Some Fishy Fun Facts

Well I didn't get a chance to play when Merfolk (also known as Fish) were in standard. One of my friends from the college I attend, Adam, showed me how powerful they are by consistently beating me with his Merfolk deck. I love combos, control and just the epic-ness that Merfolk bring. So, I built myself a Fish deck and it is today's topic of discussion.

Here is my Deck List:

4x Cursecatcher
3x Enclave Cryptologist
4x Stonybrook Banneret
3x Coralhelm Commander
3x Inkfathom Infiltrator
4x Merfolk Sovereign
4x Merrow Reejerey

4x Aquitect's Will
4x Counter Spell
3x Merrow Commerce
4x Savor the Moment

4x Halimar Depths
16x Island

Okay, first I should start off with two major points. One is that this deck is missing one major component. The missing card is Lord of Atlantis. For those of you who don't know Lord of Atlantis give +1/+1 and islandwalk to all merfolk in play (including your opponent's). The essential part is the islandwalk. Islandwalk, because of Aquitect's Will makes all your merfolk unblockable. Also, Lord of Atlantis is the lowest casting cost lord in the deck at UU. The highest and most mana intensive is the Sovereign at 1UU.

The second point is that Counterspell makes this deck legal only in the Legacy format. However, I have played this build against several different types of decks and I found even without the Counterspell it plays quite well. So to make it legal in Extended only Counterspell would have to be changed. The most versatile replacement card being Deprive from Rise of the Eldrazi. But the drawback is that you have to return a land to your hand. This is not a huge drawback as long you have a Reejerey in play.

But what it does do, is put more pressure on you to get to 3 mana. This deck almost requires you to get to 3 mana to be effective. Now there are special circumstances when this isn't a problem. For example, one game I had two mana an Infathom Infiltrator, a Stonybrook Banneret, Merrow Reejerey, and Counterspell in hand. Now I chose the easy play (the Stonybrook) so next turn I could play the Reejerey and if I happened to draw an Island, the Infiltrator as well. But my opponent was no push-over and as soon as Stonybrook hit the field he ate a lightning Bolt. (I did indeed draw an Island) I went for the Reejerey to desperately try and get back in the game. He stuck because my opponent had already burned 5+ creatures. He also didn't draw any burn for 2 turns which let me get the board position I needed to win the game. But if he had a burn spell the turn the Reejerey came out, it would certainly have been game over. If I had to use a Deprive to counter a spell it may also have been game over. Returning a land to my hand at that point in the game would have slowed me down significantly. This should be no surprise because Counterspell is the best counter target spell card in the game and well Deprive is not (sniffel).

The Merrow Reejerey is the best card in this deck in my opinion. It buffs all your other merfolk, can be reduced to a CMC of U by having two Stonybrooks in play, and the best part is that whenever you play a merfolk spell you may tap or untap target permanent. This is HUGE. It allows you to untap land after playing a merfolk spell. With one Reejerey in play you can reduce the cost of any merfolk spell by Blue. For merfolk that cost Blue if you have two Reejerey in play then you actually net one mana. It situations where mana isn't a problem there is always the option of tapping down creatures or opponents land (be careful when you do this though because they cast a spell in response to you trying to tap their lands). Merrow Commerce is crazy because you can untap all your merfolk at the end of your end step. This means you can attack and block (almost like vigilence but better). Enclave Cryptologist lets you draw large amounts of cards when fully levelled due the Commerce's effect.

The clincher in the deck is Savor the Moment. Or as Adam likes to call it, Savor the Flavor. This can be a game changing / game winning card. Why? Well you can take an extra turn for a measley 1UU, thats right folks (No seriously stop drooling. its disgusting, haha just kidding). The draw back about skipping the untap step doesn't matter because of the Merrow Commerce. So you get to draw a card and have two combat phasing. This is amazing because so much damage is usually unblockable. The Lord of Atlantis would make this so crazy awesome I almost might not want to play the deck cause it would so good. Nahh, I'd still play it.

The drawback with the deck as it right now is that it relies on getting cards like Merrow Reejerey and Inkfathom Infiltrator as well as other Merfolk on the battlefield to go off. Which means that it is vulnerable to to burn decks as well as decks with heavy removal. To get around this cards like Negate and Lullmage Mentor can get sideboarded in. This will help to get you more creatures on the field and into a position where you can counter your opponent's spells by tapping 7 Merfolk. Remember that Negate, Essence Scatter, Deprive all put 1/1 Merfolk into play using the Mentor's ability.


I will be posting an Ideal deck list as well as some Game records so you can see turn by turn how the deck was played.