[Discussion-Strategy Issues] How will Fish do at Tier 1?

[Kerz]

Fish has been putting up consistent numbers for many months. Within the past 8-12 weeks, this deck has skyrocketed in popularity and the winning percentages have followed suit. Judging from its preformence at the StarCity P9 tournament, it is the deck to beat for GenCon.

These facts are not disputed, and recently Stephen Menendian has published an article reaffirming this.

What problems arise when our format is based around Fish?

I believe that one of the main reasons the deck is putting up such good numbers is peoples lack of preparedness for it. Fish was able to capitalize on a Tog-heavy metagame a few weeks back, coming in and taking the legs out of a format where the majority of any given metagame was an auto-win matchup.

With top players recognizing its strength and altering their choices (whether it be card choices, or even what deck to pilot) even the sleightest amount- Fish loses much of its potency.  Tog has almost completely disappeared for this reason. Will Fish, an amazing metagame deck, have a hard time dealing with players packing hate and experience in the matchup? Is Fish a hate deck for a metagame that has moved on?

Lets face it: the deck itself isn't hard to hate against. Potent sideboard bombs such as Juntu Stakes and Tsabo's Web can be added specifically to destroy Fish, or other, more subtle, actions can be taken. This can include upping the maindeck Fire/Ice count, adding some more creature-kill in your sideboard, and the like (this can be applied to any deck).  When an entire tournament's worth of people are gunning for a deck that bases its strategy heavily on what the metagame is going to be like, what happens?

[Wollblad]

I cannot tell how it's going to be over there, but I can tell you what it's like here, where Fish has been a large part of the meta game for almost two years now. The largest reason for the high number of Fish decks is that we have almost no proxy-tournaments. Fish is a cheap and competative choice, few other decks can compete in tems of sucess per invested dollar. But I can not agree that Fish is the deck to beat. In our tournaments, where the rest of the field is prepared, Fish is less succesful. In an average tournament with 80 competitors, we usually see perhaps 10-15 Fish and typically one or even zero of these manage to make top 8.

How come? One reason is Stax which with Crucible of Worlds just humiliates Fish, and we have lots of Staxs over here. Also 4cc with Crucible is not as easy for Fish as it used to be. Actually there are so many Stax and 4cc with Crucible that people have started to turn away from Fish. The other part is that all other players take Fish in account when building/choosing there decks. There is virtually no idea to play combo decks that are sensitive to Null Rod since you know that you will run into at least one or two Fish during the tournament. Other decks tries to minimize there sensitivity to Null Rod/Wasteland by running an extra basic land instead of a mana artifact, maindecks one extra creatur kill and uses two or three sidebaord slots for the Fish matchup. And it goes on like this.

To sum up: Fish is indeed meta game defining, but it's not that powerful in an adjusted meta game.

[kirdape3]

But if that's the case, then you should be beating Fish with what actually is the most effective - large creatures and basic lands.  You know, Timmy stuff.  None of their cards are really going to affect a Wild Mongrel or a Call of the Herd or the like, and God forbid someone actually play a Juggernaut.  Madness will probably edge Fish out in a budget metagame, and it holds a great potential to do it in general since it beats Workshop even better than the base strategy of Fish and it's even against 4c.

[Smmenen]

Part of the problem is that *us* type one players have been playing powered decks for so long (that is part of the allure of the format) that playing a relatively unpowered deck is almost obscene.

I started an article that was going to do my first Comprehensive analysis of the banned and restricted list - but that, like many other uncompleted articles, is a work in progress.

In that article it dawns upon me that the single thing that separates t1 from other formats, among all else, is the accelleration.

Specifically, 8 cards:
Mox Pearl
Mox Sapphire
Mox Ruby
Mox Jet
Mox Emerald
Sol Ring
Black Lotus
and Mana Crypt

These cards aren't restricted becuase they are *too powerful.*  They are restricted because it would be a fundamentally different format if they weren't.  

With every other card on the restricted list, including Ancestral Recall, you can analyze the effects of the metagame of restricting or unrestricting a card, but it is absurd to think of any of those 8 cards in that way.  

If those eight cards come to *define* the format in that they make it what it is - and make it different from other formats, then think about Null Rod.  

The best Null Rod deck in the format, should, by definition, be incredibly powerful.  

What I am saying is that most of us would rather play with the Rule cards, than the rule breakers.  That leaves only the most daring and best of us to play the Null Rod deck and get really good with us.

How many of us would honestly consider playing Fish as their primary deck?  I've thought about it - but even as Spike as we would like to think of ourselves, everyone of us who says no, isn't really a true Spike.  

Fish suffers from the fact that too few of the BEST type one players - those who have the most experience with the format, actually care to play the deck.

[Nameless]

I just don't like Fish because it really aint that good in a general field.  You can't take it to a completely random metagame and hope you don't get your ass pounded by Sligh.  It's just one of those decks that you have to plan on using because it is a metagame deck to begin with.

On that note, while you think you aren't Spike enough, I'd bet that if you were really expecting a shitload of Artifact decks sporting full power you'd play Fish; I just say that though because it's been my experience that you'd rather take a deck you think will win then a deck you'll have more fun with, and I consider playing a deck packed with P10 cards, just because it IS packed with P10 cards, to be quite fun.

And I certainly agree about the Moxxen not really being broken.  If we could play 4x of each think of how even the crappiest crap-ass-crap deck would suddenly become better, being able to drop half it's land while ignoring the whole 1-land per turn rule, and not even having to have en Enchantment in play to do it.  The Moxxen aren't broken themselves, it's just that the rules multiple Moxxen let you break are so integral to the balance of the game in general that it has to be policed somehow.

On the other hand, 4x Black Lotus would pretty much be just retarded.  

[Ric_Flair]

People act like Fish beating up Tog is a big shocker, but the truth is, we should have seen this coming.  Tog became so rarified that it basically could do only one thing.  Tog became the sniper rifle of Magic.  If you have any experience with First Person Shooters you know what I mean.  The sniper rifle is so lethal because it is focused, but when the targets don't play by your game plan, i.e. stay far away and don't notice you, the sniper rifle SUCKS.  It is too specialized of an instrument.  This is what Tog became.  It happened when Tog ceased being a control deck and became Tog the combo control deck.  All of the solutions it "should" have packed were excised from the deck because the metagame other than Tog eliminated the need for such cards.  Tog became mana, draw, counters, and Tog.  With many people upping the free mana count to 8 and the Deed count to 0 is it any wonder that a deck with no removal would suffer?  This may explain why GAT was not hit as hard.  It is less dependent on free mana, it still has Deeds, and it has a back up plan in the form of Dryads.  

I think that Fish is an excellent development for the format both in terms of lowering the barrier of entry and in making "powered" players work again.  No longer can a person throw restricted cards together and win.  Thought is required.  And I think that is a good thing.  

I also think that Tog is down but not out.  A return of some creature removal in the form of Fire/Ice and Deed is undoubtedly a good thing for the deck.  I can't imagine cards like Deep Analysis being good anymore when Null Rod makes them all but impossible to cast.  I also think that a LD element could help Tog.

Another development that I foresee, or at least could imagine, is the re-emergence of Broodstarrunner decks, that have enough fat to consistently run over Fish but enough draw to run with control decks.  

I also think that the "Weissman" tech of maindecking REBs could certainly be popular again, as could adding more MisDs to maindecks.  

Fish's emergence is a good thing.  It challenges the format and it makes the format more accessible to newbies.  Is there anything that could be better?

[Kerz]

I think that Fish's "invasion" of type one can be compared to the Vietnam war.

The Viet Cong, while having extremely small numbers (especially compared to the US's), used its knowlege of the forests and underhanded tricks to topple the GIGANTIC force that was the US Military.

The US's role in that war was the overly powerful force that was set to come in, clean up, and leave in quick fashion.

The US was so much ahead of the Viet Cong in so many ways- numbers, technology, medicine, etc, yet they were still able to beat us, humiliating the US for years.

How did this happen? We were not prepared for guerilla tactics, nor did we have their extreme knowlege of their surroundings.  Dispite our advances and extreme might, they were able to "steal" victories with tactics we'd never seen before, nor considered a threat.

As you have already guessed, the US represents broken Type One decks in general. The Viet Cong directly compares to Fish. Taking advantage of Synergies, hate cards, and the like, it is able to beat the brute force that are Type One decks. Has type one been humiliated in the same fashion the US was? Possibly. 1/1's are smashing face in a format that has YAWGMOTH'S WILL, TINKER and BLACK LOTUS. After our legs being taken out by this deck (fish), I think we will be able to come back with more knowlege in general, no longer losing to the Viet Cong of type one.

[Methuselahn]

The brown acid tabs were the bad ones, Kerz.

There is no problem with the format just because fish is on top.  There is no lesson to be learned.  "It's just a bunch of stuff that happened"-H.J.Simpson.  Honestly, decks will adjust to other popular decks of the present.

[Smmenen]

I think you are all missing the point to a certain degree - you are all talking about Fish and other matchups as people playing them correctly and its all just a battle of the decks.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  I'm trying to point out that Fish is a large function of the player.  The strength of the players who want to play Fish is often lower than the strength of the player who wants to play, say, 4cc.  As a result, Fish does disproportionately weaker.  I tried to explain why.

I think Fish is here to stay.  It will remain in the tier one for some time to come simply because mana denial/tempo with Null Rod (partifcularly) is such a good rule-breaking strategy.

[Phantom Tape Worm]

[only semi serious]
First off, I would like to ask a mod to change the title of this thread to: "[Discussion-Strategy Issues] How will PTW do at Tier 1?"  

I mean c'mon guys, I think we all know by now that fish will be just fine until I stop playing it.  I have been winning with this deck for so long now; having played through huge metagame shifts and widley varied strategies I have remained extremely successful.  I've played through hate, I've played through allegedly bad matchups, I've played through degenerate decks, and almost without fail, in my hands fish is victorious.  Fish will survive at its top spot because I will survive at that top spot.  I will win the type 1 championship at gencon and if I do so with fish then everyone will say that fish can survive at tier 1.  But if I do so with some other deck, then everyone will say that fish is dead.

The only reason I would consider NOT running fish is because I know crucible of worlds will be the hot card in the metagame.  THAT'S THE ONLY REASON.  As far as fish's position at the top of the metagame and being able to hold out against hate, all I can say is (and i'm going to speak candidly): pfft.  I don't worry about any hate at all because the haters end up losing to burn and sui and never catch me in the winners bracket or top 8  

I am personally responsible for fish being what it is and where it is.  I am personally responsible for keeping the archetype pure and unchanging.  I am personally responsible for the death of tog and the rise of fish.  And when it is fishes turn to die it will be at my hands as well.  It can truly be said that the entire American metagame begins and ends with me.[/only semi serious]

[Vegeta2711]

Amazingly enough out of that semi-serious thing, it made a lot more sense than most of what else was written.

I mean c'mon guys, I think we all know by now that fish will be just fine until I stop playing it.

And I think that also summed up what some of us we're thinking.  

[Wollblad]

@kirdape3
Madness and deck like it will beat Fish, but in a non-proxy meta game it will be rare since the few players owning Bazaars will not all play Madness but a few will play Dragon instead. I also agree that Madness has a better matchup against Stax than Fish, so actually I see Madness with Null Rods as a greater threat for the tier one than Fish.

Fish suffers from the fact that too few of the BEST type one players - those who have the most experience with the format, actually care to play the deck.

This is of course one explaination for the mediocre success of Fish in our meta game, but also, here you cannot win a tournament without beating Stax, and Fish in general does not beat a well built Stax. Playing Stax for a long time, I've lost only one single match and that was the first time ever I played against Fish. I made som modifactions and since then I have played like 20 matches against Fish in various tournaments and not lost a single one. I'll guess your meta game will respond somewhat like it, less brokeness and more stability.

[ELD]

I played fish for about a month last summer.  The list I ran was very close to what I'm seeing around now.  I won most of the tournaments, if not all of the tournaments, I played with it.  In the end I was still not impressed.  The total lack of brokeness means you give away a large edge vs many good decks.  You cannot just go busted and win.  Often, going broken is what determines a match of two equal players.  

I play against it all the time, with slaver.  It is the only match up that I feel threatened by at all.  Having said that, fish has to draw null rod.  Over half the games, when they don't draw it in the beggining, the deck just can't win.  The fact that fish cannot draw cards when it needs to is another problem.  The counter base is also too weak to stop another control deck from doing what they want.  

IMO fish is winning because people have not tested the match up enough.  A word of advice to anyone who fears fish.  Build it.  Win some tournaments with it.  When you face fish after that little excercise, I think you'll find facing fish a lot less stressful.  If you are serious about winning, you should know your opponents deck better than they do.

[Cuandoman]

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer"
-Sun Tzu

Fairly good advice. Playtest difficult matchups. With that said, because Fish is so easy to build, there should be no excuses come GenCon. Test it and adjust.

To me the real question is, what beats the deck that beats Fish? With all the high profile writers hyping Fish, there's going to be a ton of it at GenCon. The best deck of the day will be the one who can beat not only Fish, but the "Paragon" reaction deck to a Fish heavy metagame.

Since I'm not going... I'll make sure watch tournament coverage.

[Methuselahn]

I think you are all missing the point to a certain degree - you are all talking about Fish and other matchups as people playing them correctly and its all just a battle of the decks.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  I'm trying to point out that Fish is a large function of the player.  The strength of the players who want to play Fish is often lower than the strength of the player who wants to play, say, 4cc.  As a result, Fish does disproportionately weaker.  I tried to explain why.

I'm not sure how one could say that piloting decks is primarily based on player skill, be it fish decks or other.

Isn't the restricted list enough of an example to show how swingy and random type one is?  Didn't you say at one point that type 2 requires more skill because of this very reason?  In a format that is so determined by the opening hand, I don't see how the matchup of fish vs the world boils down to primarily player skill.   Perhaps PTW has brainwashed you.

Decks will beat fish because they have flat out broken hands, bigger creatures, or learn to play around the gay tricks.  If the meta needs to shift to not using the format defining jewelry in order to produce the top decks, then why won't that happen?

[Smmenen]

@ Vegeta

What I said is not actually contradicted by what PTW said - they dovetail if you read both statements.  PTW is a good player and it will do well if good players play it.  I think a PTW calibre player who learns Fish would do as well.

@Methusalahn:
It's not a matter of being able to beat fish.  It's a matter of being able to win a match.

Fish has like a 60-40 over almost every deck in the format.  It will lose games, but becuase it is more consistent than almost everything else, it will win matches.

[Vegeta2711]

Smmenen: ? Um... what? My statement was an open one and had nothing to do with yours. Why are you singling me out for a response? Did those 2 sentences I wrote offend you in some way?

[Jacob Orlove]

A lot of the criticism people are levelling at fish actually doesn't apply to WTF, interestingly enough.

Crucible is much less of a thread because you can run 2 MD Oxidize, and Stax/shops in general will lose to SB artifact mutation. The Oxidizes also make opposing MD Platinum Angels much less threatening, and they provide additional answers for the ever-problematic Chalice @ 2.

River Boa and Naturalize are excellent against randomness, and the Boas help a lot against the bigger creatures that "just beat fish".

Brainstorm is just savagely broken.

People need to stop looking at WTF as just a fish deck that wins the mirror. Green adds so much more than that to the deck.

[Klep]

I'm not sure how one could say that piloting decks is primarily based on player skill, be it fish decks or other.

What Steve was trying to say in that compared to most other decks, Fish has an extremely high learning curve, the result of which is that in order to do well with the deck, you first have to be a good player, and secondly have a lot of experience with it.