Well, I guess it depends what you mean by tempo. We wasted a turn doing nothing while the opponent advanced their own game plan. Holding up mana isn't a great strategy unless you play a lot of instant speed effects (like a Delver deck) so you have options no matter what the opponent does.Īnd in those cases where we hold up the mana on their 2 or 3 and they're like 'sure, play my land, pass my turn.' or 'shockland, creature, go' it's just worse than awful. Sure, we've got vials, but the great thing about vial is that I can put 2 dudes on the field and really be threatening my opponent. The big issue is that we've also spent our turn and 2 mana not being proactive and not winning the game. Against slower, grindier decks, we've delayed the game which kind of just played into their hands. Against faster decks, it's meh because they'll get under you anyway and they don't need many lands to operate. They miss a land drop, maybe a spell for a turn. The tempo gain when SoD is good is not really that good. Merfolk plays a good proactive game with some disruptive/tempo cards as support.

It's why I've never liked cards like Remand, Spell Snare, or Shadow of Doubt in this deck. I'm pretty convinced that Merfolk makes a terrible tempo deck.

Shadow of doubt mtg