Ah, ok, cool  

I knew I screwed something up there.

For soem further clarification, the token goes to the graveyard and triggers any graveyard effects. But the little sucker can't exist outside of play, so he gets removed from the game once he gets there (as a state based effect, I believe).

Not sure of the exact rules in the big book behind it, but that's pretty much how it works.

I tried it, and I can say that more than 3/4 of the time I wished I had a lavamancer instead of an old man.

Not that old man is a bad card, he's just not great in fish. Fish wants speed, and direct damage for either crowd control or kill.

He'd be better in mono U where you can sit back a bit with more counters and play a little more cautiously.

Exactly, that's one of the reasons the deck fared poorly. Too many conflicting play-styles were introduced from the card choices. (too bad I didn't realize that at 11:30 at night when I decided to make the pile).

I'm presenting my deck as more of an example of what NOT to do if you're going to try to do a fish/mono U blend  

Speaking of fish/mono U.....
I tried this at the last waterbury tournament. Didn't do so hot, but it was interesting, and old man was a brute. Not having man-lands hurt, but I really wanted to pack back to basics. Oddly this thing ate a food-chains deck alive, which was highly unexpected. I thought piledriver would own me, but the sword of fire and ice turned out to be a highly effective goblin killer.

4 Spiketail Hatching
4 Flying Men
3 Old man of the sea
3 Suq'Ata firewalker
(14)

4 Curiosity
3 mana Drain
4 Force of will
4 Standstill
2 Cunning Wish
(17)

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Timewalk
3 Back to Basics
2 Sword of fire and ice
(7)

1 Black Lotus
1 Sol ring
1 mox Sapphire

4 Wasteland
1 Stripmine
6 Fetchland (3 polluted Delta/3 flooded strand)
8 Islands
(22)

SB:
2 Gilded Drake
1 Old Man
1 Suq'Ata
3 Sigil of sleep

4 Null rod
1 Back to Basics

and some other stuff I can't remember because I never sided it in. Probably a stifle, a manadrain, and a chain of vapors. They were wish targets, but I don't think I ever had a chance to wish in the entire tournament.


4cc killed me by cycling through standstill a few times, but it wasn't a total beatdown. Some sort of slavery build sans slavers was a draw; gilded drake stole a platinum angel there. I also used it to steal an exalted later.

I came expecting workshop decks, just like everyone else, and got owned because of misreading the meta.

A U/R oldschool counter-burn deck slaughtered me. My counter was too light and my creatures too wimpy to handle it. I also got clobbered by white weenie...his crusade made his critters too big for my old men to steal

If this had been U/R fish I would have won all the games I lost, honestly. I missed the grim lavamancers terribly.


That's what I get for going all creative the night before the tourney and not play testing enough

Edited to add: Forgot the point of my post:

Mono U seems to work because of superheavy counter and hosers like BtB and Control magic.

U/R Fish seems to work because of laying small but numerous threats down fast and hard and drawing massive amounts of cards to compensate for the lack of strong counter.

Fish/Mono U removes the heavy counter present in straight mono U and ditches the null rod hosers, and in the process adds more counter to U/R fish and takes out the hard hitting critters like lavamancers.

It seems like it would be a good combo, but it takes the weaker aspects of both decks and tries to mash them together.

I'm not saying it couldn't be done, just not quite like this.

Forking a fireblast is kinda nice, if you're into sligh. I can't say it'll have much more impact beyond that, however. Most sligh decks I know don't even run a single fork in the pre-unrestriction days

Which is pretty much why it was unrestricted.

Hmm, for what it's worth, this is what i'd start off doing:

4 Exalted Angel
-4 Juggernaut
+2 DoJ

4 Duress
4 Wasteland
-3 Chains of Mephistopheles (proxies)
*note: I cut these because you seem to like nights whisper, and it does shite once you get one of these babies out.
+2 Skeletal Scrying

1 Mind Twist
1 Strip Mine

3 Swords to Plowshares (-1)

-3 Nevinyrral's Disk
+4 Dark Ritual

2 Vindicate
1 Balance

4 Night's Whisper
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will

+2 Crucible of worlds

4 Flooded Strand
4 Scrubland
3 Ancient Tomb (-1....too much hurt on yourself, and the dark rit. will pick up some mana slack)
3 Plains
3 Swamp
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring

+2 Cranial Extraction (and you could find room for a third) from CoK. Cranial extraction might give this deck a nice edge.


Sideboard:
4 Disenchant
4 Dust to Dust
3 Planar Void
2 Rule of Law
1 Nevinyrral's Disk
1 Sword of Fire and Ice

I'll leave the SB alone, although i'd suggest you can the Nevi disk. Also, with skeletal scrying, planar void = non synergy, although you could swap them for each other if needed. Instead of planar void withered wretch might fill the same roll.

Another idea is to replace the juggies with hippies. Hypnotic specter off a dark ritual or black lotus first turn hurts, especially if they can't force it or kill it right away.

I would actually not get rid of the swords at all (although one can move to SB). They give you some good ammunition against welder decks and against a tinker -> D. Colossus first turn. They can even help if you run into fish by nailing their curious critters.

Just some thoughts, i'm trying not to be a dick and tell you to "run something else" but work with what your ideas are  

You might think about Volrath's stronghold as well. It's a land that recurs critters to the top of your deck, and with crucibles in the deck, you can easily pop them back even against opposing crucible/wastes and get an angel back.

White weenie is, oddly, a son-of-a-bitch for most fish decks to deal with. When you analyze the cards they pack it it makes sense though. Silver knights (if they're packing them) can be really horrific.



This argument for standstill > brainstorm in UG or UGR fish + dryad makes sense to me. You don't need to get the dryad all that big in this deck for it to be a beast, and I can imagine standstill would bait some counters at worst and make dryad get even bigger. I'm sold on it. Not that brainstorm is bad or anything, I just think from the discussion standstill will be better. Just don't f*** up and play it wrong  

I also agree that genesis chamber should find its way back into this deck, although the welders can help do the same task (to a limited degree) by allowing artifacts to swap in and out and boost the crushers.

Sword of fire and ice is a good card, but I don't think it quite makes it in this deck. You mentioned equipping it to a welder to turn him into a threat, but at that point, why not simply use the welder to swap something a different and better threat in? I also agree that it makes the deck simply more vulnerable to nullrod. Even if nullrod is less popular than it was, there's no way in hell that it's ever going to disappear entirely. It would really suck to scrub out by gambling on not getting matched up against any rods.
That being said, you do have some decent ways of handling nullrod, at least post SB. Welder isn't usually one of them, from my experiences. Decks that run null rods don't usually have many other artifacts to let your welders play with.

Also, i'm curious how the loss of evasion (flying ornithopters) affects this deck? One of the big benefits of ornithopter is its ability to fly over big ugglies and hit for the win (as Purple hat taught me by example a while back, up in pittsfield). I'm not saying cutting ornithopter for more consistent clamp targets is a bad idea, i'm just curious if it's been a problem for you or not. I'm guessing with the trampling crushers you haven't been bothered too much  

I guess if it was my deck, i'd probably favor genesis chamber over the sword of fire and ice. The mox monkey idea isn't bad either, since it gives you a good game 1 answer to nullrod (which may not actually be so devestating to this deck as it would other affinity builds i've seen) but i'd rather see more clamp targets, welder targets, and ravager food.

I'm even wondering if you could cut down on welders to increase the "real" threat density like a manshow build. Perhaps 3 genesis chambers and 3 welder? Cut the sword of fire and ice?

Just a few thoughts. Nice build at any rate. Blood moon maindeck makes me happy, it's pretty slick that you found room for it in an affinity build.  

Hmm....kinda looks like wtf only you swapped out the river boas for dryads.
Rootwater thief is an interesting choice as well. He seems like a bit of a mana pit to me, but then, he's certainly got an effect worth sinking mana into. So many decks seem to be running bare minimum threats now that they could, perhaps, be more effective than they were in the past.

Standstill + dryad seems like non-synergy to me...perhaps running brainstorm would be better for the deck? Maybe up the fetch land count by 1 to take advantage of it?

I'll admit that welders weren't spectacular here, but they did allow me to do some interesting stuff.

Against opposing workshop decks the welders are nice (especially under greaves) since they allow me to play with their gadgets and give them a hard time.

Against controlish decks, I found I would actually throw out a gnome over a welder first turn. Once a few of my playtest buddies got wise to the first/second turn colossus deal, they'd wind up countering the gnome off a force, giving me an opening for a trinisphere or welder. Oddly, I wound up using them as counter bait and then welding them back in. And for those who decided not to counter such a janky little card, they soon realized their error as I swapped the gnome back in to get out the big guy.

This deck does very well against 4cc, wtf, monoblue, and Tog/hulk (although my SB was accidentally well tuned for dealing with Tog/hulk, admittedly). The SB also gives me a good shot against opposing welder decks (I don't want to reveal my "secret tech" though, since i'm using it in more mainstream workshop builds, especially stax.)

It's the match against gay fish and combo that's a pisser, which makes me really wonder about the viability of this build (of course, all workshop decks have a rough time vs. combo). Trinisphere is definately a keeper, there's no possible way I can cut it and stand a chance; it helps against both decks.

The null rod mixed with direct damage/ping and light counter really kicks my ass, even post SB, and it ticks me off that i'm even considering adjusting the SB just for a bloody fish deck

The green-splash U/R fish is also kind of nasty because of artifact mutation, but then, any deck with mutation is brutal to workshop decks. You can't win them all.

So far my win chances vs. gay fish are around 30-40% pre SB, and they really don't get any better post SB (at least vs. my friend's build). They get a bit better if I can win the coin flip, as i've got a far better chance of spewing out something big first/second turn.

As much as I like the idea of dropping welders in favor of metalworker/staff, that's not going to help me against fish at all....it's just going to give them more fire/ice and grim targets and more stuff to hose with null rod  

I may simply have to run a battery of razormanes SB to deal with it. Ug. Not that razormane is bad or anything...

One deck I haven't tried playing against is U/G madness, but I have a suspicion that that deck would be a rough fight unless I get a good hand. I haven't seen a U/G madness in a long time though, it might be played too little to be worth worrying about.

Thran Dynamo sounds good. The only reason gilded lotus was decent for a while, really, was because of memnarch and his need for blue mana (as far as I can tell) although it's handy if your running more than 2 colors in a workshop deck, I suppose. It helped me a lot when i was running a 7/10 with some strange color mixes, but it's not needed here.

Even still, that gets whacked by null rod

I took a look at the new orchard oath in that other thread; that deck looks brutal  

I won't get much time to test this deck this week, unfortunately (damn people and their weddings ), but i'll keep toying with it and see if I can come up with a better list. Thanks for all the feedback  

I know, those are all valid concerns, and are pretty much the reason why I started this thread: to see if anyone had some ideas to improve on it

Thanks, that's all I was after  

I like the gnomes over quicksilver for a few reasons.

1) Quicksilver costs more. I can get 6 mana in an opening hand pretty easily with this deck. 8 is pushing it.

2) Gnomes are, at the least, a 1/1 beater and a chump blocker, even under null rod, and are usually able to be cast turn one. Quicksilver can't even boast that much.

3) Gnomes can get any artifact out, even a memory jar or trinisphere if I really need to avoid a fat mana drain being fed into a decree of justice.

Another thing I favor with the colossus over the titans is that they trample, and kill one turn faster (Like I said, I have problems with allowing combo to set up, so I want to smack them down ASAP).

Decks that run null rod (fish and the new turboland, some madness...can't recall any others off the top of my head) may pose a problem, although so far I haven't had much trouble hard casting the colossus or the lone titan. Once the colossus hits play the entire game tends to turn around. I still need to test more against those deck types.

I like the idea of gilded lotus in here, although the null rod weakness won't go away. One option i'd considered was a battery of su-chi, since their mana trigger is just right for a welder-swap into a gnome, and they make decent beaters against fish (and other decks), although i'm not sure how I would adjust the deck for them.

The idea of cutting out some of the welders is interesting, I may give it a run and see how it goes.

Ok, this is a thought for a deck i've been toying around with for a while, and finally built and tested a bit at some friday night magic games as well as with a few buddies of mine.

Here's the (current) list:

Mana: (28)
4 Mishra's Workshop
4 Volcanic Island
2 Island
2 Mountain
4 Wasteland
1 Stripmine
1 Tolarian Academy

8 SoLoMoxCrypt

1 Grim Monolith
1 Mana vault

Card Draw/Search: (8)
4 Thirst for Knowledge
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Windfall
1 Tinker
1 memory Jar

Critters: (14)
4 Welders
4 Copper Gnomes
4 Darksteel Colossus
1 Platinum Angel
1 Sundering Titan

Utility/Hosers: (9)
2 Crucible of Worlds
4 Trinisphere
1 Timewalk
2 Lightning Greaves

I'm still toying around with the sideboard, but it will probably consist of blasts and extra creatures, unless anyone has soem brilliant ideas  

I've noticed a lot of decks are packing a single Darksteel Colossus just on the off chance that they pull an opening hand tinker. Tinker used to be "Tinker, go get memory jar" but now it seems to be more like "Tinker, I kill you in 2 turns sucka!" and the colossus has turned into the tinker target of choice, simply for the random "i win" aspect.

I've also seen show and tell decks here and there, but I can't tolerate the fact that it benefits your opponent as well.

Copper gnomes seem like a nice, quick way to speed out a big colossus. In a deck like this it's not all that hard to wind up with six mana in the opening hand (and a colossus or the titan to spew out).

Even in the worst case scenario, they make nice chump blockers against fast aggro, and if your opponent gets wise to your tactics, they become yet another "must counter" in the deck. Also, they allow the colossus to come in uncounterable (pray for a stifle) and they can be recurred with welders to get the big guys out again.

Lightning greaves have been a great addition after some early testing without them. Adding protection to the welders is obviously good, but getting haste onto the colossus is a scary prospect. So far two seems like the ideal number, and i'm reluctant to cut them since they can get me a win a turn earlier (which can help against combo, or fast aggro, where they're forced into defensive mode if I can get them into 1 colossus hit = death range). They change a colossus from a 2 turn clock into a 1 turn clock, and deny my opponent the chance to untap a group of blockers or dig for an answer.

One weakness is, obviously, null rods. So far i've found that, even with null rod in play, i'm able to hard cast a Colossus off workshop/tolarian mana with fair consistency. Nullrods are just a fact of life for workshop deck players.

Another thing I fear is opposing welders swapping my colossus out of the game on me. I can counter this to a limited degree with my own welders and the lightning greaves, but it's still a threat. Triskelion (or razormane) seem like the best answers for this, but so far I can't figure what I should cut for them, or if I should simply leave them in sideboard.

The other weakness is against combo. The trinispheres (and to a lesser degree, the platinum angel) help but not that much. The one thing i'm considering is cutting the trinispheres to speed up the combo (and by combo, I mean early colossus drop)/draw aspect, but i'm afraid that i'll simply screw myself by not stalling my opponents. Trinisphere is such an amazing card, and frankly, i'm addicted to the effect it has on the game.

Any thoughts on what direction I should take this deck would be appreciated. I can say that this deck is loads of fun to play, especially when you can toss out a 1st and 2nd turn colossus every other game

This is a pretty tough call. My nostalgic side favors old man, but firewalker is a hard little bugger to kill off without some odd color kill.

I think it would have to be meta dependant. Either one is good against fish. If you're expecting any fish decks that add green for boas (or any deck with boas, actually) i'd favor old man. If you expect plain U/R fish i'd go with the Firewalker. The advantage over factories is good though. At the least it'll make your opponent hold off a turn from swinging with a factory, since he'd need two online to attack.

I also think old man might have some slightly better utility against workshop decks, although I havn't tested it to be sure. At least old man can steal welders to block an angry 7/10.  

I ran them for a bit in my 7/10. THey did pretty well actually, but I was running a lot of odd-colored cards, like MD atifact mutation and also black for demonic and vamp tutor. I ran 4 of each (city and gemstone) and the mana base was amazingly smooth.
Even recurring a gemstone mine once was often enough, and the mana base was completely immune to the titan. It did pretty well.

Of course, back to basics kinda hurt  

I bet someone might try and squeeze sapphire medallions into a deck with these suckers. It looks potent, although that casting cost is brutal.

At the least, it's a hefty "F.U." late game, and it's force/misdirection pitchable and cunning wishable.

So far, the best I can see is packing one in SB to wish for just to dick with someone, but that's about it.

I think the implication with trinisphere, or maybe sphere of resistance, is that this card turns them into a pseudo-benefit, tacking some colorless onto the cost of a spell and letting you play it uncounterable.

Uncounterable tinker and yawg's win? I like it. Don't know how i'd find room for it in a deck, but hell, I play workshop, paying 2 life for mana (ala ancient tomb) is something i'm used to anyhow  

It's worth a second look, although this makes me curious as to what kind of big-scary counters are coming out in this set.

Oh, and this:


You havn't dealt with a lot of translation between languages, have you?  
This type of wording is pretty standard for oriental translations. Other languages don't always have pronouns that are gender or inanimate object specific.
hell, in romantic langauges (french, spanish, etc...there may be exceptions), everything has a gender, even something as plainly gender neutral as an artichoke or a building.

Ok, that was TOTALLY off topic, but anyhow, the name sounds completely legit to me for an oriental style setting.

Edited to add: It stems from the whole spirituality of religions like shinto, where they believe everything has spirits and entities inside of it, even rocks and dirt, and are therefore treated somewhat as living entities.

Ok, i'm a f***ing nerd, so sue me  

Great report, congrats on your daughter and the win

I've run versions of this deck for a few years, and I have to say, at first I would have called you crazy for cutting incinerate and chain lightning for the fire/ice, but the proof of the effectiveness is obvious in your report. Well done

Have you considered running crop rotation, or is it too random a one-of? I've had loads of luck with it by rotating out waste-strip victims for an opposing strip.

Rancor is ridiculous, i'd highly recomend finding room for it.

I'd say cut out the naturalize for 3 null rods, and then drop two of the treetops and one mox monkey for 4 rancor.

You could also find room for a crop rotation, which i've seen abused heavily in a deck like this. When hit by an opposing strip, simply rotate it out for your own strip mine and deny your opponent a second land.

I'd also recommend barbarian ring, altough since you're running grims I suppose that lacks a bit of synergy. Nevermind the ring

Viridian zealot is also a viable choice to replace naturalize in this deck, if you want. It's a 2/1 threat for 2 green (the more threats this type of deck runs the better!), and can swat nasty artifacts or enchantments at will.

Oh, and null rod barely impacts a deck like this....the only thing you'll lose out on is blocking and pumping. If you're going to pump, simply leave extra factories as lands and tap them to pump from there. This deck shouldn't be doing a lot of blocking anyhow.

Another odd choice is scryb sprites. I've seen the flying evasion from those little bastards kill some really powerful decks, especially when rancored.

I'm seeing a painful lack of synergy between cursed scroll/powder keg and three maindeck null rods

Has that ever backfired on you? As good as scroll is, I wouldn't have even considered them in a deck with MD null rods.

Well, for my 2 cents, survival has been great in TnT simply because the deck doesn't rely on it to function. The deck list you've presented is similar to one that a buddy of mine uses in our weekly friday night magic matches. It's a little slow and more reactive than aggressive. A single counterspell that hits the survival means you've lost your main threat.

TnT does well because even if the survival is countered, you can bet that a hard cast juggernaut/su chi or welder (both frequent "must counter" cards) are going to hit the table and put some serious pressure on. Survival is just one of the big scary threats in TnT.

Also, this deck has got barely any blue spells in it....force of will, even if you're only packing two, is simply not going to cut it; no synergy, no pitch cards. Either up the count of blue spells, or drop forces altogether and run duress for disruption.

Null rod is actually not a bad idea, since your artifact count is quite low.

I've been tooling around with janky affinity decks a bit, and i've found that sphere of resistance is a nasty little addition. With the workshops/ancient tombs it gets out turn one far too often for your opponent to be happy, and it's effectively a neutral card towards affinity while hosing your opponent.

Now if I can just organize the pile I threw together in five minutes maybe it'll work better  

I think some of the other posters underestimate what a kick in the sack damping matrix can be.

It's an interesting idea for a deck, maybe i'll test it at friday night magic tomorrow  

I still feel that TnT, properly built, is probably a better option, simply because welders are nearly the best creatures in the game, and the anger/survival/welder speed advantage probably has a good shot at out speeding this build.

That being said, ESG is a slick little speed addition...seems like a first turn juggy would be realllly easy in a build like this.

One thing I would mention is that newer TnT builds i've seen have maindecked artifact mutation for a few reasons; hitting their own creatures to create a swarm of attackers/blockers, or picking off hosers like null rod or...damping matrix. Also, WTF/R seems to be itching for artifact mutation, and workshop decks probably pack enough SB artifact hate that they can overwhelm this deck post SB.

I'm not saying it's bad, it's actually interesting, I just think the advantages presented by splashing red outweight the more consistent mana base of straight green.

I'll give it a shot though, seems like it would be fun

I'll admit that i've been trying to squeeze a colossus into my 7/10 this past week, since it's kind of a random "i win right now" off a tinker, but i've also found tinkering in a 7/10 is usually adequate for a win.

It's not all that hard to hard cast a colossus from this deck actually....at least the build i'm running which packs gilded lotus can spew out a load of mana pretty fast.

At the same time, colossus isn't that good against other workshop decks, since they usually (90% of the time) pack welders, who can swap him away, or duplicant, to simply remove him and change the balance of the game. 4cc also seems to pack swords as well, which is annoying, and i've seen lots of fish decks siding sigil of sleep. Bouncing a DC isn't a big deal, but they might think twice about bouncing a titan.

I havn't included DC in my deck yet, but the 'timmy' in me is calling out to find a slot for him...  

I can confirm that maindeck artifact mutation is good. Purple hat will back me up on this  

You know, that was actually a bonehead move on my part....you already had a crucible in play, I was trying to stall. If I had been a bit more alert I would have taken the hit and waited for you to equip the platings onto something else and pegged that with the mutation.

Not that it would have helped much. I didn't have a single flyer in my deck game 2, and a mutation on an ornithopter doesn't get me any saproling chump blockers.  

Ornithopter as primary kill card....who'd have thought