Taking the initial plunge.
Uh... something something something.... splash.
Anyway.
Modern is an awesome format. The power level is high, but not silly. The skill and knowledgebase required is daunting, but not prohibitive. I basically love every single deck. The aggro decks are strong and synergistic, the midrange decks have tight control and strong finishers, and the control decks deck is pretty cool.
I could definitely see myself playing a top-tier deck in the future. They don't feel like the top Standard decks, which are more methodical and boring. When you look at the top 16 decks in terms of large tournament performance, it's all just cool. Affinity is a blast to play (until somebody casts Creeping Corrosion), turn 3 Karn is badass, etc. etc. The reason I play the decks I do in Standard is because nothing that's actually good satisfies that desire to do something crazy. The closest thing we have is Omnidoor Thragfire...
So I've picked something cheap and easy to get into the format and learn (and so I don't have to buy two playsets of Fetchlands before I can play the deck). Merfolk probably isn't the best choice for that, but you'll find it chilling comfortably on the aforementioned list at number 15. Modern is a big format, 15 isn't so bad.
I've chosen to go with the Blue White version. Path in the mainboard deals with the creatures that usually make aggro decks shit their pants; cards like Wurmcoil Engine, Tarmogoyf, and Restoration Angel. It's also nearly impossible to build a sideboard without white. Ethersworn Canonist/Rule of Law, Rest in Peace, and Stony Silence are incredibly potent hate cards that handle a lot of things that blue, red and black just can't handle as efficiently. Maybe some time in the future I'll add red, as Lightning Bolt provides valuable reach. But the manabase gets sketchier (and more expensive), and I'm not sure that it's worth making it even harder to run Mutavaults.
Once you've chose U/W, much of the deck builds itself. It's pretty hard to argue against the following being auto-four-of's:
Lord of Atlantis
Master of the Pearl Trident
Silvergill Adept
Phantasmal Image
Æther Vial
There's no discussion with the Lords, Silvergill Adept, and Æther Vial. Phantasmal Image is also incredibly good. If you have a good board presence, he becomes yet another lord and provides some six or more power to your army. If you don't have a good presence, it's often better to copy your opponent's creatures instead. Dark Confidant seems pretty damn good for our deck. Hm... maybe that's something to look into some time...
Phantasmal Image also kills the fuck out of an Emrakul.
Anyway, these cards are also pretty easy includes:
3-4 Path to Exile
3-4 Merrow Reejery
4 Cursecatcher
3-4 Spreading Seas
0-2 Coralhelm Commander
If we run the high end of each of those, and playsets of the cards from the first list, we have 38 cards. 20 seems to be the concensus on lands, leaving us with two open slots...
Obviously, we're going to need to cut down on a few cards to have some level of utility, but you don't have a whole lot of options when you're tuning a Merfolk list; you get about 4 cards that aren't creatures, Spreading Seas, or Path to Exile.
Mostly, we want counters. Considering the extreme number of two-drops in the deck, my first instinct is to look towards the one-mana counters: Spell Pierce and Spell Snare. Remand and Mana Leak are both very strong, perhaps enough so to justify running them despite our reluctance to hold back two mana early on (especially without Æther Vial).
Finally, we could run Vapor Snag. Anybody who played Delver last Standard season knows the potency of this card: In addition to being a tempo play that keeps the board in our favor and chips away at our opponent's life total, it also bounces our creatures out of the way of removal. In this case, the one life isn't an issue. We're just about always The Beatdown, so we're more concerned with their life total than they are with ours.
Let's take a look at what we have so far.
4 Æther Vial
4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Merrow Reejery
4 Phantasmal Image
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Spreading Seas
4 Path to Exile
2 Cavern of Souls
6 Island
3 Mutavault
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Wanderwine Hub
4... Other stuff.
This is the tricky part: the four cards that can change the way the deck plays fairly drastically. Remand and Mana Leak are both very good cards in the right deck. This, however, is probably not the right deck. A control deck this is not, and keeping fish in our hand in the hopes of hitting something good with Mana Leak (or worse, trying to get tempo from Remand while simultaneously losing tempo...) is pretty bad.
So, what do we want, Spell Snare or Spell Pierce? Should we run Vapor Snag?
Seems like it's largely a Meta call. That answer feels like a cop-out, but you really need to know what you're playing against to... you know, play against it.
Spell Pierce is definitely better against combo. It can usually Time Walk Storm and Eggs (and probably Infect), it counters Splinter Twin and Scapeshift and pushes our spells through against them, and it's pretty damn good against a turn 3 Karn.
And yet... it's pretty damn bad against a turn 5 Karn. It counters Liliana of the Veil and every once in a while a Thoughtseize, but not much else against Jund, which is usually going to be your most important matchup.
On the other hand, Spell Snare hits some very important cards in Jund. Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant, and Terminate are all great targets. It's kind of tough to out-mana Tron, so Spell Snare is definitely where you want to be against their Pyroclasms. Spell Pierce is awful against Affinity (which is right behind Jund in terms of big tournament performance), whereas Spell Snare counters Cranial Plating, which is essential to their plan, as well as Whipflare and Vault Scourge. Spell Snare also does just fine against Storm, and can counter the good Infect creatures so you don't have to try to Path to Exile them all.
That's whole lot of upside. Are there problems though? Of course. There are decks that don't really run particularly important two-drops. You're not going to get much more than a Coiling Oracle against Pod. Against Red Deck Wins you hit Searing Blaze. And Scapeshift?
Nobody likes countering a Farseek.
Vapor Snag seems incredibly good against Jund, but it's dead in too many matchups for me to feel good about maindecking it. I'm not going to talk sideboards today, but it seems like it could make an appearance there.
I definitely don't have what I'd call a finished deck, but if somebody picked me up by the back of my shirt and tossed me headfirst into a Modern FNM today, here's what I'd be playing:
4 Æther Vial
4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Merrow Reejery
4 Phantasmal Image
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Spreading Seas
4 Path to Exile
1 Spell Pierce
3 Spell Snare
2 Cavern of Souls
6 Island
3 Mutavault
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Wanderwine Hub
I'm still learning the format, but I find it fascinating. I love negative feedback, so feel free to tell me why I'm awful at Magic, or an awful writer! I get the impression that, unlike in larger communities, the vocal minority of my readers are actually the positive ones, which is interesting. Feedback is what drives me to write, so post in the comments or just hit me up on Twitter (@abrapw).
<3
There's no discussion with the Lords, Silvergill Adept, and Æther Vial. Phantasmal Image is also incredibly good. If you have a good board presence, he becomes yet another lord and provides some six or more power to your army. If you don't have a good presence, it's often better to copy your opponent's creatures instead. Dark Confidant seems pretty damn good for our deck. Hm... maybe that's something to look into some time...
Phantasmal Image also kills the fuck out of an Emrakul.
Anyway, these cards are also pretty easy includes:
3-4 Path to Exile
3-4 Merrow Reejery
4 Cursecatcher
3-4 Spreading Seas
0-2 Coralhelm Commander
If we run the high end of each of those, and playsets of the cards from the first list, we have 38 cards. 20 seems to be the concensus on lands, leaving us with two open slots...
Obviously, we're going to need to cut down on a few cards to have some level of utility, but you don't have a whole lot of options when you're tuning a Merfolk list; you get about 4 cards that aren't creatures, Spreading Seas, or Path to Exile.
Mostly, we want counters. Considering the extreme number of two-drops in the deck, my first instinct is to look towards the one-mana counters: Spell Pierce and Spell Snare. Remand and Mana Leak are both very strong, perhaps enough so to justify running them despite our reluctance to hold back two mana early on (especially without Æther Vial).
Finally, we could run Vapor Snag. Anybody who played Delver last Standard season knows the potency of this card: In addition to being a tempo play that keeps the board in our favor and chips away at our opponent's life total, it also bounces our creatures out of the way of removal. In this case, the one life isn't an issue. We're just about always The Beatdown, so we're more concerned with their life total than they are with ours.
Let's take a look at what we have so far.
4 Æther Vial
4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Merrow Reejery
4 Phantasmal Image
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Spreading Seas
4 Path to Exile
2 Cavern of Souls
6 Island
3 Mutavault
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Wanderwine Hub
4... Other stuff.
This is the tricky part: the four cards that can change the way the deck plays fairly drastically. Remand and Mana Leak are both very good cards in the right deck. This, however, is probably not the right deck. A control deck this is not, and keeping fish in our hand in the hopes of hitting something good with Mana Leak (or worse, trying to get tempo from Remand while simultaneously losing tempo...) is pretty bad.
So, what do we want, Spell Snare or Spell Pierce? Should we run Vapor Snag?
Seems like it's largely a Meta call. That answer feels like a cop-out, but you really need to know what you're playing against to... you know, play against it.
Spell Pierce is definitely better against combo. It can usually Time Walk Storm and Eggs (and probably Infect), it counters Splinter Twin and Scapeshift and pushes our spells through against them, and it's pretty damn good against a turn 3 Karn.
And yet... it's pretty damn bad against a turn 5 Karn. It counters Liliana of the Veil and every once in a while a Thoughtseize, but not much else against Jund, which is usually going to be your most important matchup.
On the other hand, Spell Snare hits some very important cards in Jund. Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant, and Terminate are all great targets. It's kind of tough to out-mana Tron, so Spell Snare is definitely where you want to be against their Pyroclasms. Spell Pierce is awful against Affinity (which is right behind Jund in terms of big tournament performance), whereas Spell Snare counters Cranial Plating, which is essential to their plan, as well as Whipflare and Vault Scourge. Spell Snare also does just fine against Storm, and can counter the good Infect creatures so you don't have to try to Path to Exile them all.
That's whole lot of upside. Are there problems though? Of course. There are decks that don't really run particularly important two-drops. You're not going to get much more than a Coiling Oracle against Pod. Against Red Deck Wins you hit Searing Blaze. And Scapeshift?
Nobody likes countering a Farseek.
Vapor Snag seems incredibly good against Jund, but it's dead in too many matchups for me to feel good about maindecking it. I'm not going to talk sideboards today, but it seems like it could make an appearance there.
I definitely don't have what I'd call a finished deck, but if somebody picked me up by the back of my shirt and tossed me headfirst into a Modern FNM today, here's what I'd be playing:
4 Æther Vial
4 Cursecatcher
4 Lord of Atlantis
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Merrow Reejery
4 Phantasmal Image
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Spreading Seas
4 Path to Exile
1 Spell Pierce
3 Spell Snare
2 Cavern of Souls
6 Island
3 Mutavault
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Wanderwine Hub
I'm still learning the format, but I find it fascinating. I love negative feedback, so feel free to tell me why I'm awful at Magic, or an awful writer! I get the impression that, unlike in larger communities, the vocal minority of my readers are actually the positive ones, which is interesting. Feedback is what drives me to write, so post in the comments or just hit me up on Twitter (@abrapw).
<3
This deck is quite good. It's clear what you're trying to do in-game, and you're list works pretty well. Currently, you're counter suite is not suited to the meta. Your matchup against both Pod and Twin is far from in your favor, though you should be fine against storm (which is admittedly out of popularity right now).
ReplyDeleteI would certainly recommend changing the mana around, too. This deck want's Hallowed fountain, glacial fortress, and some fetching. Fetches can also give you access to black (via Watery Grave), if you ever decide to change the deck into something more disruptive post board (with thoughtsieze, inquisition).
Hand disruption is particularly good in modern right now, as it hoses Pod, Twin, and Eggs pretty well, and can at least breaks even against jund. Besides that, why not run Snapcaster? It is such an absurd value card these days, and it really gives your paths allot more reach. While we're at it, why the hell is clique not at least a 2 of? It has great power, especially with your lords, has the ability to wreck opponents hands, and can be a shitty faithless looting in a pinch.
ReplyDelete