Spirits as a tribe have some hot hot fire right now. Probably not vintage playable but damn if they didn't just take merfolks slice of the pie.
You still need to cast whatever you draw in your opponent's turn most likely, so that would put a heavy restraint on deck building so you don't just exile all your permanents during your opponent's turn.
@Wagner It's fine, like 99% of spirits have flash anyways right?
I do really wonder if there is a vintage caliber spirits deck out there. Mausoleum Wanderer, Rattlechains, Spell Queller, and Supreme Phantom all are somewhat parallel to previously vintage playable fish pieces, some much better than that even. They do a lot of what you want them to do.
@protoaddict Supreme phantom is ass. Drogskol Captain is what you want. 1 more mana, but +1 power and all spirits hexproofed. Then you can run phantasmal image cloning the captains and not worry about it dying to being targeted. There's actually a lot of good spirits out there. I run one deck in Modern and it's fun. With phyrexian metamorph, phantasmal image, drogskols, and other "+1/+1" creatures added to queller and wanderer...might be something.
UW is clearly a great color combo, and you also get things like kataki and selfless spirit and windborn muse if you reach deep. Teferi happens to be in those colors too, along with power blue and FoW. Interesting...
@thewhitedragon69 I'd say in a Vintage context speed is much more important than hexproof, so Supreme is probably better.
Also, Dimir Cutpurse and Eidolon of the Great Revel are spirits. Off-color, but I wonder if splashing red is the way to go.
What's the "killer app" that makes you want to run Spirits over Merfolk? Lord of Atlantis is a much better value-per-mana than the spirit lords we've mentioned, and you can run 8 of them. Pilferer has a neat effect but I feel like it requires enough weird support cards that you wouldn't want it in a tribal deck even if there was a tribal deck.
Summary: State some specific superlative spirits so Spirit stacks succeed!
@brass-man said in [M21] Ghostly Pilferer:
What's the "killer app" that makes you want to run Spirits over Merfolk? Lord of Atlantis is a much better value-per-mana than the spirit lords we've mentioned, and you can run 8 of them. Pilferer has a neat effect but I feel like it requires enough weird support cards that you wouldn't want it in a tribal deck even if there was a tribal deck.
Right now I think:
- Mausoleum wanderer is leagues above curse catcher
- Rattlechains is probably better than most merfolk options though I don't think there is a direct parallel. It protects your stuff in a deck you want to protect your stuff in and plays at the speed you want to play.
- Kitaki is a known quantity and is still strong when it lands
- Spell Queller is a very playable and efficient counter creature, against something that merfolk do not have
- Eidolon of Rhetoric and Spirit of the Labyrinth have a known and powerful stax effects
I'm not saying the deck is the end all be all or anything, just that it's getting more and more pieces that seem like they are totaling up to something. All of the abilities listed here are vintage relevant effects.