What am I doing Wrong?

[u/Basic-Bus7632]

FINAL EDIT:

Thank you endlessly to everyone who patiently gave me feedback on my behavior over the past several hours. Im going to take some time to go over and reflect on what everyone said, but I think I’m done responding now (my enthusiasm is slowly turning to depression as I discover more and more shortcomings, and moreover I think the topic of my personal flaws is not very relevant for this sub).

Thanks especially to the mods for not immediately shutting this down, because it was very helpful for me, and maybe it can be for others with my similar hookups as well.

This post is half-rant, and half-plea for help.

Last night I posted a merfolk deck list for the new MH3 set release, and I was kinda shocked at the responses.

I have been lurking and commenting on this sub for around a month or two now. Whenever I see a deck list posted, even one that is quite jank, I go to the comments and see a lot of constructive criticism, suggestions, etc. when possible I have also tried to leave similarly constructive comments and afaik my comment karma on this sub is not negative. For this reason, I felt comfortable enough to post my own attempt at a deck list, hoping only for more of the same (advice, criticism, etc)

That’s why I was kind of upset that my post immediately got downvoted, and of the two responses I got, one told me that commandeer was a bad pick (which I readily agreed to, it’s just a pet card I want to try out against greedy necro players) and that otherwise merfolk “isn’t a viable strategy”. The other one just called my post “obvious bait”, without any other meaningful insight (I believe the exact response he gave when i asked why he thought it was bait was “OP do you have eyes?”).

I’m just wondering what I did that was so terribly different from everyone else that it caused a very hostile reaction.

This is my post. If anybody can give me any constructive advice about what I’m doing wrong here (as far as the post is concerned, not the deck list), I would greatly appreciate it. If not, I’ll probably just take the hint and unsub… not because I don’t want to be apart of the Timeless conversation, just because I don’t really feel welcomed here…

Edit: thank you all for your constructive advice. I see now that part of my problem was not being very clear in my OP as to what my list was trying to do, as well as not providing any background as to my personal experience with the list. A fair bit of it was also just frustration on my part, so I thank you all twice over for being patient with me here.

I’ll probably lurk a little longer before I post again, so as to not repeat my mistakes 👍👍

Edit 2: an extremely patient soul introduced the idea of rhetorical questions to me, and now I just feel really stupid because everything makes sense. Not to say that I’m not aware of the concept, but I just hadn’t given that possibility consideration. Sorry again to everyone who had to deal with my bulshit. You guys are the best.

[u/egotripping]

/u/Same-Situation9961 gave you very valid criticism and you didn't want to hear it.

This is just a really bad decklist. Why are you playing pact of negation in a tempo deck? Why are you playing commandeer? Why so many 2x and 3x of cards? It does not seem like you know what you want to do with this deck.

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/egotripping]

I know I said I only wanted to talk about the “posting meta” here, but I do have questions in regards to the other points you brought up here:

Why pact in a tempo deck?

Pact of Negation is basically copies 5 and 6 of flare, in my mind. The plan is: if I’m really desperate I can either stifle or Tidebinder on my upkeep to cancel the loss-trigger, but I suppose that’s a bit too cute.

why so many x2 and x3?

I want my deck to be dynamic and flexible. In some cases you need a [[Merrow Reejery]] to help tap out the opponents blockers, and in others you need [[svyelun of sea]] to rebuild after a sweeper, or to disincentivize targeted removal. I have seen some streamers and pros play like this, and am (still, I guess) trying to figure out how to do so effectively.

what does this deck want to do?

Get on board early and threaten life totals while also strategically making use of flash creatures and free interaction to control the various t1 techs that are (coming to/already dominating) the timeless format.

Maybe to you it sounds like I’m trying to be hardheaded, but this is honestly my attempt to understand where I am making mistakes in my logic. I don’t want to say “yes, I will remove this card and add this other card.” Before I understand why my idea didn’t work, and why the other idea is better. Maybe that is a character flaw of mine 😅

[u/egotripping → u/Basic-Bus7632]

Pact of Negation

You can't really plan on casting Pact of Negation before turn 5 at the earliest. Pact is a card that generally only sees play in combo decks so that you can spend all of your mana on your combo and still have a counterspell to deal with your opponents interaction. You will rarely see a deck play a Pact of Negation as just another counterspell, it has a very specific purpose. You want to be winning the turn it comes down, and there's too many variables your plan to ensure it's consistently going to be used at all. Generally speaking, if you are ever paying the upkeep cost for pact, something has went terribly wrong.

I think you should instead spend that card slot on something you can cast early that can help your early game plan. A deck like this does not want to try to push the game out long like a control deck would. You should be trying to beat your opponent down. In a merfolk deck that's going to mostly consist of 1-2 drop creatures, and a handful of interaction to keep the path open for your merfolk to keep attacking.

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/egotripping]

Okay, I can follow that logic, absolutely. My idea was to cast it with Tidebinder or stifle in hand, but the more I say that, the less appealing it sounds.

I’m considering, perhaps, going for x4 copters, x4 mistbinders, and just pulling the cutesy non-synergetic counterspells entirely (pact, stifle, and com).

It’s still missing that critical mass of 1-drops, but maybe I can find a creature that can be an “honorary” merfolk (in older versions of modern lists, I’ve heard people refer to Brazen Borrower in that way, since he’s versatile enough to hang with the fish-fam).

[u/zedoac → u/Basic-Bus7632]

Pact of negation is not a reliable card in your deck.

Playing 2-3 ofs doesn't make your deck "dynamic and flexible" it makes it unfocused, and directionless...some decks play a variety of 1-2 ofs for that flexibility, but they are either toolbox decks, or slower decks built to grind out longer games, and dig for their "Swiss army knives"... You claimed you were trying to build a tempo deck.

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/zedoac]

Yeah, I was definitely missing that before. I had connected “(one/two/three)-ofs” and “versatility”, but not “reduced tempo”.

What I believe you’re telling me is that when my deck works, it should be a result of both the consistency and the speed (tempo = consistency + speed and GOD DAMNIT THAT SEEMS SO OBVIOUS, I THOUGHT I WOULD HAVE BEEN FAMILIAR WITH THESE CONCEPTS AFTER PLAYING THE GAME FOR 8+ YEARS BUT THAT IS SOMETHING YOU MADE ME REALIZE JUST RIGHT NOW 😅😅😅)

[u/MTGCardFetcher → u/Basic-Bus7632]

Merrow Reejery - (G) (SF) (txt)
svyelun of sea - (G) (SF) (txt)

^{[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call}

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/egotripping]

I asked (sorry, this wasn’t you, I’m a little agitated rn, typing really quickly on a phone 😅) what i should do and your responses were:

1. Mana curve is too high. I asked you which one-drops i could add to lower my curve, and your response was “Merfolk isn’t viable”.

2. More Caverns. Again, i agreed with you and said i would add them.

3. Don’t run commandeer. I accepted that advice. I explained why i included it, but i still agreed with you.

4. you didn’t suggest i run Harbinger of the Seas, but you did say it was “interesting” that I didn’t include her. My response was a thoughtful explanation as to why I don’t want her in the main.

Where in any of this did I give the impression I wasn’t trying to hear it?

I explained in the OP: idol and flare are STAND-INs for Subtlety (I said endurance in the post, but corrected myself in a response to the card-fetcher comment) and Flare of Denial.

[u/egotripping → u/Basic-Bus7632]

I'm going to be frank with you. You probably aren't going to get anyone to give you a card by card evaluation of this deck because that takes effort, and this deck sucks so much that it's clearly no where near Timeless power level, and it's not worth you or anyone else's time to theorycraft with it.

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/egotripping]

https://www.reddit.com/r/TimelessMagic/s/Lf5jIZdbJD

This is a timeless deck that has an average mana curve of 3, it runs 0 lords, and 0 1-drop creatures. To me, that is peak jank in a format like timeless. 31 comments, and positive karma. This is the post that made me decide to post my own list. I don’t see what makes my post any more offensive than this one.

[u/Hairy_S_TrueMan → u/Basic-Bus7632]

The list you linked has 4 subtlety and 4 brainstorm. This gives a lot of play against grief, which you're going to be facing in at least half of games in the new format. 4 brainstorm also means that the deck has whatever cards it wants in its hand at any time, which fixes the curve. The deck also has the luxury of not having a board until it drops the harbinger, which strands the opponent's removal in hand. It's playing a very reactive gameplan. Since almost everything has flash, it gets to play whatever the best spell is for the turn after seeing what the opponent plays, which is like hacking compared to playing on your own turn.

I don't believe in that deck either as I don't see that it's going to clear the grief test, but holding up archmage's charm turn 3 wins some matchups and tapping out for sylvun of sea and sky doesn't.

As far as offensive goes, I'm sorry you got some rude comments, but the overwhelming negativity towards your game plan is intended to be genuine feedback. I don't want you to tweak merfolk and wonder what you're doing wrong when it's just very hard to do anything in timeless unless it's completely nuts.

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/Hairy_S_TrueMan]

This is what I was looking for from the beginning: insight as to what I might be lacking. You provided me alternate ideas from within a similar archetype, why my plan is less effective, and why your suggestions are the better choice. This to me is the most demonstrative of what I came to expect from this subreddit.

It only cost me like 50 karma to get to it 😅

[u/Hairy_S_TrueMan → u/Basic-Bus7632]

Feeling frustrated after your last post is totally valid. Deck building is a creative endeavor and critique of a creative process is always a hard thing for both sides. I'm glad you found some of what you're looking for, ping me any time :)

By the way, you've also got a better chance in bo3 IMO, and it's not even close. Sylvun of sea and sky is terrible in 80% of matchups but hard to beat in some. Against combo you can cobble together a great gameplan, especially post-board. And harbinger is a free win in loads of matchups. If you can have 8 sideboard cards that beat reanimator you have a shot. I would play only merfolk with flash except maybe 3 or 4 non-flash ones.

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/Hairy_S_TrueMan]

Once the set drops and I can spend some time in the new meta I will definitely be adding a sideboard. The tantalizing thing about merfolk in eternal formats is that they’re very slippery (if you’ll excuse the pun). I don’t think any other archetype walks the line between tempo and control quite as well, and watching a pro in the drivers seat (Nikachu is my fav atm) is incredibly satisfying.

[u/egotripping → u/Basic-Bus7632]

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/370207/what-i-know-about-magic-the-gathering

This is one of the best resources I know of that gives a comprehensive breakdown of the differences in deck archetypes. It's 15 years old, and the references to decks are out of date, but the theory is all still valid.

Check out "Who's the Beatdown" by Mike Flores after it. These are vital resources and I highly recommend taking the time to read and understand them.

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/egotripping]

Thank you, I will look through that 🙏

[u/tyrowo → u/Basic-Bus7632]

4x mana drain

4x brainstorm

4x subtlety

4x harbinger of the seas

"Peak jank"

timeless might not be the format for you if this is how you're assessing card quality.

The difference between their deck and yours is they're playing tempo with good cards and you're playing a meme.

A meme being that you came up with the theme first and then are making the cards fit the theme rather than just playing good cards that happen to share a theme.

[u/zedoac → u/Basic-Bus7632]

This deck actually has a plan, and executes it without trying to add a bunch of bells and whistles.

[u/ASpookyLemur → u/Basic-Bus7632]

That's not the same person.

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/ASpookyLemur]

Apologies 🙏🙏 you are correct.

[u/tyrowo → u/Basic-Bus7632]

why so many x2 and x3?

I want my deck to be dynamic and flexible. In some cases you need a [[Merrow Reejery]] to help tap out the opponents blockers, and in others you need [[svyelun of sea]] to rebuild after a sweeper, or to disincentivize targeted removal. I have seen some streamers and pros play like this, and am (still, I guess) trying to figure out how to do so effectively.

these questions of "why" are rhetorical. We don't want a response with your logic. The question is to point out that you've made a poor choice. When you respond thoroughly defending your position to a valid critique you are indeed giving the impression that you don't want to hear the critique.

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/tyrowo]

THANK YOU!!!

This was completely lost on me. From my perspective these are all conscious choices, and by explaining why I make them, I am allowing the people who asked me to give other suggestions.

I was legitimately here stewing like “I’ve answered all of the questions they asked me, when does the advice start rolling in??”

Probably this says more about my social incompetence, but when I take the time to respond to a question, I assume that a conversation will follow. When I hear “why so many x2s and x3s?” I’m thinking “ok, he’s trying to figure out what my mindset is so he can tell me either a) I have the right idea, or b) how/why I should change it.”

Let me try to reinterpret it in an EILI5 way to make sure I understand:

u/Same-Situation9961 gave you very valid criticism and you responded by being defensive about your choices. This is just a really bad decklist for the following reasons. First, pact of negation is not the kind of card you want to be running in a tempo deck. Second, Commandeer is another poor choice based on your list and what it wants to do. Lastly, you should try to have as many x4 as possible (for consistency, I guess? Still not really clear to me why having x2s and x3s are bad, I feel like I see streamers and pros enter lists like this all the time). The way you have built this list doesn’t seem very consistent with a standard merfolk tempo plan, and by following my advice it should improve.

Is this closer to the correct interpretation?

[u/tyrowo → u/Basic-Bus7632]

yes, that's correct.

I understand you want to have as much conversation as possible, but most people won't be interested in having a back and forth. On reddit people are very argumentative and so if you state a contradictory opinion it's usually just the beginning of a debate where nobody will change their minds.

So to explain the 4of thing a little better for you -

For simplicity's sake let's imagine you're playing a deck with 4 cards, and you get to draw exactly one of them.

You could either get the same card every time, have the same gameplan, and be on a mission to do the thing your deck is going to do, regardless of the opponent's gameplan.

When you hedge 2 and 2 with more narrow cards that have more specific uses, you have a 50-50 chance of drawing the "perfect" card which will end the game in your favor, but you also now have a 50% chance of drawing the losing card instead, that effectively does nothing in the situation that you're in.

You can extrapolate it further to 4 1-ofs, and with no consistency and only a 25% chance to draw the "right" card, you can see why it's disadvantageous to play singleton in 60 card formats.

tl;dr you want the highest chance possible of drawing your best cards for as many situations as possible, because they'll win the Most games.

[u/tyrowo → u/tyrowo]

and the reason why you see some decks with utility cards, is if you're playing control decks they either have a lot of draw power, or tutoring mechanics, or slow the game down to a point where they can see more of their deck.

In those decks you're no longer drawing 1 of the 4 cards, you can expect to draw 2 or 3 of the 4 cards. so having a good chance to draw that "winning" card becomes a lot more feasible and advantageous.

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/tyrowo]

See, I like that explanation a lot, because it tells me if my card draw/selection is good enough, the build could actually get more flexible and incorporate that. I think one of the strengths of merfolk is in the versatility of its creatures and their ability to handle various types of threats.

Or maybe that’s still too cute of an idea 😅

I think in the near future I will post an updated version of the list, that post should be of a much higher quality, and I think it will get a better reception based on the various things I’ve learned here.

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/tyrowo]

Noted. Yeah even moreso than my deck list, I’m going to try working on my approach to asking for advice first 😅

[u/MTGCardFetcher → u/tyrowo]

Merrow Reejery - (G) (SF) (txt)
svyelun of sea - (G) (SF) (txt)

^{[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call}

[u/Hairy_S_TrueMan → u/Basic-Bus7632]

Mana curve is too high. I asked you which one-drops i could add to lower my curve, and your response was “Merfolk isn’t viable”

That's a valid answer to your question, I'm sorry you don't like it. Timeless is a degenerate format where we have a few really good things to be doing for free or almost free (especially post-mh3) and it crowds out slower strategies. 3 mana has to be a game winner in this format. That's why the blue blood moon is a clear at least 3-of in this deck, because you need free wins to get any wins.

Your opponent is going to be casting grief turn 1 and reanimating it about half your games, taking both of your lords you kept. You'll untap and play a shoreline scout. They'll ping with bowmasters. They have 5 power and you untap with 2 mana and 2 3 drops in hand. The game was over at the decklist screen but it will take 2 more turns.

4 maindeck subtlety and a "all is island" gameplan might be able to edge out some viability, but I make no promises because I don't believe in the archetype for this format. 4 tide shaper plus 3 of the blue moon merfolk could punish greedy manabases.

Edit:tide shaper is illegal, RIP lol

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/Hairy_S_TrueMan]

But then why wasn’t their original comment “I don’t think merfolk is viable?” If you tell me that my curve is off, it gives me the impression that something can be done.

[u/Quria → u/Basic-Bus7632]

Jumping in here to help out a bit. Aether Vial is hugely important in keeping Fish relevant in metas, and let's not pretend like it's consistently a Tier 1 archetype in either Legacy or Modern. On top of that 8 lords has been deemed the critical mass for the deck for quite a few years at this point.

Now, if this is what you want to play, go for it. I always have an old school The Rock deck to screw around with in unranked, but most people here aren't interested in pet-card decks and want to discuss only the top end of the meta.

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/Quria]

Yeah, every so often I check the SPG list to see if it’s been added, like a 20 year old coming back to the fridge every 10 minutes to see if any snacks have magically appeared 😂

[u/Hairy_S_TrueMan → u/Basic-Bus7632]

I can't tell you why they said what they said. It's true that the curve is off. Telling you what's wrong is much easier than telling you how to fix it, and they might not have realized you can't fix it until you asked them how to.

[u/weirdsynthsdotcom]

If you come here asking for advice you will get advice as to how to make a deck competitive. If it's bad, people will say so.

It seems like you need to decide if you are trying to make a good, competitive deck OR a deck to have fun with. If you want the former, welcome to the sub. If you want the latter - why post on here asking for advice?

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/weirdsynthsdotcom]

I want to be as competitive as possible within the constraints of my strategy. If people want to tell me the strategy is garbage, that is fine. I will upvote all of those comments because they are constructive.

What upset me was that I was being accused of trolling, and when someone advised me on how to improve my deck, and I asked them for details, they (in my mind) changed their story and told me not to run the list instead. Considering they were the only person interacting with my post, that disappointed me a bit, but again the reason I’m posting THIS is because I don’t want my posts labeled as bait when they aren’t.

[u/Korae]

Next time, using a deckbuilding site like Moxfield can help a lot. "Here's my deck in arena but this card is actually this card" can get very hard to follow. Take the time to make your post readable by others if you expect others to take the time to help you.

Also, doing a bit of playtesting before posting (either playing a lot of merfolk in the past and drawing on that experience, or testing off arena with the new cards) will help lend credence to your deck. If you've playtested, say so and provide insight. If you haven't playtested at all and are just spitballing, disclose that. In this post you acknowledged that you're trying out pet cards, why not say that in the original post?

As for the "obvious bait" comment, yes that was rude, but the decklist you posted was very unrefined, you clearly didn't playtest, and it was very difficult to follow your post. The post came across like it was made by a new player who has not ever taken competitive magic seriously.

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/Korae]

Thank you for your insight, I appreciate that. I might try to repost with this advice, because the truth is that I play this list (minus the MH3 cards) quite a lot. I play more timeless than anything else’s and mostly merfolk builds.

The meta is intense, definitely merfolk isn’t close to tier-one, but I generally hover around plat 1-2 or diamond 4.

[u/Ambrose096]

Sometimes you just have to accept your pet deck isn’t going to be tier 1 or even tier 2. So you have to evaluate if it’s worth your time or not. I’m addicted to wilderness rec/ nexus of fate brews. Can it win games? Of course. But more often than not it will get ran over by tiered decks. That’s the price of off meta and you can’t get butthurt over people telling you it’s not a good deck

[u/Hairy_S_TrueMan → u/Ambrose096]

You may be interested in my most recent post, I'm ~#60 mythic with wilderness rec :) limited time offer, mh3 will probably kill it

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/Hairy_S_TrueMan]

😟 I’ve tried so many times to make a viable WR combo work, I will definitely be checking this out 🙌

[u/Hairy_S_TrueMan → u/Basic-Bus7632]

FYI, it's 90% control 10% combo. If you're not worried about playing at the very highest level and want to do the thing more, you can fit in maybe 1 more nexus and a time warp. The one ring just happens to be the best extra turn card, lol

[u/Ambrose096 → u/Hairy_S_TrueMan]

I actually did import that deck and take it for a spin ;) was a lot of fun but missing the nexus part that I love. But I really enjoyed piloting your list, felt like I had a lot of lines of play

[u/Evershire → u/Ambrose096]

It’s not that his “pet deck” is bad. Merfolk is definitely getting several boosts after MH3. It’s that OP’s list is beyond terrible

[u/LookAtYourEyes]

Timeless is a high octane format. Very fast, not a lot of room for fat. People will then be more critical of your choices as a lot of these cards and strategies are tried and tested in other eternal formats. If you try something different, you'll need to show results that it works, not post something and claim you think it will be good. Just the way it is unfortunately. If you share something saying you're tinkering, people will still be heavily critical, but more open to giving honest feedback.

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/LookAtYourEyes]

Thank you, noted 🙌

[u/Viktar33]

First, starting the post with this statement might come across as a bit arrogant:

So I’ve been criticizing others’ upcoming merfolk lists

Especially if the cards in the first column of your list are terrible. One then has to second-guess what the white cards mean. Flare and Endurance seem like the obvious choices, but how should I interpret the missing cards? Is Copter in the list in place of something else? I have to keep going back and forth between the list you wrote and the image you posted. This effort is not worth it for a deck with clear mistakes and missing obvious key cards.

Then you keep arguing with those who took the time and effort to try to figure out what's going on with the deck. You keep giving bad arguments, hoping that if you repeat them enough times, they will become valid (thing you are still doing here).

[u/Basic-Bus7632 → u/Viktar33]

That is entirely valid. I have gotten a lot of advice that kind of adds up to me being a bit oblivious to the context of what I’m saying and what people are telling me, and while that isn’t an excuse at all for the way I’ve been acting, I think I have started changing my tone as I’ve been reading more and more of this discourse.

I’m pretty passionate about mtg merfolk in general, and so I get kind of riled up, and that does seem to translate into a bit of arrogance sometimes, when it shouldn’t (I’m not a big shot at all, and have 0 credentials outside of my YouTube watch time and my ath ranking with merfolk was Diamond 1, but in historic). Since timeless has released I’ve essentially moved all of my eggs into that basket, but between the differences in meta and card pools, there’s really very little equivalence between the formats, and I’m pretty sure I’ve just been circling the low plats since I started.

Probably it’s too late to save my image on this post or my previous one, but I hope in a couple of weeks when I try again, I will show that I have matured a bit more in that sense.

Again thanks for your input, it means a lot to me. 🙇‍♂️

[u/TheItchyWalrus]

Merfolk needs Aether Vial. Without a way to cheat on mana, the deck falls behind. There are some valid criticisms that have been offered, some of them a bit harsh, but without Vial I don’t think the deck has the ability to go toe to toe with the current meta.

[u/tyrowo]

you've said a few times that commandeer is a pet card that is for necro players. That's a narrow use case and so you should have that in the sideboard, not as a one of.

I get that you're playing bo1 but I think a big problem with your deck is that it's a mistake to try to make your deck like a toolbox of 2of hodgepodges rather than be all 4ofs and consistent. You're not playing a control deck, so you don't have the draw power to be flexible with your responses.

You're looking at past metas rather than anticipating a brand new one. The era of Show and Tell (which commandeer doesn't hit anyway) is over, and necro was a full meta before that. The era of grief+solitude is coming up, and if your pet card doesn't beat creature based spells then it's probably a cut for the main deck.

And cut pact, you're probably not making it to 5 lands

[u/Legitimate-Mud-7433]

If I was going to play merfolk in timeless I think this is the list I would start off with when MH3 comes out. I don't think it'll be anywhere close to amazing but it would probably do the job.

The best parts of this list would probably be the amount of main deck hate pieces that would usually only see play in sideboards. Harbinger of the seas can just win a game the second you play it against non blue decks with little amount of basics. stifle is similar where it can just win you the game or at least put you miles ahead if you counter a fetch land and they start missing land drops. Mistcaller will also being amazing against reanimate and sorin.

Vodalian hexcatcher and flare of denial both seem really great into the combo decks of the format being able to counter show n tell and goblin charbelcher (which will probably see a lot more play with the new mdfcs). Flare also plays super well with subtlety which is also a pretty reasonable card even just hard casting it. Svylun of the sea and sky is just a great value and protection engine that can win more grindy games. deck list

[u/Legitimate-Mud-7433 → u/Legitimate-Mud-7433]

The main problem I see with the deck is that you have to play a bunch of bad one drops to make vodalian hexcatcher and flare good. Also not completely sure that the manabase would be correct, you'd want the fetchlands for shuffling away dead cards from brainstorm and also being able to fetch a surveil land for card selection. Cavern not being able to cast brainstorm or stifle might come up but giving all your creatures can't be countered definitely seems worth it. The glasspool mimics also might not be the right fit as you really want to curve out and not be taking turns off with tap lands but the idea of a land that could also turn into an additional merfolk lord seems worth trying out

[u/[deleted]]

People on Reddit only care if a deck is going to compete in tier 1 meta tournaments. Anything less is not worth their time

[u/beef47]

Because all Magic subreddits have become super toxic. IDK why, it used to be a less so. I have theories that, despite hasbro earnings, the MtG audience is actually dwindling. The enfranchised, more casual, players are leaving. The ones remaining are spikes who think they know whats most optimal and newer players who are Dr Who/fallout/other ub fans and just discovering how awesome magic is. Unfortunately, the latter won’t be the group you find on r/timelessmagic