Legacy and Vintage Merfolk Deck

[Baron Sengir]

This will mostly be for Legacy at Pastimes along with my Dragon deck, but I may play it casually occasionally. The deck is simple enough. Get merfolk out and prevent your opponent from doing stuff to them. Being blue I think that speaks as to what this deck does. ;D

Legacy Version
ARTIFACTS:
Aether Vial X 4

BLUE:
Lord of Atlantis X 4
Coralhelm Commander X 4
Merrow Reejerey X 4
Merfolk Sovereign X 2
Cursecatcher X 4
Silvergill Adept X 4
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner X 2
Sower of Temptation X 1
Force of Will X 4
Daze X 4
Spell Pierce X 1

LAND:
Island X 13
Wasteland X 4
Mutavault X 4
Mishra's Factory X 1

TOTAL: 60

[House Turtle]

My merfolk deck beat the snot out of my white knight deck and all done on 3 mana.

[House Turtle]

Looking over this very impressive. I had the displeasure of facing another merfolk deck and the only common card aside from land was Lord of Atlantis.

[Baron Sengir]

Yeah there are some pretty nasty cards out there now that go well in the deck. Its actually what made me make it for a legacy tournament because I think the theme has a lot of potential. I think what I really like about Merfolk is that after thinking about it for a bit I realized you can very easily make this into a Vintage deck by just substituting maybe 10 cards or less.

[House Turtle]

I didn't realize there were so many merfolk that pumped others up.

[Baron Sengir]

Yeah there are quite a few now.

Here is the Vintage Version of the deck:
ARTIFACTS:
Null Rod X 4
Black Lotus X 1
Mox Sapphire X 1

CREATURES:
Cursecatcher X 4
Silvergill Adept X 4
Lord of Atlantis X 4
Merrow Reejerey X 4
Cold Eyed Selkie X 3

SPELLS:
Force of Will X 4
Daze X 4
Spell Pierce X 3
Standstill X 2 (Threw that in for you John. )
Hurkyl's Recall X 1
Mystical Tutor X 1
Ancestral Recall X 1
Time Walk X 1

LAND:
Island X 10
Mutavault X 3
Strip Mine X1
Wasteland X 4

TOTAL: 60

Sideboard So Far:
Echoing Truth X 2
Tormods Crypt X 2
Relic of Progenitus X 2
Thada Adel, Acquisitor X 1
Kira, Great Glass-Spinner X 2
Hibernation X 3
Stifle X 3

[Maraxus of Keld]

I love Standstill. It's a great card.

You know what would make the Vintage version a bit stronger? Replace four of the Islands with Seat of the Synod, find room for a Lotus Petal somewhere in the deck, and replace another Island with Tolarian Academy.

Academy is, without doubt, the single most abusable land in all of Magic to this day. It's pretty much the reason you see Wastelands in every deck, and the more fast artifacts you have, the better. It's also the reason that Crop Rotation got restricted.

I hate to suggest it since I like being the only one in our playgroup who uses one, but it really is a fantastic card and you would no doubt benefit from it.

[Baron Sengir]

Hmm ok yeah I may do that.

[Baron Sengir]

Do you think being at 62 cards is ok if i add in the lotus petal? The seats and tolarian would just replace islands like you said. Also do you think i have enough artifacts for the academy to be beneficial?

[Maraxus of Keld]

You're not going to get the holy shit amazing results that some decks get with it; adding a Lotus Petal will help though. For that matter, you could throw a Sol Ring in for much the same reason, though you don't have that big a need for colorless mana in this deck from what I looked at.

On the other hand, mathematically you're more likely to draw Null Rod than any other artifact in the deck, and once you have that in play all your other artifacts are useless, including your artifact lands. So... maybe not, I dunno. It doesn't seem like quite as good a suggestion as it did before. Actually, it leads you down exactly the road that Null Rod is there to prevent, so maybe it's not such a good idea.

As far as going up to 62 cards, I would avoid it if you can.

[Baron Sengir]

Yeah the Null Rod kind of shuts down artifacts which is counter-intuitive to Tolarian Academy.

[Maraxus of Keld]

It shuts down Black Lotus and Mox Sapphire even harder though. So you're taking a tradeoff either way. It's really just a question of where you want to draw the line.

[Baron Sengir]

Yeah, but at least those are only two artifacts instead of like 7. Honestly losing the 4 artifact lands would worry me the most because Null Rod is very common in vintage due to people running the Lotus and all the Moxen as well as things like Time Vault, yadda yadda. I'd have to try both ways though and see how things turn out.

[Maraxus of Keld]

Oh no, you've adopted "Moxen" as the plural of Mox too?

[Baron Sengir]

Oct 25, 2011 8:15:04 GMT -6 Maraxus of Keld said:

Oh no, you've adopted "Moxen" as the plural of Mox too?

Any particular reason everything you have to say lately has a negative or less than helpful tone to it? If there is anything I can do to help let me know if needed, but I just get the impression your in a miserable mood lately.