Swim With The Fishes

 Last year I started working on the merfolk deck I had, only to realize that there would probably be some cool new merfolk released in Lorwyn Eclipsed. That suggested I should table Piranacon until that set came out and then see what I could do with iit.

Now that Lorwyn Eclipsed is out....the merfolk are a whole lot of meh. 

I've tried some different configurations of the deck and the big problem is none of them feel good. I'm just goldfishing and the deck doesn't do anything. 

And it has me wondering if there's something I can do to change that.

2 Lord of Atlantis
3 Tidal Courier
2 Galina's Knight
3 Merrow Reejerey
1 True-Name Nemesis
2 Svyelun of Sea and Sky
3 Sygg, Wanderwine Wisdom
3 Deepchannel Duelist
1 Deepway Navigator

4 Plumes of Peace

4 Counterspell
2 Emergency Eject
2 Opt
3 Shelter

3 Plains
3 Wanderwine Hub
4 Tundra
13 Island

2 Sygg's Command

I'm considering just retiring the idea. In part because as a person who's been playing this game for thirty years, I feel like I should have a merfolk deck instead of enjoying the play patterns. 

Which is a pretty silly way to go about it, isn't it? 

Maybe this would be an excellent deck to translate into Commander: I could make it WUG and have access to a lot more shenanigans without having to feel 'serious'. 

The cards I'm thinking of for that commander would be Brenard, Amareth or Morska.

Tide Goes Out

Yeah...it was pretty bad.

First, there's just a LOT at the three-cost spot, and some of those cards are weak as hell: Plumes of Peace is a lockdown card, but the Forecast ability is just a mana siphon in a deck that doesn't have it to spare, and Stonybrook Schoolmaster isn't strong by itself or fast enough to help this deck go wide. 

Merrow Harbinger costs four and doesn't refill my hand. Islandwalk isn't as relevant as flying can be. 

The Ghostway/Jolting Merfolk combo has ben useful, but I'm wondering how helpful Akroma's Blessing is--it's not a card I've played but just cycled. 

So I started by replacing these cards:

2 Merrow Harbinger, 3 Stonybrook Schoolmaster 

For 2 Unsettled Mariner and 2 Svyelun of Sea and Sky and 1 Island.

Of course, after I say that Akroma's Blessing didn't do much, I ended up playing it for the win against one of Matt's decks....

But it was while discussing the deck with Matt that I realized that I should hold off on further changes to this until Llorwyn Eclipsed comes out--as that will have merfolk and likely ones in White.

So; as of 8/6/25 I am tabling the deck....to work on something I have been inspired by!

Piranacon

Don't worry folks, I'm not quite done with Kingbreaker but I need more time to test. So instead we have a true callback, we have:

2 Lord of Atlantis
3 Tidal Courier
1 Wake Thrasher
2 Galina's Knight
4 Judge of Currents
2 Merrow Harbinger
3 Merrow Reejerey
3 Stonybrook Schoolmaster
3 Jolting Merfolk
2 Sejiri Merfolk
1 True-Name Nemesis

4 Plumes of Peace

2 Toils of Night and Day
3 Ghostway
3 Akroma's Blessing

7 Plains
3 Wanderwine Hub
4 Tundra
8 Island

That's right. Merfolk. Before they decided that Green was a better pairing than white. 

Originally, this deck was using a Merrow Commerce/Drowner of Secrets combo to mill the opponent out. 

That...did not work. There wasn't enough control to give the deck time to mill sixty cards, and the win conditions were vulnerable to the most common removal in the format; creature removal. 

This new version is more midrange, with the idea being that I can tap down my opponent's creatures long enough to do 20 damage, with boosted Merfolk. Let's see what happens--especially since this deck hasn't seen an update since Llorwyn. 

The deck is named after the Transformer, of course.