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Introduction
Once upon a fanciable time, there was a mythical plane where planeswalkers could sling the silliest spells and have them work. This was a time of obscure combos, long, grueling control mirrors, and even a place where faeries would sometimes come out to play. Then, one infamous day, a shadowy figure started working on a deck that would eventually result in mass ruin for all. The early spells that Finn had to work with were awkward and underpowered, but he noticed that they still managed to get the job done. As the Eventide approached, powerful new spells became available, and he and his associates began sculpting a dark concoction that soon would turn the world into a land most hostile.
Today, I’ll be talking about Merfolk, looking at a brief history of the deck, and examining its role in Legacy today. Merfolk is important to look at because it is easily the most common deck in the format. In any large event, you can expect that at least 10%—but up to 20%—of the field will be made up of Merfolk decks that are normally identical except for three or four cards. The other major reason that Merfolk is important to look at is because it is such a menace to the rest of the format; Blue decks are afraid of being Blue in public, and even Zoo decks can have trouble battling against the deck if they try to deviate from the plan of crushing opposing aggro decks. Whether it’s a counterbalance to the format or a fishy pest, this is the story of Merfolk.
History
To the best of my recollection, it all started with Mike Long’s Invitational card—Rootwater Thief. Until this time, any Merfolk decks that were running around were mostly casual, but Rootwater Thief offered a unique ability on a card that was begging to be built around in a time when Blue’s most aggressive game plans involved Rishadan Airship and Winter Orb in the form of a deck called Blue Skies. Rootwater Thief really only ever saw sideboard play in those decks, but it laid the groundwork for what was to come.
My first experience with a Merfolk deck in Type 1.5 was some time later, in 2002, just a few months after the release of Odyssey. The printing of Standstill gave the fledgling Blue aggro strategy a source of card advantage to use in conjunction with the early pressure the deck was capable of applying, allowing the deck to catch up in tempo with strategies that had cards that were a bit more powerful, such as U/G Madness, Recurring Nightmare Survival, and the Land Tax– and Blue-based control decks. The early builds of the deck used cheap creatures such as Cloud of Faeries, Manta Riders, Lord of Atlantis, and many times even Tidal Warriors. The disruption suite from back then looks strikingly familiar to what we see now today—Daze, Force of Will, and Misdirection.
The earliest list I could find of one of these decks is a Type 1 list from the Mana Drain, although the author speaks about the 1.5 version a bit:
[cardlist]
[Creatures]
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Manta Riders
4 Rootwater Thief
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Psionic Blast
3 Misdirection
4 Force of Will
1 Time Walk
1 Coastal Piracy
4 Curiosity
4 Standstill
1 Mox Sapphire
3 Null Rod
[/Spells]
[Lands]
9 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Strip Mine
2 Wasteland
4 Faerie Conclave
4 Mishra's Factory
[/Lands]
[/cardlist]
Obviously metagamed for the Vintage scene at the time, incarnations of this deck would go on to be important factors in both Type 1 and 1.5 for years to come.
What became the standout feature of the deck was the use of Curiosity on Cloud of Faeries and the interactions between the man lands and Standstill, which could cover a lot of ground for a Fish player. As time went on, these features stayed with the deck, but ultimately, much of the Merfolk theme left the deck as a Red splash in the deck proved worthwhile, offering both Fire // Ice and Grim Lavamancer to combat other aggressive strategies and Red Elemental Blast to fight control decks. The deck became heavily warped around Curiosity, and nearly all Merfolk had been cut from Fish as the deck went through its metamorphosis. Rootwater Thief lingered in many lists for some time, but eventually even he was cut as it became evident that the card simply wasn’t efficient enough for the format’s increasing speed.
The slow evolution of Fish featuring Merfolk into a U/R deck playing a single Merfolk, if that, is the reason that modern U/x tempo decks are so often called “Fish” now, despite the fact that there are no actual sea creatures in the deck. This new “Fish” deck quickly became the budget Type 1 deck of choice and started changing even more in nature to combat the mirror, including Suq'Ata Firewalker to beat Grim Lavamancer, Razorfin Hunter (the lone Merfolk left in Fish), and opposing removal.
In 2004, this list made Top 8 at Waterbury:
[cardlist]
[Creatures]
1 Gorilla Shaman
1 Grim Lavamancer
2 Flying Men
2 Suq'Ata Firewalker
3 Razorfin Hunter
4 Spiketail Hatchling
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Echoing Truth
1 Misdirection
2 Fire // Ice
3 Stifle
4 Force Of Will
1 Time Walk
3 Standstill
4 Curiosity
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
3 Null Rod
[/Spells]
[Lands]
1 Mountain
3 Island
1 Flooded Strand
1 Library Of Alexandria
1 Strip Mine
2 Faerie Conclave
2 Wooded Foothills
3 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Volcanic Island
[/Lands]
[/cardlist]
U/R Fish lists stayed relevant for some time in the format, causing trouble for both the control decks and Stax decks in Type 1. As U/R Fish became such a strong metagame player, a new breed of the deck emerged that was finally able to cut Merfolk, once and for all.
As the format matured and learned to deal with the fishy problem, U/G tempo decks, such as Worse Than Fish, were some of the last decks in the vein toward the end of the traditional Fish deck’s relevance in Vintage:
[cardlist]
[Creatures]
3 Ninja of the Deep Hours
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Spiketail Hatchling
4 Wild Mongrel
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
1 Ancestral Recall
4 Force of Will
1 Time Walk
4 Standstill
1 Black Lotus
1 Black Vise
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire
4 AEther Vial
4 Chalice of the Void
2 Umezawa's Jitte
[/Spells]
[Lands]
3 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
3 Tropical Island
4 Flooded Strand
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland
[/Lands]
[/cardlist]
This deck caused many people to ask, “Is Wild Mongrel the best aggressive creature ever printed?” Fish deck continues to play a role in Vintage today, but seldom feature Merfolk—to the confusion of many new players. But that’s not quite what we’re here to talk about.
With the exception of a few cards in Time Spiral block and Ambassador Laquatus, a Merfolk hadn’t been printed since Invasion Block, and even when printed, Merfolk seldom were close to playable. However, with Lorwyn and Morningtide on the rise, the idea that Merfolk were doomed to be unplayable would all change. Just as Mirrodin seemed to be the block that was going to make Ornithopter into an all-star card, the number of attractive Merfolk in Lorwyn and later Morningtide had people noticing that Lord of Atlantis not only existed, but had been reprinted in Time Spiral. With Fallowsage, Surgespanner, Sygg, River Guide, Tideshaper Mystic, Silvergill Adept, and of course Merrow Reejerey, suddenly a tribe that had struggled for playable cards throughout the history of the game was given several interesting cards. Morningtide offered both Grimoire Thief and Stonybrook Banneret; Shadowmoor brought Cursecatcher and Sygg, River Cutthroat, and finally Eventide gave the deck Wake Thrasher and Cold-Eyed Selkie, which would eventually be a tool used against the deck. You can see the evolution of the early stages of the deck in this thread; I’ll share a couple of lists here:
[cardlist]
[Creatures]
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Merrow Reejerey
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Stonybrook Banneret
4 Tidal Courier
4 Tidal Warrior
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
3 Stifle
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 AEther Vial
[/Spells]
[Lands]
15 Island
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
[/Lands]
[/cardlist]
This list is from shortly after Morningtide. Not many people took the deck seriously at this point, but the deck had a growing following of people who were dedicated to making the new deck work. Those who were truly dedicated to the deck were forced to fight against newcomers insisting that the deck play Brainstorm, fetch lands, and sometimes even Counterbalance and Top, as most other Blue decks were doing at the time. By the time the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block ended, the lists that were doing the best had incorporated Cursecatcher and Wake Thrasher and were still going without Brainstorm, Ponder, or any other traditional Blue draw. Merfolk had proven itself to be a real metagame contender in Legacy, already plaguing opposing Blue decks, but truly struggling against other aggro decks.
[cardlist]
[Creatures]
3 Stonybrook Banneret
4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Merrow Reejerey
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Tidal Courier
4 Wake Thrasher
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 AEther Vial
[/Spells]
[Lands]
14 Island
3 Mutavault
4 Wasteland
[/Lands]
[/cardlist]
After this basic list of the deck had been completed, all that was left was to refine the lists, which became easy after M10 brought Merfolk Sovereign and Standstill was used over Stifle, as Stifle was rather awkward in a deck that wanted to be doing things on turns one, two, and three. Eventually, Rise of the Eldrazi gave Merfolk a flying, 4/4 lord in the form of Coralhelm Commander, which solidified so there were only a small handful of flex slots. Kira, Great Glass-Spinner became a fixture, and after Mental Misstep, for the first time since Rise, Merfolk underwent a large change, giving us the current list, and bringing us to the end of the history lesson:
[cardlist]
[Creatures]
1 Sower of Temptation
2 Merfolk Sovereign
4 Coralhelm Commander
4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Merrow Reejerey
4 Silvergill Adept
1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Mental Misstep
4 AEther Vial
[/Spells]
[Lands]
13 Island
4 Mutavault
4 Wasteland
[/Lands]
[/cardlist]
The current builds have some variance. People still experiment with splashes of all colors. White offers the deck Stoneforge Mystic, Sygg, River Guide, and the best removal options in the game. Red offers plenty of tools to fight the mirror, such as Arc Trail and Grim Lavamancer; Black can provide Perish for the most difficult matches and Dark Confidant to draw a few cards. Green mostly offers Merfolk Tarmogoyf, which was a popular inclusion at one time but has since fallen off the radar.
Merfolk’s Strengths
Merfolk is a deck of several strengths and only a few shortcomings. Let’s take a closer look at some of the deck’s greatest strengths:
Some Decks Get All the Good Matchups
Above is my artistic representation of what Merfolk’s matchups in the current metagame look like, and while it isn’t scientific by any means, I’d like to discuss what it means.
1. Being Favored Against Blue Decks
The pairing of AEther Vial, Lord of Atlantis, Wasteland, and cheap countermagic with a quick clock means that most blue mages are going to struggle to keep up, or even play the game for very long. This is huge because most people want to be playing the deck that has the most powerful cards, or the decks with the most options, both of which are Blue. Furthermore, most outsiders who come into the format want to play a Blue deck, as they’ve generally played Blue in other formats. Just a quick glance over the last month:
Michael Jacob – NO R/U/G (Invitational Top 8)
Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosea – U/b/g Landstill (GP Top 8)
Owen Turtenwald U/W Stoneforge Landstill (GP Top 8)
Gerry Thompson U/W Landstill (SCG Open Top 8)
It actually becomes difficult to find pros in the format who aren’t playing Blue. Well, what does this mean? It means that in playing Merfolk, you’re inherently advantaged against most of the better players to enter an event, and that’s nothing to scoff at. You’re also favored against almost all of the combo and control decks, and even have great tools to fight against the opposing aggro decks (which, by the way, can’t beat the Blue decks without giving up game against Merfolk).
Need another example of the power of Blue in Legacy and why playing a deck that is inherently good against it is worthwhile? Check out this post on The Source.
In Chronological descending order, GP Columbus 2.0 had 7 out of 8 Blue decks, GP Madrid 5 out of 8, GP Chicago had 4 out of 8. GP Columbus 1.0, where it was actually possible to play Hulk-Flash, still only had 5 players in the top 8 running blue. At GP Lille it was 4 out of 8. At GP Philadelphia, only 3 out of 8 players ran blue.
To a lesser degree, Merfolk keeps most new decks in check, too, since those decks are going to want to have access to counterspells and Brainstorm/Ponder effects to increase the consistency of their draws, which is exactly what Merfolk preys on.
2. Sixteen Lords and a Bottle of Rum
Merfolk’s greatest strength is how, with incredibly consistency, the deck is able to curve out and overwhelm an opponent. Unlike most Blue decks that try to facilitate this with cantrips such as Brainstorm and Ponder, Merfolk takes a much more non-Blue approach—redundancy. Having access to a total of sixteen lords, all of which are playable, means that Merfolk can execute nearly the same game plan every game.
What about disrupting the early game? Well, Cursecatcher, Force of Will, Daze, Wasteland, and now Mental Misstep all help to ensure that the early game remains in check. Silvergill Adept actually works out to be the best creature in the deck; since if it doesn’t directly disrupt your opponent or make all of your creatures larger, it can draw you closer to something that will for minimal investment.
Another factor in Merfolk’s consistency is its perfect mana. In days past, the only deck that was able to field this many lords was something like Meathooks (a.k.a. Slivers), which won Legacy Worlds not too long ago. This deck used Muscle Sliver, Sinew Sliver, Winged Sliver, Crystalline Sliver, and sometimes even Hibernation Sliver in the same deck where the resulting mana base was incredibly unstable, held together with fetch lands and AEther Vial. A deck like that must look like a joke to anyone who wasn’t playing back then, now that Merfolk has access to better creatures and better disruption, which is supported by, not glued together with, AEther Vial, and all using basic Islands.
How smoothly Merfolk runs allows it to punish decks for their variant draws in much the same way that Zoo used to in years past.
3. The Perfect Curve
How often have you seen a chart like this?
This is the breakdown of the average costs in Merfolk decks that have performed well over the last month. We see lists like this all the time in Legacy, but so often these are deceiving. These sorts of charts are really designed to be used in formats where everything is done fairly; every spell is cast with mana, and you’re seldom able to cheat anything into play. However, in Legacy, we try to cheat on everything, especially our counterspells, and as a result, these graphs don’t reflect the true costs of spells in Legacy. In fact, this represents some of the worst-case scenarios in Legacy, where you actually need to pay 5 mana to counter a spell, or where your Daze is cast off two Islands because you’ve reached a point in the game where you’re effectively not using your mana to apply pressure. Force of Will and Daze are powerful not because they have a mana cost, but because you’re normally playing them for 0 mana. When you take that sort of thing into consideration, we are presented with curves that look a lot more like this:
You can see the difference in the chart; there are no 5-cost spells in this deck, and there are far fewer 1- and 2-cost spells than you’d actually be led to believe. Now that Mental Misstep exists, more than a quarter of Merfolk can be played for no mana investment whatsoever. This dynamic allows Merfolk to maintain pressure and tempo, using its lands every turn to generate the largest board presence while disrupting the opponent. When you consider that both AEther Vial and, to a lesser extent, Merrow Reejerey are also both able to alter the way that this deck uses mana, the mana restraints on the deck come down yet again.
Merfolk’s Weaknesses
For this section, I’ll talk about both these specific cards and what each of them represents.
Deed represents the Junk and other midrange decks that have access to Pernicious Deed and other removal spells. These are the decks that are often able to get value out of Engineered Plague from the sideboard, as it can pick off the lords to keep them all small. Merfolk is weak against this kind of board-sweeping strategy because it so effectively fights the plan of spewing the hand onto the table, and Deed itself is able to come down relatively early and work around Cursecatcher. Recently, Junk and the like have been seeing a lot less play, but I imagine the day for those decks is coming, as it tends to be rather well positioned against not only the format’s most common deck, Merfolk, but against much of the rest of the field as well.
Grave-Troll specifically represents Dredge, which is another deck that tends to be favored against all Blue decks. Merfolk is especially weak to this kind of deck because unlike most other Blue decks, it isn’t able to really dig for the sideboard cards that it has with effects such as Ponder. Ultimately, the downside to being so consistent is that when the deck is consistently bad against a specific strategy, there is little that can be reasonably done to correct it.
Another example of this interaction is against Painter decks, which also like to put cards into the graveyard, albeit the opponent’s. This deck tends to main deck a lot of 1-mana answers for Merfolk and is prone to sideboard in several more. When a combo deck is able to work effectively around Merfolk’s disruption, which has become increasingly narrow since Misstep, it presents a lot of problems for the Fish.
Knight represents the G/W decks that have been gaining popularity recently and the Zoo decks that are a fixture of the metagame. Knight itself is the end game, a sign that the game is ending and Merfolk isn’t going to come out of it winning unless it has drawn plenty of Submerges. The main problem with these decks for Merfolk is that they are not trying to counter anything and they’re not trying to cast any large, flashy spells; instead, they’re looking to answer problems as they reach the table and attack with creatures. Worst of all, they don’t even play Islands. G/W and Zoo both have about twenty-four cards that a Merfolk deck is going to need to counter to be in the game, whereas the average Team America deck has much closer to eight cards and perhaps eleven post-board. Not only do these decks have tons of threats, they often have stable mana bases that feature no Islands whatsoever, meaning no free wins off Lord of Atlantis.
Next time you take a look at a Merfolk sideboard, look at how many slots are dedicated to trying to combat G/W and Zoo compared to how many they can even bring in against Merfolk.
While Grim Lavamancer is a card also seen in Zoo, here it represents not only the U/G/r and U/W/r decks that have it in for Merfolk, but the realization that Merfolk is a Tier 1 deck that players know they need to beat. I used to be convinced that it was impossible for a Blue-based aggro, control, or aggro-control deck to have a positive match against Merfolk, and while I’m still skeptical, some realistic work has been done in the department. U/W/r decks featuring Stoneforge Mystic and Grim Lavamancer did well at the Grand Prix, and NO R/U/G has been on a tear recently, making it perhaps the Blue deck that does the best against Merfolk. Grim Lavamancer is essential to this game plan, as it comes down fast and is a recurring source of removal that Merfolk isn’t often able to play around or even against until much later in the game, buying a deck like Natural Order much-needed time to establish board presence.
In the case of Natural Order, it’s easy to see how Mental Misstep has impacted Merfolk’s ability to combat the strategy, only in this case it’s due to the fact that Merfolk is playing it over what it used to play—Spell Pierce. Pierce was cut from most lists as a way to incorporate Misstep, but very few players moved the Pierces to the board, which has resulted in some decks such as NO R/U/G and various Show and Tell–based decks to come back on the upswing since their numbers against Merfolk have changed so dramatically. I think Spell Pierce is an essential tool for Merfolk to keep these decks in check and look forward to seeing a lot more of it in sideboards as time goes on.
Conclusion
Without something big happening in the format, Merfolk looks to be very well positioned for quite some time, meaning that the deck’s players will be able to keep everyone from having fun for quite some time.
Speaking of fun, I hope you’ll come back next week and join me as I examine the first six weeks of Mental Misstep and the rest of New Phyrexia and its impact on Legacy. I have already started wrestling the numbers into submission so that they’ll be presented in a clean and clear way for when you are ready to check them out. Until then, I hope that you have a great day, regardless time of day it happens to be for you.
~ Christopher Walton in the real world
im00pi at gmail dot com
Master Shake on The Source
@EmperorTopDeck on Twitter
