Can fish come back?

[PemsAura]

The use of fish has been declining in the current meta.  Even according to the article by Stephen Menendian fish is considered at this time a "rotten" deck.  Fish has been severly hurt by the increasing use of workshop aggro, 7/10 and other such decks.  The purpose of this article is to get any opinions as to when the meta might change enough to allow fish to compete again.

[Nastaboi]

The problem with fish is that Null Rod isn't as effective any more. People are prepared for it and no deck autoscoops to it. Decks run also more basics, thus weakening fish's main strategy: tempo via mana denial. The thing is, fish don't have strategy superiority over any deck right now. It won't be the best deck in any given metagame.

I think fish now needs different kind of distruption: cheap metagame answers like Fire/Ice and Artifact Mutation (I play WTF) to go with its cheap and efficient creatures. Fish can be tuned to fight even with any deck, but it won't become top tier or metagame defining any more. It is just so underpowered and unable to broken things. While not having strategy superiority over anything right now, it remains a contender at its best.

EDIT: I'm gonna play my latest WTF list at local tourney on sunday. You'll hear more about it. And yes, it has nine basic lands.

[PemsAura]

I also play wtf/r and have done well in manly local tourneys but in your opinion is there a build of some sort that will allow fish to become high tier again?  Is there any predicted meta change that could allow more blue based control to compete again making fish better again.  I hear some people are trying to revamp psychatog.

[Frappie]

A friend of mine has tested Annul to replace his Null Rods and found that it works better because it can act as mana denial and it allows another way to defeat oath quickly. you might want to try that.

[Raven Fire]

The purpose of this article is to get any opinions as to when the meta might change enough to allow fish to compete again.

When Workshop gets restricted.  
Seriously, the metagame will have to make a rather specific shift and it is impossible to predict when/if this will happen.

[Jacob Orlove]

This thread seriously lacks content. Unfortunately, Zherbus put a moratorium on closing threads, so this gets moved to newbie. Verbal warning to PemsAura.

[c hurrle]

I've never understood how starting a discussion could constitute "lack of content" here. I understand that you're trying to do your job, Jacob, but you come off as a little overzealous at times. Maybe we could name these threads "{Discussion} Can fish come back?" so that people are aware of what they're opening before hand. It just seems that good open discussions can be of value, even when the thread's originator doesn't have a decklist to post.

As for the question at hand- Fish is a reactionary metagame deck. Predicting the metagame in Vintage is difficult as various players react to existing conditions and those reactions are, in turn, reacted to. Rather than predicting when the metagame will swing back to favor a certain deck, look at the metagame as it currently looks, identify vulnerabilities and exploit them with a new (or previously forgotten) archetype. I've seen a lot of people lose simply because they try to force a deck that the current metagame has ample answers for.

[combo_dude]

I suspect that Jacob was looking for arguments that fill up more than one sentence in the original post. For a good discussion to get going, it helps if the person who actually seems to want to discuss it (and hence has started the thread) shows that they want to discuss it. He wasn't starting a discussion, he was putting up a place for other people to start a discussion, which isn't the same thing.

It is decks like 5/3 and other Workshop decks that kill off Fish. I use 5/3 as an example because Fish's best weapon against artifacts - Null Rod - is not a lot of use when the artifact player doesn't need to play any activated abilities. Trinisphere, Smokestack, Chalice, Crucible, Juggernaut - none of these are activated. This makes Fish, which is a Null Rod and mana denial deck (and mana denial is fairly weak against Workshop because it's so much better at it; Workshop and Crucible work rather well both with and against a mana denial plan), weak in Workshop-heavy metagames. In the US at the moment (and other places too, no doubt), there is a Workshop-heavy metagame. So Fish is weak.

[Jacob Orlove]

Yeah, threads have to start out with some foundation in the initial post. Asking people to discuss something is no better than asking them to post a decklist. If you want to start a thread, you have to put some work into it.