And what happened to Cavern of Souls? Or is uncounterable just not that important?

I would totally agree with you that “fairness” isn’t determined by power. I was arguing more that the fact that Burn approaches the game by making their damage unpreventable at the cost of repeatable (thus requiring hyper-efficient 3 damage-to 1 card spells) is what puts it in to “fair” territory. In the same way Affinity uses explosive speed, Burn uses non-preventing damage. Having said that, I totally see where you’re coming from and respect your definition. Thanks for the reply!

The distinction for me is that the scale isn’t determined by power. It’s about how a deck approaches the game. Burn is inherently fair because it plays a fair game and achieves a fair end. It may feel “fair”, but trading a card for a card (if you value life as the Philosophy of Fire states) is a fair strategy. The unfairness stems from how poorly positioned most decks are against Burn thanks to their reliance on fetch/shocklands for the manabase. It certainly has a lot in common with “fair” decks in terms of losing to hate cards, but that by itself doesn’t shift it from fair territory. Attacking from a different angle is still fair.

Preach, brother. How many times can people keep making the same mistake? As for Spirits… yeah, I think we’ll just have to wait on the cardpool hopefully getting a bit deeper.

In open metas you are right, it is bad Merfolk. However, it has certain good matchups that are much better than the Merfolk’s, so when the time is right it will be better. A metagame deck through and through.

There’s definite three-drop bloat, and that’s why I’m pining for a two-drop spirit who flies. If there were another good flier I’d probably play it but there really aren’t options. A Vryn Wingmare that costs one less and is a spirit is my ideal choice.

That was exactly what I was implying. Between Affinity and the other “fair” decks I’m not surprised Merfolk struggled. I didn’t know about the Salvation reports, but I am always stunned when any deck does that. After years of articles warning players against free-riding on hate cards, and frequent reports lamenting the choice, people still make the mistake. I guess there’s something to be said for learning it on your own but COME ON ALREADY!

Regarding Merfolk posting a good-but-not-great record-based metagame percentage… I’d wager Affinity being at the top and a lot of lists opting to not include Recalls (as evidenced by the reports on the Merfolk thread on MTGSalvation) have a lot to do with it. Affinity is always present at big events, and it’s always a mistake to cut your Recalls if you’re going to one, but for reasons that mystify me, people just. Keep. Doing it.

I think that the quality of the drop 2 slot is pretty low
– Selfless spirit is nice, but more a SB material,
– Anafeza is better as a combo enabler, but as a value creature it’s not that good.
– Spirit of the Labyrinth also is not that good, there are matchups where it might be good, but in other matches it just a Blade of the Sixth Pride.
– And because the quality of the spirits is low, Rattlechains ends being bad, the best thing it does is protect spell queller from removal.

Basically the deck is trying too much to force synergy to a point that is using cards that aren’t that good at all. Unless the payoff synergy is very strong, it’s not a nice idea to use subpar cards to acheive it.

I like Thalia, and that effect would be extremely strong in this deck. The only problem is that she isn’t a spirit and doesn’t fly. I think she has a place in a deck similar to my Spirits list, but it needs to be less dependent on the tribal synergies. And you couldn’t run Cryptic Command, which might actually be fine.

Perhaps your search for the proper 2 drop isn’t looking in the right places.

My deck was successful because I realized something about spirits.
Spirits is a deck that’s looking to cut off as many axis’ of play for the opponent as is possible.
Everything has flying, so you cut off most blocking. Almost everything has flash, significantly dampening anything at sorcery speed, a lot of Hexproof to turn off removal.
No planeswalkers, graveyard plays, artifacts or enchantments that can accidentally give splash relevancy to the opponent

This is what makes their countermagic so powerful. Basically they are forced to try to race you. Which is exactly where you’ve ended up struggling. You aren’t preventing a race.

In my standard deck I opted to run 0 removal in the mainboard. I did not want recursion or Hexproof or delirium to be a factor their deck would be able to easily make use of (cutting off more angles of play)
I also only ran one nebelgast herald.

But I did run 4 topplegeist.

everyone dismissed that card but let me explain.
“When spirits are ahead they are one of the best decks at staying ahead” to quote another writer.

If they stay ahead almost unshakeably, your goal is to get ahead in the first place.
One of the best ways to do this is just raw density of 1 drops.

The ability to tap down a blocker, or if you have rattlechains, an attacker, swings the tempo and race math massively, and given an anthem (or a lord) a 2/2 flyer is very very relevent.

Even just as a chump blocker to buy two turns (tap, then block) your deck has no lack of value to be left wanting from a relatively low impact card and has a flying clock to punish those lost turns and tempo from your opponent.

I strongly suggest giving it some real testing.
It opens up really powerful plays like wanderer, topplegeist topplegeist swing for 3, captain, swing for 7.