That's just incredibly false. Fetchlands are already lands that effectively tap for more than two colors, and they have other upsides like shuffling and fetching sanctuary. If you have 4 three color indestructable lands in your 3 color deck, that's a significantly worse manabase than playing 9 fetches and 6 duals.
Fetches are even harder to replace now than ever because of how insane mystic sanctuary is. I can't even really imagine any land that would make me cut fetches from my xerox deck. Maybe if they started printing mishra's workshop clones for instants and sorceries, but they would need to be at that level of power, and even then you'd probably still play fetches and duals, just less.
While the official thing we did is done, if you tag me in the discord at pretty much any time I'd play. It's also the best place to hear about any future events.
This doesn't seem to have really gotten any attention on tmd, but I played in this, and many for fun practice games through the discord, and the format has been great so far. Lots of cards that can end the game on turn 1 obviously, but tons of counterplay and interesting deckbuilding decisions.
This was run in a league format, meaning we just played each other round robin when we had time, and no one was locked into a single deck. I played three different decks in my 4 matches, prison shops, hollowvine, and a turbo tinker deck.
First one was before the companion nerf, I was trying hard to find a way to make the anti lurrus playable. My solution was leylines, golos, worksops, and trinisphere. Second was a nice op that didn't scoop to me going off with mono red storm. I'd already tutored like 6 cards from my board with a wish and had 30 cards in hand or something.
I've got a bunch of these stored up, I'll drop a couple of my favorites.
In order:
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
I played a few leagues with the deck with cursecatcher, and it was quite bad. On board tricks are a lot less effective than tricks in your hand. My plan with vial was to always be holding up mana for counterspells or wastelanding them to tax their mana. I went really heavy on counterspells under the idea that true name would win every fair matchup. I think with all the counterspells, combo is the best matchup, making rod a lot less necessary. Energy flux and skydiver are huge wins vs shops as well, and with a deck full of basic islands and forces, you generally get to cast your spells. During the challenge, I stole multiple huge stonecoils in multiple different games.
In my experience, the lords are by far the weakest part of the deck. Skydiver answers both of the cards out of shops that race you, ballista and stonecoil, and helps with the mana denial plan of 5 wasteland effects and dazes and flusters. True name is practically the only card that matters vs fair decks, and I generally mull to cavern + true name in the matchup. Silvergil is a decent cantrip, but the 8 lords are mostly just filler.
I actually top 8'd the vintage challenge with merfolk a week ago, perfect 6-0 in swiss before punting away the match in top 8. This was before hullbreacher, so I would be cutting lords for that probably. https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/3543549#paper