Pre-Ugin you are entirely correct, post-Ugin Tec Edge is a little slow. In my experience when Tron plays its fourth land they will be able to Ugin even if you’ve Spread them already thanks to Nature’s Claim post-board. I think Eldrazi is likely enough to supplant Tron for the moment not to worry about, but you are right the board needs work now that the metagame has proven to be very different than I was expecting. How it will change will depend on what happens at the SCG events over the next couple weeks.

Meddling Mage has been for combo decks, especially Grishoalbrand and Scapeshift. It is a probable cut if the trend is away from those decks towards Chord of Calling decks and Eldrazi.

Thank you! I also hope to have worthy results to write about soon!

Very good games to you too, and good luck in the future!

if you should decide to go mono blue, then I would start with the spell base of 4 AEther Vial, 4 Spreading Seas, 2 Sea’s Claim, 2 Echoing Truth/Dismember. Not sure which is better to have at the moment Echoing Truth or Dismember. However in UW with Path to Exile at the ready, Echoing Truth adds a ton of utility since it can be saved for bouncing other problematic permanants. Path to Exile is needed so badly right now that I think going mono blue might be a mistake.

So I don’t see where the room is to add Sea’s Claim to the maindeck which means I think it would be fine as a 2 or 3 of in the sideboard for this deck going forward. But main or side, I think Merfolk is definitely going to want to run some number of copies of Sea’s Claim in it’s 75 to supplement Spreading Seas.

I was a college debater so I have a lot of experience writing very fast and staying focused on the game. I use shorthand notes for each lifetotal changes and note the important play sequences so that I can recreate them afterwards. Judges encourage note taking to help sort out disputes so this really just grew from me protecting myself against bad judge calls.

Without tec edge (or ghost quarter) you are going to lose to RG tron everytime – 4x spreading seas will not get you there. Similarly your midrange three colour matchups suffer from no tec edge. What are you boarding out – if you board out vials – your sb needs a ton of work to be honest..

I disagree. Even though I think that UW merfolk is the least optimal build it doesn’t come up that often on here. The twin discussion was necessary and the reasons for its ban were not strong.

The RUG delver stuff is pretty much correct though

Love the website and look daily for new articles, mostly great sometimes not so.

Wow, I’ve never thought of it that way before! You sure told me.

Hey mister anonymous, did you notice that these articles are presented free of charge? Maybe you will consider your no loss option of not reading them if you don’t like them.

Sheridan, don’t waste your time replying to criticism that has no constructive input on what should be done differently.

Yeah, I’m with you on that. Now the question is, mainboard or sideboard? I’ll test both, but overall prevalence makes me lean toward main.

So far Harbinger has been the real all-star in that matchup for me but yes for Eldrazi you do need Sea’s Claim to win the match. You can spike a few games by just Merfolk being Merfolk but their mana is fast enough that they can race you more often than not, which is the same problem you have against Elves. I don’t like Claim, but while Eldrazi is the new hotness you need them.

Agree that Folk is great against Eldrazi. I have a ton of slots in my Stompy SB to diffuse that matchup. Congrats on the split.

Interesting. I’m guessing this is why you didn’t feel that Sea’s Claim was worth reaching for at the moment. Do you think you’d be able to take down Eldrazi if you didn’t draw a Spreading Seas? Because my testing experience is actually pointing me toward more Seas effects, because without it I tended to struggle.