Can Extirpate find it's way into URBana Fish?

[wethepeople]

I will start with a little history on the deck, because I of course was not the one to create it, I choose not to get into such details, but I am only here to discuss the deck, and a card that I am looking to make room for in the maindeck, or possibly just the side board.

I have been testing various different URBana lists for quite some time now. For referance to my own, there have been two other threads that I know of discussing the deck. Rather than bumping one of the old ones, I chose to start my own here.

One of which is Eric Becker's, or Kobefan, who had much success with the deck making several top eight appearances:

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=28184.0

Another more recent one began as a U/R discussion, soon turned into URB, but eventually died out because I was the only one really following it:

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=30492.0

URBana Fish is a very strong deck that for some reason sees very little discussion here on TMD, with the acception of those two threads. With a metagame consisting of several Drain decks, Combo, and minimal Stax, which is the case right now here in NE, URB seems like the best choice to me.

I was recently inspired to update my list because I really would like to find room for the new Extirpate which is being released in Planar Chaos. The card discussion can be found in the Open Forum, and this is *apparently* how it reads, though it has not yet been officially verified:

Extirpate
Instant
Split Second
Choose target card, other than a basic land in a graveyard. Search its controller's graveyard, hand and library for all cards with the same name and remove them from the game.

Since the card has not been officially spoiled quite yet, I have not made the definite addition to my deck. I currently am running the following decklist. I will explain a few personal mods I have made on the list, but I admit that I did not do that much to it quite yet.

URBana Fish:

Creature Base:
4 Dark Confidant
4 Gorilla Shaman
4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
2 Grim Lavamancer

Permission:
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
2 Red Elemental Blast
3 Duress

Utility:
3 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Fire/Ice
1 Darkblast
1 Echoing Truth
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Chalice of the Void

Other:
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Time Walk

Mana Base:
3 Sapphire/Jet/Ruby
1 Black Lotus
1 Lotus Petal
3 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 City of Brass
1 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Steam Vents
1 Watery Grave

I now will explain my reasoning to what specific card choices I made for the decklist, several of which consist of metagame specifications.

Pain Lands- I chose to bring in both of these mainly for Extirpate. If the card actually becomes all it is being hyped up to be, then these will stay, if not, Volc and U.Sea will return. The mana base is still fairly weak and I currently have two many fetches to compete with Extirpate. The reason that I run so many is that I hate wasting my fuel to later draw a bunch of Dual lands, and I also need a fuel for the Lavamancer.

Grim Lavamancer- Lavaman was something that was successful like a hundred years ago in Gay Fish. It is able to kill other anything with the defense of two or less, as well as unintentionally kill Jotun Grunt by eating all of its CU targets. He also works as an additional 1-drop for Ninja of the Deep, which I will get to in a minute.

4 Ninjas?- Ninja of the Deep is unbelievably easy to get in play with the total of six 1-drops, Lavamen and Gorilla Shaman, and when teamed with Dark Confidant, I have the most outstanding draw engine Fish has to offer.

Gorrila Shaman over Null Rod: Shaman has been played over Null Rod in URBana since the begining as far as I know, and he works well enough to not be replaced. I have tested both and can say that Null Rod is also very strong, but he is two sided so it does not allow me to run EE.

Engineered Explosives- I have been playing this a lot lately because it is far more versatile than Umezawa's Jitte. Jitte takes out opposing creatures, and gains you some life, I know. But with the explosion of Empty the Warrens, those pesky 1/1 Gobbos are too much for my Jitte to handle. EE can take out opposing Jittes as well as a few other guys on their board all at once.

One problem with the deck is it's high quantity of spells with a casting cost of one. This rarely comes as a problem to me, but Chalice of the Void at one basically shuts down half of my deck. Since there is a bit of a decrease in Fish, it may be safe, however I did make some maindeck modifications to fix this.

Echoing Truth is my main bounce spell from now on to solve Chalice of the Void-1. I more commonly see CotV at one than two versus my deck. Unless my opponent doesnt know the deck and is just casting it with two counters because it is Fish, then I am saved by E-truth, if they do put it at two, then I don't really care because my only actual loss is Dark Confidant.  This situation also inclined me to run Daze over Stifle, because Stifle just becomes another dead card weighing down my hand.

Truth also helps solve ETW because the card is insane versus Fish, and I believe most Fish players should be required to run this from now on.

Duress is not usually played as a 3-of in URBana, but I chose to do so because it is strong in more matchups than the third REB is, and I assume it to be outstanding with Extirpate. Extirpate still needs to find its room in the deck because the card amazes me when used with Duress and Wastelands, however I have not yet decided the number I will choose to run maindeck. I will test it at all numbers from 2-4 MD, as well as the remaining in the sideboard.

Oh yes, I forgot the sideboard.

SB:
1 Duress
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Darkblast
1 Lightning Dart
1 Hurkyl's Recall
1 Rack and Ruin
2 Energy Flux
4 Leyline of the Void

The remaining slots consist of a combination of REB's and Pyroblasts depending on your metagame.

As you can see, I packed quite a bit for Stax and Fish. Those two specific matchups are certainly not my favorites so I made the SB almost designed entirely for such decks.

My reason being that I chose Leyline of the Void over Tormod's Crypt is that it is a continuous effect and eliminates virtually all chances of the Ichorid player to get back into the game. Crypt also is shut down by Chalice of the Void, that as far as I know is ran in all Ichorid lists.

Lightning Dart has always been a favorite of mine versus Fish. It can take out just about any creature Vintage has to offer, Grunt, Lions, Mages, Ninjas, Bob, Salvagers, etc. Since it's red, I had the opportunity to run it here, so I have been for quite some time now.

Besides that, everything is pretty normal for a URB sideboard, any further questions regarding the main decklist or sideboard?
---

As to my matchup analysis, it is pretty consistent when playing most of the common decks.

Gifts Ungiven:
I actually favor this matchup because my deck has everything you can ask for. ETW doesn't really scare me now that I have tuned my sideboard and MD to it, so overall my rating is "favorable"

Control Slaver:
Depending on the build, this matchup can vary. Gorilla Shaman, REBs, and my outstanding draw engine certainly give me an edge game one, but g2 it is common for them to bring in numerus amounts of creature-hate, even though I can also bring in some tech of my own.

Combo (Grim/PL):
I probably shouldn't be considering all Combo based decks the same matchup, because I have certain stuff only strong versus some of them, but most mainstream Tendrils decks aren't too bad if I can get a fairly decent hand. Usually this matchup for me is 50/50, however others say differently.

Fish:
My draw engine is generally stronger than every other build out there, just the inconsistency of my mana base tends to come as an issue if there are multiple Wastelands targeting my board. Chalice of the Void is a bitch if they know to set it at one, however it is common for it to hurt them just as bad as it does me. Game 2-3 I bring in Engineered Explosives and my other creature removal to make things smooter.

Stax:
Ehh, I don't look forward to this in any way. Three colors makes it a struggle when trying to put up with 4 Wastelands and a Sphere of Resistance, but recently I haven't been seeing too much of it in New England.

Ichorid:
I for some reason don't ever get to test this much, but I am assuming that game two it is much better with the four Leylines. All I really need to remember is to mull until I draw one just as my opponent would to find their Bazaar of Baghdad. If i make room for Extirpate, I doubt I will have to worry about this much at all though.
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Anyway, respond to me if you have any form of feedback, whether it is comments or critism, get at me.

//wtp.

[chrissss]

I might try the deck myself. I have all the cards except for some power, and it looks good. I do doubt the 3 COTV a lot. I might try duress instead and obviously (once its out) exterpiate instead of the COTV.

[Barron]

I like the idea of URB fish, but i think the build is a little heavy on blue (bear with me). I used to play U/R fish and *loved* it, but since i have been back from a long magic break I started to come to the conclusion that wizards is putting the screws to blue (i give a light list as to how in the expircate topic in the legacy forum). Because of that I think the URB skeleton should be taken from a deck more like TMWA (a fantastic deck that served me well) rather than a blue based fish skeleton. If there were still vintage tournaments around here (Texas isn't vintage friendly either) I would think of something more along these lines.

Creature Base: 13
4 Dark Confidant
2 Gorilla Shaman
3 Dimir Curpurse
2 Grim Lavamancer
2 Goblin Vandal (if you are worried about your stacks matchup)

Permission: 13
2 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
4 Duress
4 Extirpate (take out the deck enablers/mana)
2 Stifle

Utility: 11
4 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Echoing Truth
3 Chalice of the Void
1 Rebuild
1 Darkblast

Other: 2
1 Time Walk
1 Vampiric Tutor

Mana Base: 21
3 Sapphire/Jet/Ruby
1 Black Lotus
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
3 Flooded Strand
3 Polluted Delta
1 City of Brass
1 Underground Sea
2 Volcanic Island
1 Steam Vents
1 Watery Grave

I think not relying on FOW and being more proactive rather than reactive gives you a better matchup against combo (spare that first turn on the play kill, which happens with any deck) and stacks (with the vandals). The discard, wastelands, and stifles help get their cards in the graveyard for the extripate while denying them resources, and with stacks, their lock pieces, which is really the key for this deck. Also, the 4 MD extirpates give you an amazing matchup against ichorid, which is a problem deck, but probably won't be after this card. To be honest I think that, unless it's U/W fish, black should be favored over blue since it's more proactive and controlling, but blue should be abused for it's card draw and bounce. I think the Dimir's cound be cut for ninja's, but i like the lower cc for the confidants and they force discard *and* draw, which is graet card advantage.  

Cotv is important in this type of deck (if anything i would try to make room for 4 MD). with the bounce and artiface destruction you can render their moxes useless (relatively.

[Moxlotus]

I would never cut Forces from a deck like this.  Losing to topdecked cards really sucks.  Duress and Ext. have nothing on topdecked Pyroclasms or Jitte or Will.  Not being able to react to your opponent's cards he's drawing is knocking out a leg in the tripod of how this deck balances aggro with mana disruption with spell disruption.

Basically you cut the deck's out against topdecked bombs and replaced it with cards that do something not needed.  The deck's biggest vulnerability besides Stax is broken 1-ofs.  Ext. does nothing against that.

[Barron]

I understand what you are saying, but the way decks like this, and TMWA work is by subly denying resources so there are no explosive top decks. I haven't seen a top tier vintage deck that MD pyroclasms or Jitte's and even with the jitte the lavamancers and darkblast, along with bounce, can usually moderate it. Additionally, pyrocalsm is only a GG if you overextend yourself, which is just bad strategy. Yawgoth is a beast no matter how you look at it, but with keeping their graveyard in check (extircate) have keeping their storm count low (chalice) it's usually not a problem. Also, the decks that run it usually save back up with their own countermagic, making yours a nuisance at best, which is why i said blue is good in a U/W fish build, but not in a build like this.

[wethepeople]

I would never even consider cutting Force of Will, it's is a must in Vintage. Chalice isn't my favorite, I'll give you that, but it is insane in so many situations to remove. The only problem with it is that I can't drop it with one counter because that is basically conceding, however when on the play and going for zero just about always messes with my opponents game plan.

You mentioned that you would add Goblin Vandal to improve the Stax matchup, that is if I am worried. I easily could improve such matchups, it's just I see so little Stax it's not even worth it anymore. I'd rather devote my maindeck to the tier decks that I see more commonly and then use my board to improve the other sub-par matchups games two and three.

If you look over my sideboard a bit, you will see all the power I have is for Stax. Energy Flux, Hurkyl's Recall, Rack and Ruin, and so forth, all chosen to garuntee that I will win those games because I more than likely lost game one.

I am glad however that others are interested in this deck, and yes, it is real fun to play while at the same time proving to be successful.

On a side note: I am going to test Extirpate with a few friends of mine as a proxy becase it hasnt been released yet, and if I use it in MWS people will be pissed. If someone is willing to test verus me using this deck with the maindeck Extirpates, PM me.