Fishstick (Like Fish, but less so)

[Ephraim]

The other day I was looking for a fun deck to play and Kowal suggested Fish. Now, I was only looking to play casually, so I immediately decided that the full decklist wouldn't be necessary. While the concept is fine, Null Rods are totally unnecessary in fun games. The same goes for Force of Will. I only own one, so that's all I'll play. Basically, if I had to buy something to make the deck work, I'd probably do without.

On the other hand, I'd recently picked up a playset of Mishra's Factory, while Cloud of Faeries, Spiketail Hatchling, and Daze are all exceedingly easy to come by.

The below list is essentially my first draft, which was happily Peasant legal from the get-go.

Creatures (16)
4 Cloud Sprite (Flying Men)
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Spiketail Hatchling
4 Razorfin Hunter

Card Drawing (10)
4 Curiosity (uncommon)
3 Flux
3 Quicksilver Dagger

Control (12)
4 Power Sink
3 Daze
4 Jilt
1 Force of Will (uncommon)

Land (22)
4 Mishra's Factory
7 Mountain
11 Island

Cloud Sprite: I wasn't about to invest on Grim Lavamancer or Voidmage Prodigy and I wanted something else to which I could attach Curiosity. The additional Quicksilver Daggers make having more creatures in the deck a good idea. It's not as good as flying men, but it's an order of magnitude less expensive, as well. A first turn Cloud Sprite always seems to be a good play for me, so I'm happy with this inclusion.

Flux: Not that Curiosity fails to yield a lot of cards, but I had slots to spare and I wanted something more. Being able to ditch even two or three unnecessary lands or a late-game Daze yields good digging.

Quicksilver Dagger: This may be the weakest card in the deck, but it yields decent results. More card drawing is never unwelcomed and it helps me to get around flying defenses. I'd be really thrilled if it let me deal damage to creatures as well, but one can't have everything.

Power Sink -- I've found that the ability to keep an opponent tapped out can be of critical importance at any point in the game. Whether the first threat makes it onto the table or not, Power Sink almost guarantees that the second threat will not make it through. This is especially helpful once my opponent figures out that I'm playing a control deck and tries to bait my counters. I've found that because it forces the opponent to tap out, it works well with Daze and Spiketail Hatchling.

Jilt -- This is another choice that is hardly standard. I've found it very useful thus far, since it very often allows me to trade cards two for one. Since it is playable at the speed of an instant, it allows me to deal with combat situations as well. In a creature-lite metagame, I'd probably use Echoing Truth, instead. Arc Lightning could also replace Jilt. It is very nice in that it allows me to deal with larger creatures, which is a problem I understand Fish occasionally has.

Recent Changes
-3 Flux
+3 Impulse

This wasn't really a difficult transition to make. Flux was there to improve the quality of my draws. Impulse doesn't have quite as strong an effect for me, but it also doesn't help my opponent and costs less. There's really no contention.

Under Consideration
-1 Force of Will
+1 Fact or Fiction

This is a difficult decision to make. The deck already has an abundance of both counter magic and card-drawing effects. Although Fact or Fiction would have a more broken effect, I believe, the confidence with which Force of Will imbues me cannot be easily dismissed. Not being a slave to Power Sink can be handy. Of course, one possible solution would be to replace some or all of the Power Sinks with Counterspells.