Topic is subject. This is my deck right now, but I need t...

[Moridin]

Topic is subject. This is my deck right now, but I need to remove the stuff i don't need, whatever you might think that is. I also would love to add one more scepter. It is currently 61 cards, so I need to cut as well. Also, I need help for a sideboard! Thanks in advance!

2 Isocron Scepter
2 Merchant Scroll
4 Mana Leak
4 Counterspell
3 Ophidian
4 Force of Will
1 Fact or Fiction
4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Standstill
3 Fire/Ice

Land (26)
4 Mishra's Factory
2 Faerie Conclave
1 Strip Mine
18 Island
1 Sol Ring

[centroles]

Without Ancestral Recall, how useful do you find Merchant Scroll?

[VideoGameBoy]

You are mixing apples and oranges with UrPhid and Landstill  - and I have some experience testing both of those archetypes.  Landstill usually only works well powered, unfortunately, so I think you should forego that route since y ou lack the mana acceleration.

It also usually helps to have some bounce like Chain of Vapor to make Standstill more effective - Fish usually doesn't do this because it has cheap and fast creatures as well as a ton of free and cheap countermagic, and all you have are the man-lands and FoW.

You could easily find room for a few fetches and volcs to give you more Fire/Ice flexibility.  Then you could also side REB and Blood Moon.  You also have room for a couple of Wastelands.

Merchant Scroll is obviously to provide flexibility come Scepter imprint time (regarding Centroles's statement), but this engine works way better with an Intuition or two thrown in the mix to reap maximum benefit from the AK's, and Intuition suffers from a lack of Mana Drains.

That's about all I can offer; in a nutshell:

1) Drop Standstill.
2) Add fetches and volcs to make Fire more castable.  You also get more sideboard bullets.
3) If you can get Drains, work in an Intuition or 2.
4) If you can get an Ancestral, work in Mystical.
5) Consider adding Future Sight.
6) Your win conditions suck.

[swawagon]

As this is obviously a budget deck we will keep that in mind.

I'd probably cut a couple Mana Leaks for Stifles giving you some kind of counter ability turn one as without Moxes your Mana Leaks become much less potent. You may even consider Disrupts over Mana Leaks just so you can counter, somewhat, first turn. I can see Merchant Scroll OK for utility with the IsoScepters but I believe that is just too slow - especially without turn one Mox drops. Cutting at least one Merchant Scroll will get you down to 60 cards.

Adding a full set of Wastelands would help dramatically. With those and Stifles (for fetchlands, among other things) you can bring some serious land disruption to the deck.

SB is much tougher. Some cards I am considering for a budget build are Mystic Remora (similar fit to standstill), and seriously considering the mana hungry, but somewhat effective against aggro, Flood.

[Moridin]

Ok, my first post was very unclear, sorry, but thanks for all the help. To clear things up, this is very budget, so no drains or power  . also, are you sure landstill is impossible to make without power? I expect a somehow srubby environment. It may be due to luck, but I have never had any problems casting Fire form the scepter, but as mentioned, I would love one more! thanks so far, though! I may be able to get wastes, by the way.

Edit: actually I did cut a merchant scroll.

[Falc]

This deck is very unfocused.  It looks like fish and landstill had a car wreck.  When you're building a new deck, the first thing you have to decide is what you want the deck to do.  It looks like from your decklist that you want a blue-based aggro-control deck that abuses Isochron.  Nice idea.  First, let's look around at some other decks and see if anything else does this sort of thing.  Well, Fish is a great blue-based aggro control deck.  It's not exactly what you want, but it's a good place to start.

Being that your deck is aggro/control, you're going to be tapping a lot of mana on your own turn to do things like casting Scepter and attacking with man lands.  Take a cue from Fish on how to handle this and run as many Free counters as we can.

3 Daze
4 Force of Will
2 Misdirection
2 Counterspell

Next we want to get your Scepter engine set up.  We have to be very careful when choosing our instants.  They need to be very strong even without a Scepter in hand.  Blue just doesn't offer us enough by itself.  I suggest going with White as a support color because it offers removal and a soft lock.

3 Isochron Scepter
4 Impulse
3 Swords to Plowshares
2 Orim's Chant

Playing Fire/Ice without red mana just isn't acceptable.  It's a great card, but you must be able to cast fire without a Scepter.  If you play against a lot of other control decks, we should swap out the Chants for Abeyance.

Now we need a win condition.  While man-lands are cool, they're slow and vulerable to wasteland.  Plus, the deck doesn't have any board sweepers (Wrath, Disk, etc.) to really take advantage of them.  For those reasons, I think a creature base similar to Fish should be our primary fighters.

4 Mana Riders
4 Rootwater Thief
4 Lord of Atlantis

With just a couple non-land slots left open, let's go for the most powerful cards available.

1 Fact or Fiction
1 Balance
1 Mystical Tutor

We'll back them up with Conclaves and round out the mana base with plenty of Strips to help us keep our early tempo advantage.

3 Faerie Conclave
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
4 Tundra
4 Flooded Strand
4 Island
1 Plains

We left out Standstill because we've replaced that situational card advantage with the Scepter Engine.  It'll give us all the card advantage we need whether we imprint Impulse, StP, or anything else.

For the Sideboard, we have to look at what our deck can't handle and try to shore up those holes.  I can't guess as to what your metagame is like, but I'd say if you start with a few COP:Red, a few Abeyance, and some Disenchant, you'll be on the right path.

We end up with basically Fish on-a-stick or "Fish-ka-bob"  This deck should perform a lot better and still be well within your budget while staying fairly true to your original vision.  Give it a try and see how you like it.  It may a need a bit of tweaking, but only testing will tell you what it needs.

- Falc

[Moridin]

Looks really cool, there's only one problem: I don't have time to get the cards for that deck on so short a notice, but I might try it on a longer term though. but I can't change too much right now, as the tournament is in two weeks...

[skycreatoR]

Two weeks!? GET GOING, he isn't talking power damnit