The reason for Tidebinder mage against jund is so you can shave cards that do little or nothing like Aether Vial for more permanents that swing in for damage. Jund is all about 1 for 1 and the person that wins is the one that has the most permanents on the battlefield after all cards are spent. This is the biggest reason Tidebinder will likely never be cut from my sideboard, I just need more permanents to bring in that attack.

I never said that Harbinger couldn’t disrupt attackers, I said it can’t disrupt blockers, unless you have four mana and a Reejerey up, and that’s not particularly likely. Yes, if your plan is to go all in on Harbinger then 4 Reejerey is correct but I don’t think that it’s worth it right now. Most of the decks you mention can and will play around Harbinger if it looks like you have it (and four mana or an untapped Vial is hard to hide), and then win with protection anyway and if Bloom is tapping to attack then you are almost certainly winning the race since they’re playing fairly. Harbinger is at its best against attackers, but most of the time (outside of Affinity, and I didn’t notice much of an improvement there when I ran Harbinger) if they’re attacking then your board is clear, or you are winning evasively and your opponent cannot block which means that Harbinger doesn’t affect your ability to win.

With Delver losing popularity we are getting a lot of fast comboish decks like Infect and Affinity which don’t do well against Delver’s pile of burn and more Abzan (in my area anyway). With Abzan coming back the format is slowing down and Scapeshift is showing up more. For this reason I see the format as going more midrange again.

The problem is that Hibernation is a kingly tempo card but only works when you have your own board presence to immediately follow it up. Doug’s deck in particular has a lot of creatures with haste (or pseudo-haste in Rampager’s case) so the window to win is very narrow and he puts so much pressure on so quickly that I frequently have to block disadvantageously to survive. Lavamancer really just lets him recover from slow starts. The solution is more hard removal and Kitchen Finks but that stretches the mana too much (I’d have to play at least two Mystic Gates and cut the Tec Edges) and it’s not enough of a metagame presence to justify making a lot of other matchups worse.

I was playing Chalice against a number of decks and found that it was a bad idea unless I set it to zero. It hits your Paths and once you could set it to one it was often too late. These day’s I’d leave Chalice at home unless Bloom and Living End are big.

I play 15 sources of colored mana, 8 of which are white. Since I only play Path main it is rarely an issue and if I really need white post-board I will mulligan aggressively.

Haha, thanks. I think I’ll drop Sheridan a line if that’s the case. I don’t have some of the shiny trophies some of the other people here do, but I like to think I’m at least decent.

Hi mate!
I read every article including the comments on this site. Everytime I read one of your comments I think “man, I’d really like if this guy would write for this site” 😀

I see where you’re coming from on the 2 drops and Cursecatcher (I agree, they are the core of the deck), but I disagree that everything else is just support. Master of Waves, for example, is an alternate win condition/trump card against anything red (I love landing these against Jund and Burn). Harbinger and Tidebinder come in as disruption – they’re not there to support the main guys, although they do so indirectly by being bodies and drawing out some removal at times. They’re there to scramble the opponent’s gameplan, and they do that job well in my experience. And with regards to the “Harbinger can’t disrupt enemy attackers” statement you made earlier… my experience disagrees with that. A Vial on 2 with a Harbinger is a devastating play (reminiscent of a Snapcaster flashing back a removal spell in Grixis Control/Delver/Twin), and that’s actually led me to trim my Vapor Snag count, because Harbinger did the job on its own. I don’t agree with the assertion that Modern is very midrange-y at the time, given that Affinity, Merfolk, Burn, Amulet Bloom, and Infect (none of which want to be playing a midrange game) are all Tier 1. If anything, the meta was more midrange-centric when Grixis Control was Tier 1, since Jund was the #1 deck and Abzan was on the rise. We’re in the process of striking a balance, and Harbinger has game against the field. Another point is that you say the Reejerey + Harbinger interaction “rarely happens”. I need to keep track of my statistics, but my (admittedly anecdotal) experience has been that it’s more common than that. I’ve been very pleased with my 4 Harbinger/4 Reejerey mix.

Your objections to Tidebinder are definitely more reasonable, especially if Zoo isn’t prominent in your meta (though I still like it against Burn). I’ve waffled between it and Hibernation many times. Speaking of which, I’m surprised that Hibernation has not done the job against Zoo in general for you. In my experience, that card is almost a game-ender. And looking at Doug’s list (which he’s obviously tweaked a bit, since you mentioned him having a Grim Lavamancer), the only problematic thing it doesn’t catch is that Lavamancer (which makes him a prime bounce/Path target for your list). Maybe you sneak in Chalice of the Void to mess with their 1-drops? It has game in a lot of other matchups so it’s not Zoo-only tech.

I definitely see where you’re coming from in not wanting to take damage from your lands, but in that case, wouldn’t you need more sources of white? 8 for a 20-card mana base feels low to me.

Here’s the thing about creatures in Merfolk: The deck is about the two-drops and Cursecatcher. Everything else is just support for those 16 creatures. Running more creatures is not necessarily correct unless they’re supporting the islandwalk lords in a meaningful fashion. I ran three Harbinger’s at the start of the Modern PPTQ season, cut them down to two, and then cut them entirely. It does not clear blockers, and given the metagame I’ve seen it only gets value when you are behind, and because Modern is very midrangy right now and focused on dropping bombs, the tempo gain is usually not enough to justify the 2/2. Like I said, if Delver and tempo in general were a larger part of the format Harbinger would be an auto include, but right now, especially with the rise in Abzan I’ve seen it isn’t good enough. For the moment, Echoing Truth is better especially since it can save your creatures from removal.

I have tried Tidebinder before and cut it for the much more powerful Hibernate. It’s so narrow that it was not a maindeck card (though if the Top 8 is indicative of a larger shift that may change) and wasn’t swingy enough in the sideboard. I always considered it a dedicated anti-Green card since red creatures don’t see much play outside Burn, and it’s pretty ineffective there. Yes, it is very good against Naya Zoo. Doug is the only player I’ve met who regularly plays that deck, and when I do see others with Zoo they’re almost always heavy white. As bad as Doug is for me, he’s not worth dedicating sideboard space to. If Zoo is a bigger part of your meta then by all means run Tidebinder, but I don’t see that deck I see Elves and Tidebinder does nothing there.

I can see where Harbinger might be good against Infect, but Spreading Seas and blockers deal with 2/3 of the usual infecters anyway and if your opponent is smart they’ll play around Harbinger until the lethal turn where they have the protection to kill you anyway (this was my experience over the summer) and Tidebinder doesn’t hit Agent or Inkmoth. Again, with Infect it was a case of choosing to lose to specific cards so that I could tap out to try and win and in neither loss would additional creatures have helped.

Cavern of Souls has a lengthy discussion in the deck tech I’m sandbagging, but the short version is that it’s only really good when counter heavy decks are prevalent, which they aren’t right now, and the white is better against the GBx decks and Bloom. You never want to deal yourself damage in Merfolk (it’s a strength of the deck) so fetches and shocks are bad and unnecessary. Half my colored sources are white so I usually don’t have problems casing my single white spells.

Firstly, I think that you’re not running enough creatures mainboard – 22 Merfolk and 2 Kira is really low, given that most Merfolk lists are trending toward 26-30 (I’m right in the middle of that range at 28, but I run Kira in the sideboard, which means I’m running a heck of a lot more Fish). I’m also surprised that you dedicate an entire section to ragging on Tidebinder Mage and Harbinger of the Tides, given that you speaking openly about your struggles with those aggressive Zoo and Infect decks. My mono-blue Merfolk beats Infect and Zoo regularly, and the cards that you deride are a big reason why (Tidebinder hitting red as well as green dudes is relevant). Also, I know that UW doesn’t have much room in the mana base for Cavern of Souls (one of the major reasons I dislike the splash) and that taking damage from your lands weakens you against Burn, but I’m still surprised to see 0 fetches and shocks. The white in your mana base seems rather inconsistent.