I can't remember TPS being a deck that fights lots of counter wars during the turn of it's opponent.

How would it fit the storm mechanic? You still can't play most of your stuff necessary to reach a sufficient storm count during your opponents turn.

It might be a great card for the TPS mirror.

Opponent: Tendril you for 20.
You: Tendril you for 24 in response and draw a card!

All cards you mention, with the exeption of Gorilla Shaman, are available for U/W and U/G as well. Unless you are facing Goblin Welders all day long I can't see a reason to play U/R.

I think you missed the point of Schrödinger's cat. The intend of this hypothetical experiment is to show that quantom theory in it's current form can't be applied to macroscopical systems because it leads to results that don't represent reality. Basing conclusions on something paradox is strange (and mathematically nonsense).

Well, I believe many people were better of if a lot of economists wouldn't have jobs. But that is something not to be discussed here.

I draw my very limited amount of knowledge from the book Rules of Play (which I totally recommend to people who have interest in games beyond just playing them). Therefor I am a little biased about game theory, I'll quote just a few lines:


I mean, you don't even agree on a basic rock, scissors and papers example.

I think you are using the term 'theory' in another context than me I tried to point out that the concept of game theory should not be applied to a tournament because trying to calculate anything useful would be way to complicated. I didn't dismiss what you could call theoretical preparation for a tournament.

IMHO it depends on the kind of deck you are playing. If it is a combo deck that doesn't want to interact with the opponent at all knowing as much about the deck as possible should be the way to go. But when you are playing something rather interactive it is very helpful to know your opponent's point of view.

The problem is that game theory is a model to determine the behavior of two players. Even for three players it gets to complicated to make useful predictions. Take 60+ players that don't play perfect builds and make play errors. Add the randomness of the game itself and of the initial pairings to that.

A theoretical apporach doesn't help to decide what to play because the problem is far too complicated. The best one can do is to make a guess on the metagame, playtest his deck, playtest it more and hope to be lucky.

In GayRed-Fish these cards were great and very efficient. You can't look at them without looking at the rest of the deck. First of all both are bodies for curiosity. Cloud of Faeries enables more consistant Standstill on turn 2. When opponents are used to using mana efficiently and their Moxen are shut of Spiketail Hatchling's ability can turn it into an uncounterable counterspell. Also don't forget that their fragility makes them likely to fill your graveyard with ammunition for Grim Lavamancer. Last but not least they are more or less unblockable attackers in the meta of 2003.

Cloud of Faeries and Spiketail Hatchling are crap on their own, but in GayRed-Fish they fulfilled many roles. Just like you demand - in the context of the deck they were used in - they are efficient use of slots. But in another build they will likely bad.

I must contradict, Fish initially could work because it did not follow the rules of Vintage decks and abused the fact that others did:

- Good decks don't rely on creatures. As a result there is not very much creature hate and people tend to underestimate harmless creatures.
- Good decks use artifacts. Artifacts are hated. They have quite a few dead cards against decks not packing lots of artifacts.
- Good decks use life points as a resource because life does not matter against the fast clocks of good decks. Against a slow clock life matters.
- Good decks use Moxen.
- Good decks make efficient use of their mana.

If you look at what Fish was when it started it was good because it took advantage of how good decks work (in other words: Fish was good because it was a bad deck). Nowdays the situation of course is completly different and quite a few of the things that made Fish good don't apply to the good decks of today. I believe some kind of a Fish deck can work even today, but most lists somewhat emerged from the original U/R version. And the complete concept of that list does not apply to the current metagame.

Maybe people should rethink what 'Fish' stands for. Fish should not be a blue and creature based deck built around the skeleton of a rogue deck from 2003 but just the idea to build a budget deck that abuses the gaps of dominant strategies. So to build a deck worthy the name Fish you would need to find the gaps in the good decks of 2005 and then get a list together from scratch. However, IMHO the metagame is more diverse and undefined now than it was back in 2003, making the task much harder to acomplish.

Fish is not dying. It can be viable but that depends highly on the metagame. Plus, the deck itself always needs to be built for a specific metagame. Just look at the Fish decks that make T8, these are nearly always builds that differ from standard Fish netdecks.

First of all, if all what you are facing is Oath and Stax you should not play Fish, I believe. Second, unless your meta is very control-heavy: why play Fish if you have access to all Moxen and Lotus?

Really great deck. U/W fish always bothered me because they lacked the synergies original U/R fish had. But this list is full of synergy, Voidmage and Vial get used to their maximum efficiency here

IMHO the list should look different:

Why no FoW in U/B? The chance of taking 5 from revealing one is really low.

White has to offer powerful permission effects,  creature removal and all kind of artifact and enchantment hate. Black gives you some discard, draw and graveyard hate.

So why should you play black at all?

Because it requires a set of Workshops to do so

Why no Dark Confidant? It is a nice draw engine that even works under Chains.

I should have less creatures in play than a combo or control deck? Because that is what you are saying here. Assuming you are playing man lands and strip effects, how the holy cow can the sacrifice of lands not be a big deal?

IMHO the fact that including Balance in this deck type is discussed here warrants moving the thread to the newbie forum.

You state that control and combo are what fish should be facing to be a good choice. Isn't it true that usually a fish deck will have more lands and creatures in play than it's opponent? Maybe I should be less arrogant and stop putting creatures and lands into play because Balance has been called the best card ever.

Permanents like Null Rod, Chalice of the Void, AEther Vial, Umezawa's Jitte and most creatures don't loose potential when played under Root Maze. So it isn't that bad but I can't find a reason to put it into fish or wtf because there is IMHO no need for additional disruption.

IMHO you really should give Dark Confidant a try. The average casting cost of your deck is about 1.3. Unless you are extremly unlucky the life loss shouldn't be too bad.

Who would ever put these cards into a fish deck?

I am still not getting why one should play blue and black. Blue provides card draw, disruption and utility creatures. What does black offer besides more disruption and card draw? Like blue it is missing answers to artifacts, enchantments and creatures.

I once had the same oppinion, playing fish a lot changed it though. When playing a deck relying on a kill through a relativly low number of small creatures you often won't be happy getting one of them countered or neutralized in some other way. Cloud of Faeries + Standstill worked because people didn't believe that lousy 1 damage per turn could spell their doom. Get the fish player's creatures and you get him.

You are playing against decks that eventually will overwhelm you because they have way better threads. Eventually they do overcome your disruption. Every creature and every freaking point of damage you can get through matters.

You should be playing for tempo, not for card advantage. Having your creatures countered is bad.

I just don't like the idea of killing myself by accidentialy revealing FoW with Dark Confidant.

I don't see the point in splashing blue. Black already has draw and disruption and you can't play FoW because of its CC. White looks like a better option to me - you get more cheap and disruptive creatures, artifact hate and creature removal.

If you are looking for synergy try Dark Confidant together with Chains of Mephistopheles. I don't believe it is great but one could build some crappy suicide deck around this card advantage engine.

IMHO these additional dual lands serve Vintage in more than one way. They might render quite a number of interesting cards and deck types playable. With 8 duals you finally can use cards with double-colored casting costs. Will there be more decks using only two colors? Not being forced to spend 70€ on a playset of duals will lower the entry barrier for new players. 

While a Null Rod that hits the board on turn 5 is obviously not as good as a turn 2 Null Rod if Moxen are already in play a Chalice would be a completly dead card in this situation. Null Rod also stops many other stuff (even if he is played later than turn 2) that isn't affected by Chalice at all. IMO Chalice is a way more situational card than Null Rod in Fish and AEther Vial may allow for cool tricks but these are again very situational and not useful enough to justify Vial+Chalice instead of Null Rod.

As mentioned earlier IMHO Vial+Chalice is worse than Null Rod and takes up more slots. Vial and Chalice do have their uses but definitly not in a Fish deck that is incapable of abusing their advantages.

You forgot to mention that your deck lacks the draw Fish had. 4x Thoughtcast is slightly worse than 4x Standstill and 4x Curiosity

Double post.