Seems like the discussion about this deck has died down...

@ Steve:
Although it's been a few weeks since I read your article (which I really enjoyed btw), I only recently have sleeved up Grim Long once again and am hoping to play with it at tournaments in the future. This deck brings back fond memories for me as well: constantly goldfishing in my college dorm room (while procrastinating) and playing it in a few tourneys when back home on break

It seems to me from the tone in your article that you're not really sure how viable the deck would be in current tournament vintage, and perhaps may be more of a relic of the past to sleeve up and play for fun ...? I'd personally like your take on whether or not this is what you've concluded, or if you think there's actually a place for Grim Long in this meta. Also when you wrote your Grim Long article in '08 you did it in more of a primer style with matchup analysis, etc. That would be interesting to read.

I personally love playing Long b/c of the myriad lines of play and intricate decision trees that must be navigated when playing. I continue to be confounded by the complexity of the deck at times I'm not sure though of the advantages of playing this deck as opposed to, say, Ad Nauseam, which seems to have more redundancy in its threats / bombs and is actually a much more consistent deck than people may think.

Sorry if this is a bit of an unfocused post. But would love to here yours (and other peoples') thoughts.

What would you be siding out versus ichorid, flash, and grim long? It seems to me like it's best to side in extirpates, and tinker/plats, but I don't really know what to take out.

After reading this thread and looking at your list, I'm confused as to what your current list + sideboard actually is, as you've revised your first post, and discussed card choices in other parts of the thread that are inconsistent with the list you've posted. Have you totally ditched leylines in the sideboard now, in favor of 2 extirpate and 2 massacre, to shore up the bomberman matchup? How effective are 2 extirpates at wrecking graveyard strategies? Personally I couldn't play this confidently in a tourney without 4 leylines in the side.

I like the Oath transformational board plan. It looks to be amazing in the fish matchup. Would it be possible to post a reply with an updated decklist, and perhaps some comments on matchups you've tested, as well as sideboarding plans? If possible, that would be awesome.

Thanks for the replies. I think I'm realizing what you're saying about retaining the ability to win, as a lot of my games have been playing control while playing draw spells or scrolls, and retaining a large hand size with the ability to go off when the time is right.

I've been wondering if the 3 misdirections in the original list are optimal ... a lot of times I'll brainstorm, fetch, and then frown as I draw into a misdirection on my draw step. I have respect for the card, but misdirection often seems like a situational card to play either in a counter war, or to use on your opponents ancestral. These uses seem to narrow to warrant its inclusion as its not really a hard counter in any sense.

I was wondering what people thought about 3 mana drain instead. I'm going to test it, but I was just wondering what people thought about this option theoretically. If you've tested this list with drains, let me know! Thx.

hey ... i've only read the first 2 pages or so of this thread, so forgive me if i'm being redundant; if my question(s) were answered earlier, just point me to it, thx.

Steve mentioned interactivity in his article about The Mean Deck. I've been goldfishing this deck for a few days now, and I was just wondering how interactive this deck aims to be, because in most of my goldfishes it didn't really seem like the deck had that many business cards (aka bombs) when going off. I have been playing mostly grim long for the past year, so maybe I'm used to just playing a more aggressive combo deck than this one. However even when playing games against friends, where I'd have to counter threats and wait til aroudn turn 4 to go off, the deck consistently seemed to run out of steam. Also, it didn't seem like it would "walk into wins" as was mentioned earlier in this post. If you could help me out, perhaps in how I should be thinking about the goals of the deck when I play it, that would be great. Thx.

I don't quite follow the inclusion of phantasmagorian in some of the lists on this thread. Is this card being included solely to feed sutured ghoul? What are the other benefits of including phantasmagorian besides recursion and food for sutured ghoul?

I don't think the fish matchup is as scary as you make it out to be. Sure, if they resolve extract and you can't deal with it, you'll lose that game.

First of all, I don't see how the absence of force of will after forcing the extract in your example, would cause you to not be able to win during your first turn ... unless of course the card you removed was part of your turn 1 barrage of spells. The way you stated it however, seems like you're presupposing you'll need the force of will in order to protect your win. Now if I were the fish player and I actually HAD countermagic in hand, I would much rather use it to force thru my extract right then rather than waiting to force another bomb played by the long player. So if we take this into consideration, we can rule out the possibility that the fish player has any more countermagic. If he didn't force back to resolve extract, I thnk it's reasonable that the fish player has no countermagic in hand.

Going off that, I'll consider the alternative: that you were claiming you cannot win because you removed some blue card that you needed to go off, when forcing extract. Sure, maybe in that case your ideal hand is slightly weakened. However, if it's storm count you're worried about, you need not worry. Menendian was saying somewhere in another thread here how with long, storm is 'inherent'. (altho i'm not sure how true this is for pitch long vs GL) But as per this argument, you shouldn't focus so much on the importance of certain individual cards to make or break the hand, but should more so work with what you have and be creative about it.

I think you're also assuming that fish has the nuts here, able to extract and cast mage the following turn. Overall I'm not sure the fish matchip is something to really be concerned about, especially given recent tournament results at gencon and beyond.

@ steve: is there currently, or are you planning on, writing a primer for grim long? I monkeyed around with death long last year, and i'm tempted to just think of optimal plays when goldfishing grim long, but I'm also worried about - like you mentioned - abstracting too much and getting locked into an "optimal play" mindset without considering game state. if you could point me to somewhere to better understand its nuances, that'd be great

It seems like the bolded points tend to contradict each other, but this might just be that I am misinterpreting what you're trying to say. I think that, from a power level standpoint, Grim Long is the better deck. Now with Steve's FoW sideboard technology, it seems that tps may be relegated to being an inferior combo deck in vintage.

It can be argued that consistency is an issue with grim long, and that tps is the more consistent deck. However, I think this is only because of the difficulty in piloting grim long. As per Steve's tournament report, there is not really one consistent path to victory with grim long, so there is no real linearity in play strategy. Personally, I would rather explore and work at effectively piloting grim long than spend time with variants of tps or IT.

So I'm working on a new fish variant, and just wanted some thoughts on it's plausibility. I haven't been active in the vintage scene for the past few months, so I don't even know if people already play this deck or if it's not really floating around the meta right now. Here's my version:

1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
4 Wasteland
2 Island
2 Swamp
4 Dark Ritual

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mind Twist
1 Tinker
1 Necropotence

1 Darksteel Colossus
3 Dark Confidant
4 Withered Wretch
4 Plagued Rusalka
4 Phyrexian Negator

4 Duress
4 Force of Will
4 Aether Vial
3 Pithing Needle

Sideboard

4 Darkblast
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Old man of the Sea
2 Chains of Mephistopheles

a few things concern me here:

1) i feel like my card choices are a little bit whack at times. the 4 CotV sitting in the sideboard seems a little off, and I have a feeling either CotV or Null Rod should be in the main.
2) I have a feeling chains of mephistopheles might have a spot in the maindeck. the deck's own draw engine is really dark confidant, which isn't effected by by chains, but chains seems like it would destroy gifts and slaver.
3) I'm not sure if the 4 darkblast in the sideboard is overkill. I already have 4 plagued rusalka in the main to battle welders and gorilla shamen. I also like the withered wretchs in the main, as it helps against welder decks and also gives tog a hard time.
4) i'm debating whether necro has any place in the deck at all.
5) does jitte even belong here? perhaps the jitte's would be better in a more aggro version of fish, i.e. wtf

as an aside, i like the negators because they are such a fast clock if cast off a ritual. i also think tinker/colossus is too good not to throw in, and is added insurance if anything goes awry.

tell me what you think...

@Smmenen
Given the approach that you're taking, how would you begin constructing the sideboard?

Don't double post.  Edit your original post. -Klep

The factories are an interesting addition to the manabase, and it makes sense since it is used in traditional fish builds. I'm surprised these weren't incorporated earlier, but maybe I glossed over some reason for not running them earlier on in this thread. Anyway, this is my current build:

Mana (23)
6 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
3 Mishra's Factory
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Mox Jet
4 Dark Ritual

Creatures (14)
4 Phyrexian Negator
4 Mesmeric Fiend
3 Withered Wretch
3 Skittering Skirge

Artifacts (7)
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Umezawa's Jitte

Disruption (13)
4 Duress
4 Night's Whisper
3 Cabal Therapy
2 Diabolic Edict

Broken (3)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Necropotence
1 Mind Twist

This has worked very well for me. Yes, there are no vials in this build, but I felt that 2 edicts were necessary in my meta, and the mind twist has proven to be a great must-counter game breaker. Overall I am very happy with the deck thus far. I would like to get feedback on this list and take the time now to ask some general questions:

-how important is the presence of aether vial? yes, it helps a lot in certain matchups, but what do you lose by replacing it with something else such as extra disruption, etc.?
-given that the deck runs dark ritual and some builds run a limited number of game breaking spells, can & should there be space for yawgmoth's will as a late-game strategy?
-what are people's thoughts on sideboarding options?
-any other general comments or new directions this deck may be going in?

at this point, I would really like to see a working decklist reflecting the changes we've come up with over the last 5 pages of this thread. i don't think i know enough about what has been discussed to post one, but i'd really like to see a revised list.

@ deMarki: no doubt, a lone crucible will most likely not be a dead draw, and isn't necessarily bad, but I don't know if it is good enough to use 1 slot for a lone crucible when we could be using it for other tempo oriented cards that help the fish gameplan along.

The benefits of a negator equipped with a jitte swinging for a lot far outweighs the fragility of negator as compared with plague spitter or other suboptimal maindeck creatures. The advantage of black fish lies partly in the acceleration provided by dark ritual that conventional fish builds have no access to, and especially the power level of creatures like negator that can end the game faster, especially when used in conjunction with jitte. The agressive nature of maindeck negators has greater advantages than maindeck plague spitters - consistent pestilence yet slow. In a deck such as this the fragility of negator is not sufficient enough to warrant its relegation to the sideboard.

the usefulness of frantic search seems all too narrow imho; the only thing that it really has synergy with in the deck is tolarian academy, which is a restricted card. if you're going to run frantic search it almost seems obligatory to also run crop rotation to maximize the probability of playing the academy before you frantic search.

besides this...imo frantic search seems just so...suboptimal that it doesn't seem to be worth including in a tendrils built at all. it's 2U casting cost is definitely prohibitive for a deck that has very little mana to spent on card drawing [if you're spending 3 mana to draw cards, it had better be on a draw7], and in addition to this you're not getting any real card advantage as you're discarding cards anyway. granted card advantage isn't necessarily what's impotant here, it's card quality, and frantic search does let you dig two cards deeper into your deck, but that in itself doesn't seem like a good enough reason to warrant including it. however i haven't done any goldfishing with it, and maybe I need to do that before I understand fully what you mean by its "usefulness."

As was already pointed out, it is really important both to have a group of people you can playtest with, to playtest against every deck in the meta game (playing with it and against it), and to have a general idea of what the metagame is like when you're going to a tournament. This brings us to the sideboard. Sideboarding is often very flexible in type 1, and while there are usually some "metagame sideboard cards" for each deck, it is easy, given the huge cardpool, to create your own tech for a certain metagame that you are expecting. The use of Lava Dart in the CS sideboard recently at Waterbury is one example. You should always be aware of unused or forgotten cards that are potentially good sideboard choices.

True, time walk does not help when going off. It is a 1U sorcery and you'd rather cast hurkyl's recall if you're paying 1U. But barring that, there are times when the card is good simply as utility, it allows you an additional draw, and this I think is enough to warrant keeping it in the deck.

Demonic consultation is totally necessary to the deck, as you said. Consulting for a 1-of is most often not a good idea. You want to be consulting for a death wish or a dark ritual to produce additional mana to give you steam while going off. The only 1-of I find acceptable to consult for is tendrils when you want to just end it. However this is even questionable because you can easily remove it in the first 6 cards, and then you lose. Granted this will not happen every time you consult for it, and I think you will win more games doing this than losing to removing tendrils as one of the first six cards.

As soon as I opened this discussion and saw this card, I immidiately became excited.

Especially in type 1 combo, while being on par with gemstone mine, I instead saw this replacing city of brass as a way to circumvent taking pain, making bargain and necro stronger.

Now I know this is controversial, because 1) there is no way to be sure that you will be winning in the first few turns of the game (and thus the 3 counters on gemstone mine are sufficient to get you the mana you need to win in 3 turns or less), and 2) there is no reason to change your manabase so drastically to bolster the strength of only 2 cards in the deck (albeit 2 very broken cards).

I don't want to be too absolute about these things, so I'll just leave those as thoughts off the top of my head and not make any real claims here.

It seems like this card has a place in type 1, and in type 1 combo, but how it fits in exactly seems yet to be determined. I am definitely excited about the possibilities though (especially after thinking about its synergy with oath).

I put your decklist together on apprentice and goldfished it about 20 times last night. I have mixed feelings about the deck: on average it goldfished and killed on turn 2.8 .... approximately turn 3, which isn't impressive by vintage combo standards. I often found myself drawing a lot of mana with not enough business spells early enough, and would have to spend a lot of spells and mana just to cast a draw 7, which didn't always draw me into the nuts. The only games that were turn 1 kills were when had bargain in my opening hand and enough mana to cast it. Necropotence in the opening hand meant turn 2 kill usually. Of course there were probably mistakes that I made while goldfishing it, and I'm sure it takes a lot of practice to play it optimally. Just wanted to give you my testing results thus far.

As lotushead said, chain of vapor would have been nice, but I'm not certain you were running that card maindeck or sideboard. In any case, the final game was extremely tense for everyone I think. Chalice for 2 was pretty brutal, but after Christian cast chalice for 3 as well it seemed like too much of an uphill battle. Such is magic i suppose.

Greetings all. I've decided that it's time I started actually posting on TMD, rather than just reading everyone else's posts, and what better way to start posting than with a tourney report? Hopefully this one turns out good. I actually wrote one out last night, tried to post, but having taken 2 hours to do so, my log in time expired and I lost it all  

      I arrived at the tournament site with my friend and fellow player Joe @ around 11ish. It was pretty dead, but sign up's didn't start til 12 [actually around 1230]. Last time I show up ridiculously early to one of these things. Later on the site started filling up with ppl, and it became apparent that this would be a good tournament.

      Most of the good players from the shop I frequent, C&J's, were in attendance, as well as a few new faces I hadn't seen before. Several archtypes were represented here, including 7/10, U/R fish, 4cc, trinistax variants, dragon, madness, and even a few hulk smash (??), in addition to some rogue of course. I was piloting FCG; this was my build:

Mana(25)
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Ruby
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring
1 Elvish Spirit Guide
1 Mana Crypt
1 Strip Mine
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Taiga
4Wasteland
5 Mountain

Creatures(31)
4 Goblin Recruiter
4 Goblin Ringleader
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Skirk Prospector
4 Goblin Lackey
3 Goblin Warchief
3 Gempalm Incinerator
2 Siege-Gang Commander
2 Goblin Matron
1 Goblin Sharpshooter

Other Spells (4)
4 Food Chain

Sideboard (15)
4 Red Elemental Blast
4 Artifact Mutation
3 Blood Moon
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Chalice of the Void

Round 1: Rishi with Suicide variant

      I didn't know Rishi beforehand, and I had no idea what he was playing. He was piloting a rogue deck full of shadow creatures and pump effects. Didn't seem like much, but it was enough to scare me.

Game 1:
He casts a dauthi slayer on his first turn, followed up by a sinister strength to swing in for an unblockable 5 damage. I manage to cast food chain, but don't have recruiter. However I draw into ringleader, cast it, and draw into another ringleader. I cast it and draw into another, and I'm able to take this game after casting my 4th ringleader and swinging with a bunch of goblins.

Sideboard: I couldn't really think of anything to sidebaord against him. Chalice would hurt me more than him, and really made no sense. No changes were made.

Game 2:
He dark rituals into a dauthi horror with an unholy strength on it. The following turn he casts sinister strength on it and swings for 7. I die a few turns later.

Game 3:
He dark rituals into a dauthi horror, and next turn puts a sinister strength on it. He swings for 5 for a little bit, but I draw food chain & recruiter, and next turn the game is over.

Games: 2-1
Matches: 1-0

Round 2: Brian with Dragon

      I know Brian from C&J, and have played against him several times [most of those times ending in him pwning me], so I am more than a little worried before this match, not to mention I fear the dragon matchip because pre-sideboard I have no answers whatsoever. On top of all this, Brian is a very good player and definitely knows what he's doing.

Game 1: I play a lackey, which he FoWs, but I play several other goblins, and finish him off with piledriver beats. I don't kno if he drew bazaar this game, but if he did I must have wasted it quickly cuz I didn't see it very much.

Sideboard: +3 Blood Moon, +2 Tormod's Crypt; -2 Goblin Matron, -3 Skirk Prospector

Game 2: He draws the combo hand and wins on turn 2.

Game 3: I draw into a pretty good hand with recruiter, some more goblins, and blood moon. I later draw into food chain but I want to resolve the blood moon, so I figured I'd use my combo as counter bait. I got both FoWs out of his hand, and resolved a tormod's crypt and blood moon. He hardcasts worldgorger, but it's not enough to stop my siege gang, piledriver, and friends from finishing up.

Games: 4-2
Matches: 2-0

Round 3: Joe with U/R fish

      Joe is a good friend of mine, and a pretty good magic player in his own rite. We laugh before the match, as it's the second time  in a row we've both gone 2-0 and got paired against each other in the third round.

Game 1: I draw goblins and beat down, and he draws no business. He attempts to curiosity his factory after activating it for 1 time card drawing, but I incinerate it.

Sideboard: -4 Food Chain, -2 Goblin Matron, -1 Skirk Prospector; +4 REB, +3 Blood Moon.
I figure there's no chance of comboing out, and decide to go straight aggro.  I leave recruiters in as counter bait, and since they're still moderately good even w/o food chain.

Game 2: I draw into a hand with sharpshooter and REB, some goblins and land. I really want to resolve sharpshooter, so I wait til 2nd turn when I draw into another mountain. I drop my 2nd mountain, mana crypt, and cast sharpshooter, and REB his FoW. On his turn, he floats a red, returns his volcanic to his hand to daze his own daze, and then removes his 2 cards in graveyard to shoot my sharpshooter. Pretty good. I really wanted sharpshooter this game, but I later had double SGC and friends that finished up.

Games: 6-2
Matches: 3-0

Round 4: Jasper with U/G Madness

      I don't know Jasper, but apparently he's a friend of Brian's from Eudemonia in Berkeley [go Cal!....well I go to Columbia but.. high school summer sessions! =D].  

Game 1:
I draw no business and his moeba's and arrogant wurms beat me down.

Sideboard: +3 Blood Moon, +3 REB; -2 Goblin Matron, -4 Skirk Prospector.

Game 2:
He draws no business, and I draw lots of goblins, I beat him down eventually.

-1 Blood Moon, +1 REB.

Game 3:
This was an interesting game because of my terrible play mistake. Probably the worst play I've ever made in magic. I managed to resolve a recruiter with a crypt, 2 taiga, a foothills and mountain on the board. His board was a mongrel. I pay 3R for a ringleader [not realizing that my warchief makes it cost 2R], so then I have a red floating. Wanting to incinerate his mongrel and not realizing I had floating mana,  I pop my fetchland.....OH NO. I realize my mistake as soon as it hits the yard, but it's too late. My stacked goblins go away as I reshuffle my library. HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE play. I definitely deserved to lose this game because of that mistake, but my board position was just too commanding and I win a turn later after dropping another ringleader and REB-ing his FoW.

Games: 8-3
Matches: 4-0

Round 5: Brent with Crucible Stax

      Brent also frequents the shop I go to, C&J, but I don't kno him that well, not having talked to him very much. I do know that he's one of the best vintage players in California, and one of the best players at our shop, and so I pretty much accept that I'm gonna lose even before the match begins. However we are informed that my win would mean nothing as I already make top 4, but Brent would need a win to top 4. I concede, not caring about the 5-0, I'd rather get a friend into top 4. We play some games for fun either way.

Game 1:
I draw into double lackey this game, casting both, and lackeying ringleaders and Siege-Gang commanders into play. The game ends shortly thereafter.

Sideboard: +4 Artifact Mutation, -2 Goblin Matron, -2 Skirk Prospector

Game 2:
He manages to cast two chalices, for 1 and 2, but doesn't have any other business spells, and I apply the goblin beats. If this were a real match I'm pretty sure he might have mulliganed into a trinisphere hand, but this game ends quickly.

Games 8-5
Matches: 4-1

Top 4:
1. Brent
2. Christian
3. Devin
4. Brian

Semifinals: Christian with Crucible Stax

      I know Christian as he is also from our shop, and I've played a couple matches against him, and also some post tourney texas hold'em, heheh. He is a very skilled player and I have a lot of respect for him.

Game 1:
We both mulligan. I keep a hand of a couple land, lackey and some other goodies, but he casts 1st turn trinisphere off a workshop. Bleh. I play land, go. The following turns he casts smokestack and crucible, inducing scoopage from me.

Game 2:
I draw into a 1 land hand, but it also contains a lotus, recruiter, food chain, artifact mutation, etc. If I had had another land, I might have been ok. However I go for the 1st turn land, lotus, prospector. Pop lotus and cast food chain, remove prospector and cast recruiter, and proceed to stack my deck. Unfortuantely I didn't stack properly most likely, stacking ringleader as 1st and 4th card. Should have stacked to prepare for some kind of disruption. The following turn he fire/ice's my recruiter, and casts smokestack a turn later. I should have planned for something like this, but it's too late. I extend the hand.

Christian goes on to win the tournament and the LoA, beating Brian in the finals.

Overall, it was a great learning experience, and I was happy to finish in 3rd place and get some Arena Serum Visions =D.

Props:
-Christian for winning the tournament...great job!
-Brian for finishing runner up and winning a chains of mephistopheles.
-Brent for conceding to me in the consolation match so I could take 3rd.
-Brent for getting Brian to FoW an imaginary BEB.

Slops:
-Fire/Ice
-TK Noodle for closing at 9, too early for Joe and me to get there and have some dinner.  
 
Lessons Learned: Brainstorm/Fetchland == Good, Recruiter/Fetchland == BAD