Gay fish matchups

[Anonymous]

I'm thinking about running the deck in a relatively high sligh environment. How does the deck do against sligh? I could see after SBing with 4 chill and 6 beb's it might have a relatively good chance. Anyone know?

[PucktheCat]

I have only tested against Ankh Sligh, which may not be the best version against Fish, but I found it did very well even without a huge sideboard.  There are a couple reasons for this perhaps unexpected result.

1. Misdirection.  This is the big one.  It really hurts that you are a deck with many blockers and Misd.  It leaves Sligh in a bind, because they want to burn through your blockers and win, but they really don't want you to burn their blockers with their own spells.

2. Goblin Cadets.  These are great cards in sligh for most matchups, but this isn't one of them.  You have so many creatures that they really won't get to attack with these, and if they try they risk #1.

3. Lord of Atlantis.  Although he is a burn target Sligh is often over extended on burn in this matchup and if he lives for even a couple of turns Sligh is in a deep hole (Assuming you have at least one or two other fish).

Null Rod deals with Scrolls, Standstill works just fine, etc.

That isn't to say it is a cake-walk.  It is very winnable though.

Leo

[Anonymous]

I have a very different point of vue.
I played against many Fish with my Sligh deck and I have found mydelf to be victorius most of them.
First of all Sligh has just about the same amount of burn as you have of creatures (some builds have more, Vis Versa) and they also have there own creatures. Cadets is still a very useful card as even if they (sligh player) attacks with a Cadets and you decalre blockers, they can still burn them away. And you will still be hit by them.
Honestly, I would say there is about a 1/3 chance for Fish to beat Sligh.

[Anonymous]

Merfolk (Fish now I guess) always had a rough matchup against Sligh decks first game. Boarding in the BEB's and Chill's helps a ton though. Used to run Sea Sprites main deck as well since they could, back then, block all the damage from Ball Lightnings, etc... Not quite so good now with the way Trample works but a Curious Sea Sprite is still awful good against Sligh

[Anonymous]

I've found it to be a favourable matchup for fish.

It's an interesting matchup really, but in general I've found that I stabalize at around 8-12 life and from there I can win.

Sligh has a much stronger early game, but they have no card advantage really, especially once you side out your curiosities (unless you take the curiositied sea sprite route). Your null rods shut down their scrolls which is the only way they really have of getting advantage on you.

Mishra's factories trump any creature sligh has, and misdirection really massacres their burn.

After boarding not a lot changes as you both really have the same weapons against eachother. I've found chill to be fairly ineffective though, and I tend to favour blue blasts. Many blue blasts.

If you expect a lot of sligh in your metagame I would probably put sea sprites in your board and leave curiosities in after boarding as a double curiositied sprite just dominates sligh as long as you keep their scrolls shut down.

When I'm playing fish, sligh is one of the aggro matchups I'm happier to see.