No, I've got the same problem as well. Odd.

It's quite clear that this is not an Urbana fish list. But that should'nt rule out a comparison between this decklist and an Urbana fish list. Comparing two deck lists is a perfectly viable way of analyzing their card choices, stragtegies etc. In many ways the UR fish deck looks a lot like Urbana Fish. In fact, I think, that it resembles Urbana Fish more than any other deck out there rigth now. Kobe Bryant may not be good on the Utah Jazz team. But this could tell me more about Utah Jazz, than just the obvious fact that Utah Jazz is not the same team as the Suns.

I'll try to make my argument more clear. From my point of view - the Urbana fish point of view - I don't see why cutting strips and stifles from Urbana and adding Voidmage does'nt make an even better deck, than the UR list you've posted.

And why is this relevant in this thread? Why is this not posted in the Urbana fish thread? Because in order for you to persuade me or anyone else into thinking that UR Fish is the new Kobe Bryant of vintage magic (my knowledge of basketball is very limited), I'll need to know why UR fish does something better than any other decklist out there - especially why it does something better than a stripless version of Urbana Fish, because they look so much alike.

If this is too OT, I apologize.

The logic behind cutting the mana denial from Urbana Fish seems solid, since mana denial sucks right now (as noted by you, Vroman and others). However, I can't see the logic behind adding Gush at the expense of black.

Black could add Duress and Dark Confidant. Duress seems too good not to use right now considering the strength of Flash and GAT. Dark Confidant has/was always been the best card draw engine in Urbana Fish. It's way better than Ninja.

You've added Voidmage to the deck. Again a really solid edit. It really helps stop game ending Wills/Tinkers/etc. But why Gush and Voidmage instead of Confidant - a wizard - and Voidmage. By adding Confidant you'll be able to not play Spellstutter - a card that's pretty bad keeping in mind that you play no mana denial and only two Feaeries - and still maintain the high wizard count. 

I do realize that playing both Confidant and Gush is a no go, due to heavy life loss. However, to me, the reasons to add Duress and Confidant and cut Gush are very compelling.

Why Mana drain and no Duress?

Duress is extremely good against Flash and other Merchant Scroll based decks which happen to be all the place right now.

I can't see your list beating Flash. It's not as fast and only runs 4 duress that can slow flash down. Am I missing something?

Top is bad in here. Having it in an opening hand sucks because it does´nt disrupt anything and the card filter is not needed early. In midgame and lategame card advantage > card filter. Basicly it's the same reasoning behind not running Brainstorm in Urbana fish.

Bribery´s effect is worse than Control Magic´s effect in the matchups that really matter: GAT and Bomberman. Putting a Dryad or a Savager into play is a lot worse than stealing your opponent Dryad or Savager. Furthermore Bribery costs one more than Control Magic.

I like the list you posted MoxLotus. Save the Trickbinds. I think Stifle fits the overall strategy better.

Sage Epitar might have a spot in this deck for the reasons you pointed out above.

However, I think there are much more pressing issues to address. The first issue is obviously post FS Ichorid. It's beyond doubt that this will impact the metagame alot. What can this deck do about it? I think that a solid sideboard will do the trick: 4 Leyline of the Void and 4 Planar Voids. But with such a huge SB dedication is the deck going to have the adaptability to fight Fish, Combo and Drain? I don't know. One thing to keep in mind is that all other decks, save fast combo, will have to dedicate some (atleast 4) SB spots aswell. This might equal less ETW and Pyroclasm in sideboards. 

The second issue is post FS combo in generel and post FS Flash-combo in particular. With the printing of Pact of Negation (PoN) URBana fish will have to adapt by playing more proactive threats in order to beat combo, since PoN makes counters so much worse. So post FS I'm on the 4-Chalice-4-Duress-and-maybe-even-4-Stifle-team. The key to beating the Hulk Flash version could be Stifle and Chalice since the deck runs 11 permanent mana sources or so. Furthermore Chalice shuts PoN and Summoner's Pact off and Stifle counters Flash trading 2 for 1. What could be replaced to make room these cards? I think a logical exclusion would be Daze, since it's a reactive counter.
As you might have noticed from the other threads in this forum, the SB-cards that work well against Ichorid also work well against Flash.... that's just about the only positive thing I can see from URBana perspektive.

On a sidenote: Yes, Trinket Mage does not have place in - what seems to be - a very fast post FS format.

I'll try to elaborate on why I think that the comments on your list are correct.

3 mana to play Guildmage. 5 mana to play and copy Time Walk. That's alot of mana. Even for a fully powered deck, which I see that your list is not. Consider what could be cast off that kind of mana investment instead. Bargain comes to mind, a card that you would never run in a fish deck.
By itself Guildmage is really bad (a 2/2 beater for 3). It's actually only when coupled with the restricted cards on your list that it does something rather good. Why copy Stifle?

So isolated Guildmage is - in my mind - not worth including. Does it have any synergy with the deck overall. That is, does it fit the general strategy of the deck? URBana fish wants to stop an opponent's early development through either discard (Duress), mana disruption (Stifle, Wasteland etc.) or simply by countering spells (FoW, Daze). In order to capitalize on the advantage generated the first few turns the deck plays Confidant, Ninja and Cutpurse, which all are great means of this end. Does Guildmage fit into this strategy? No, it does not. Guildmage is a late-game threat that does not help you early on and does not help you capitalize on the early advantage, since it's very slow. So when Guildmage becomes relevant, the game is very often over. It's a win more card in this deck.


If you can't hit a creature Magma Jet is irrelevant. URBana fish does not win the game by doing damage. It wins by generating overwhelming card advantage and by crippling the opponent. If you want to run a burn spell, run Fire/Ice. It cycles when you don't need it.


I don't see the point in running Brainstorm. You don't need a card filter. The power level of your cards is roughly the same, so it makes more sense to draw  cards than filtering them. The same goes with the scry effect from Magma Jet


If they bounce him that's +1 CA in your favor anyway.
If burn is a problem in your area, URBana Fish is a very poor solution, since it thrives on card advantage generated by burnable creatures.

This question might actually explain some of the differences in our approaches: I don't live in the US. I'm from Denmark - you know the little country that are with you in Iraq.

Geography aside. Any comments on the Stifle issue? I see that my list is the only one running Stifles(!). I think it's worth discussing as Stifle does fit the overall strategy of the deck very well. The overall strategy being: stop ETW, stop Tendrils and, most importantly, stop mana development.

I have tested it. Both the matchup and FTK. I know that you've done that as well and I respect your results. But anyway I've found that if Null Rod resolves, I too often can't get the 3R before they've either killed me or named FTK with a Meddling Mage.

Edit: Dave Feinstein's latest UW fish - taken from the UW thread - runs 2 Stifles, 3 Null Rod, 3 Kataki, 3 Daze and 5 wastes. Therefore I think that post board it would be logical to try to reduce one's dependence on mana. FTK does the exact opposite of this.

The point is not that I'm extremely scared of UW fish. If it was I'd follow MoxLotus's advice and change deck. The point is that having a really bad game 1 against a deck that sees much play, is a bad thing.

Running FTK is often a suboptimal solution against UW fish since you have to get 3R, which can be really difficult to get in this matchup. Often running Old Man of the Sea or Grim Lavamancer is a more fruitful solution, since Old Man does'nt need R and Lavamancer does'nt need colorless mana.

From my experience with the deck the match ups against against Gifts and combo are still favourable, just not as favourable as before. The removal of chalice does'nt really change that, since the Stifles keep the mana denial strategy intact. It's not as if the Mages are dead in these matchups, they are just not as good as turn 1 Chalice is. However Mages are a lot better in the combo matchup than Echoing Truth which it is replacing. If the match goes on for more than 3 turns - which is very likely considering that I run 4 Stifles, 3 Duress and 3 Dazes in addition to 4 FoW and 5 strips - Trinket Mage can seal the deal in my favour by for example removing their graveyard with Crypt.


From my experience when UW Fish beats me, it is mostly because they run a 2 colors and I run 3. This is where Stifle shines. Normally this deck draws more cards than UW Fish so it can easily trade 2 for 1 with Grunt or it can simply chump block him until he dies to the upkeep cost. 

I believe that in a tournament it's quite important not to autolose game 1 to a deck that is played as much as UW fish is now. As Zherbus stated in the X cc thread, the main 3 decks a deck has to beat in order to be viable are Gifts, combo and UW Fish. This deck can beat those 3.

Mage can fetch Crypt - which I considered more or less as spot removal for Grunt(s) - or Mage can fetch EE - which is mass removal against a deck playing 4-10  2 cc creatures. So not only does Mage stop Grunt, it also stops Meddling Mage and Kataki.


Edit: Spelling and the fact that FS is here

For reference here's a list running Mages. As you'll see it's quite different from the list Becker posted:
// Lands
    2 Island
    3 Polluted Delta
    3 Underground Sea
    3 Flooded Strand
    2 Volcanic Island
    4 Wasteland
    1 Strip Mine

// Creatures
    4 Dark Confidant
    4 Gorilla Shaman
    4 Trinket Mage
    4 Ninja of the Deep Hours

// Spells
    4 Force of Will
    1 Ancestral Recall
    1 Black Lotus
    1 Mox Emerald
    1 Mox Jet
    1 Mox Pearl
    1 Mox Ruby
    1 Mox Sapphire
    1 Time Walk
    3 Duress
    4 Stifle
    3 Daze
    1 Engineered Explosives
    1 Red Elemental Blast
    1 Tormod's Crypt
    1 AEther Spellbomb

The main differences being: no Cutpurse, no Chalice, no Remand and no Truth. Instead this list runs: Trinket Mage, Stifle, EE, Crypt and Aether Spell Bomb.


Noone has mentioned what matchups each build is geared to beat, but I guess that especially Beckers build is geared to beat Gifts and different types of combo decks, whilst maintaining a favourable slaver matchup. I believe that it has suceeded i doing great in these particular match-ups.

However a thing that I've found after removing Bouncer from the first URBana list when ETW began seeing play, is that the UW fish and the random aggro match up have become really bad. Especially pre-board. As Moxlotus stated, the matchup against...:

To sum up: You run more colors than they do, making you more vulnerable to their wastelands. You don't run any removal. Your creatures are smaller than theirs. You rely heavily upon your attack phase to draw cards and you run Chalice which is often dead against Fish.

What I've done to solve this problem and the ETW problem is that I've added Trinket Mage. And yes the power level of Trinket Mage is very low, even compared to the normal low power fish cards. What's so good about Trinket Mage in this deck?
It's a beater that stops ETW, kills wheenies, destroys moxen, removes graveyards, and sometimes even fixes your mana. So it's never a dead draw as Chalice and Echoing Truth will be in some matchups. Even if Null Rod is on the table he's still a beater.

The other main difference in this build compared to the Becker build is the addition of 4 Stifles. That's quite many Stifles. Even in a Fish build, that plays a mana denial strategy. But they help you combat ETW (both by preventing access to red mana and actually stifling the storm effect), they stop oath activations, they prevent you from rolling over to wastelands against UW fish and Stax. This, I believe, is very important: From my experience an early wasteland is often enough to seal the game in their favour.
Agianst Gifts and Combo decks that normally play 5-7 fetchlands and a win condition that can be stifled, 4 Stifles shine. It fits the mana denial strategy very well.
While Stifle does'nt turn the Ichorid matchup into a good matchup, it can still stifle Bazaar. Which can be game winning if you manage to waste the Bazaar before they get another upkeep.

What I think is main differences between this build and the various other builds floating around in this thread is that deck a slightly worse matchup against Gifts and Combo due to the Mages. They are still a good matchups, just not as good. In return for this, this deck has a good mathup against fish decks as opposed to a terrible matchup and it has a good matchup against stax as opposed to mediocre matchup.
Basicly the discussion over which deck is better than the other overall is rather misleading. You have to think in matchups before thinking in better/worse terms. So if you think that Trinket Mage is trash in this deck, you might be analysing it in one particular matchup (read: Pitch Long and Long) and not in another (read: UW Fish).

I've been testing a build with 4 Trinket Mages for just about one and a half month now. It's really a great addition to the deck. First of all Trinket Mage fits the manabase of this deck perfectly. A lot better than any other fish like deck, be it UW fish or Bomberman. Second: Trinket Mage allows the deck to play w/o Waterfront Bouncer/Echoing Truth which both are rather situational. Third: it's good against any kind of deck ranging from Goblins to Gifts. Fourth: this has been said by WTP, but Trinket Mage gives you a chance of beating Ichorid game 1 which, I think, is really big. Finally: Trinket Mage comboes with Ninja generating even more card advantage.
What toolbox should be run with Trinket Mage? Well, I think EE and Crypt should be run as a minimum since they are good against ETW, Fish (Keep in mind that Crypt is spot removal for Grunt), Ichorid (both graveyard and tokens) and Will.   

On the direction of the deck. From my experience the deck, in order to be competitive, has to rely on mana denial. This means playing 4 Stifles and 2-4 dazes in addition to the "normal" mana denial package. If you can slow an opponent's mana development early on, you can take the full advantage of Ninja, Trinket Mage and Confidant 

I'm in the LotusHead-camp on this one. It's very hard to conclude anything from these numbers. The large difference in mean finish between Gifts and Bomberman can be explained by many things like for example Gifts being a better deck (which may or may not be true), better players choosing to play Gifts more often than Bomberman (which may or may not be true) etc. Even if one figures out a plausible explanation to why Gifts is making a better showing the numbers available are so small that you can't really conclude anything from them.

It seems like over kill against Gifts to run 4 Hide/Seek when they are near-dead cards against Fish and Slaver. You could add a Lavamancer and a Grunt at the expense of a Hide/Seek and a Heretic. The Gift and combo match-up will still be good, however your Fish and Slaver match-ups won´t be as poor as they are now.

Would'nt Life of the Loam be a better choice than Crucible? It costs less and it is harder to counter. The drawback of lossing a draw should'nt matter when you are destroying a land a turn.

No, you don't an additional draw step only an additional upkeep step

But so does duress. Duress is really much better versus combo. If you are stuck on turn 2 with a Misd and no FoW there is not much you can do to stop them from goldfishing (with Misd that is).

Against 5c Long and Stax Misd can do nothing. Duress can.

@Duress vs Misd: Duress has great synergy with Meddling Mage. Duress makes turn 2 Meddling Mage a lot better (although one very often names tinker anyway). Furthermore Duress can not be countered by Misd, Misd can.

Have you considered running gorilla shaman. It is pretty broken in fish decks with full acceleration. It serves a lot of purposes making welder bad, tinker more difficult to cast, removes chalice and keeps your opponents low on mana.

I think that you should cut True Believer. The card is amazing but it cost WW. You won't want to have to fetch WW early. 
Don't play 4 Jitte - It's legendary, play 3 instead
There is no reason not to play 4 Vials. The card is extremely good.
Since you don't play crucible I don't think that Wayfarer makes the cut either.

So this is what I'd change:
- 2 Wayfarer
- 2 True Believer
- 2 Faerie Conclave (they suck and you have Aether Vial)
+ 1 Vial
+ 4 chalice (it's a must-use card w vial)
+ 1 Jitti

How does Uba stax do against an opposing Energy Flux. I would imagine really bad since it runs 4 Bazaars 4 Shops and Rods. Has anyone got anything on this issue or is of no importance since none of the top tier decks (except Oath) are able to run it.

Name tinker instead - or Oath. Otherwise they'll just go turtor tinker -> dsc win or Oath - > win. Even if you want to name a "counterspell" name drain since it's a very important part of drain decks mana.
   
I think that you ought to be run 4 or 5 strip effects. You'll have trouble keeping other decks in check without them.

I don't see why 3 cc should be good right now. I think that at the bottomline the "keeperish"-decks don't answer the threats that other decks pose atm. Have you considered how you can beat oath, meandeck gifts or fish for that matter. I don't see any way you can fight Oath early game nor meandeck gifts. These 2 decks will simply outpower you. Especially with no duress main.
Against fish decks you'll be a sitting duck. You can't race them and you'll always be a step behind since fish has a really good match-up against multicolored control. I don't think that 3 cc is the answer right now.

However if you want some suggestions I'd say remove power artifact and grim monolith- it's simply too random for a deck that wants to be consistant. Definitely add the last drain and maybe a cunning wish.!

The land tax scroll rack combo is really bad. It takes up 8 spaces in your build. Neither land tax nor scroll rack are very good on their own. If you think playing a draw engine that is unreliable (needs two pieces to work) and easily disruptable in an aggro deck that doesn't need much card draw then I think that you are making sub-optimal list. Speed is the issue here, not drawing 3 cards a turn from turn 3 and after. If you get land tax scroll rack on-line and manage to keep an early threat in play I bet you'd have won anyway.
Land tax + Scroll rack is bad. Play Skull Clamp, Standstill or even Ninjas or mask of memory instead   

I think that if you want White Weenie to be good you have to take it in an other direction. Evasion in vintage is bad when only a few decks drop creatures that evasion is useful against. Exalted Angel is good if you have a way of casting it faster than turn 4, but you don't have. Even if you manage to cast it then in most cases it won't win you the game. It's not what it was when U/R fish was good. Armageddon was a sign on it: Drain me and lose. Casting it will often lose you the game if it gets drained. Land tax/Empyrial plate is'nt really the bomb. It's two cards that aren't going to go anywhere  on thier own. Run Jitte or Sword of Fire and Ice instead.
I think that if you want to go with White Weenie then you have to play a fish like strategy. Capitalize on tempo and fast effecient disruption. If I where to run White Weenie this is the list I'd run:

Mana: 23
1 Islands
8 Plains     
4 Flooded Strand
4 Tundra
3 Wastelands
1 Strip Mine
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Pearl

Blue stuff: 2
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk

Removal: 5
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Abolish

The utility artifacts: 8
4 Aether Vial
2 Jitte
4 Chalice

Creatures: 22
4 True Believer
4 Icatian Javelineers
4 Meddling Mage
3 White Knight
1 Isamaru Hound of Konda 
3 Kami of Ancient Law

Here goes some explanation:
Artifacts:
The artifacts have proven themselves well in fish decks. Vial speeds up the kill and makes your creatures uncounterable. Chalice for 0 going first is a really strong play. If you go second or get more than 1 chalice setting it at 1 is a good play with this list. Jitte basicly speeds up your kill and makes a up for some bad aggro match-ups.

Mana:
I've tried to run as many plains as possible to get abolish online by pitch casting it. This is why there is no 4 th wasteland.
The rest is explains it self.

Creatures:
Meddling Mages is the bomb, hands down.
Kami is an anti Oath card and a 2/2 beater. Good against oath bad against every thing else
White Knight is a bad card really. But it has first strike which is very nive against fish. If you don't face fish run Rootwater thief instead.
True Believer good against slaver, gift and combo.
Javelineer anti welder.

Removal
Abolish is never a dead card. At worst it takes out a mox at best it wins you the game.

As sideboard cards I suggest you use a normal fish-like sideboard

 

I mean defficult in the sense that it requires a lot of decisions to be taken. These decisions can decide whether you win or lose. In the primer on this deck on SCG Justin Walters says about playing the deck:

"Every decision is an opportunity to make a mistake, and you're going to make at least ten decisions on your winning turn-frequently quite a few more. That leaves you with plenty of chances to make a mistake"

The thing I'm trying to say is that you can't make all these decisions right in 6 rounds of swiss and a top 8 unless you are extremely skilled.

Isn't one of the greatest problems with this deck that it's so difficult to play and suffers so much from a play error that it really is too difficult to take to a tournament and have success with it?
My take on it is that one can't really play it to perfections through 6 rounds of swiss and a top 8. It is simply impossible.

I don't think that there's a middelway for tournament play, anymore atleast. Either one is "new school" and has a chance or one is "old shool" and does'nt stand a chance at all.
But there is more to it than that.
Since the "new school decks" have "out dominated" the "old school decks", the new school has made less broken decks less viable for tournament play. The decks that used to be viable and aren't anymore are decks like Sligh, RG beats, White Weenie, UR landstill and UR fish.
The above listed decks have some things in common:
 - they don't suffer much from playing without P9.
 - they all had okay chances in tournament play       
 - they are all  byes for any TMD-deck - except for fish
 
My point is that the innovation has made it harder (impossible) for non powered decks to make a top 8 showing. Making it harder to play decks like sligh and white weenie makes it harder to play on a budget. This especially has an impact in areas where with a no-proxy policy. Because the difference between a optimized (powered) Gifts list and an non-optimized (not powered, nor good) WW list is a lot bigger than the difference between a not optimized full powered old days keeper list and a not optimized WW list
The innovation has made it nearly impossible to compete unpowered in a non-proxy environment. This may be holding back some casual-players.       

I definately think that you should consider using abolish maindeck. They are huge against Oath, at worst they are a killed mox.
Your main problem that you need to address is that your disruption comes (save therapy) online at turn 2, not turn 1. This is a huge disadvantage. Maybe move the chalices to the main deck aswell.