Subject: tournament report & deck analysis: merfolk Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 17:05:50 -0700 (PDT) From: John Robinson To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com Hi Frank, hi world. I've dominated a lot of matches lately with my merfolk deck. This is a big deal for me 'cause I've been playing for almost 4 years now and usually do pretty horribly in tournaments. Since nobody's reported any wins with the fish of late, I thought I should let everybody know that Blue Weenie is strong. Here's the record: 9-0 in sanctioned T2 play in two small tournaments, 18-1 total game record. I go down to the Wizards of the Coast gamecenter once a month or so to their Friday night tournaments. $5 gets 4 or 5 rounds of swiss play with a bunch of hardcore gamers. About half the crowd plays for fun, the other half for ratings. Winner and runner-ups get a bunch of boosters. I've played there for about a year and usually fare at 3-2 (or 2-2-1 or even 2-1-2). That is, until I played my version of Fish. I was tired of losing the initiative and fighting to win it back with a blue control deck of mine, so I decided to switch to blue weenie. The original deck idea called for a Sligh-like mana curve and 4 of each of blue's power cards. The 1 card in my deck that most fish players ignore is Unstable Mutation, which I believe helped win about 50% of my games. Here's the original deck design: Mutantfolk ---------- 4 tidal warrior ...the weenies 4 manta riders 4 lord of atlantis 4 unstable mutation ...the blue power cards 4 legacy's allure 4 counterspell 4 man-o-war 4 suq'ata firewalker 4 winter orb ...the power cards for weenie decks 4 wasteland 2 disrupt ...early control 1 spindrift drake ...in my test deck before I got 4 Lords...left ...him in for good luck and never regretted it. 2 waterspout djinn ...late game beatdown 2 undiscovered paradise 14 island ...20 land total This deck went 5-0 about a month ago; it's one game loss came in the final round against a Control Necro deck where a Nekrataal went the distance after I failed to draw anything useful for 10 turns. Highlights: Against a tradewind rider deck with birds and walls, the legacy's allures function as instant creature control. I remember one game where I stole his tradewind and had a Lord and unstable merfolk in play, 1 island untapped. He firestormed for 4 targetting me as well; I disrupt, Game. Second game, he has 2 birds in play and I have a firewalker. He casts a tradewind rider for the lock, so I ping a bird in response. On my turn I cast lagacy's allure, ping his final bird and he concedes at 16 life. The fish play similar to a counter-sliver deck without the non-basic lands. I beat two counter-sliver decks. Against decks packing non-basics the wastelands are key, either for control or time advantage: My opponent: city of brass, bird. Me: Waste the city. My opponent: karplusan forest, muscle sliver. Me: Waste the forest. My opponent: no land, attack for 2. Me: island, merfolk. My opponent: no land, attack for 2. Me: island, legacy's allure, steal bird, attack for 1. My opponent: forest, attack for 2. Me: unstable mutation, attack for 4. And I went on for the beatdown win. Against control decks like the one I faced in the final round, early unstables give massive life advantage. Like I said, my only game loss was against a control necro deck packing bottle gnomes and drain lifes, but even here the early beatdown keeps them on the defensive the rest of the game. My opponent's life total: 20 16 turn 2 unstable mutation 12 lord of atlantis in play 4 disrupt something, unstable mutation on lord, attack with both creatures 7 bottle gnome gets through, blocks lord 5 ... In the final game, I get the early beatdown and he starts to come back like he did in the second game, but waterspout gets through after he's Nekrataaled an unstable lord of atlantis. I draw another unstable and attack for 7. At times like this, the unstables function as mini-armors. Anyway, that was a month ago. Last friday night, I modified the deck after going over the 5th edition list and discovering that Urza's Bauble is legal. Adding 4 Baubles I got this: BaubleFish ---------- 4 manta riders ...the best merfolk out there 3 tidal warriors 1 rootwater diver 4 lords of atlantis 3 suq'ata firewalker ...with only 20 land I don't want more than 1 in ...the opening hand. 3 man-o-war ...ditto 2 waterspout djinns -- 20 creatures 3 unstable mutations ...still key, but I had to fit the baubles in. 2 force spike ...in testing against suicide black, disrupt ...didn't cut it. 4 counterspell 4 legacy's allure 4 urza's bauble 3 winter orb -- 20 spells 4 wasteland 2 undiscovered paradise 14 island -- 20 land Sideboard: use your imagination and include boomerangs My reasoning with playing with the Bauble over something more useful like phyrexian furnace was thus: 4 baubles theoretically give you a 56 card deck. With only 20 land, I have thus increased my mana ratio from 33.3% (20/60) to 35.7% (20/56). This is pretty significant in such a tight, weenie-oriented deck where the first 3 turns are the most important ones. In the first round I played a beginner who forgot to attack with his dauthi horror. I stole his dauthi cutthroat and beat him up with 3 early merfolk while he drew late counterspells. I felt kinda sorry for him cause he just started playing a couple months ago and didn't even know what legacy's allure did. 2nd round against Hung Nguyen, who told me later he was playing 4CW with uktabi orang, earthquakes, armor, mox diamonds, mana leaks... In the first game I get a first turn merfolk with 1 island in my hand and 2 baubles. I bauble for 2, draw an island and another bauble, draw and 2nd turn attack for 1 and counter his soltari priest. Bauble-draw and draw 3rd turn, unstable and attack for 4, waste his city of brass, cast another merfolk. 4th turn, he casts shaman en-kor, blocks the unstabled merfolk, so I attack for 1 and cast another folk. He does nothing; 5th turn I cast a lord and attack for 7. 8th turn is Man-o-war a blocker and finish. 2nd game: He gets out a white knight and an armor when I have a suq'ata firewalker and several merfolk. I go for the quick kill: 19, 18, 14, 8, 6. I can win in 2 but forget to ping him down to 5 at the end of his turn. He attacks for 7, I'm at 5. I play legacy's allure and attack for 2, he's at 4. He attacks, I block and ping, he's at 3. I attack for 2, he's at 1. He plays an uktabi, attacks for the kill, I block, now with a single merfolk in play. Untap, unkeep, steal orang, win. 3rd round vs. Dan Shear, Living Death. I never go below 20 in both these games. 2 wastelands against his black mana are key, as is a legacy's allure on a bird. I force spike a recurring nightmare at one point and counter a big firestorm. For the first time ever I use the tidal warrior ability to keep his single swamp as an island when he casts another bird. Dan did get a hermit druid and a graveyard full of fatties, but never gets 2 swamps and 3 colorless to cast living death. 2nd game: This time I don't have a counter for the firestorm. My attack stalls out when I have 2 little merfolk and he has a tradwind and a bird in play. The longer this goes on the greater the chance he draws another creature for the tradewind lock or living death for game. I topdeck an unstable with Dan at 4 so he's forced to chumpblock this turn and next and finally dies. He never draws a living death: Live by living death and die by it. Final round against Ben Yim, playing an unusual middleground B/U deck. First game he plays a fallan askari then counters like forbid & dismiss. He also edicts away my early threats. I steal his askari tho' and counter his man-o-war. With a winter orb in play, he never comes back with capsizes and other quality cards in his hand. 2nd game: I have an opening hand of 2 wastelands and 1 island, with a counter, a legacy's, a merfolk and a winter orb. The wastelands seem pointless against Ben cause I can't cast my allure and I only saw 1 non-basic in game 1. I also draw an undiscovered and 2 more wastelands in the next 5 turns. His first 2 lands are swamp, island. I play island, undiscovered, merfolk. He edicts my 1/1 merfolk which seems like a bad play on his part so I don't use the force spike I drew. On his third turn he finally plays a nonbasic and ophidian. I go legacy's allure, wasteland (1). He plays another land and attacks for a card. I play undiscovered again and steal his ophidian during his upkeep. That's game. He doesn't realize it and I only know I have control at this point. But then again that's all this deck needs. Usually it plays a fast weenie horde to seize the initiative and then protect it with counterspells and/or manowars & worbs. In this case I stole the best creature in his deck, probably the best in Magic. He plays a non-basic and Nekrataals the ophidian. I spike it. I untap, waste (2) his non-basic, play winter orb, attack for a card. Over the next 6 turns he manages to draw two more non-basics which I waste and cast energy feedback or whatever its called that forces a 2 mana upkeep on artifacts, but by this time I outnumber him 7-3 in land (my draws suck. 7 land + 4 wastelands in a 20 land deck!? without the ophidian I lose) so I let the worb die. During this time I draw nothing. I wanted so much to unstable the ophidian, since I am after all playing a weenie beatdown deck, but I decide to let the snake work her charms and wait for another creature: Waterspout Djinn. He casts a blocker, I boomerang, unstable and attack for 7 and yet another card with the ophidian. He casts another blocker, I man-o-war, attack for 6 and a card and cast a lord and a merfolk. He nekrataals the waterspout; it dies. Next turn, I boomerang and attack for 7(Lord+Merfolk+Man-o-war+Ophidian). Significant was our conversation afterwards: why not capsize for 1 more instead of boomerang? Well, it costs 1 more. Or other conversations: I can't believe I lost to such shitty cards. Well, Urza's bauble and Unstable Mutations on 1/1 merfolk are pretty damn efficient. Like any other speed deck, this deck will always win over other decks that have better cards but don't get a chance to play them. That's why impulse and ophidian aren't in the deck. Also, it's focused on beatdown, not finesse. The survival of the fittest/hermit druid/living death decks have wonderful engines but they don't do any damage until the late game. What if there isn't a late game? John Robinson After 4 years of playing the game, no longer a scrub.