My initial gut reaction to this during previews was "much worse than
Assemble the Legion", and as Assemble is much more widely owned and findable, why would anyone ever run this? EDHRecs seems to agree - Assemble is at 6015 decks, while Merriment is in a mere 600. I want to slow down today and examine that thought - is that right and true? Is Merriment always worse than Assemble? Is it so much worse as to be not worth running alongside it for redundancy? Let's have some context; Assemble is in the top five most played and arguably most powerful cards in the Boros color identity, coming in behind only staples like
Boros Charm and
Wear // Tear, toolbox extraordinaire
Sunforger, and big splashy
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight. Being a bit worse than that should still carve out room for some merriment to be had, and yet Outlaw's isn't even on the list of Boros staples (nevermind having a shot at popping up in Marath tokens or Marchesa blitz or whatever). Should we take a second look?
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Mana cost: Merriment comes down a whole turn sooner in ideal circumstances, so point Merriment. I will say that this is debatable and subjective, but 4 versus 5 is also a big deal. Lots of players are in the "3 lands + 4 action cards = keep" mindset for mulliganing, myself included. If one of our action spells is Merriment versus Assemble, a quick trip to my hypergeometric calculator shows we're 91% to be casting Merriment on-curve (i.e. to have drawn one additional land or rock by turn 4) but only 76% to be casting Assemble on curve in an average "45 mana sources" deck. It's also relevant that on, say, seven or either mana, that one mana point difference could be the difference between holding up for
Chaos Warp or
Return to Dust while also developing a long-term plan, and spending your whole turn assembling. In terms of actual mana cost, I'd call the cost a slight edge in purely Boros decks (where the increased Devotion is actually possibly an upside for fueling
Iroas, God of Victory and other devotion spells), a slight annoyance in tri-color, and a major barrier toward running Merriment in Saskia or other 4+ color decks, for a wash overall. That means that when it comes to casting this,
Outlaw's Merriment wins.
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"The Worst Case Scenario": In some/many metas and mindsets, people evaluate cards as "what if this card only does its thing once before dying to a boardwipe or stray removal spell?". In that case, Assemble the Legion gives a legion of one 1/1 dork, while Merriment has provided on average 2/1 of board presence (with some miscellaneous but not irrelevant abilities). If you really feel like your big splashy engine enchantments only get a single round around the table, you should 100% be running
Outlaw's Merriment over Assemble in your decks.
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Scaling Power: Let's instead look at how these two stack up if you do get several turns out of them. It's a bit shaky but bear with me - I'm going to say that one outlaw is worth "4 points" (power + toughness + either the ping, lifelink, or trample) and a single legionnaire is worth 2 points (the power and toughness); the haste is irrelevant as both cards have all tokens starting ready to rumble. Let's also ignore that, in theory, Merriment could be cranking out Outlaws a whole turn sooner than Assemble - that'd be relevant in some sort of racing situation in Standard, but not terribly relevant for deck construction in EDH.
- Turn 1: 4 points Outlaw, 2 points Assemble
- Turn 2: 8 points Outlaw, 6 points Assemble
- Turn 3: 12 points Outlaw, 12 points Assemble
- Turn 4: 16 points Outlaw, 20 points Assemble
- Turn 5: 20 points Outlaw, 30 points Assemble.
As we saw in the Worst Case, Outlaws is literally twice as strong after a single turn cycle, and it is still ahead after two turn cycles and even after three. We need to make it four trips around the table without someone deciding to wreck our game-winning enchantment before Assemble starts to pull ahead, and it is only on the fifth cycle that Assemble is ludicrously, embarrassingly far ahead. Thinking about it in quadrant theory terms - I'd say Outlaws is much better when you are winning (it adds more power faster to close the door) and much better when you are way behind (providing more value immediately to try to dig yourself out, with the caveat that neither of these cards is amazing when you are very far behind), and also generally better when developing (the extra power on the first two cycles should carve you a better foothold, and I can't ignore the mana and tempo advantage there). Assemble is better if you are at parity as long-term it can take over the game in a way Outlaw can't. On its face that means we should say Outlaws is better (better in 3 of 4 quadrants), but I do think it's fair to say that in most EDH games, parity is the natural state compared to limited or standard games. What I hope this shows everyone (since it showed me) is that I think we all get so excited by what Assemble looks like with five assembly counters that we forget the road to get there. In terms of scaling power overall, I'd call it
A Tie between Outlaw's Merriment and Assemble the Legion.
Synergy AKA "Magical Christmas Land": Let's be real - we SHOULD be weighing cards by those first metrics alone, but we're all playing normal EDH and not cEDH for that sweet Magical Christmas Land action. The elephant in the room is
Doubling Season, and it's no secret that Assemble + Doubling is a match made in Naya. Suddenly your first trigger of Assemble gets two muster counters and then makes four soldiers! Next turn you are getting up to four Muster counters to make eight soldiers! Outlaw's Merriment definitely can't compete in that case. Obviously, if you are looking for an enchantment that makes dorks over time in Rith, Marath, Gahiji, or any other Naya deck, you should look no further than Assemble the Legion.
And yet I still want to look deeper. After all, of the 18 Commanders that most play Assemble, only four are Naya-aligned. By percentage Assemble shows up most in pure Boros decks and by raw numbers it finds the most homes in
Queen Marchesa - Commanders that have to rely on
Anointed Procession alone for their doubling needs, where the two cards perform exactly the same. Further, while the two cards (mostly) benefit the same from most go-wide buffs, it should be noted that because the tokens are higher power from Outlaws, they scale differently and better off of stuff like
Rage Reflection or
Aurelia, the Warleader or
Gisela, Blade of Goldnight. And honestly, I'd also say that 66% of the time, it also is more impactful to be granting +2/+2 (from Agrus Kos) or the Menace (from Iroas) to some tramplers or lifelinks than to generic 1/1s. Two of the three also interact quite grossly with
Archetype of Finality. Now it's not all roses - to be fair to Assemble, Outlaw is nigh-impossible to get tribal advantages out of since it makes creature types at random and none of its three are nearly as well-supported as Soldier is. What I'm saying is that overall while Assemble is going to be better in Naya or Soldier decks, I think Merriment has some real contending power in any other deck, and in particular should be, if anything, REPLACING Assemble in your average Feather, Iroas, Aurelia, Brion, or Marchesa deck (which are the most popular Boros and Mardu commanders that tend to run Assemble).
Advantage: Close, but Outlaw's Merriment
TL;DR - I think the word "at random" scares people, and for sure there are going to be occasional feelbads where you really needed Friar Tuck's lifelink and got someone else, or really needed to snipe
Mother of Runes with Will Scarlet before she was active but missed, or desperately needed Little John's trample and someone else came to the party. But if we overcome our initial biases and comforts, we can see that actually, in reality, not only is Outlaw's Merriment "as good" as Assemble - in many decks it is superior. Give it a try, and be merry! Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.