Good job and nice report.  However, there is a very minor discrepency.  I was your opponent round two and the third game started with land, ancestral, pearl into sol ring, go.  Anyway, good job and hope to see you again at the next one if there is a next one .

xantid swarms have been used to good affect incombo before and I think that they can here as well.    Oath seems to worry alot of people and I understand why.  However xantids give you a free turn to go off because the current version of oath has no maindeck removal.  They swing twice with Angel or SotN and gt you down to low, you attack with xantid and have hopefully by then developed a hand that can win.  If you see alot of standard build oath, then just put can't die angel in your deck and not xantid, you will almost certainly win that game.

your interpretation is the one of correctitude.  After a bit more playtesting, I believe that if you are safe from hate, then the xantids represent a better choice for disruption.  Also, take note that this issue is metagame dependent.  Treat this similarly to the dragon situation, if you believe your meta will allow xantids without to much trouble, then by all means go xantid.

A side note that should be mentioned is that a mixture is probably not the best idea because the two solutions, xantid and duress, are different enough that they need to supersaturate the answers to your threats in different ways and having less than four of either one, albeit that there is some cross benifits like durressing away a fire/ice to push though the xantid, will not be more effective than a purebreed form of disruption.

I think it is also neccessary to state why xantids are superior to durresses  given that they both do what they are supposed to do.  In LongDeath, MeanDeath, or Deathlong you will probably cast some form of draw seven before winning and before your tendrills is leathal.  Ideally durress gives you some certainty about what your opponent can do to respond to your speed in addition to striping one couter from thier hand.  Xantid, when cast on the first turn will probably remove two blue cards (a force and something else) from your opponents hand or spell game over in the next turn or two because that draw seven will never get them more answers.  However, if they have swords or fire/ice, you will definately be hurting because that investment netted no advantage to you going off.  That is how I see it.  I don't think this is the right thread to say much more about the xantid swarm in the main because I don't want to hijack it, but if someone pms me about starting a thread about this topic, I'll definately start one.  I would appreceate to hear how people play the deck as far as my first few questions are concerned.

One thing I've noticed more and more in playtesting this deck is the importance of reading an opponent.  If you have three draw sevens in the first rip, This can be amazing or horrible (at most one is the twister, and the rest will just dump your hand with the other two draw sevens in the yard, which will mean that you have one non wished-in draw seven left and an opponent with a fresh 7).  If you really see force in you opponents eyes (not just some stupid bluff at having one), don't go for the twister when wheel, or windfall does the same job of taking a force from thier hand.  Save the twister for threat two or even three.  The combo game, whether you're playing it or against it, is more poker skills oriented than any other form of magic.  A good call will pay off in spades and a bad one can lose you top 8.  Most people say that means it's a luck deck, but it is just a different form of skill.  In this particular example, Jar is a middle ground card, definately not as good as twister for the short term, but more explosive in the long term as you save the other draw sevens and have a free turn to go off after untapping unless you try to go for the gold after spending five mana.

I have a few playtesting questions:
When do you decide to play conservative and do the untap thing (eot) in order to increase the potential certainty of going off?
What kind of oppening hand is good enough (keepable) vs a deck with 4 force and 4 manadrain?
What do you sideboard out for the xantids and does that change with different machups, more importantly, why?

I also have some maindeck choice questions:
Is there a way to put xantids in the main without taking to much from the power of this deck and would this be a good change?  

 Oddly enough, I think that this question is best answered by how prepared your enviroment is to welders than anything else.  That being if welders are running rampent, then the natural answer is anti-welder cards, which also kill xandtid.

With the recent successes this deck has had and it's vault into the mainstream articles, would a secondary win condition like colossus be benificial because of the possible increase in stifles present.

By the way, great report and thanks to anyone that answers.
edited once thus far for spelling stupidity.

After playing fish for quite a while now, I think that 24 mana sources is the right number, especially with color restraints the way they are.  I've been toying with a lotus instead of the sapphire because it produces red and is a bit of a boost, but that subject has already been killed in other threads.  

As far as voidmage goes, I've said it before and I'll say it again.  Although it is not the mvp of the creatures, it is one of the only forceful lategame drops that fish runs.  It's countering affect is virtually uncounterable save stifle and adds even more usefullness to an extra lavamancer in play.  Having multiple lavamancers is good only for a short amount of time.  If they don't finish an opponent off they can be used for voidmage food which improves thier versatility as well.  Basically, Voidmage is good and the two of them should stay; if you plan on cutting something  for land, try and look elsewhere.

Just incase people still play the flying men, I have two things to say that should convince you otherwise.  Firstly, it cannot be overstated how useful the untapping lands affect is in a deck that plays four mishras factory and a library of alexandria, plus the needed red mana that can be a bit difficult to pay for lavamancer ablility is sometimes easier to get with the fairies.  I have many times been able to draw two cards  and or get a free pump on a mishras factory from the untapping lands property.  The secondary property of the cloud of faries, cycling, is useful from time to time.  I've found that under a standstill if I make the supposition that having a possible counterspell once the standstill is broken is more valuable than a cloud in hand I will cycle them.

On a complete side note, I've been playing two waterfront bouncers in place of two spiketails to see how they benifit the deck.  I can honestly say that they increase the potency of the standstills in that they can clear the way of an annoying angel or fattie (eg darksteel colossus) when necissary under a standstill and give power to all the extra cards that lie in your hand during certain parts of the game.  Basically, if you are losing the creature battle you can lay down a standstill if you have a bouncer on the board (bear in mind that other aspects apply to whether or not this is a benifit, how far behind you are, whether the bouncer is still sick of being summoned, whether your opponent will respond with fire or swords, ect.)  They also help win the mishras factory battle in the mirror.

I am a big fan of voidmage and cannot see running any other number than two.  Given that the decks draws the number of cards it does, it almost plays like three, but only when fish is doing it's job.  Some people might interpret this as winning more, but as fish is tempo based, I feel that it needs a mid-game threat that threatens to win the end game for you.  Voidmage is that type of card.

I don't like rasorfin hunter.  I tried it in several places to put in in and it never earned it's place in the main board.  It is darned demanding on the colored manabase and the voidmage already fills that gap enough.  Dont forget that fish playes less that 16 colored manasources and having two early on isn't as easy as it seems against opposing wastelands and the additional restriction of one of each color.

Hope I've been helpful

I like the bb forest with the plains picture, I think it's german, wald.  The promo 4th islands  with the beta picture are also pretty neat.

As for the guru thing.  They look neat and are quite rare, not compared to summer magic, but still a rarity; they arent for me though.

Great read.  It is rare to find an article or series of articles that comprehensive.  I have counted atleast four response topics in this thread alone that could easilly support thier own productive thread, wow.  I noticed that the dragon topic now has one which is so good because untill that thread started, the discussions on dragon were a bit disjointed and unproductive (I am not reffering to the dicemanx threads).  Bravo and I can't wait for the next enstallment.

I would imagine a judge would find a deck to be insufficiently randomized if there was an algorithm that could predict the next type of card in a deck.  Something on the order of land spell spell repeat or no two lands together.  Interestingly enough, if a deck was to be totally randomized, it could still be very organised in any such way.  I belive that the clear signal would be a high amoung of order because the number of times a deck is well ordered after a randomization is so staggeringly small compared to the other possible outcomes that foul play is almost a given.

Cheating does not have to be to your advantage.  Getting a one land hand is, unless you are playing two-land belcher, going to be a disadvantage.  My point was not whether or not it is good for your game or not, my point was that in getting a one land hand almost all the time means that you are not randomizing your deck, which is cheating.

Shuffling is an imperfect art.  The goal in shuffling is to completely randomize your deck.  Unfortunately, absolute randomization is not a feasible goal.  Another issue is that in magic, you are not rewarded by a good randomization, you are rewarded by having an even mix of lands, threats, and counters in your opening hand.  This problem in goals causes players to dislike landscrew and landfllood enough that they start to question their shuffling techniques.  Fact; if you are consistently getting 2-4 land hands almost every game (read over 95 %), then you are cheating (given an infinite set of data).  Additionally, if you are getting 1-land hands almost every game, then you are also cheating.  Basically, if you are shuffling to evenly disribute rather than randomize and you are doing that task well, then you are cheating.  I just thought someone needed to say something to that affect.  The easiest way to avoid issues like the two mentioned above is to shuffle a lot, do not pile shuffle as it is an ordered method and therefore does not provide any randomization unless you randomly place cards into different piles, and try not to shuffle in the same way all the time.

Magic is like many other games of incomplete information.  There may be different rules and victory conditions, but the path to victory is all the same.  The goal in magic is to create imbalance, to push instead of being pushed.  A corollary to this is to be able to distinguish between a push and a last ditch effort.  In magic, it is important to understand why your opponent makes a move in order to justify your counter.

         If you can threaten you opponent with superior card draw over the course of a few turns, he/she will most likely turn on the heat in order to force you to respond with on board action.  If no one presents a game threat early on, both will seek out ways to win the long haul.  The goal in deck creation and play is not to win convincingly, but to force your opponent on their metaphorical heels and squeeze.  Your tools are not just limited to your cards and the particular draw; they include your gestures, your opponents gestures, your ability to read in-between the lines, trickery with any of the tools, and your understanding of the intricacies of the rules.

       In type one, there are far more resources available than any other format, and as such, they should all be capitalized on if possible.  The old theory of broken cards makes broken plays is still applicable, but not to the extent it once was because although loading a deck with the most broken cards can be advantageous at times, the level of consistency will fall terribly.  The more modern thought of extreme consistency has weaknesses for the opposite reason, namely, if every game you can present the same less powerful threats at the same rate, your opponent will inevitably run into something to trump you hoard of 1/1s.  A third and equally moving force in type one is synergy.  If many of your cards benefit each other and can stand alone in bringing threats to the game, then you have more effective threats than those not applying this philosophy to their decks.  

         Ultimately, it comes down to risk vs. reward.  If you decide to play 2-land belcher at your next tourney, you are risking a lot (first turn trinishpere, fow, and consistency problems) for the real threat of first-third turn victories.  If you decide on UW landstill, you are giving up on game ending early threats for consistent card draw and resilient answers.  I could go down the list of tier one and tier two decks, but that would eventually lead to a long and pointless list that has been done before.

           One topic that has been a hot button for the last few years has been the tier status of any given deck.  With larger numbers of larger tournaments and more publicized results we have been able to effectively illustrate which decks do better and top 8 more often.  However, I found that large lists of top 8s only show part of the story.  To all of those listening, I think that a truer story of good decks would include proportions of entrants playing the deck.  For example, Hulk is without question a tier one deck.  It has more top 8 finishes than any other deck right now.  Unfortunately, if 85% of the field consisted of different versions of Hulk, then the numbers it has in top 8s would be misleading.  I know that no large tournament has ever been so single deck dominated, but I would like to know if there was a higher % of Hulk in top 8 than in decks registered for these large tournaments.  Granted that the percentage will still probably be higher in top 8, but I would like to see those numbers, as they tend to be as revealing as the top 8 lists or possibly more so.  
 
          My concluding thoughts on the tier status of a deck are as follows.  In a medium sized tournament (30-60), anything within the “agreed upon” first two tiers has about (give or take a few percent (read one to 5) wherein the best deck’s percent is converted to be 20 percent and all other tier one and tier two decks are then recalculated given the conversion factor if the top deck) chance of making top 8.  What distinguishes a tier one deck from a tier two deck goes back to risk vs. reward; tier one decks do one of the following three: reward their players with better threats for the same risks than the tier two counterparts, they reward their players with comparable threats for less risk than the tier two counterparts, or reward their players with slightly better threats and risk slightly less than the tier two counterparts. (Please note that the threats referred to in the previous sentence are cards that create imbalance.)

  Thanks for reading this somewhat random post.
One last and final note is that playtesting is the tool that provides incite into all of these topics.  If there is any piece of advice that I have been given in the time I've played that has always held true, it is the value of good playtesting.

In your quote of the rules, it states that if that players deck was shuffled, then you may cut the deck, however, if the deck was only cut, then you have no opportunity to cut your own deck.  Therefor, if your deck was cut, but not shuffled, you no longer have access to that last cut.(That last period is supposed to be larger so as to say to the world PERIOD, however hard I punched the keyboard it would not listen to my request)

buy a sharpie,Hah.
Is the corners thing going to be the downfall of this antire idea?  Is there no way that problem can be fixed?  I think not.  BTW, Ancestral cannot be on top becuase opponent can always shuffle ( I do not want a shuffle thread to develope) and will almost always cut.  As stated earlier in this comunity, type one is as much about friendship and trust as it is about anything else.  If someone wants to cheat badly enough, and is skilled enough, we will not catch him/her easily.  With time this will become clear when ancestral in the oppening hand every game or two thirds of the games happens.  Type one is not the most benificial format to cheat in.  you will lose face, maybe friends, and might get a lotus for all that hard work of learning to cheat well.  Rob a freakin elderly if you want low risk unethical adventures. Just read last cut rule.  I think that if ancestral is the first card in your deck 4 times in a row, the 3600^2 odd would illustrate your cheatin ways.

Perhaps that last comment should have been more thought out.  You are right Kerz.  Alpha cards are shaped differenty and toally legal in type one is the new justification that square corners are ok.  Another quazi benifit from ce being restricted is that players with power can have an english black bordered dual for x-treamly cheap.

clipping would be required.  I did not mention the benifits to this suggestion because they seemed obvious.  But just incase they arent,  more power=more competative players=somewhat less reliance on proxies=more real tournies=more attention to type one by wizards=good.

I do not own any ce cards, before I started getting power cards again I wanted ce to be legalized about 1 day after recieving mine in the mail, but reality hit.  I chose not to purchase a ce set and instead went for an unlimited lotus and a good start at a mox.

           I do believe, however, that ce is not without some future playability in type one.  The way the rules are now, ce is no defferent than unglued as far as legal playability is concerned.  I am not going to advocate making ce completely legal in type 1.  What I am going to suggest is to modify the restricted list to include ce cards.  This would cause any conflicts with standard/extended to be negated and for one and only one ce card to be included in any type one deck.  

          Of course in doing this modification there would also be another rule that states that no ce card in a deck that is already restricted could be used in its unlimited, beta, or alpha form in addition (I know this is wordy and poorly written, but I'm a math magor who has failed more english classes than most people attend:( .)

           I know many people wil instantly disagree with my suggestion.  I think that everyone here with power has worked hard for it and noone wants some cheap scrub to sell his ce set for real power.  Time is money, and although I didn't have the balls to buy a ce set, there are those that have.  If this suggestion is accepted buy the powers that be, and there is a new influx of power, there will be an increase in the value of ce, but not to the extent that everyone expects (there would still be stigma about using ce (is stigma the right word)).  Secondly and most importantly, I'm sure many of us know the trials we have gone through for power.  I don't even want to start a thread of how many of us have gotten ripped on e-buy or some trade sight becouse we would be on page 9 within a few days.  What I am ham handedly trying to point out is that starting with a ce set and having the goal of real power given the ce restriction update would be a long, risky, and demanding task that would require the level of dedication to type one that this sight rewards.  My power to these people, just not litterally.

          Please respond with your comments and questions.  Please do not turn this into another thread bashing ce players/cheaters.(though I am totally against them all) That is not the topic nor should it ever be because the rules are completely clear as to what is legal and what is not.  

          Hazzah, first thread

tried tithe, it is a good card.  However, although it might get you two lands, you cannot cast it for free, which translates to extra riskyness if part the goal was to decrease lands and improve timeliness of belcher kill.  The way I see land grant many things can happen. first, you can have a land and land grant first turn which (unless opp has already played two on first ahead of you, unlikely) causes land, declare land grant, land of other color and have one mana for other stuff(tithe depends on having white mana and only gets you more if the unlikely two land oponent above). Two, land grant and no land on startup could be good or bad depending on mox status(additionally, have been thinking about chrome what do you guys think) and matchup, ie force or no.  Three, you do not have land grant in your first hand, irrelevent because we're talking about whether or not to have land grant.  Benefits to land grant beyond color fixer.  Allows a lower land count in the deck without  additional risking mana screw (no land hand), save FoW.  Notice that tithe is actually worse than land grant if you don't have the mana to pay for it, land grant risks counter but so does tithe, but it is a color fixer and deck thinner/shuffler(gotta love the ScRack) just the same.

Cutting the land taxes given that I only have 8 basics seems ok, however, having four land tax and 3 land grant  that can only get the two duals means that an early cast or tinkered belcher can take many people by surprise and steal many games really early, especially for parfait.  I will give it a try though.  Any other thoughts. I've considered both 4 ScRack and 4 Isochron, but I usually find that with tutors three is best for both.  Love moat to much.

my name is David,
  Live in Ames Iowa, math Magor at iowa state U.
been playing since antiquities but quit between fallen empiers and visions, then again from saga to nemisis, but been playin ever since.  Love type one and play parfait and void, have no power but had mox set stolen around 1995 and still miss it.

I've been playing parfait for quite a while, in the beginning with k-runs deck and more recently with blueberry builds.  I "tink" blueberry builds have access to many tools that improve the consistency and potency of the deck. Without further ado, I give you my parfait build.

Kill
3-Goblin Charbelcher

TaxRack stuff
4-Land Tax
3-Scroll Rack
2-Zuran Orb

Isochron stuff
3-Isochron sceptor
4-Orim's Chant
4-Swords to Plowshares
3-Argivian Find
2-Disenchant

Utility
1-Tinker
1-Back to Basics
1-Mystical Tutor
1-Ancestral Recall
1-Moat
1-Humility
1-Story Circle
1-Balance
1-Enlightened Tutor
1-Ivory Mask
1-Memory Jar

Mana
3-Land Grant
1-Mana Vault
1-Mana Crypt
1-Grim Monolith
1-Sol Ring
1-Black lotus
1-Lotus petal
1-Mox Diamond
1-Mox Pearl
1-Mox Sapphire
7-Plains
1-Island
1-Savannah
1-Tropical Island

        I understand that quite a few of the card choices in this deck are strange at best, but they have been working well for me.  The deck has more synergy and explosiveness due to the low land count.  The four blue spells that are all key mean that having blue mana almost as consistently as white is important, if not critical.  Those two reasons are why land grant is in. The tutors that blue adds are irreplaceable to me.  Memory jar is great in a deck with lots of fast mana and Orim's Chant, plus it's another tinker target surprise(sp).  I imagine That might help with the controversial cards, now what do y'all think.