LankeOnLuck

Glad to hear it! No problem man :)

thank you :)

No problem, hope you'll enjoy the deck :)

Seahunter could definetly work out, it's an expensive tutor, but since merfolk decks usually run a lot of counterspells and control cards, getting him out on the field is not that big of a problem. I personally like merrow harbinger (and that's due to me running venser, he can combo with a lot of different cards to draw more cards and the merrow harbinger with him is completely sick!)

In my opinion, you don't really need to pack your deck with a ton of counterspells if you don't want to. Currently, I play with 4 mana leaks and 2 Azorius Charms. Due to all the card draw you have i nthe deck and the number of cantrips, you get to them fairly easily. I've seen a lot of merfolk decks this past year and am very happy about it. One thing though that people realise is the fact that mono blue merfolk lacks strenght in different areas depending on how you like to play them. White and black is the most common colors to find solutions and cards to cover up those weaknesses (though I have seen red and green being splashed before, it personally interests me).

One card that I think is missing a bit is the Silvergill Adept. It's basically a merfolk that makes you lose no card advantage. A cantrip creature basically. If it dies, it's never the end of the world, because it replaced itself with another card anyways. Even though some players tend to try and keep them alive at first, they really are only ther to block incoming attacks and trade a basically free card for something that the opponent spent a card on.

Now, there's a couple of ways you ccould build a merfolk deck, at first glance, it looks like you have the lockdown build (the one where you use your lullmage mentors ability to negate anything and everything your enemy tries to do as soon as you get 7 merfolk cards in play). But since you say you want a more swarm heavy approach, it could turn into a very interesting sort of hybrid. Liking the idea...

If you want to be able to play more cards in a single turn, I'd highly suggest switching out the sovereign for Merrow Reejerey. They have the same cmc and power bonus. The difference is that the reejerey gives more board control and can untap lands whenever you play a merfolk to effectively reduce the cost of all your merfolks by 1. (which is pretty much the same power as the bannerets, only a bit better).



Now, to answer your actual question (sorry for not getting to the point earlier)
Mana leak is a good card. Nothing bad about it, however, merfolk decks doesn't seem to benefit from them later on, which is the point in which people play big spells to try and turn the board position to their favor. Basically, after using them in my merfolk deck for about a year or so, they seem to be a little bit of a gamble. because if the enemy doesn't do anything big, you're not going to be too worried. Since I've played with my friends for so long, I know when they want to play a big spell with their deck and when they don't want to, so it's a bit easier for me to guess.
Run cancel if you're not that good at telling when your enemy is going to play something big that you want countered or if your deck just doesn't seem to want to play counterspells early on.
Run mana leaks if you're sure you want to at some point between turn 2-5 counter an important spell. Is what I would say. Azorius charms are also very useful, in terms of card advantage and board position, they're incredibly powerful. the power of giving your opponent an essentially dead draw next turn as well as turning the tides in battle is powerful.

You could also use Rune Snag instead of mana leaks (which I am thinking of doing personally). They're not so strong early on, but once you've used a single one, the remaining ones will be a lot more powerful. In merfolk decks with a lot of cantrips, you're sure to stumble upon at least two in a normal match.

In terms of merfolks, white doesn't really have a whole lot going on. Most good merfolk cards are hidden in blue, occasionally you'll find some that could work in different colors, but a lot of them are situational and completely dependant on how you build your deck. In this case, Sygg (being aone of the more god-like merfolk creatures) and Stonybrook Schoolmaster works because you've gone for the more token heavy build. In terms of other control cards, you open up a sea of choices.

On a last note, I would probably take out one or two Bannerets unless you're planning on running Summon the School, the simple reason being that you can get to them easily with all that card draw. And if you do keep them in and add Summon the School, having 4 of them would only increase the rate at which you can spwan merfolk tokens.

I hope you don't die in the amount of time it would probably take to read all of this (sorry!) and I also hope that you'll enjoy the world of the Merfolk deck :)

Cold-Eyed selkie is better than scroll thief at the same cmc
I also suggest Sygg, River Guide. He's almost a must for any merfolk deck.
Wanderwine Hub makes it VERY easy to splash him aswell!
I've made several comments on multiple merfolk decks before, it gets repetative to constantly re-tell them every time I see a new one, so if you'd like more advice, you could probably look at my profile and other merfolk decks that I've commented on.
In terms of number of bannerets that you're using, I'd probably advice to drop one of them. You only really need one or two on the field, having 3 of them would make them consistent enough to get that while not giving you three in a short amount of time. Ofcourse, having four of them could be justified if you decide to run the Lullmage Mentor with Summon the School and go for a complete lockdown deck.
I'd drop the Enclave Elites, they simply do not fit into merfolk tribal decks. There's way better choices. If you're running Wanderwine Prophets, you might as well run the Stonybrook Schoolmasterrs too.
Freed from the Real is an odd pick here, this is where I'd most likely see the Merrow Reejerey (for obvious reasons) but it just doesn't seem to fit into this deck. If this was a mill deck (which this clearly isn't) it would be justified and rather obvious, but it is not. I'd suggest you get rid of that and put something else in.
I'd probably drop a couple of Merrow Commerces, they're nice to have, but they have the same problem as the bannerets, you only need so many of them. In this deck, you only need one and you can search for it with the Merrow Harbinger, so there's really no point in running more than one or two in the deck (run one if the enemy doesn't have any way of getting rid of enchantments, run 2 if they do have).
Other than this, the deck looks interesting. I don't see Shapesharer and Cackling Counterpart being played in merfolk decks all that much, they're pretty awesome in a lot of them, too, sadly merfolk decks can only have so many different cards as there are a lot of merfolks that are too good not to have in a deck, so a lot of the times they just get left out.
Liking the deck ;)

"it's not cheating if it's in the game" :P

twice

that's expensive. If I could afford it, it'd be in here, trust me :)

Wouldn't master of the pearl trident make your creatures unblockable anyways though?

this looks like a nice deck. Liking the mix of lifegain/combat tricks you have in there (with the counter spells that are pretty much mandatory for merfolk decks, it's going to break many o enemies hearts)
Liking the mix of spreading seas with aquitect's will, they're both really good cards, although I prefer using a set of 4 spreading seas with ponders (just personal though)
Was feeling like there was a bit too many bannerets to start off, but later realised that you had some token generation in here too, pretty neat.
The one thing I'm pretty iffy about is the Merfolk Sovereign. Any perticular reason for it to be in there? As there are better lords and the fact that you have so much land into island cards available, you should be able to have your whole team unblockable at all times. Guessing you could sideboard in the prophets to give you an infinite combo, but then the sovereign should belong in the sideboard aswell. Something like Merrow Reejerey could fit in there more nicely imo.

what you're stating here is wrong. The reasoning being that he uses Seahunter. He even has 4 of them to maximize his chances of getting certain cards. What he esspentially has is 5 different cards that can get his prophets out on the field. That is a fair deal, given that he has a lot more utility for it than that.

Also, a card more than 60 does not mean the deck is unplayable. There's such a small difference between playing 60 card deck and 61 that there's no real need to discard a card. Going past 62 will be a little too much though.

Thank you for posing your own merfolk deck, I quite enjoy looking through what some players come up with as I am a fan of the merfolk tribe myself and has played and seen soon to be almsot every strategy that can be (not counting small variances in card amount of course)

If you get 2 or more Paradox Hazes in play your Chronozoas are gonna be sad..

Also, love cantrips (cards that does something for you and draw a card too!) and this deck uses quite a bit of them, if you count the soulshift that a lot of creatures have too, it's just rediculous. Love the South Tree too, it's like built in overrun on a creature, but you get to decide the power you gain from it by playing things and it is reusable :P

I love this :D

Ah, Wanderwine Prophets is a nice card, for the slower kind of control merfolk decks it can work as a finisher. It + Schoolmaster + any way of making both unblockable gives you infinite turns :)

I would take out Unholy Strength and add 4 more merfolk lord, like merrow reejerey, he can untap your lands as you play merfolks. How cool is that?

Also, consider Spreading Seas instead of Aquitect's Will. Difference is that spreading seas can be removed easier but makes something a permaisland, screwing up someones mana pool if they're multicolored. Both will be played at around turn 3 anyways (aquitects will for the card draw and spreading seas to target the land they only have one of). Stonybrook Banneret is a dead card in this deck, you only need one out on the field at any time and even then it only reduces the cost of 2 cards in your deck.

Oh man... There's multiple things that I would do differently with this deck... This is probably going to end up in a wall of text, so sorry in advance :S

Sygg, River Guide is a must for any white-blue merfolk deck. There's just no questioning there, he protects your dudes so they can't be removed from play. As long as you keep 2 mana up, the enemy won't be able to do much of anything against you! Especially against control decks which uses mass removal and point removal. It can also make them psuedo unblockable or be used as a combat trick to make the merfolk unkillable in combat, dodge enchantments like pacifism, spells like Shock, etc, etc. So many usses to him, and he's still a 2/2 for 2 with island walk built in, three's just nothing to hate about him.

Switch your Scroll thieves out for Cold-Eyed Selkie, they're simply better. Merfolk decks doesn't use that much of any other colored mana than blue either way, they just splash a bit of one or more colors.

Spreading Seas is extremely good in this deck as you won't have a whole lot of ways of tapping your schoolmasters for the extra merfolk. I would replace your Halimar Wavewatches with that (they're weird to have in a merfolk deck anyways). In addition to that, there's always the "Aquitects Will or Spreading Seas" war going on between merfolk decks. You could run both in this deck completely fine, the difference is that spreading seas can be removed easier but in exchange it turns the land into a perma island (removing whatever it was or had before). Aside from that, no, aquitects will will probably not be played turn one, it's probably going to be played turn 3 along with spreading seas so you can get the extra card draw. (the reason you play spreading seas turn 3 is because then any multicolored deck will have different kind of lands, so you can use it on the land they have the least of. Causing mana problems for that player)

Seahunter is amazing (though I could not find any, but I got my hands on a Venser the Sojourner, so I can easily play with the Merrow Harbinger, they're pretty good, not better or worse than seahunter as they can be flickered with vensers ability.)

Merrow Commerce is kind of an oddball... You only have use for a single one of them and the uses aren't many in this deck. I assume you want to play a merfolk lockdown deck with the mentor so you can counter all spells your opponent is trying to use, but you don't need Merrow Commerce for that. Merfolk lockdown is meant to be a slower control deck, so I would just take them out for more counterspells to get to the point where Lullmage Mentor reaches the complete lockdown mode faster.

Aside from this, I think everything else looks good.

EDIT: Consider Merrow Reejerey! He's close to being a must have for merfolk decks aswell, the reasoning being that he can untap your lands as you play merfolk spells but also because of the board control! You could play an aquitect's will to tap your enemy lands so they can't use something like cancel or other things!

as you only have a single krenko, I really think those times when you actually get him out will be few, let alone keep him away from harms way.

I think you should move Rhys down to the sideboard too, as it can be played as your commander if you for some reason would like to.

Have you tried making a spirit deck with green? Like having Elder pine of Jukai and Loam dweller etc?

Maybe you could do it with blue so you can have Tomorrow, Azami's Familiar too? Would make for tons of deck control at least. Splash white for the Kami of False Hope and possibly Drogskol Captain or something?