Deck created by: theletteri
Deck Versions Here
So this is a tribal deck that I have been thinking about making for a while now. The fish are beautiful and honestly the easiest to work with in all of standard’s tribes. Rivals of Ixalan honestly didn’t quite get it where it needs to be. It needs something else before it can become the best, but it’s the most fun I think. These can be fun because of the simple untouchableness they can create. They have many varieties of hexproof, and unblockable. Who needs more? I love to stick to each block, I personally wasn’t a big fan of the Ixalan block, but I’m going to stay true to my ability to keep my decks legal for as long as possible. So you will not find any cards from Aether Revolt or Kaladesh (expensive version excluded), and when Dominaria comes out, I will not modify this to those cards.
This version of merfolk is based on swamping the board with your fish men. The main cards that we hope to activate with it are
Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca
and
Deeproot Elite
. This deck is going to be (if you do it correctly) will easily maneuver around removal. There are going to be so many things that need removed, that it won’t be easy to remove them all, and
Essence Scatter
will be your way to avoid the nasty
Settle the Wreckage
that I hate to play against with a burning passion. The Deeproot Elite + Deeproot Waters
is such a fun combo, because two counters to any creature and two merfolk, and triggers for
Hadana's Climb
if you have it out. The strategy is simple, keep instants to protect, and drown your opponents in fish.
CREATURES
Deeproot Elite
- This in my opinion is one of the most underrated cards. It is so powerful against all of the metas in standard currently. It doesn’t work against control, because your opponent doesn’t play merfolk, its job is to prevent burn from becoming a problem, and your opponent is going to run out of life gain eventually if the vampires don’t beat the power of your fish. Anything that creates tokens will hurt too.
Deeproot Waters
triggers it off of the tokens
Aquatic Incursion
will trigger it twice
Jungleborn Pioneer
triggers it twice. You have so many opportunities to use this card to destroy, and you can even put the counters on itself, so it can’t be removed as easily.
Forerunner of the Heralds
- Find what you need and then do what
Deeproot Elite
can do for others, to itself. It gets out of hand, and you can use itself to find the
Jungleborn Pioneer
to trigger itself twice on top of it all. It just like
Deeproot Elite
can create a way to flip
Hadana's Climb
real fast.
Jungleborn Pioneer
- When you want to swamp the board with fish men create a Hexproof token, to off a bunch of damage, or pump it up with
Deeproot Elite
(considering you can add two counters to it right away) and make it a game ender with the
Aquatic Incursion
. It can’t be removed, so have fun.
Jungleborn Pioneer
itself is there to trigger abilities, and to block.
Kumena's Speaker
- Huh, 2/2 for one mana. Score! It also triggers abilities, and is great for blocking early game.
Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca
- He is an expensive card that is meant for late game stuff. With swamping the board, he for sure isn’t a guy to mess around with because if you do well, you can trigger the third ability twice a turn, but he does require a few creatures to be on the battlefield first, and don’t get sad about how many you need to tap and that removing blockers (you can do it on your opponent’s end step). Many counters, and drawing is crucial to merfolk. So don’t entirely disregard him. But do keep in mind that he is expensive, look through the maybeboard options for replacing two or three to keep this deck extra-budget. I have an ultra-budget version linked at the top of the description.
Merfolk Mistbinder
- Hey, all merfolk are more of a problem. Hey, twice. Hey, now guess what take my 3/3 unblockable
Mist-Cloaked Herald
, for a while while I ramp up the rest of my stuff to end your existence. Haha.
Merfolk Mist-Binder - He is a one drop unblockable, he may be small at first, but if your opponents don’t pay attention, then they may have a problem with
Deeproot Elite
. I personally like
River Sneak
too, but because we are playing merfolk fast, but having the one less mana can create two of these and trigger other things.
Silvergill Adept
- Merfolk that puts another card in your hand. For two mana, that’s a deal. The more the merrier! It keeps your tempo up, so it’s almost like paying two mana for a token actually, because you still have the same number of cards in hand when he is played.
ENCHANTMENTS
Aquatic Incursion
- This card is our game ender actually, create two hexproof merfolk to trigger whatever needed, and then for the throat make a merfolk unblockable. There are only two though, because
Deeproot Waters
is made more for the swamping idea.
Deeproot Waters
- While it may be per cast, it still gets the ramp going with making a ton of hexproof merfolk that can block or become big. This is just a fun way to become the most annoying person you know. More merfolk more problems.
Hadana's Climb
- The start boosts your creatures for fun, then the flip goes and tells your opponents that a 6/6 that can be managed, might also be a 12/12 flyer, that can’t be managed. The flip is so easy to get with merfolk, so just whack them with this
LANDS
Hashep Oasis
- This is one of the only non-ixalan cards in this deck, and the only one in the mainboard. It’s simple enough for sure, but when Hour of Devastation goes out of standard you can replace it with two forests, and two islands, but if you’re getting mana-swamped this will be a good way to pass the time.
Woodland Stream
- Two colors that you need, good if you have no one drops, or you can play two one drops turn two and then a three drop turn three, (if you don’t have a two drop)
SIDEBOARD
Essence Scatter
- You have a way to get rid of those pesky creatures, like
Glorybringer
, or
Hazoret the Fervent
. You won’t get burned, because they probably can’t play the creatures due to the fact that they never made it to the field to begin with. Yay counters.
Kopala, Warden of Waves
- You wish to throw down some of them
Vraska's Contempt
s on my Creatures? Well you need to pay six per contempt. Sorry, but not really.
Negate
- In case Kopala isn’t enough to stop them, why not counter it? It’s what every good citizen of the color blue would do. Negate will do any instant or sorcery spells, so removal doesn’t get to annoying.
Unsummon
- If you need to bounce your opponent’s creatures because it’s getting to big off of their counters, just use this bad boy to do it, and it’s even more fun to synergy Essence Scatter + Unsummon
to really pick on your opponents.
SUBSTITUTES
On the maybeboard of this deck you will find discluded cards from this version to compensate for price. Some people believe it or not won’t spend hundreds of dollars on a deck. So these are the cards that get switched out from the normal deck into this version to compensate for price.
River Sneak
- In ultra-budget this card gets added to fill in gaps for missing
Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca
s, as well as the
Forerunner of the Heralds
. This card is very similar to
Mist-Cloaked Herald
but it gets a little boost for Merfolk entering (which is nice with the token production we do here).
Jadelight Ranger
- This card is super expensive, so we only add this to the high budget play. Although the explore ability keeps your tempo up, and makes him become much more powerful quite quick. So this card is really great for the deck.
Merfolk Branchwalker
- Only found in high budget play. This is simply because I personally don’t like this card but it can be very helpful. It has the tempo explore function, and it keeps variety throughout each version.
Botanical Sanctum
- He isn’t very fair to pay for unless you have the money, but it is such a great turn 1 or 2 land that must be added if you have the money to pay for it.
Blooming Marsh
- For the Black Splash in Expensive
Foul Orchard
- For the Black Spash in Expensive
Fatal Push
- One mana to destroy Four CMC creature. Heck yeah.
Vraska's Contempt
- Exile and gain life. Can be planeswalkers too which will help against the new Karn.
I bought the ultra-budget deck with a very small modification of turning one
River Sneak
into a
Deeproot Elite
so I will do updates on how well this bad boy works at a standard competition at my local store. I am not the best player actually (I am just really good at deckbuilding) I make a lot of silly mistakes so it will more than likely perform better for you than me.
Thank you for the look see on this deck, please upvote, and if you have questions or have suggestions please comment so I can help, or be helped.
