As I understand it `git am` is actually replaying the series of commits on top of the branch you run it in, whereas a merge commit flattens the commits out and applies them in one go (while keeping full history of the commits begin merged). So it's definitely a different strategy, and you can get conflicts where you wouldn't with a merge commit. As you said, though, they're super easy to fix when they happen. Often when I see a conflict like this it's because there are 52 (OK, exaggerating, a little) commits in the contribution and using the `git am` flow is a huge win since I'm now in a good spot to squash the down to one or two commits.