This is another deck in my battlebox, a collection of reasonably well-balanced decks for people to pick up and play at group meetings. It turns out that blue is sill powerful even when sticking to a budget in old school. And the little fish are surprisingly resilient even with only a single lord.

Living close to Dice City Games, owned by the Merfolk Master himself Jimmy Cooney, makes me wary of writing anything about Merfolk for fear of sounding ignorant, but I played against similar decks plenty back in the day and ran with fish briefly when Mercadian Masks was in Type II, so I do have a little to say about it.

This is another deck whose core existed from Alpha …

but we needed expansions, particularly Fallen Empires, to have the tools for a deck:

Unlike White Weenie, Merfolk is not a historic deck of the era. (More on that here.) Of particular note, Lord of Atlantis is only a Merfolk now thanks to a raft of errata that gave sensible creature subtypes to every creature (and sometimes nonsensical ones, like making a Jackal a hound).

As with the White Weenie deck, the addition of Fallen Empires gave the deck a bevy of useful small creatures. Merfolk Assassin’s main claim to fame was half of a combo with War Barge (also in The Dark), where you could give an opponent’s creature islandwalk and then destroy it with the Assassin.

Blue being the most powerful color in the Old School card pool means we have to ask ourselves why we would play Merfolk instead of, say, control, and the answer is almost assuredly “it’s fun.” Let’s take a look at some of the tools at our disposal, and a budget deck as a starting point.

A Budget Starting Point

4 Merfolk of the Pearl Trident

4 Lord of Atlantis

4 River Merfolk

4 Serendib Efreet

1 Seasinger

4 Counterspell

4 Psionic Blast

2 Control Magic

3 Unstable Mutation

3 Phantasmal Terrain

2 Boomerang

1 Unsummon

1 Strip Mine

4 Mishra’s Factory

17 Island

And here the current version (still a budget build) that I have sleeved up, with a few more surprises:

It finds room for two Aeolipiles, a Powersink, a Dance of Many, and a maindeck Energy Flux but is otherwise similar to the above list.

Like the White Weenie deck, this one is slightly tuned, or perhaps I should say detuned, to fit in with my battlebox decks, and a typical tournament deck will have more mana taxing (more on that in a bit). It’s unfortunately more expensive to build even on a budget than the White Weenie deck, especially with Serendib Efreets creeping up in price. Fortunately Psionic Blast got a Timeshifted reprint, which eases the pain a little.

I don’t feel there’s very much to say about the creatures, as they’re simply the most efficient ones available that don’t have some strange restrictions. My version is a little creature light, but Control Magic makes up for it against other creature decks, who are probably outclassing your critters anyway.

There is something about the way this deck plays out that I’d like to highlight: Despite the Counterspells and Control Magics, it’s almost always the beatdown. Games where you draw all Efreets and Counterspells are a perfectly fine way to win the game, but even then you’re racing. Your creatures aren’t getting any bigger, and you don’t usually have inevitability unless the opponent is four life and you’re just waiting for a Blast to show. There’s no big spell you can cast like Armageddon to reset the game. With that in mind, I usually fire off Counterspell at the first thing that would slow the game down at all, rather than trying to rely on Serendib Efreets and Psionic Blasts showing up in multiples to break a stalemate.

The more interesting space for this deck is in the tricks available. I’ve gone heavy on damage-based removal, with Psionic Blast and Aeolipile also giving the deck a little reach. Boomerang mops up the weird problems that get past a counterspell or two, and Unsummon is a reliable combat trick. Keeping something off the board even for a turn is usually good enough.

My maindeck Energy Flux simply does good work in a format with so many artifacts, but the look on your opponent’s face when it comes down game 1 and matters should be fairly priceless.

Dance of Many is here simply as a cheaper clone. Sometimes the upkeep doesn’t even come into play if you are copying a Lord of Atlantis and the whole team can ‘walk through.

The Sol Ring isn’t an auto-include; if the deck contained fewer mana costs with “2” in them, it would probably be worth skipping for another threat or utility spell.

There are plenty of other ways to build Merfolk, many of which may be more tuned and less “obvious” than mine. Here’s one of Jimmy Cooney’s versions, which I think is worth discussing:

Note the full complements of Force Spike, Stripe Mine, and Boomerangs, and the three Phantasmal Terrain giving him free reign with Dandan more reliably as well as additional ways to take care of problem lands in the format, like Library of Alexandria and opposing Factories. This lets him save his Strip Mines to keep his opponent off their colors.

Dandan also makes a lot more sense in a tournament environment where you can expect many opponents to have Islands even if you didn’t draw Phantasmal Terrain. Many people splash blue just for the power cards, so it’s a fairly safe bet outside of the budget world.

Brassman is an interesting creature that will probably get some discussion time in relation to another deck, but I will say it’s an underrated card.

Other Cards to Consider

First, the obvious: Yes, any serious, top-level tournament version of this deck not on a budget would run a Mox Sapphire, Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, and Time Walk. I’m more interested in the unusual choices that can be made.

Braingeyser and Recall are notably missing from my build. I tried it and found I rarely had more than 3 or 4 mana available, so it wasn’t worth it. As far as Recall goes, not only is there rarely anything I want, but I almost never have extra cards in hand or the mana to pay XX with. However, there may be a slower, more controlling build that would be interested in these.

Clone: If four Lords of Atlantis is good, then more must be better. I have seen blue decks that played four of these, four Lords of Atlantis, and not much else in the way of creatures. This is analogous to current incarnations of Merfolk in other formats, where you have access to a zillion lords and you don’t really need much else.

Dandan is the One True Fish, even if he’s not how the archetype got it’s name. If you face mostly islands, then you probably face few creatures, and a 4/1 that comes down on turn 2 is absolutely brutal if you have multiple counterspells.

Juggernaut and Su-Chi are generally worth considering as colorless sources of damage in any mono-colored beatdown deck. Su-Chi is no longer a budget option, and mana burn is in effect under Eternal Central Rules, so some care is needed. Juggernaut still dies to everything. If Control Magic just isn’t doing it for you, some artifact beef might.

Flying Men: Look, sometimes you just want to play a 1/1 for one mana that isn’t Merfolk of the Pearl Trident. It can save your bacon against a Moat if you don’t have a Boomerang handy.

Land Equilibrium is an interesting tax against control decks, especially if you play it with a Strip Mine already on the table or a Mishra’s Factory they need to answer. This is a rare from Legends, and there is a prison deck that uses it, so if you happen to have one from before the price went bonkers you might try it.

Old Man of the Sea is clearly not in consideration for a budget build, but in a version that might want to skip Phantasmal Terrain for some reason, in the hands of a player who actually owns one, it could be a useful card against other creature decks.

Mostly I would consider it style points. I mean, look at that crazy bastard!

Psychic Purge: Though I doubt I’d maindeck it here, for a long time I played a blue beatdown deck in Type 1.5 (the predecessor to Legacy) that did. It wasn’t just that there were several discard decks at the monthly Friday Night Magic, but the spell kills a surprisingly large number of first- and second-turn creatures in the early sets. Think about the sorts of things you’d want to Lightning Bolt that aren’t a Kird Ape with a Forest on the table, starting with a Kird Ape with just a Mountain on the table. Birds of Paradise and Llanowar Elves, opposing Merfolk before a Lord hits the table, half of the White Weenie deck … the list goes on. These are just the uses when you cast it, to say nothing of what happens when your opponent uses a Disrupting Scepter on you for the first time in the match.

Serendib Djinn, the Efreet’s big brother, could be worth considering in the Beef slot. I used him in my blue beatdown deck in 1.5 years ago when he was long-forgotten and not worth much. The more Islands the deck plays, the safer this creature gets. Unfortunately, the days have long past that he was affordable.

Telekenesis is a deep pull from Legends, but a wonderful tempo play, especially against any deck that expects to put the shields up with a single larger creature like Serra Angel, or when racing another aggressive deck. You probably don’t want more than one, but it’s a neat alternative to Boomerang in a creature-filled environment. Unfortunately, it’s a legends rare, which means that it’s a horribly expensive fringe-playable on the reserve list, and you’re likely only sleeving up if you already own it.

Vodalian Knights are a notable omission; while First Strike is good, having yet another creature that needs Phantasmal Terrain or cooperation from my opponent to do anything was a bridge too far for me. In the right meta, though, they are another solid three-drop if you need one beyond the Efreets.

Vodalian Soldiers are a common substitution for the River Merfolk, with the assumption that they are easier to cast reliably in a deck that runs four Strip Mine and four Mishra’s Factory. I think that the extra power and landwalk ability of the River Merfolk is important enough that I’m willing to trim the colorless lands. However, there are times where I can see an extra point of toughness instead being important, perhaps against Desert.

Winter Orb was an ingredient in a deck sometimes called Frozen Fish. There are formats where the strategy creates more tension than in Old School: ith Mishra’s Factory already in the deck, your opponent is probably not making a difficult choice about whether to leave in their artifact removal. However, it can take the pressure off the factories, and some decks simply don’t maindeck dedicated artifact removal, so you get an edge here or there.

Going Off the Rails

If we’re going to stay on theme, there isn’t too much leeway, since there just aren’t that many Merfolk to play. Any blue deck with small creatures is likely to end up playing some Merfolk simply because they’re the most efficient small creatures blue has available. Going in a slower direction usually means splashing some colors for better creatures, such as a blue-white “Skies” deck filled with fliers and Moats, or the Blue-Red decks that prey on The Deck and other control decks.

An intriguing competitive “Fish” deck is what’s known as the Electric Eel deck, originally a Noobcon winner from 2014. It uses Electric Eel and Dandan as its primary threats along with a lot of burn spells and metagame calls like maindeck Red Elemental Blast. Steve Menendian considers the eel deck a closer relation to Zoo, but I’m mentioning it here because it plays more actual fish (Giant Shark!) than Merfolk does, even if the ‘folk gave the archetype it’s name.

Sideboard

As usual, I think that building a sideboard without some knowledge of what you’ll face is premature, but Blue Elemental Blasts are an easy choice. Some form of artifact hate is worthwhile, whether it’s Energy Flux, Hurkyl’s Recall, or Steal Artifact. Most of the cards on the considerables list could be decent choices.