I agree totally here – 3 Kira’s me seem clunky – but you will lose matches against spot removal.dec without her – I expect may spot remval dense decks to come into the format moving forward..

I agree with this. I wouldn’t count on my opponent misplaying (although it does happen more than you’d think) as part of my strategy.

Ad Nauseam is a weird deck. On the one hand it can win surprisingly quickly and at instant speed. On the other if it never finds or resolves it’s namesake card it can’t win. For that reason I don’t think it has good or bad matchups so much as it has good and bad matches. On that note if you didn’t think that it was playable before then nothing has really changed, you still need to find and resolve Ad Nauseam before the opponent kills you. If the format moves increasingly linear then yes, by all means play the deck, it is reasonably fast enough to hang with aggro and more difficult to disrupt than you may think. However, Stony Silence can put a serious hurt on your acceleration and that card is likely to see a lot more play now that Affinity has been unleashed. Guess what I’m saying is that Ad Nauseam is definitely viable, but you have to know and accept the risks involved.

In the matchups where Kira really shines (Grixis, formerly Twin, and control) you’re pretty locked into playing a longer game and for those you want 3 Kira’s. She is an easy card to board out against many other decks because against many linear decks she is pretty cluncky especially since you’re likely to get less time to play Master of Waves these days.

Relying? No. Benefiting from? Yes. I refuse to rely on any single card to win me a game and while Kor Firewalker helps a lot against Burn it does not win the game. Merfolk vs. Burn is a question of Burn’s speed vs. Merfolk’s board presence. Merfolk needs to overwhelm Burn’s speed with an insurmountable offense. An early Firewalker buys time to develop that presence but if you fail to assemble a decent amount of fish in play you will lose. I run Firewalker because it is a good speedbump but I do not need him to win, so I don’t see any reason to lose percentage points adding fetchlands just to be certain that I can cast it turn two when it isn’t necessarily required.

As for Stony Silence it is only necessary against Affinity when they are on the Arcbound Ravager/Steel Overseer plan. This is happens to be their easiest to disrupt plan with Path and Echoing Truth. Yes, Silence is very good at slowing them down in general, but my loses usually come from a very explosive turn 1-2 involving Cranial Plating or a very hard to disrupt Signal Pest rush (which incidentally Echoing Truth is very good against) both of which ignore Stony. If Silence wasn’t also good against Tron I’d prefer to run Hurkyl’s Recall for Affinity since it gains you so much time and tempo. Does turn two Stony help me? Yes. Is it enough to save me? No. I don’t gain enough from ensuring that I have white turn two every game (when I’m also fairly unlikely to actually need it most of the time) to justify the life loss that would entail.

I’ve tried many different combinations of lands and colors in Merfolk and tested them extensively. If I’m telling you that my experience tells me that my numbers are fine it is because I’ve put the time in to be certain that they work.

The bigger question is – is that you appear to be relying on Vial to cast Kor Firewalker – hmm.. You also don’t seem to understand that Stony Silence has to hit early – but again – you have a solution – ill just cantrip to it.. hmm. ‘Ive been playing the deck for years’ – poorly it seems..

It’s not the reason to play it, merely an occasional bonus. It’s surprisingly strong against most aggro decks since they, much like Merfolk, rely on redundancy and building large board presences so it is very possible to steal a lot of tempo and damage from both Affinity and Zoo. On its own Echoing Truth defeats tokens decks and cleanly answers Lingering Souls. It’s also one of the only maindeckable ways that Merfolk can beat Ensnaring Bridge or Ghostly Prison. As a powerful, versatile card I’ve always been surprised that blue decks never ran it.

Counting on your opponents to play miserably is a pretty bad reason to include a card IMO

What’s more hilarious is that you are running Hurkyl’s recall in a UW list – isn’t Stony Silence the only reason to run white (by the 4x paths are incredibly questionable with spreading seas).

This is the worst list to ever be printed in a place like modern nexus – pls go back to mtg salvation with your list – im not sure its even worthy of that..

But that aside, why thinking about Merfolk if you expect Affinity to be the go-to deck?
Even with the whitesplash the matchup barely gets equal.

Here is my real beef with your article though. I think your assumption is completely wrong.
I don’t believe Affinity will rule the world. Actually i think it will get stomped to death!
All the sideboardslots that were spend on Twin will directly convert into Affinityhate in Addition to what decks already ran. Affinity is on everyones radar. There is no way, that white, red or green colored decks will overlook the affinitymatchup. Even more so that Tron and Lantern profit from Twinban as well.

I understood what you meant. My point is that if you’re looking for a dedicated token producing beatdown machine you should be looking at Young Pyromancer because in Modern it’s at a better place in the curve and in a better color. The Legacy and Vintage Mentor decks tend to be slower than the Pyromancer decks and I’ve come to believe that is also true of Modern. If I’m going wide it’s not to get around creatures it’s to spread out topdecked removal after a longer attrition fight. Again, it’s a slower midrange/control list. If you need reach, you should be playing a faster deck with Young Pyromancer.

I knew exactly which article you were referencing. I assure you that I have considered it, but experience has shown me that 8 sources is perfectly fine, mostly because the white isn’t THAT critical to the deck so that even when I never see a white source it doesn’t always affect the outcome. You need to get a little lucky against Affinity anyway so missing a turn 2 Stony might not win you the game.

As for Burn, in my experience what I lose to either my opponent dropping early creatures or me failing to put together a reasonable clock. In either of those cases restricting Burn’s mana isn’t going to save me. My burn opponents also frequently play 3+ lands without help from Path so it’s rare that I can actually shut them off of mana. I’d rather advance my board state or answer their creatures than try to shut off their hand.

Oh, and Sea’s Claim is clearly worse than Spreading Seas obviously, so what works for Spreading Seas may not be worth it for Sea’s Claim (though more one drops never hurt).

Here’s a link to the Carston article in case you want to check it out: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/frank-analysis-how-many-colored-mana-sources-do-you-need-to-consistently-cast-your-spells/

He does make allowances for cantrips; as a rule of thumb, you divide by 4 to count as “virtual land”. So you could treat Merfolk as having two additional white sources, which has you getting a white source reliably (90% of the time) on turn 5 on the play with 8 actual white sources.

I’ll note that having played a lot of mono-blue Merfolk, keeping in spreading seas versus Burn post-board has almost always felt very powerful. It absolutely wrecks what should be really good hands (2 lands with lots of gas). Sometimes it just cuts them off a color, which is still pretty solid. Other times, it lets you sweep through their blockers (who sometimes are not in a position to attack due to your merfolk) and win a turn faster. Of course, path does open up their manabase a little bit more, so may be a better fit for mono blue than UW.

When I say Mentor needs to be paired with 1 mana spells, its because Mentor’s success in vintage/legacy has been done with free spells like Gush and Force of Will. You don’t have those in modern, so the closest analogue are 1 mana spells like Bolt.

The inherent issue is that you have no way of interacting with the top of your opponent’s library, and Mentor lines up very poorly against Goyf without a mass of cheap spells that allow you to go wide.

Cutting removal vs. Zoo is a good way to get beaten down into the ground, since you can’t interact with their dudes and they’re just way too fast for Mentor to really matter against.

Also, the thing about Bolt. You have no reach. You can’t close games out without having access to burn to finish off an opponent, which is the main reason Jund sees play over junk (though both decks are pretty bad now).

Truths vs Zoo is actually very good. The way the matches have played out for me is that I trade Path, Cut, and Inquisition for creatures until either the opponent is out or I’m dead. After that you drop a win condition, reload with Truths and hope to hit Sorin to seal the game. Trading a Bolt for 3 cards is still very good, and Zoo doesn’t run that much burn so I’m willing to go very low against them (Burn is obviously a different matter).

I’ve been getting to 6 quite often, actually and even when you don’t Colonnade is still very good since it fixes your mana and is unaffected by Choke or Boil.

I think your objection is rooted in you thinking that this list is about Monastery Mentor like my previous lists were. It isn’t. This is a midrange deck that’s about grinding with the Lingering Souls and removal package. Monastery Mentor is really just a win condition that you drop once you’ve cleared the way with discard and Vendilion Clique. Frankly, if you want to pair Mentor with 1 mana instants then you’re looking at Delver, and as I mentioned last time I talked about Mentor, that means you actually want Young Pyromancer. Mentor is intended for slower decks that clear the way for him and have proactive spells after the fact, not for decks that are trying to get under the opponent.

As I mentioned, I agree that right now you don’t want to be fair. Go for unfair or linear until a clearer picture of the metagame emerges.