical, but it's nice to have a 1-drop to curve out with again, and the loot has been pretty darn good (turning a topdecked Vial or a late land into a live draw never gets old). It's also freed my curve up to test bigger counterspells like Mana Leak, which has also been impressive. This is the list I've been jamming of late. It's preliminary, but I feel good about it.
I'd rather run Curious Obsession than Favorable Winds, to be honest. In fact, I have been jamming that exact list in the MTGO friendly leagues to quite a bit of success (3 5-0s so far). Here's what I'm rocking.
I think that very well may be the correct assessment, to be honest. It's interesting but probably not quite good enough, especially given the success I've been enjoying with no 1-drops. Definitely looking forward to jamming it in Standard, though.
Bauble is good in that it lets you really drill down on the land count. I'd have to play at least 1 more land if I didn't have it.
That site you quoted is also most definitely inaccurate; there's no mention of Phoenix decks, which until last week were the consensus most popular deck in the format (they arguably still are now, it's just that it's not obviously the case).
Over-extension matters less than it did in the past - fewer decks run sweepers. It's just that interacting with the opponent early is oftentimes more important than advancing our own gameplan. Tempo is a variant of aggro-control, and right now the metagame conditions dictate we lean a bit more toward the control side.
Regarding Kopala... I don't think we're quite seeing enough BGX to justify his presence. The top 4 decks in the format right now are Grixis Shadow, UR Phoenix, Dredge, and Burn (not sure where you're getting UWX Control or BGX being that high, Shoebaccha), and Master of Waves is awesome against all of them (they all rely on red removal and/or are soft to a true go-wide strategy).
2) Connected with the above point, Master of Waves is a fantastic way to turn the corner, and his immunity to red removal has become more important than it has been in a long time. Great card right now, and I gladly run 4.
3) I think we're doing pretty well of late. After shaking off a bit of a rough variance stretch, I've been doing fairly well for myself, and other pilots are experiencing quite a bit of success on Magic Online. A metagame where Phoenix decks, Grixis Shadow, and Burn are popular is very kind to the Fish.
The sideboard is curious to me - you have quite a bit of graveyard hate. I assume this is a metagame adjustment?