After a lot of testing, I've come to the conclusion that Mermails indeed suffered a large blow when Gunde was limited. This killed the structure of the 4-Axis build involving Pike and Turge and severely hampered the Mermails' grind game (Teus cannot search and make a Rank 7 reliably without Tidal for example). Gunde was a major combo piece in this deck, and I believe simply replacing Gunde isn't possible. The deck's skeleton will require a large retooling, and as such I don't believe the deck to be tier 1 at the moment. It probably won't be. Due to the decline of the combo availability, Reckless and Upstart will start to lose steam and could be dropped, although I won't hesitate to keep them in Minis due to the giant combos they have without Gunde. Aqua Spirit and Salvage will probably see a rise in usage to make up for Gunde, though Archer won't because of its reliance on it. We're down on viable discard fodder also, so Leed will likely be dropped and possibly Megalo as well due to being a terrible draw in general (there's a reason it was played at one last format). Turge will probably be dropped to 1, as it was a bad early game draw before and will be moreso this format. But all of this is too much for the deck to play similarly to how it did before. The Mermails will need extensive repairs to be able to compete on the top level again imo, so we'll just have to wait and see.
