@notmi looks like someone else did well on the challenge with vials. Seems like you’re doing something right. I have a few questions.

1. Do you ever get screwed by phyrexian revoker? It seems like us wastelanding and them naming vial will set us back quite a bit

2. Do you think our PO matchup is good enough to not need Null Rod? I know thieving skydiver is really good against serpent and ballista and lone moxen, but PO always is on the back of my mind. I guess the MD flusterstorms and mindbreak traps help, but Null Rod is such a clean answer

3. Any thoughts of splashing white for kataki, deafening silence, or Thalia?

4. Any thoughts on paradigm shift combo with oracle?

@naixin

In order:

• Revoker can be a problem, but for the most part you want to just force their most meaningful play and resolve flux post board. My loss in the challenge top 8 was because I stupidly let them resolve a lodestone golem with force in hand because I had a vial, then they followed up with revoker and I was too far behind to win. But in the 6 rounds before that, I played vs shops twice and beat both of them by just making land drops they couldn't wasteland away.

• The deck was build with beating combo in mind. I think rod is very unnecessary, especially since you're not playing much mana accelerants to play it on turn 1.

• The manabase would have to drastically change to support white cards. Honestly, even with 9 islands the deck sometimes struggles to cast non merfolk blue spells. Deafening silence is the most relevant of the white cards you could play, and I don't think it's worth the added weakness playing white would add to your manabase

• My very first list a couple months ago was actually UB with paradigm shift, demonic tutor, vamp tutor, and demonic consultation with 4 oracles, but I found that the end result was just me putting a bunch of medium cards in my deck to turn 5 kill people, which was accomplished by just casting lords anyway.

@notmi thank you for taking the time to answer. I will try your challenge list with the hullbreachers and see how it runs.

I haven't touched this deck much recently, but I did play a challenge with it yesterday so I thought I'd share my list. I went 4-2 top 16, losing a match to bant where I misplayed my force, and a match vs oops where I didn't have any creatures in my top 30 cards and died to hardcast narcomoeba beats. I beat shops twice, skydiver stealing stonecoils, basic islands, and fluxes continue to make that matchup incredibly good. I beat dredge, I think that's surprisingly a good matchup with the current board plan because you can waste the bazaar, protect your hate, and not die to hollow ones. Last win was vs BUG, plan was the same as ever vs fair blue, cast an uncounterable true name and then watch them spin their wheels for 8 turns until they lose. The only match I missed having lords was vs oops, but I would have been happy to have literally any creature.

I might experiment with moxen over vials now that I'm playing 4 breachers and no lords, but vial was still pretty reasonable in my matches.

I like how angry this list is my only real question is do you think you have enough spells and wastelands to fit a cruze or a DTT?

@botvinik said in Merfolk:

I like how angry this list is my only real question is do you think you have enough spells and wastelands to fit a cruze or a DTT?

I think even one delve spell would be pretty greedy without fetches. Maybe a cruise, but it would never be live before turn 6 or so I don't think.

Ok reasonable I have now played with it a bit and I agree it doesn't have the lands for delve my current question is how do I stop oko, he has been giving me a very hard time.

Pithing needle and attacking it with true name. In the challenge vs bug, they turn 1 oko'd me, and I ended up stabalizing the board by stealing food with skydiver multiple times, tapping down food with tidebinder mage, and attacking it with true names and the flyers. Needle is the easiest answer though.

@notmi this is a great list. I’m inclined to try moxen as well since there’s no more UU.

Any thought on null rod in SB?

@naixin

Null rod could be in the board if you expect a ton of ravager, but that's just not a large enough meta share for me to board more cards in what is already a reasonably favorable matchup. PO has mostly died off, and the deck has a million counterspells to fight against it anyway. Other than those two matchups, I can't think of any where I'd want rod.