Quote 2) Why do most people go with Lavamancers over Razorfins in u/r Fish? I know it's cheaper, but I would think the synergy with the Lord and its pitchability would make it a better choice for Fish. What am I missing?
Thanks in advance for your help!
1) Firstly, most versions of U/R fish don't play Lord of Atlantis, so it's a bit of a moot point.
2)because almost every other non land card in the deck is a blue card, being stuck with a lavamancer and a force of will you can't cast will rarely come up anyways.
3)You'll notice that there are no one drops in most lists besides lavamancer, gaining tempo advantage by being able to drop a guy on turn 1, instead of turn two where things tend to get a bit crowded with Voidmage prodigy, spiketail hatchling and cloud of faeries. In other words, from your second land drop on, you're gonna be busy enough dropping other guys anyways, the last thing the deck needs is another two drop. This is gives another way for fish to recover from a chalice set at two other than man lands.
4) The lavamancer also has excellent synergy with voidmage prodigy as he is also a wizard and can be sacrificed using the voidmage to counter a spell if he's not being terribly useful at the moment.
5) Lavamancer can make a big difference in mirror matches, he kills Mishra's factories, he kills Lord of Atlantis, where razorfin hunter would fall short.
6) It's also not terribly difficult to "feed" him as fish is usually very good at getting alot of card advantage, and if you're getting card advantage and tempo advantage, and your graveyard is empty, things are looking pretty good anyways.
7)Also, this allows you to play standstill on turn two in some scenarios, dropping a lavamancer and then a standstill essentially forces your opponent to break standstill at some point, you can continually feed him by discarding at end of turn, he makes it so your opponent can't activate his man lands (unless he gets two factories and you get no Land destruction), and yet you can still hit him for two at end of turn if he doesn't.
