Against the Odds: I Made Infinite Merfolk in Standard
Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Against the Odds! This week, we're heading to Standard to make infinite Merfolk with a pile of janky combo pieces and Deeproot Pilgrimage! What are the odds that the plan actually works? Let's get to the video and find out on today's Against the Odds!
Against the Odds: Infinite Merfolk
The Deck
Our deck has a few ways of making infinite Merfolk, but they all come back to a single card: Deeproot Pilgrimage. The two-mana enchantment makes us a 1/1 hexproof Merfolk token whenever a non-token Merfolk becomes tapped. So, how do we go infinite with the enchantment?
The simplest combo in the deck is two copies of Forensic Researcher, a Merfolk that can tap itself to untap another target permanent. If we can get two of them on the battlefield alongside a Deeproot Pilgrimage, we can simply tap a Forensic Researcher to untap the second Forensic Researcher and then tap the second Forensic Researcher to untap the first, making a Merfolk token every time we do, until we eventually make a few hundred or billion Merfolk tokens to win the game.
The problem with the Forensic Researcher combo is that it requires us to draw two copies of Forensic Researcher, which isn't all that easy. Thankfully, we have a way to increase our odds in Marvin, Murderous Mimic. Marvin just steals all the activated abilities of creatures we control. So, if we can get a Forensic Researcher on the battlefield alongside Marvin, Marvin will also have Forensic Researcher's ability, so we can do the same combo but with only a single "real" Forensic Researcher on the battlefield.
The third way we can combo is pretty janky and involves turning all our creatures into Merfolk with Leyline of Transformation. With Leyline on the battlefield, we can turn our looters Rona, Herald of Invasion and Kitsa, Otterball Elite into Merfolk so that when we tap them to draw and discard, we'll also make a Merfolk token with Deeproot Pilgrimage. While this isn't infinite, it is a nice backup plan if we don't manage to assemble our full combo, especially since our looters are good at digging for our missing combo pieces. If we add Agatha's Soul Cauldron to the mix alongside Leyline of Transformation, we can combo with any two non-token creatures, with Leyline turning those creatures into Merfolk and Agatha's Soul Cauldron letting us exile Forensic Researcher from our graveyard to give all of our creatures with counters its ability. At this point, we can do the same loop (using two creatures with Forensic Researcher's ability to untap each other infinitely) to combo off.
The final piece of the puzzle is Vodalian Hexcatcher. You are probably wondering why we are playing a Merfolk lord in the deck. If we go infinite, don't we win just as easily with 1/1s as with 2/2s? All of this is true, but the power of Vodalian Hexcatcher isn't being a Merfolk lord—it's the second ability, which allows us to sacrifice a Merfolk to counter a noncreature spell unless its controller pays one.
The biggest downside of our combo is that it doesn't technically win us the game right away. Let's say we combo off and make infinite Merfolk. The problem is they are all summoning sick, so to actually attack for lethal, we need to pass to our opponent, hope they don't have a sweeper, and then win with combat damage the following turn. Vodalian Hexcatcher more or less solves the sweeper problem by essentially giving us infinite copies of Negate—we can sacrifice as many Merfolk as we need to counter any noncreature spell our opponent might play, and then use the combo to make more Merfolk to ensure we have lethal the next turn!
Wrap-Up
Record-wise, the deck was pretty janky, coming in with below a 30% win rate, so this probably isn't the deck for you if your goal is to rank up to Mythic. The good news is that we got to combo off with the deck a bunch of times, and it was hilarious! No one expects infinite Merfolk, and it turns out that a huge horde of hexproof 1/1s is a pretty solid way to pick up some wins!
The big issue with the combo is that, no matter which combo we end up with, they all require at least three pieces and two creatures sticking on the battlefield, which isn't especially easy against removal-heavy decks. Basically, while the combo is funny and fun, and it is good at winning games when it all comes together, the deck just isn't consistent enough to be truly competitive.
Anyway, that's all for today. As always, leave your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and suggestions in the comments, and you can reach me on Twitter @SaffronOlive or at SaffronOlive@MTGGoldfish.com.
