Modern Monday: Mono Blue Merfolk

Around this time last year, I wrote an article on Modern Mono White Soldiers. That article was meant to be in a series of budget mono color Modern decks, a series I have as of yet not finished. I'll try not to take another three years to finish it, but this is the second installment of this series.

Since Soldiers are the iconic creature types of White, I considered the iconic type of Blue and we have Merfolk. Of course, Merfolk is an established deck, but let's look at a budget version.

Mono Blue Merfolk

Creatures x4 Cosi's Trickster x4 Tideshaper Mystic x4 Merfolk of the Pearl Trident x4 Lord of Atlantis x4 Master of the Pearl Trident x4 Merfolk Sovereign x2 Master of Waves Land x18 Island

Other Spells x4 Spreading Seas x2 Merrow Commerce x2 Dispel x4 Mana Leak x3 Negate x3 Dissipate

Last time, I used StarCityGames.com as the benchmark for prices, and I'm going to do the same this time. All prics will be for the Near Mint versions with the cheapest version available. For instance, any card with multiple printing where one is $1 and the other is $0.50, the one worth $0.50 would be the price used.

    

Cosi's Trickster x 4: $2.76

Tideshaper Mystic x 4: $0.60

Merfolk of the Pearl Trident x 4: $0.60

Cosi's Trickster is perfect for Modern because most decks rely on shuffling with fetchlands, and as such, Cosi's Trickster should wind up with at least one or two counters.

Tideshaper Mystic is used to help fix the problem of the anthem merfolk giving all your merfolk islandwalk. Is your opponent doesn't play Islands, there is no easy way for islandwalk evasion to work.

Merfolk of the Pearl Trident is just here as extra support for the one mana slot. It added another cheap merfolk to the deck.

    

Lord of Atlantis x 4: $27.96

Master of the Pearl Trident x 4: $39.96

Merfolk Sovereign x 4: $2.60

Lord of Atlantis is the original "anthem merfolk" as I call them. It boosts all the other merfolk in your deck and gives them islandwalk which is a perfect form of evasion and how you'll win with this deck.

Master of the Pearl Trident is a duplicate of Lord of Atlantis and having eight total makes your deck all the more powerful.

Merfolk Sovereign is yet another anthem and adds additional evasion with unblockable.

Master of Waves x 2: $9.98

Master of Waves is here to protect from burn, plus all he devotion from the rest of the merfolk will provide a large number of elementals. Sure they'll only be 2/1s, but it's still more chances of dealing damage to an opponent.

For this deck, there are 18 Islands needed and I'll assume most people playing Magic have 18 Islands sitting around somewhere. Also, sometimes stores will give away simple basic lands or sell them really cheap.

    

Spreading Seas x 4: $3.96

Merrow Commerce x 2: $2.50

Dispel x 2: $0.30

Spreading Seas gives us islands on your opponent's side which allows creatures with islandwalk to be unblockable.

Merrow Commerce allows you to untap all your creatures at the end of your turn which allows you to both attack with islandwalk and then block during your opponent's turn.

Dispel starts our control spell suite. It's cheap and stops burn or something like Path to Exile.

    

Mana Leak x 4: $1.56

Negate x 3: $0.45

Dissipate x 3: $0.75

Mana Leak is next in our control suite and is good early one in the deck.

Negate also is here to stop burn and any spells to take out your creatures.

Dissipate is last in our list of the control suite as an additional spell to protect your 

Assuming the Islands cost nothing, the deck winds up costing $93.98. Now, of course this deck could change in price, but at the time of this writing, that's pretty cheap for a Modern deck.

While there isn't a way to make this deck any cheaper on account of the vital pieces for the deck, but splashing for white, adding Path to Exile could ultimately cause Cosi's Trickster to get a few extra counters by causing your opponent to shuffle more, and perhaps Remand might be a better choice for the control suite. 

    

Either way, here is a Mono Blue Merfolk deck for Modern under $100. Hope you've enjoyed the second deck of this series and hopefully we'll get to explore the rest soon.