Just Keep Swimming

What’s good, Spirit Squad!

Today we’re gonna go over a Modern Regional Championship Qualifier (RCQ) I played this weekend, featuring my current favorite Modern deck: Merfolk!

Hol’ up. So you didn’t even play Spirits?

Shut up. We’ll get to that.

No, seriously. Why Merfolk?

OK, that’s a more serious question. There are a few reasons I enjoy Merfolk, but I suppose I should take this time to say that I’ve actually been playing Merfolk for LONGER than I’ve been playing Spirits! There’s always value to “playing what you know”, but there are a few meta-relevant reasons I enjoy Merfolk’s place in Modern right now. Before we do a bit of a deep dive into those, here’s the deck list I played:

4 Tide Shaper
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Vodalian Hexcatcher
4 Svyelun of Sea and Sky
4 Harbinger of the Seas
3 Subtlety
2 Rishadan Dockhand
2 Harbinger of the Tides
2 Lord of Atlantis
4 Aether Vial
4 Sink into Stupor/Soporific Springs
3 Dismember
3 Flare of Denial
8 Island (335)
4 Mutavault
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Fiery Islet
1 Otawara, Soaring City

Sideboard
4 Tishana’s Tidebinder
3 Unlicensed Hearse
2 Cursed Totem
2 Harbinger of the Tides
2 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
2 Spell Pierce

Now that we know what cards we’re playing, let’s talk about the “why” of the deck choice. I think Merfolk is in a fairly unique place within the Modern metagame, as it serves a lot of the same function as Spirits does in Pioneer. Merfolk wants to be the deck that beats up on any strategies that assemble Card A + Card B, but in return we’re weaker than average against hyper-aggressive creature decks. Spirits tries to do the same job but doesn’t have the ability to straight-up win a game with Harbinger of the Seas as effectively as Merfolk can.

(nice spells, would be shame if you couldn’t cast ’em)

Here’s how I believe Merfolk stacks up against what the best of the Modern meta’s doing:

• Bant Nadu, the best deck in Modern, is one of those A + B decks. They’re looking to assemble the combo of Nadu, Winged Wisdom and Shuko, and Merfolk is in a perfect place to interrupt all of that nonsense. Flare of Denial and Subtlety help with keeping Nadu itself off the stack, Flare of Denial and Spell Pierce can cleanly answer a Shuko on the stack, and you even get both Tide Shaper and Harbinger of the Seas to make sure Urza’s Saga can’t go about doing its thing. They even play Islands in their deck, so your Merfolk end up being unblockable a good portion of the time!
• Boros and Mardu Energy are the hyper-aggressive decks that we’re looking to avoid, but even these aren’t necessarily the end of the world (that title belongs to Izzet Prowess, which thankfully doesn’t see a ton of play). Galvanic Discharge and Lightning Bolt are as annoying as always, but we have 10 “Lord” effects in the deck to try to outpace aggressiveness with, Harbinger of the Seas to lock them out of being able to cast anything, and just enough ways to get creatures off the table early between your 1-drops and Dismember.
• Jeskai Control is one of the best decks in Modern, but between Cavern of Souls and Kira, Great Glass-Spinner it’s pretty hard for them to actually deal with what you’re doing outside of exactly Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury or Wrath of the Skies. At the same time, it’s pretty trivial for you to deal with what they’re doing!
• The last deck I’d say is at the top of the Modern meta would be Ruby Storm. Merfolk players would probably pay money to guarantee that we fight the Ruby Storm matchup every round if that were an option. A resolved Vodalian Hexcatcher can sometimes mean game over by itself, but even if it doesn’t you still have access to cards like Flare of Denial and Spell Pierce.

OK, so you had a plan. How’d your RCQ go?

Spoiler, I guess, but I won it! This won’t always be the case when writing about tournaments (as we can see in our Little Tournament, BIG Lesson Learned! article), but today we get to celebrate a plan realized. Here’s a bit of the play-by-play:

Round 1 vs. Mono-Black Necrodominance: Necrodominance is one of the tougher matchups in Modern, but I did consider this when constructing my sideboard. Spell Pierce is great against both Necrodominance itself and The One Ring, and Kira, Great Glass-Spinner can almost solo any of their March of Wretched Sorrow plans. Sink Into Stupor is also an excellent bit of help from Modern Horizons 3, and thanks to this plan my first opponent didn’t really get to participate too much.

1-0

Round 2 vs. Jeskai Control: Game 1 came right after a discussion with the tournament’s judge, Warren. He favors Azorius Control, and I was updating him on Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury and just how good that card is. I had a pretty firm grasp on Game 1 but Escaping Phlage finally worked on my opponent’s third try, and Phlage killed me by itself. Unfortunately for my opponent, being on the play made game 2 trivial, and an uncounterable Harbinger of the Seas basically turned his entire deck off in Game 3.

2-0

Round 3 vs. Zoo: Chris is one of those guys who absolutely knows what he likes, but even without Merfolk Trickster being anywhere in my 75 Zoo isn’t too difficult for us, outside of exactly the Turn Zero Leyline of the Guildpact into Turn 2 Scion of Draco hands. Harbinger of the Seas turned off his entire mana base, and in Game 2 Tishana’s Tidebinder gets to turn off Territorial Kavu just as easily as Merfolk Trickster. He does mention that Merfolk basically never comes up in his play and that he didn’t really know how to board against the deck. We have plenty of time, so I get to give him some tips before watching more One Piece in between rounds.

3-0

The tournament is only 5 rounds of Swiss, so I got to double-draw into Top 8 as the 3rd seed in playoffs! Pretty exciting stuff, but I’m busy pretending to be the saltiest human alive because the 1st seed overall is a local homie, Justin, on SPIRITS.

I’m not playing Spirits and here we have a Spirits player in the first seed overall. I have failed you all.

Top 8 vs. Zoo: poor Chris has to fight me again, and this time he doesn’t even get to be on the play. Game 1 is basically a stomp, with Harbinger of the Seas turning off everything other than the basic Plains he’d searched for, and a Tide Shaper cleaning that up. In game 2, the sideboarding advice I’d given him earlier panned out (whoops). Pick Your Poison cleans up my Aether Vial nicely, and I have to navigate combat the hard way. It does work, but at least this game was competitive.

Top 4 vs. Mono-Black Necrodominance: different pilot, same plan… although there were a couple of pretty funny moments in Game 2. With an Orcish Bowmasters token on the table, I had a choice of shutting off a basic Swamp or a Phyrexian Tower with Tide Shaper. Almost chose the basic Swamp, but I did remember to look at my opponent’s lands BEFORE finalizing that choice. Whew! There was also a turn in which I could have used Spell Pierce to counter a Necrodominance, but I was already so far ahead on life total that I decided to keep the Pierce for a copy of The One Ring, which it turns out he had!

Finals vs. Goblin Charbelcher Combo: I don’t know that I could have asked for a better matchup in the finals. Years of playing Spirits has all but erased my fear of combo decks, and the friendly banter/smack talk between my opponent and myself might have taken more time than the actual gameplay.

And with the finals being all said and done, that’s a tournament! The Merfolk did the thing they’re supposed to do and I was lucky enough to dodge the hyper-aggressive matchups I didn’t want to face. The perfect combination of a good plan and good luck, as is the case with everyone who wins an event!

Anyone who’s able to make it to the Regional Championship in Charlotte, North Carolina… I’ll see you there! As for everyone else, just keep swimming (or whatever it is your deck of choice does), and I’ll see y’all on the next one!