Hi all!

Merfolk are an interesting tribe in Standard, and they're usually seen in Simic colors as a go-wide deck that overwhelms your opponent quickly. I have decided to try to take the deck a different route with the help of a few non-Merfolk creatures that greatly assist us in our goal!

Magic Merfolk is a tempo deck that focuses on countering our opponents spells and attempting to play at a quick pace and using enter-the-battlefield abilities to mess with our opponents board state. We are mono-blue, so we have quite the variety of counter magic and cantrips to choose from.

Firstly, all of our creatures are Wizards. Dominaria brought us an interesting Wizard that we're going to abuse with a few of our Merfolk, such as Silvergill Adept and Merfolk Trickster. The few Wizards that we do not play are Siren Stormtamer and Naban, Dean of Iteration and they are very necessary for the deck. With that being said, let's dive into a bit of the deck tech!

CREATURES!

Siren Stormtamer is our 1-drop creature of the deck. We often times do not need to play this turn 1 as we have another card we generally want to play on turn 1, but it's a fine play. Stormtamer saves us against spot removal or even certain sweepers that target us such as Settle the Wreckage.

Silvergill Adept is one of our best card draw engines in the deck, especially if we have Naban, Dean of Iteration out. Silvergill is often a 2 mana 2/1 that draws us a card, but with Naban out it's a 2 mana 2/1 that draws us two cards, which is absolutely insane. Either way, Silvergill is great and definitely worth playing in any Merfolk deck.

Merfolk Trickster is a new addition from Dominaria and a card that has already seen immediate impact on Modern Merfolk. In Standard, while not as effective, it's still an incredible card to flash in on your opponents turn to either chump block, tap down, or prevent some sort of effect until the end of the turn. Trickster is fantastic and is definitely going to see play for a very long time.

Watertrap Weaver is usually draft chaff at best, but it finds a pretty decent home in this deck. We can't unfortunately flash it in or abuse it with Aether Vial like Modern fish do, but we can still use it to our advantage as slowly grind away at our opponent's life and don't really have ways to get in for a ton of damage. Watertrap taps down a creature our opponent has and lets us get in for damage, or with Naban out, taps two creatures. Double the fun!

Riverwise Augur is Brainstorm on a stick and is very fun to activate twice with Naban! Augur usually comes out when we're low on cards or we're searching for a certain card. It isn't as effective as Brainstorm is normally because we don't have many ways to shuffle our decks in Standard, but it's still a good card to play to search for answers.

And finally and most importantly we have Naban, Dean of Iteration as our other non-Merfolk creature, and he does one hell of a job in this deck. All of our creatures minus Siren Stormtamer have ETB abilities that are insane if they do it twice. Naban is a perfect fit in this deck and though he isn't a Merfolk he definitely makes the tribal Wizard synergy better.

NON CREATURES!

As a mono-blue deck we're always going to have a ton of counter magic and cantrips, and Standard has quite a few options right now!

Opt is our primary 1-drop that we always want to play on turn 1. It's a fantastic card as it can either find us the card we need immediately or we can scry junk to the bottom. It's our baby version of Serum Visions and it's at instant speed, so that's nice. (Wizards, please reprint Serum Visions...)

Chart a Course is another way we can draw cards and it's usually pay 2 draw 2 as we can flash in our Merfolk Trickster, tap our opponent's creature, untap for turn 3, swing and draw 2. Chart is nice, but it can backfire sometimes if we can't attack. We can always discard a land to prevent flooding, though.

Blink of an Eye is a decent Into the Roil reprint, and that card is a powerhouse. You almost always don't want to cast this for 2 mana, you want to save up until you can kick it to draw a card. Since we're playing at instant speed for the most part, it's not too big of an issue to let your opponent cast something, wait until their end step, and then Blink of an Eye it, draw a card, and end their turn. I love the card in mono-blue decks and U/W decks.

Wizard's Retort is just Counterspell in this deck. If you're playing in a format where Counterspell is legal and you're playing mono-blue, you're playing 4 Counterspell for the most part. It's such a perfect "no" to your opponent for only two mana. Definitely love this card, and I love breaking it in Standard.

Spell Pierce is my favorite counter spell in Standard. Not many people expect it and there are a TON of non-creature spells running around in Standard right now. Sagas, artifacts, and Planeswalkers are huge right so Spell Pierce is amazing at the moment. Tapping out for Teferi, Hero of Dominaria? Meet Spell Pierce. You can even play the Rivals of Ixalan art and have a Merfolk on it. :) (although the original art is better)

And as for our land base, we're mono-blue! Islands and Ipnu Rivulet are perfect. I'm playing 21 lands as I don't want to flood but we have a decently high end curve so I want to play more than 18-20. I don't think any utility lands are necessary here as we're not a midrange deck and thus we want to keep our mana as open as we can for all of our double blue spells. If you do want to play any other lands, Zhalfirin Void is nice.

SIDEBOARD!

So, as is usual with sideboards, it's varied depending on your local game stores. I'm mainly just playing more counter magic such as Negate for a hard counter to non-creature spells and Essence Scatter for creature heavy decks.

Unsummon is an important key for mono-blue decks that don't attack very well, so returning a Rekindling Phoenix or Hazoret the Fervent to our opponent's hand is a great swing for us.

River's Rebuke is difficult to cast at 6 mana but in games where we need this we're probably going to have a lot of mana open anyways. I like this for control decks that exile our creatures with Seal Away, Cast Out, and Ixalan's Binding or token decks that play Anointed Procession and Hidden Stockpile.

Deeproot Waters also comes in against grindy decks because it allows us to create a ton of hexproof Merfolk and assists us in attacking and blocking.

Kopala, Warden of Waves is a perfect out of the side for super removal heavy decks, as it's going to cost a lot more to fry our fish and we can protect him with Stormtamer and our counter magic. Win-win!

And that does it! This deck is very budget, very starter friendly, and very fun to play. If you're new to Magic, new to Standard, or just want to play a cheap deck that can steal some wins, this is a perfect deck for you. I believe the deck clocks in around $30 and ~3 tix online or so, and thus it is very affordable. This deck will more than likely not win you a Grand Prix, but it'll definitely turn some heads and win you FNM. It also teaches the importance of waiting on your counter spells or the sequencing of plays, so it's a great tool for learning as well as playing for fun. :)

I hope ya'll liked it! If there's anything I can improve on, please let me know!