MTG Salvation

That being said, is Remand completely out of favor now?

Cool. Thanks for the responses, everyone. Sorry if I keep bringing up topics that have been covered or asking seemingly random questions. This is just the first time I've been in a hub of so many Merfolk players, so I can finally ask all the stuff I have pondered in the past

I will say that being here has made me really pumped to play the deck again. I started trading for pieces at FNM last night to try and rebuild it.

So, I understand that Wanderwine Hubs are great because they will come in untapped for us 9/10 times, so they are free protection from Choke. However, would using UB lands (Drowned Catacombs and a few Darkslick Shores) be a viable alternative? They would make Dismember less painful, and would open up Thoughtseize out of the side? I'm not sure if it's something we need, but it's something that popped into my mind.

Quote from Ayiluss »

Quote from NerdPop140 »

Forgive me if this has been discussed, but is there any merit to reducing Aether Vial to 3? I know we want it as soon as possible, but I cannot be the only one that hates to top deck later in the game.

Being only good very early on (even turn 2 is not good though acceptable) but very bad top deck later in the game exactly is the reason to play 4. With playing 4 your chances of drawing her in the opening hand (when do you want to draw it) are much better. The less of them you play the worse your chances of drawing it at the start are but it's more likely to draw it later in the game. In this case it's better to not play it at all. So my answer is to play all 4 of them and then sideboard accordingly. In grindy matchups where you need as high threat density as possible and Vials aren't so good (for example against Jund and Junk) you board them out and play more creatures instead which won't be dead top deck later in the game.

Thank you for the reply. I had not considered the statistics like that.

Forgive me if this has been discussed, but is there any merit to reducing Aether Vial to 3? I know we want it as soon as possible, but I cannot be the only one that hates to top deck later in the game.

Quote from rothgar13 »

So I faced a Troll Worship deck today (in case you haven't heard of it: it's centered around Hexproof creatures like Sylvan Caryatid and Troll Ascetic + Worship), and my sideboard is ill-suited to handle it. Given that I probably would have beaten the deck if I had a bit more general bounce and counterspells, how do you guys feel about swapping out Hurkyl's Recall for Echoing Truth or Annul? I'm also considering adding a few more copies of Spell Pierce, because I feel like I'm a bit soft to combo decks like Amulet Bloom (which is everywhere right now). For reference, here's my list.

Have you thought about Kiora's Dismissal? I know it does not hit artifacts, but it can hit enchantments after they have already hit the field, and it has saved me in the Boggle match up in the past.

Ok, and now I'M intrigued by the UW Worship build too.

CoB, The Coralhelms are not replacing Cursecatcher. As this was my first draft, I just grabbed what I had. Once I have them again, they will be in the deck. The same is tru for the fourth Vial, Mutavault, and oddly, Kiora's Follower.

The Nykthos was to quicken the Coralhelm shenanigans, but will probably come out if (or more likely WHEN) they come out (see below for why I have not already written it off).

Also, I REALLY like those sideboard suggestions.

That being said, while I am enjoying the goldfishing of this deck, it does just seem less potent than the U or UW versions, so I will probably just keep it at one of those. I'll give it a spin in some casual games at FNM this week and see how it goes.

On the topic of UW, I just want to chime in on my position on Seijiri Merfolk that was popping in and out over the pages I read: He is just lackluster. I was very intrigued by him at first as well; he was the reason i wanted to try the UW version at all, but I always found him being cut in favor of other more useful cards. I would even prefer something like Azorius Charm over him if you wanted lifelink.

Lastly, a question: Is there anyway to deal with rogue decks in Merfolk? For example, my friend is playing a Starfield of Nyx deck in an upcoming GP with lots of prison effects and other enchantments that I just cannot think of a way around if I cannot out race him. Is Echoing Truth a prison the only way? Or do I have to overload a Cyclonic Rift off of a Nykthos (half-joking here)?

I see what you are saying. Harbinger is actually WHY I decided to take the disruption from the main in this draft. It is still at least SOME disruption, and then I have more in the sb if needed. I'm intrigued to try and do a little testing with it.

Hi, everyone. Brief intro: I played Merfolk a bit over the past year and a half. Mostly just small tournaments and then GP Charlotte (was not a good showing for me). I decided to take a break from it for a while, but I was brainstorming last night and came across an idea that really sparked my interest. Has anyone tried splashing Green for Collected Company and Kiora's Follower? Here is the list I drafted up last night. I'll explain a few specifics after...



A few points:

Kiora's Follower: This is actually a nod to a budy of mine who has been playing merfolk for years. He included it for Vial shenanigans, and seems like it could be good; kind of a 2-drop Reejerey impression.

Coralhelm Commander/Nykthos: A nod to my first rendition of a Merfolk deck. I actually was testing a way to run Cryptic Command in the main (It's my favorite modern card and I have a playset of the textless promos with the merfolk art, so I had to). Nykthos allowed me to run it, and Coralhelm became a good place to use all that mana.

Cursecatcher/Merrow Reejerey: My first draft is missing these for two reasons. (1) In all honesty, I sold a large part of this deck after GP Charlotte, and I don't have them right now. THis is "easily" fixed. (2) Having a threshold of 2-Drop creatures makes Vial a lot better I feel.

1 land will become a 4th Aether Vial. I just don't have just yet.

So has anyone tried out anything similar to this? I read through the past 10 or so pages of this thread, and already see some things I want to change, but was wondering about viability.

It looks like so much fun... I'm starting to think it might be a way for me to combine my Deadeye Gifts with a more traditional build... I'm excited.

@Acissathar, I think my big problem with my build is that Deadeye does not have an immediate effect like Norn does. There are very few scenarios I can think of where I would want to get Rites for Navigator at the earliest moment, since I would want at least two mana up. On a side note, is there room for Moorland Haunt/Misthollow Griffin in a Norn build?

@pzbw7z, Riptide Laboratory is not Modern legal.

So, I recently decided to try Gifts. I don't get to play Modern often, so I wanted a deck I can build cheap for events (like a GP I have coming up) and I realized that with all the EDH items I have, Gifts might be a good way to go. However, I wanted to do something a little different to optimize to my playstyle. I want to use Deadeye Navigator to abuse different ETB effects like Siege Rhino or Venser, Shaper Savant.

Here is my GPS Gifts



I haven't really done much testing (just goldfishing and a few matches against a friend's rogue deck), but some things I have been considering:
- Massacre Wurm : Another Navigator partner that can "Wrath" like Elesh Norn
- Sideboard slots : Sun Titan might come out, and that'll leave 2 spaces
- Thoughtseize / IoK : more hand disruption than just Raven's Crime (maybe these are the sideboard slots since I have Tidehollow Sculler)
- Velocity : I have been tooling around with some combination of Sultai Charm, Thirst for Knowledge, Sphinx's Revelation (probably in the side), and Blue Sun's Zenith (original version was a combo kill with USZ and infinite mana with Deadeye, Deceiver Exarch/Pestermite, Nykthos)
- Evacuation : instant speed blue wrath, which can create a soft lock with Eternal Witness. Should probably be a Damnation, but I do not own one.

What do you guys think? Is there some viability to this? Or do you think I should just go for the traditional Elesh Norn build? I have nothing against that build, but I just figured I had to try this out.