I made top4 last saturday with Grow-a-goyf here in Quebec. I used Steve's list, but I cut some cards including the drains for 3 Counterbalances and 2 Top's. As a legacy player, i'm kinda sold on those and I found myself mana burnin' way to often for my liking with drain's mana... Top also play quite nice with bob as everybody know: I was able to drop two confidants quite often, without fear of getting killed by them, as we run quite few high cc (FoW, Tendril's, Gush, Inkwell)!

Anyway counterbalances were amazing, they won me some games I had no business to win. I also used some Mongoose sideboard, as a counter-threads strategy: that too worked quite nicely, won me my top8 match on his own against Landstill. I had 2 Trygon side for the aggro shop match, maybe because i'm a BUG fish player;) and I have to say that I won the match on this guy back only!

Cheers! Thank you Steve for that list, I had a load of fun during the weekend!

Did you ask your opponents if cursecatcher actually slowed them down after each matchup? Because everytime I was not sure if he had been good or not, my opponent answered that he was bothered alot by this lil' guy!

I was not impress by Negate either, but I fail to see a situation where mana leak would have been better... Daze, for example, is almost strictly better in the first few turns... but is quite useless in the late game. Mana leak has not real advantage over Negate... It's not a hard counter late game and I would be suprised if you actually used it during your tournament to counter a creature! I mean, I prefer to counter a real threat like tinker or recall!

As for Demonic Tutor, it won me alot of games I had no business to win, it's an amazing card in the deck: I don't see myself cut it anytime soon.

I do agree with you as far as stifle is concerned: it's great in the deck, but I just consider the deck too tight to be able to fit in 2 more of them

I think the maindeck bounce is needed. I know it can be dead sometimes, but it's our only out against Titan or Platinum angel maindeck! Not to mention that sometimes you can just bounce a blocker and go lethal with your lil' dudes.

Still, if you are not facing Oath at all in your meta, it might be a good call.

As a side note, I don't know what is the problem with stifle: they were so good to me all day long! With all our disruption, I like them as complement, acting sometimes like Wastes #5 and 6 and sometimes like Time walk for  against oath. Stifle even saved my butt against a Duplicant while playing vs Aggro shop!!! Not to mention that it's good against storm based strategies and that your opponent will be forced to play around it even if you run only two copies!

As far as I'm concerned, Negate is a more debatable slot... I had to be tapped out more often than not to cast that critical Duress, Rod, etc. It's true however that, unlike Daze, it's usefull late game. I don't know what to think, you guys  have any suggestions ?   

Hi guys on the manadrain, it's my first post here, but I'm a long time fallower of the site: awesome forum by the way

I've been very interested by BUG fish since M. Becker first posted it here. I decided to give it a shot, even if I wasn't sure that it would perform well here in the meta (Quebec city). Oath, suicide and aggro are played here, and I didnt liked my chances against those archetypes.

But the deck was great to me all day long! It was a 50+ players tournament and I played against Oath, Time control, Bomberman (another favorite here in Quebec meta) and Aggro shop during the swiss (I was first after 4 rounds, being 4-0, and finished third after two ID).

In top 8 I first faced Time control again (same guy I faced in swiss), then a dawn of the dead like deck in top4 (bazaar, duress, reanimate effets with titan n' platinum angel and finally Ugo Rivard in final (slaver tezz). I lost in final due to some play mistakes, but mostly from overall better draws // skills from my opponent.

I was amazed by the deck, very nice list M. Becker. I too, like maatn I think, played a singleton Trygon instead of vamp tutor and was very pleased by the results. Cursecatcher and waste were MVP (honorable mention to strip, wich I drew like 7 times ).

I liked the Grip's from side and the other trygon alot. It's a very fun deck, it adapt itself to various situations and opponents... I think it deserve a lil more respect!

Well, it's not that much details because I didn't take notes, but I hope it proves one more time that the deck is good. Sorry for my english, its not my first language!!