honestly: I don't know. I use this tool here (http://reya.de/pages/service/probabilities) to calculate opening hands, but its in german..(erm, first white field is decksize, second is the number of cards you want to see to odds of drawing them, the table at the bottom shows you the percentage)

I don't think 7+8 is correct either though, erm, my guess would be that, you take the chance of each card drawn sepratly and then use some higher math formula to determine the percentage.

erm quick correction on your math, the chances to having one of those 8 cards in your oppening is 65.4% not 93%. so the whole idea is probably not that viable imo...

(btw assume this, if you would have 12 cards you're looking at, your math would suggest that its 12 x 7 /60 = 140%, which is obviously impossible...)

hey, first of all: nice to see someone else trying to come up with a merfolk list ^^ (I'm currently also trying something, but haven't got to test it)

But I'm sorta curious about some things /choices.

The first thing that struck me, when seeing your list was that you run only 13 Blue mana sources, while having 14 spells that require UU. From a probability point of view, that would mean that 37%-45%  chance of NOT getting your second blue on turn 2 and still a 37%-30% chance of still not having it turn 3, didn't you lose to that a lot during testing/playing the tournament? Also why do you play fetchies, when you dont' have anything relevant to fetch?

Also didn't you have a lot of trouble with NobleFish (or basically any fish that plays rods?) as, unlike other aggrolike decks, you seem to be heavily affected by a single Rod, making your 3 CMC critter either hard to cast or daze-fodder?

hmm...interesting thought ^^ I haven't even considered that...ermm, well, honestly, yeah, you're of course right, that the premise is to resolve empty, but the strength (or the one I see) of the deck is somewhere from Turn 3-5 after you resolve empty and can start to abuse the tokens with discovery, wjhich should give you the edge of contrliing the game and will lead to a second empty for the win eventually (or a short Turn 5 Will for draing 6 cards off 2 Discoveries and/or the Anc for few mana)

I honestly wouldn't know where to squeeze in some rits (would be red ones, as the Black manabse is the unstable part anyway, imo) maybe for repeals?

hmm on the other hand, it's not as if you're not doing anything on turn 2-3...either sculpting your hand for the safe empty/discovery abusage or disrupting the enemy draw (or trying to..) or slow down the game with Remora, so that you're not at a disadvantage when the time to act comes...

I mean, to premise of using rits is to be able to win the game quicker as your opponent, which this deck woudln't do anyway (as empty still takes a few turns to be lethal) on the other hand, start using the Discovery earlier, which is the point anyway can't come too early...hmm gotta try that out...

thanks for the input

Hey everyone,

As I haven't found a thread on this already, I thought I give it a try. I just dicovered the card Shared Discovery yesterday and was kinda psychied to try and make a deck that works well with it, so first, the decklist, and after that I try to write a bit about, why I chose the cards etc.

Hope to get some ideas, critiques etc. to see if the idea might be a good one or not.

Decklist:

4 Empty the Warrens
4 Shared Discovery

4 See Beyond
1 Ancestral
1 Time Walk
1 Brainstorm
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demontic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Personal Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Yawgmoth's Will

4 Force of Will
1 Misdircetion
2 Pyroblast
3 Spell Snare

2 Repeal
2 Rebuild
2 Mystic Remora

8 SoLoMoxCrypt
1 Mana Vault

2 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
3 U-Sea
3 Volcanic Island
2 Island
1 Mountain

SB

2 Annul
2 Hurkyl's Recall
2 Pithing Needle
2 Ravenous Trap
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Ingot Chewer
1 Darkblast
1 Pyroclasm
1 Thada Adel
(or 1 additional Land instead of Thada or Pyroclams)

Well, as Shared Discovery is really useless without 4 critters/tokens I figured figured I really want 4 Emptys. On the other hand, having a few tokens is often useless, so I also really wanted 4 Shared Discoverys to make something more out of the tokens than just a few dudes hanging around on the battlefield.

But as with 4 offs: Sometimes you get too much of one and that's why I tried out See Beyond here, to shuffle back to not needed second copy of some cards, or depending on the MU some other useless/suboptimal cards. As with 4 Empty and 4 SD's the Deck was already quite Sorceryspeed-heavy, I figured I rather have See Beyond than any of the 2-3 mana instants who do a similar job but slightly worse (imo, OR I forgot a card..).

I haven't gotten to actually testing (as it's summerbreak for vintage Tournies here in Switzerland AND I just orderd the cards yesterday anyway), but I did some Goldfishing and See Beyond was solid there. Not extremely awesome or anything, but  wouldn't want to kick it out of the deck (or rather: no better card came to mind in this slot).

Anyway, as the deck is quite Sorceryspeed-heavy, I decided to not play drains and play 2 Pyroblasts instead (they were fist drains, but I never had the mana open to cas them anyway), which also help against fish (destroying their draw engine or a nasty meddling mage).

As the deck doesn't require UU, I also put in a basic Mountain, which should help me against Staxx/Fish (especially postboard) and makes having 2 Pyroblasts not a risk to my manabase.

3 Snares also mostly against fish, but have theri uses against Drains as well. Against fish, cause I really think a single resolved null rod can easily ruin my day. as Empty still costs 4 Mana and they not only got Stifle, but can also protect their Rod with Force and Spell pierce, which makes a resolved Null Rod hard to handle (if they have a decent clock). Or so is my believe on that matter, correct me if I'm completely wrong.

Besides the usual power/restricted cards, I didn't want to include a few namely: Thirst, Gifts, Fact, Ponder.

Thirst: I think I don't have enough artifacts to really support that card in a useful matter, also the Instant speed isn't needed.
Fact: 4 Mana is quite a bit, considering I already have 4 Empties, also the effect even though OK, is surely not THAT great in a deck that doesn't go "Draw, Go"

Gifts: well, partly the same reason as Fact (4 Mana), but also, cause I believe I sport too few actualy Bombs, that work on their own, to make this a worthwhile inclusion here. I mean, I don't have a 2 card combo or a quick tendrils kill or anything, I don't have a lot of draw that works on its own etc.

Ponder: I'm not sure, I shuold just take one See Beyond out for this to be honest. Though more often thatn not, the awayshuffling of a not-so-needed-card was really nice to have even though See Beyond only goes 2 cards deep.

Inclusion of Personal Tutor: Well, as this deck heavily depends on Empty/Discovery I wanted to have more than 3 tutors for them. First I wanted to include an impereal Seal, but figured I didn't want to fetch for U-Sea, if I don't have to, so mostly for manastability purposes I included personal Tutor here. Still this card is really either great or useless depending on the situation. So I dunno if I shouldnt look for a better card here.

Inclusion of Remora: Another slot that I don't feel too strongly about. Mostly I felt I needed something against Drains, as I lack the unconditional draw-bombs, that drain has, at the same time, I didn't want some too expenisve spell, so I thought I put remoras in here. As they slow down the game and let me make some landdrops, mabye let me resolve a See boyond or even a small Empty for 2 or 3, while Drain players "have" to wait a bit OR have to use a counterspell for something I only paid U

Well, from the few goldfishingmirror on MWS (which is of course not really conclusive in any way) I get the feeling, this deck MIGHT maybe be quite good, but of course I have to test it first anyway..

Either way, I hope you can give me some ideas, cirtique cardchices, etc.

ehm, maybe I overlooked something, but once you get this guy out, even if tezz lands vault/key, how are they going to win? Unlike they still play Tezzeret, they'll most likely are not going to win with just 4 Confis and 1 Robot, or not?

(Meaning, they need 4 turns of all of them attacking, while at the same time, reavelaning 10 cards to confis etc., so most likely they would die either cause of lifeloss or drawing their library until they get the attackers set up, no?)

Not to mention, you can't run Tinker when you don't have enough artifacts for backup...or to create storm with mass artifact bounce etc...

quick question: What's your sideboard?

I see you have play 2 volcanic Island, so REBs and Rack and Ruin SB? what's your weapon of choice againt Fish decks? (ok 4 S.S. main is already Sweeet! )

also: how does this deck perform against Remora builds? any specific SB plan against it? or do people in your area just not play it enough to be relevant for you?

Peace
Ruven

little hint: if you're planning on going to an italian Tournament then I'd definitely test against UR fish, which are heavily played there (so I've heard) and differ a lot from other Fish strategies insofar as they don't run Rod but a lot more Disruption with the Spellstutters. (Meaning they have about 16-17 counters postboard some of which can be played again (Stutters) during the match, so beware).
On the other hand I think the Italian Meta is currently the only one where this Fish variant is actually played, so if you're not planning on going there, then there's probably no need to test against it.

@ marske: thanks for the help. But one thing I don't quite get: Why do you board out Cabal Rituals when you know you're up against mana denial? Wouldn't they help a lot (especially asuming you don't have that much mana available anyway) to get something bigger into play (like Bargain/Necro or even to pay for Gifts or something)?

btw my list looks like this for the moment

4Mox
1 Lotus
1 Petal
1 Mana Cryot
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
3 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Tolarian Academy
2 Island
2 Swamp

--
22

4 Dark Ritual
1 Cabal Ritual

--
5

4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection
4 Duress

--
9

1 Timetwister
1 Yawgmoths Will
1 Necro
1 Bargain
1 Mind's Desire
1 Tendrils
1 Tinker
1 Jar
1 Inkwell Leviathan
1 Time Walk

---
10

1 Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Ponder
3 Telling Time
1 Mystical
1 Vampiric
1 Demonic
1 Imperial Seal
1 Grim Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
1 Gifts Ungiven
1 Rebuild
1 Chain of Vapor

---
15

SB
1 Swamp
1 Island
2 Tormods Crypt
3 Jailer
2 Needle
1 Extirpate
2 Hurkyls
3 Fishslots (still havent decided but probably go with 1 Infest, 1-2 Slaughter Pact, 0-1 Chain of Echoing Truth)

thanks, that already helped a lot.

one additional question: When you're up against a UR Stutter variant (dunno if you have them where you play, but it sorta started being more popular here), would you consider boarding needles against gorilla shamans? Reason being, that you can't bounce Rod EoT before you go off the get access to your artifact acceleration like vs other Fish variants, but that the Monkey actually destroys the Moxes, Lotus etc.

Or do you just wait to play said Moxen until you can go off or really need the mana?

my SB against fish is for the time being is: 2 Basics, 1 Massacre, 1 Infest, 1 Chain. I'm thinking about Echoing Truth since I can also play that vs. Icho and if Mage already names Chain, but I dunno if that's a good plan.

I just started to play with TPS last week and hope you could help me a little with explaining the boardplan vs Fish decks.

I know someone had posted earlier about boarding, but I don't run the Goyfplan (or any Manplan) in my side so far, so my question is what do you board against fish in a UB version of TPS?
And what is the gameplan vs fish in general? And do you play differently against one Fish variant then against another (like the UWx or URx which are quite different from each other)?

boogie man: Well, yes, but problem is with adding all the stuff that would also be great is, that I have to cut something else which already is doing fine... I mean I ran this deck with 3 goyfs and only 3 Ninjas last time and it worked fine, but usually the goyf is not what you want too early anyway, so I cut down to 2 which worked fine.

running clique would be nice, but I wouldn't know what to cut for it. Except maybe a ninja. adding another Grim would also be very nice, but again, same problem: what to take out.

the other possibilty would be to take out all the tutor/regrowth stuff and just add more critters, like grim, goyf and clique. Would be worth a try maybe, since the first UR list I played didn't have any of those and worked just fine all the same...

you could also try some BUG aggro and abuse your Recall with tutors and 2 or 3 regrowth effects.

is this discussion still on here?

Because I really like the decks from the way it works and have been goldfishing it a couple of times, but I sorta think, that it has severe problems against an early wasteland or two. Worst when it comes from a shopplayer who by that time also has a sphere or so in play..

I mean you run 15 lands, all of which are non basic and besides 2 moxen a petal and a lotus there's not really anything there that gives you additional mana.

I feel like this deck should have a hard time against fish/shop decks, but maybe I miss something here? Also the Side with grudge and spree doesn't help much, when you're on 1 land and there's a sphere in play, or when you're on 2 lands with a sphere and hold grudge or so. (Which I think is not entirely anreasonable assumption or is it?)

Help on this issues would be appreciated, since I'd really like to take this to a tournament sometime, but for know I would really fear of losing to half the decks. (Even if only because I don't knwo how to play against these decks with a combo deck like this one)

Peace
Ruven

btw I was playing a Urg List the last 3 Months at our tournaments and I have to say I like it a lot better than the UR. Mostly because of the better Stax and Fish MU. Also Regrowth Effects really help a lot. I tried Reclaim as an additional Regrowth and that card alone won me 2 games or so.

the List was following

3 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
2 Island
4 Volcanic Island
3 Tropical Island
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Sapphire

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Brainstorm
1 Echoing Truth
1 Deglamer
1 Regrowth
1 Reclaim
1 Time Walk
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Merchant Scroll
2 Fire / Ice

4 Force of Will
3 Daze
2 Spell Snare
1 Misdirection

4 Spellstutter Sprite
3 Gorilla Shaman
1 Grim Lavamancer
3 Sage of Epityr
4 Ninja of the Deep Hour
2 Tarmogoyf

SB
3 Tormod's Crypt
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
2 Energy Flux
2 Ancient Grudge
2 Ingot Chewer
1 Umezawa's Jitte
1 Negate

The SB is still a bit under consruction, but worked fine. Never had to play against storm though, although there weren't  a lot of storm decks present anyway. In the MD, I will probably cut back to 3 Ninjas and maybe add 1 Echoing or 1 Goyf or 1 Grim or 1 Negate. I'll probably go for the Negate though.

btw swawagon: You never had some serious trouble with aggrodecks or Staxx with the UR build? especially against random aggro, which always gave me  a lot of trouble when I was still playing with the UR list..

ah, tokens, right, I completely forgot about the tokens.

to be honest, I'm not sure how I would run it. Out of personal preference I'd probably cut the chalices and I wouldn't play more than 3 Rods. Then again, I'm not sure if that's the right choice, since I never play either of them. also 3 Daze are enough usually, since you don't have acceleration and the Land drop is quite important in a non-mox deck. Also Bitterblossom looks just plain slow. even with the synergy with the stutter. Also with a confi out and no way to control our draws, you might even reveal yourself to death before you bring down the lifepoints of your opponent.

ermm, I dunno how I would play that deck, to be honest. How did the deck do in testing btw? anything particular that caused trouble or didn't work well together?

I myself am gonna play a budget version of the fish I played last tournament. Budget except for that one recall that is, but that's about it.
other options would probably be Elves, Goblins, Sui. which can all be run on a bduget version. (a Budget Goblin made even 2nd on the eurovino last year, assuming the list on deckcheck is correct, so might not be the worst choice)

hmm I dunno. I value echoing very much, especially in the Icho matchup you don't wanna miss them. Additional bounce like waterfront bouncer would be nice tough.

What I wanted to say is just that 2 bounce and no library manipulation is too random. So when you really need them chances are they're not in your hand.

About therapy: Why pick it over duress? Which creature would you wanna sac to it? (I guess thoughtseize is ruled out, cause you play blossom)

Looks like a nice idea. Once you establish yourself with the mandenial most bluebased decks will probably have a tough time. I think the main problem is probably not being able to kill your opponent fast enough, thus giving him more time to recover from the manadenial plan.
Also there's a lack of first turn plays and if you have to daze on with only one land out it sets you back quite a lot in the early game, so maybe a spell snare or thoughtseize or something would come in handy there.

But I wouldn't really know what to cut, since I'm not really familiar with how the deck actually plays etc.

also for a deck that has to fear tinker/DSC it seems that 2 ET and no CQ whatsoever seems a bit insufficient.

just my thoughts from looking at the list.

Peace
Ruven

btw Speaking of experiment: have you tried worldly tutor in this deck? Since all your creatures are also solutions or elements of control, the tutor might work here...but it's just a thought.

the Tournament was a smaller one with 5 Proxies allowed (so this deck was perfect, cause I didn't have any power) and there were about 26-28 people attending (we still played 6 rounds of swiss + top8 though) and I got in 1st and won the Recall. I was very lucky though, winning against Ichorid in the Semifinal and against Goblins in the Final.

Thank you and Francesco for the update on the deck.

I'll maybe write more later, but now I'm just too exhausted to go on. (also been sick with light flu for the last 4 days, duh )

First of all: Thank you for your reply and explanations.

Only one thing I don't understand: Why do you play Chain of Vapor over Echoing? Deglamer over Echoing is surely a very good choice, but why Chain over Echoing?

I like Echoing a lot, because it also helps in the ichorid matchup, or against Chalice 1. Because, if there is a Chalice 1on the board, the only solution I see right now is Deglamer, which can't be tutored by scroll (and mystical/gorilla can't be played at this time). So chain seems like an unnecessary risk to me of not helping at all in certain situations.

Besides that, your list looks really strong. You have better solutions to the Aggro/Workshop Matchup, which are Matchups that I always feared with the list I played. Also the plays with Relearn seem a nice idea.

Anyway, definitely an interesting way the deck developed. Looks great.

p.s. Can you say "thanks" to Francesco for the original list from me? (It just won me a Recall last Sunday, and I enjoyed playing it very much. I don't know what I would be playing if I hadn't found this deck on the web. And I really like the deck a lot)

Hello,

I've been playing this deck too for the last 4 months (using this exact list here http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=18164 I found on the web) and I've got to say your build looks interesting but I'm really curious about certain card choices.

Especially the whole Tutor/Scroll engine: In your newest build with the Green splash. It seems you cut more creatures for a draw and tutor engine and also some added solutions like Deglamer and Electrolyze. And on first sight it just seems oddly slow, especially for a deck that uses every mana available most of the time for disruption and/or playing creatures. How did that play out during testing?

Personally I think a lot of the strength of the deck comes also with the synergy between Ninjutsu and the Stutters/Sages. Stutters give you more disruption/mana denial and the Sages give you enough Card Quality to make more almost obsolete. And cutting that engine for a tutor/solution engine just seems odd on the first sight (to me at least, that's why I'm asking)

Gush also seems a very interesting choice: While I think mana (especially colored one) is always a bit rare in this deck, that one gush also can help protecting the duals from getting wasted (Which against random aggro or Gobbos is one of the bigger pains, cause  most of the creature disruption is based in red.) So I'm really intersted in knowing how that worked out for you. Or how often you couldn't/didn't want to play Gush because you needed the land as opposed to gladly playing the Gush and maybe even get an extra mana out of it and/or protecting your lands from getting wasted?

Also curious about the Electrolyze. The 3 Mana (especially against an aggro deck) seem like a lot and it usually only kills one critter on their end. Why chose this over a 2nd or 3rd Mancer, which is a more permanent solution to the critterproblem? Or why play them at all if you have a Goyf SB now which usually holds of most critters on the other side?

Really curious of your answers, cause I definitely don't understand some choices. But I'm also quite new to the whole Vintage Format, so maybe I just don't see the obvious here...

Hope I don't come off too rude bombarding you with question like that.

Peace
Ruven