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in the fish mirror, one of the most important cards feels like lavamancer, for his recurrable removal. I have played alot of fish mirrors that came down to who got the lavamancer on the board first, and who kept him around the longest. Considering this instant speed with no conditions on it would be the best bet for the mirror. Things like Sword of fire/ice are good, but useless if you can't get the opposing lavamancer off the board. Your creatures will die before they get equiped. Razorfin's and Firewalkers suffer from summoning sickness and really don't help much more than the lavamancer you are trying to play anyway.

Personally I love Fire/Ice you will always have a target for it, plus you can two for one your opponent alot of the time by splitting up the damage. I am also rather partial to Slice and Dice, for just the reasons I discussed above. It's instant speed, plus it's alot harder to counter than fire/ice or a R/Beb. The cantrip part is just icing on the cake. The cards for the fish mirror I've been testing to bring in from the board are:

2 Slice and Dice
2 Fire and Ice
2 Crucible (one is in the MD)
3 ReB

I like having access to both Slide and F/I plus they are both helpful in other matches as well... like ones involving opposing Goblin Welders.

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you also state in your post that you would wait until the fish player had 7 cards in hand to break the standstill?? From everything i've ever read here on the manadrain this is completely wrong, everything I've read has recommended breaking standstill ASAP... a good fish player is goin to be able to capitalize on your fear of breaking his standstill, he'll build his hand strength, he'll poke and prod with his gay army. Those mini time walks are precisely what he's hoping for. These little boosts in tempo are precisely what the deck was designed to take advantage of.

many people don't seem to realize that you have another active thread talking about Urg fish splashing G for Oxidize and Quirion Dryad. (hint hint)

With that being said, I honestly had not considered Energy Flux until very recently as a good form of disruption, but could not seem to think of where to put it in the deck. Playing the combination Energy Flux/Null Rod seems like a good idea. However I don't know if dropping a Null Rod for one of the Fluxes is a good idea. Have you had a chance to test this any? If so I would very much be interested in the results.

ok so everyone is in agreement that whether you run Quirion Dryad or River Boa, if you're playing green you need 1-2 oxidize in this decks main. However nobody is really suggesting whatcshould be removed to make the space? I'll start by saying I really don't think taking null rods out is the answer. One of the deck's strong points are the 3 maindeck null rods that hose fully powered deck. Like I said numerous times though I could completely not understand what I'm talking about here so if I'm in err, please by all means explain. I welcome it. If you're not removing null rods, I think one Daze could be sacraficed for an oxidize, but where can we put the second? Do we need a second main?

the protection idea really isn't a good one, since the spell is a sorcery, and they can use welder in response at instant speed if they see you're taking something from them they really wanted

in your opinion are the main deck oxi's really needed? Like I've said before the majority of my testing is invested in UR, I've only just recently started playing Urg fish. The lack of maindeck artifact removal has made me cringe at times, but never to the point that I would consider adding it. Is it just a given that by running the green splash, we will be adding the oxidize?

I believe the reason the Oxidize are not currently main deck are because it increases the green spell count, lowering the number of spells that pump the dryads

I like the explaination you posed for the standstill, I can see how it might work that way. I hadn't considered a turn one dryad, I'm still stuck in the UR fish mentality where we cast the Lavamancer's first

My take on the crucible however is a little different. I LOVE my null rods. If I wasn't affraid of bending my perfect condition versions I would sleep with them under my pillow. Since this is the case I have never considered taking them out, even when testing your version with the 2 extra moxen. The card I took out to test with crucible in it's place was time walk. My reasoning being, time walk gives you an extra turn, while recurring waste/strip effects has a very similar effect on the game.

However I do have a couple problems with this, I was hoping I might get some discussion on from you on the boards here. The first is replacing a 2cc spell with a 3cc spell. The moxen I do believe will help some in this department, and the crucible is really meant to be played later in the game, not really in the first 2 turns or so. My second apprehension and the greater of the two that I'm concerned about is lowering the blue spell count. Time walk is one of the weaker cards in the deck in my opinion, unlike other decks like 4cc or Hulk fish doesn't really have a whole lot of back breaking plays it can setup to be executed during the time walk turn. Timewalk however does give you an extra spell to pitch to force of will, by lowering the count to 20 blue spells will there still be sufficient resources to cast FoW for free without problems? Will removing ONE blue spell make that much of a difference?

Personally I'm testing the crucible in the Time Walk slot, but is this a mistake?

Edit:

I'm not sure if this helps much but I use this sideboard and have been fairly happy with it so far.

Sideboard  
3 Red Elemental Blast
2 Blue Elemental Blast
3 Rack and Ruin
2 Artifact Mutation
2 Maze of Ith
2 Gorilla Shaman
1 Stifle

In your lastest build you are still running Standstill in the card drawing section, however in an earlier post you recomended using Brainstorms in place of the standstills if you were going to be using the Quirion Dryads.

Has your testing with Quirion main deck along side standstill proven that it is a better draw spell instead of brainstorm. It seems to me that using standstill as your draw spell in that slot is counter-intuitive to the Quirion dryad route to victory which is load up on as many spells as you can to make it large and in charge. Have you found this to be a problem?

Another question I wanted to pose: Has anyone considered adding a main deck copy of Crucible of Worlds? This card seems so very powerful to me that it might actually be worth adding a main deck copy? I've been playing around with a copy in my deck and I kinda like it. I have another in the sideboard because recurring the strip effects is some fun Anyone else have any thoughts about this?

It's fairly intimidating to be posting in a thread so full of "Full TMD" members but here is my 2-cents anyway.

If this had been one of our posts, and by "our" I mean someone who is not a full member, it would have been locked. You posted a decklist, with nearly no explaination for the card choices or how the deck works. I think it might be a little more helpful for the readers here if you maybe did some explaining about why you think your cards are better suited for the deck, rather than just argue with everyone who expresses their opinion on the pile status of your deck.

You can't really expect everyone to just apprentice up the deck and start testing it against their gauntlet, just because you had a hunch in your sleep can you? if you truely believe the deck has potential I fully expect to see you come back over the top here with an explaination for your deck, and probably a couple flame posts questioning my sexuality and business even reading TMD.

Or maybe I missed that line in the TMD guidelines for posting that said the Full members were exempt from the rules, I certainly hope that is not the case however.

My opponent drops the work shop and taps to play CoTV for 1, if I daze the Chalice, he can't pay the extra cost of daze with his float Workshop mana can he? Or am i misinterpreting the Only use to cast artifacts part of workshop.

Another arguement for F/I is the Time Walk effects it can have... effectively buying you an extra turn by tapping down a critical permanent the opponent needs. My experience with F/I is more limited to it's uses in the Fish decks, but it's been invaluable stopping that Sundering Titan, or Exalted Angel for a turn allowing me to dig essentially 2 cards deeper into my deck to try and find an answer. (One from the Ice, One from the extra turn it bought me)

I think instead of everyone saying I don't get it... I don't get it... please explain the xantid swarm thing to me one more time, wouldn't it serve your time better to go try his ideas? From what I can tell... he's played the deck, has loads of experience (since he built it hmmm....) where as you guys are theorizing, or at best have only tried YOUR versions and are trying to say this one won't work because it deviates from what you're playing currently.

I think your time would be better spent, getting the deck together and throwing it against some other decks and then come back with some constructive criticism, instead of just complaining over and over that you don't get it.

Wow you guys are really helping me understand the fish deck alot better than I could have hoped. I really appriciate all the replies and the discussions here.

I took the advise posed in an earlier post and looked up PTW's build. I really liked it, it is very similar to the one I was working with, so i've changed it around a little. I liked the suggestion to put in a mountain to have an unwasteable (did I just make that word up? ) source of red mana, so I changed the lad around a little bit. added in the mountain, and dropped in some new fetchlands to reflect this.

Personally I really like Fire/Ice in the main deck, and I'm looking for a way to fit another into the main without detroying what's already there. Anyone have any ideas how to do this?

// Fishies - 15
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Spiketail Hatchling
4 Grim Lavamancer
2 Voidmage Prodigy
1 Gorilla Shaman

// Draw - 8
4 Standstill
4 Curiosity
1 Ancestral Recall

// Disruption - 13
4 Force of Will
2 Daze
1 Misdirection
1 Stifle
3 Null Rod
1 Fire/Ice
1 Time Walk

// Mana - 24
4 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland
4 Mishra.s Factory
2 Faerie Conclave
2 Island
1 Mountain
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Mox Sapphire

Sideboard
3 Tormods Crypt
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Rack and Ruin
2 Fire/Ice
2 Maze of Ith
1 Stifle
1 Misdirection

I live in the Harrisonburg, VA area... not in H-burg but close enough. I am getting desprate here, the magic here is basically um... non-existant that I know of. Does anyone on the boards here know where I can get a regular game?

as far as I can tell, what makes the deck good is the fact that it controls tempo well. It's not a super explosive deck, but it likes to stay a step ahead of the decks it plays against. That's why it has such a hard time against aggro decks because they tend to be about fast beats, and the red ones pack burn for the mini creatures Fish runs.

*waits to be smacked by one of the real TMD members for being wrong*

I know this is going to sound ignorant but this is after all the newbie forum. However here goes... What is PTW's Build... if it's a specific person. How could I go about finding this build so I can compare it to my own.

This is going to be for a tournement, a 5 proxy if that matters. That was going to be the next question I asked. What 5 cards if any should I proxy in for this deck?

I really appriciate all the help you guys have been, being a new type one player it's nice to get such a nice reception for my first posts here.

Thanks Inquisitor I really appriciate your input here. When I said I couldn't find a starting point for fish, it's not that I couldn't find a deck list. The problem was they seem to pretty meta dependant, and I wasn't sure which ones were the "standard" build and which ones were people trying to meta certain cards for their areas.

I had given a little thought to the sideboard but to be honest I copied that one from a decklist on SCG's one for one. It looked to be pretty solid against a number of matches. To shore up the aggro in your opinion would I be able to run something like this:

3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Rack and Ruin
2 Fire/Ice
2 Maze of Ith
2 Flametounge Kavu

I cut the single Stifle and Misdirections for 2 Flamgetongue Kavu's and made the ?'s into Maze of Ith. I already had two stifles main which made me think I could do without the third, and the misdirection as a singleton seems kinda useless without it's friend in the maindeck. I had thought about maybe making the Kavu's some number of lightning bolts, but I like the idea of getting a warm body from my removal.

I'm a new player to type 1, though I've been playing magic since revised. I've been reading the mana drain boards for several weeks now and I'm interested in playing some tournements with a UR fish deck.

Being new to type 1 I obviously don't have any power yet. I do however have cards like force of will and some dual lands.  I'm hoping to become good enough to begin winning into some power, that's my goal at least. However while reading these boards, I can't seem to find a good starting point for the UR Fish decks. They seem very similar to the Landstill decks but that is probably just the newbie in me talking.

After  comparing as many UR Fish - Gay/R lists I could find I've some up with the following list. My questions would be: Is this ia good starting point for an unknown metagame? I know fish is an adaptable deck that can change itself depending on the opposition it intends to face. However since I don't know what my opposition will be because I'm just starting out I need to try and make the deck middle of the road... so to speak. At least until I can figure out what decks I'll be facing.

// Fishies
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Spiketail Hatchling
4 Grim Lavamancer
2 Voidmage Prodigy
1 Gorilla Shaman

// Draw
4 Standstill
4 Curiosity

// Disruption
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
1 Misdirection
2 Stifle
3 Null Rod
2 Fire/Ice

// Mana Sources
1 Sol Ring
4 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Faerie Conclave
3 Island
3 Polluted Delta
1 Strip Mine

// Sideboard
3 Tormod's Crypt
3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Rack and Ruin
2 Fire/Ice
2 ?
1 Stifle
1 Misdirection

Any help here would be greatly appriciated.