Merfolk has never found itself at the forefront of Modern, though people have been playing it in some capacity since the format's inception. A copy of the deck broke the Top 8 of the SCG Invitational in Columbus and now two copies found their way to the Top 8 of Grand Prix Copenhagen, with Przemek Knocinski winning the whole tournament.

The deck hasn't changed a ton, with the general plan still being to jam a bunch of Relentless Rats... er... lords, but both players in the Copenhagen Top 8 backed up their fish package with some great metagame choices. Here are the lists:

The creature base is still pretty weak relative to Modern, though the idea has always just been to do the same thing consistently. The Cosi's Trickster in Christoffer's list are cute, but it's unlikely that this slot had much to do with his success. Rather, it's the answers to Tarmogoyf, Tasigur, and non-basic lands present in both lists that allowed them to combat the popular strategies of the format while creatures with power did some attacking.

While both lists are clever, I would suggest that players working on Merfolk pull elements from both lists, rather than just copying one or the other. The huge elements here are Przemek's Relic of Progenitus and Christoffer's Ghost Quarter over Tectonic Edge. Relic helps you keep pace against delve and Snapcaster Mage spectacularly, and Ghost Quarter is immensely better at combating non-basic lands, as breaking up Tron before they can use the mana is clutch and you'll have better openings to use GQ against Amulet Bloom.