Fixing Merfolk

Originally I built my merfolk deck along the same lines as my druid deck; quick to hit but little defense. When I decided to run this deck at last weeks Friday Night Magic tournament I added in some control and mill cards to give me more options mid and late game. I added 2 Remove Soul, 2 Negate, 2 Coordinated Barrage, 3 Drowner of Secrets. I kept 2 or 3 Judge of Currents in the main deck just in case and he was a welcome sight against several Red/Green Beatdown variants. I also added in 2 Silvergill Dousers to keep cards like Chameleon Colossus at bay until I could manage to overrun them with tokens or mill them out. A couple games I managed to mill my opponents deck down without the addition of Grimoire Thief (which I forgot to add in before leaving my apartment :S). Oblivion Ring seemed to be the card of the night and I spent most of my negates trying to keep my Drowners and Merrow Reejerey in play. All in all my favorite card of the night was Mirrorweave. It saved my hide countless times especially against aggro decks. I would just wait until they swung out with all of their 3/3s and bigger, Mirrorweave one of my tokens and wipe their side of the board by blocking with my tokens. A perfect example of how good this card really is happened during the last match of the night:

I have a ~5 1/1 tokens, a Douser, Drowner, and two Merrow Commerce out and I'm trying to mill my opponent before he has time to beat me down with red/green goblins. I'm staring down the business ends of two Boartusk Lieges and a Boggart Ram-Gang who looked mighty hungry and my Merfolk seemed to be on the menu. A quick check of my hand showed a shiny Mirrorweave and enough mana to play it. I checked my side of the board and then his. I did some mental math estimating I needed to stall him for just one more turn to be able to mill him out. As I figured he turns his board sideways declaring that he was attacking me with everything he had. I quickly tapped four and Mirrorweaved my Douser and tapped 3 of my creatures to reduce their enemy's power to zero. I then waited for him to finish his turn and for my creatures to return to normal. After untapping, tapping to mill, untapping for one of my Commerce, re-tapping to mill, untapping for the other Commerce, re-tapping to mill again I had just enough to mill him out.

To make a long story even longer adding control elements to the deck went a long way towards increasing its effectiveness and resilience. Even though my record wasn't the greatest (2 Wins-2 Losses-1 Tie) I was very pleased with the performance of the deck in it's current form and with my play throughout the night. I will add "before" and "after" decklists when I get home tonight!

Food for thought...

EDH Zombies anybody??

EDH-ification

EDH or Elder Dragon Highlander is a form of constructed magic that my play group is getting involved in and its been pretty fun to think of deck ideas. Basically an EDH deck consists of a "General" creature which starts out the game removed from game and can play it any time you normally could as if it was in your hand. You can only put cards in your deck that share colors with your general. The other limitation on construction is that your deck must have a minimum of 100 Vintage-legal cards and cannot contain multiple copies of the same card (besides basic lands). If you play your general throughout the course of the game and it is killed, instead of putting it into your graveyard you remove it from game again. You can play it again once it has hit RFG but every time you do, the cost increases by two colorless. It leads to some interesting deck building strategies and some out of the box thinking! I threw together a mono white soldier deck with Akroma, Angel of Wrath as my General. I'm also toying with the idea of a blue/black deck with Circu, Dimir Lobotomist as the General or a Red/White/Green deck with Rith, the Awakener as the General. I will post a decklist or two tomorrow after Ive had a few hours of sleep and a few cups of coffee..

Druids!

Who says you can't have a fun, competitive type II deck that isn't Tier I? "Druids!" utilizes the basic strategy of accelerating into Gilt-Leaf Archdruid and then stealing an opponents lands. Using the "Elfball" elements of the deck (Heritage Druid, Nettle Sentinel, Hunting Triad, and Elvish Promenade) you can accomplish this task as quickly as turn 4! Avoiding those pesky Wraths if you are on the play. I've been wanting to build this deck for a while but I've been too busy prepping for the PTQ next month and getting my Esper-Control Deck ready for tournament play. (Both my Extended "Ravinity" and Type II "Esper Kevilark Control" decks will be previewed in later posts!) Against control decks it's a glass cannon but against any other type of deck it fairs pretty well and is a blast to play! I am still working on a sideboard that will toughen it up a bit for control match ups but this is the deck in it's current form:

"Druids!" Decklist:

Creature Spells:
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Elvish Harbinger
4 Gilt-Leaf Archdruid
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinal
4 Treefolk Harbinger
4 Devoted Druid
2 Farhaven Elf
2 Leaf Gilder
2 Noble Hierarch
2 Imperious Perfect

Other Spells:
2 Elvish Promenade
2 Hunting Triad

Lands:
20 Forest