Both Fish and Stax manage to survive in a Drain meta (especially if you consider SS to be a Fish variant). Since one can't avoid being Drained every time, and since the play does tend to be "Drain, Untap, Win", Fish and Stax (and anything else) must be doing something to not lose to Mana Drain.

I'm not saying that decks don't play main phase threats. Just that, when you see a Crucible, Stack, or Meddling Mage come down on turn two, the person who played it has probably considered it getting drained and decided to go for it anyway. Things that could make someone go for it anyway are (aside from you not having UU open): Force/Daze backup for Fish and a Sphere of Resistance, Trinisphere, or Tangle Wire already out from turn one for Stax.

Please don't take this to mean that resolving Mana Drain is impossible or even improbable. Just that, a lot of the time, it's not as simple as Drain turn 2 thing, untap, win.

It seems like that play hinges on your opponent spacing out. Generally, players try not to walk 2-3 CC sorceries into your Drains.

Would you at least consider replacing one of the Deep Analysis with a Fact or Fiction? The remaining 3 Deep Analysis in the deck would make pile-making more difficult.

First off I'd like to say that Shadow of Doubt is much more than a cantrip Stifle. It virtually counters Gifts, Tinker, tutors (Demonic, Mystical, Grim, Merchant Scroll), and, if this counts for anything, Goblin Recruiter. The other side of the argument is that Stifle counters land on turn one; the best time to counter a land. Both cards, however, make Wasteland much better by making the loss of one land more relevant.

Also, looking at the lists posted, it seems like the deck's mana base has been somewhat neglected. The lists (and correct me if I've missed a list or miscounted) contain 11-12 permanent black mana sources. That's not a ton. Has anyone found this in testing to be a problem?

Before getting into anything specific I’d like to just say that, based on intuition (the feeling, not the card), I don’t think YawgWill should be banned.

Referring to the “I hate loosing/winning with a random top-decked will� argument I’d like to propose and address several of the possible scenarios:

1.   You are out of cards and not in control of the board; your opponent has a mitt-full of cards in hand.
2.   Both you and your opponent are in top-deck mode.
3.   Your opponent is out of cards and you’re tapping Library every turn (maybe more figuratively than literally.)
4.   Both you and your opponent have full hands and are waiting for the other to play something juicy to Mana Drain.

In the first scenario top-decking a YawgWill will bail you out only if, in their big hand of cards, your opponent is sporting zero counter. Of course, you do need to have a nice looking ‘yard, but this will be a given for the time being. Also, the option of holding onto the Will and setting up with more top-decked love is available. The latter, I think, is tricky to do under an opposing 4+ card hand size. Basically, you’re either praying for a counter-free forecast, or you’re still stuck in top-deck mode waiting for more support.

In the second scenario, wouldn’t any type of cheap win condition do the job? Maybe something with a bunch of teeth? Any draw spell would sure be a sight for sore eyes, too.

You’ve got no business loosing in the third scenario anyway. Even if they top-deck a YawgWill, if you had no counter, it could’ve been any number of broken things that frequent the Type 1 scene. No counter for top-decked Tinker? Looks like you’ll be Recalling me, keeping the zero-pile on Fact or Fiction, and Forcing your own Thirsts. No counter for top-decked Balance? Welcome to top-deck mode.

The final scenario is perhaps the most important one. A few turns of draw-go, both players have a billion cards in hand, 300 of which are counters. Finally you rip a YawgWill. Sweet. But now winning is a little more difficult than just tapping 2B and throwing down some totally pimp simplified Chinese card. That’d be like plowing your brand new BMW straight into the first brick wall you come across. It takes lots of careful planning and baiting to actually pull off a YawgWill.

I may just suck at Magic but, it seems to me that if a card offers a player victory in exchange for a whole bunch of skill it’s worth keeping around.

The idea of playing those three invitational wizards is very appealing at first glance; they seem to have a lot of synergy with each other. However, the main issue with these guys, which has already been touched upon, is their color-intensive main-phase-only mana costs. Aside from the 5-strip problem (which can even be avoided if you play your fetch's right) there's trying to balance playing a bunch of main-phase spells like Duress and dorks while keeping mana open to for the 10 counters in the deck that need it. This makes it almost like the cards of the deck are fighting each other for control of your game plan. Do you ever find this to produce a lack of synergy?

Having played a deck very similar to this one a few months ago, I would very much like to see it work. But the most annoying thing I noticed about this type of strategy is that it has very little, if any at all, potential to go broken. In my opinion, Type 1 is all about brokenness. Either you have the potential to go absolutely nuts on turns 1 and 2 or you play things during those turns that make your opponent unable to go broken themselves. The best this deck can do for brokenness is land, lotus, Meddling Mage, recall (maybe adding mox, mox, walk, but that's even more improbable). Now that's not a bad start at all, but it isn't game ending. What's more is that you probably can't follow it up with more brokenness the next turn; maybe land, Shadowmage, beats for 2.

Perhaps instead of running counters that get in the way of your win condition it’d be better to play things like Daze and Misdirection. This way you can play your disruptive/card drawing creatures and still be able to counter things. Also, as it stands this deck seems like it’d fall into top-deck mode far too often. That being said I think some more card draw is in order; maybe something like Standstill.

A parting note on Masticore: This guy used to be huge in Type II and Extended as a way to control the board and kill the opponent efficiently. But, in today’s Type I it’s just not very good. Against decks that have creatures you can kill without spending 6, 8, even 10 mana (Fish), he’ll probably be locked under Null Rod or sent farming. It’s gets a lot scarier against decks with Mana Drain in them.

Since turn two is your ideal turn for winning, have you considered making room for a Necropotence? Dropped on turn one (easy with 8 rituals that make BBB) it has a way of making turn two go a lot smoother. However, it's so fun at all to see a Necro while comboing off and praying for another draw spell so I can see why it might not be the best card for this particular deck.

Ideas Unbound is pretty super. Just how hard is it to get UU consistently? I don't doubt your testing but the effect seems strong enough to warrent another look. Even if only one or two copies make it into the final version, they could really be useful during the combo turn.

Just one more thing about your sideboard: why Negators? I can see the desire to clobber some unsuspecting control deck game two after they bring in Arcane Labs and stuff. But is this really effective? Slaver could have a problem with first turn Negator but, since they generally only run Force and Drain (as opposed to Force, Drain, and Duress) this is a pretty decent match-up anyway. More combo-oriented control decks like SSB and other Gifts variants can just combo you out from under a 4 turn clock. And certainly Fish, which brings in Labs and Chants, would not have too much trouble dealing with Negators even after boarding Swords out due to Factories and other dorks. But I could be dead wrong. What decks do you tend to sideboard Negators in against and what do you take out for them?