Worse Than Fish: the Reprise (aka WTF/r)

[Cross]

something I forgot to mention is that if you run call of the herd you get elephant tokens, elephants tokens getting bounced by your own chain of vapor sucks big time.

[honkeyb5]

Today on starcitygames, the CHA1N5 guy asks what the role of Voidmage Prodigy is in fish.  I don't see him fitting well into the maindeck of WTF/r, but do you think one or two would be a good inclusion in the sideboard?  If so, what matchups could this benefit?  Does this deck honestly need any more counters than it already has?

According to the thread, they have über-synergy with lavamancers, and they work with firewalkers, too.

I myself have never played with the card before.  I just traded for a few last week, just to give them a whirl.
 
Has anybody tried it (at least in SB)?

[Blommis]

There's an interesting little WTF/r decklist from a recent Finnish tourney. It placed 7th in a field of 64

There are two missing slots.

Thirdly, Lightning Bolt in the sideboard - for random aggro?

I was actually suprised to see my decklist here when browsing randomly.
The missing slots were stifles which were left out propably because of my bad handwriting
Coth would have been superior over the third stiffle, but werent available (as werent sb naturalizes which would have been needed cause abyss ruined my day :/)

Lightning bolts on the side were due the heaps of aggro in the field.
I'd also would like to point out that this deck was made 5am in terrible hangover without any testing :p

[ChrisTJs27]

Wow, I'm impressed with all the wonderful information. It is actually easier currently to find useful information regarding almost every Type 1 deck imaginable than either Block or Standard. Mostly involving actually discussing a deck.

That said and being new to TMD, I'm still rather confused on to what this deck's plan is in any particular match up. How does this deck actually manage to win? Especially since comparativly its power level is lower than almost every other deck out there.

Even when you compare WTF's cards to decks like $tax, Slaver, 4cc, etc., WTF comes up really short in power level. Even the creatures themselves aren't very intimidating compared to 7/10's, 11/11's, smiling 1/2's, and little green monsters that have a habit of getting bigger. This deck doesn't do anything particularly broken and really only has four hard counters with out Voidmage. Isn't Spiketail and Daze easy to play around in a format with Moxen, Lotus, Workshops, etc? Even with Null Rod in play, isn't it easy to play around?

Instead, why isn't there a deck like CounterSliver that has the same basic premise, yet with obviously better creatures?

[Jacob Orlove]

Even when you compare WTF's cards to decks like $tax, Slaver, 4cc, etc., WTF comes up really short in power level. Even the creatures themselves aren't very intimidating compared to 7/10's, 11/11's, smiling 1/2's, and little green monsters that have a habit of getting bigger. This deck doesn't do anything particularly broken and really only has four hard counters with out Voidmage. Isn't Spiketail and Daze easy to play around in a format with Moxen, Lotus, Workshops, etc? Even with Null Rod in play, isn't it easy to play around?

Instead, why isn't there a deck like CounterSliver that has the same basic premise, yet with obviously better creatures?

First of all, the deck wins most games via tempo. It's hard to explain just how good it can be; like fish, you really have to play it to understand how it all comes together.

Countersliver has really bad creatures, actually, and no good draw engine, since you can't play curiosity. All the slivers can do is attack--that's not true at all with this deck, which is why this creature base is so ridiculously amazing. Plus, Crystalline Sliver is white (ugh), and you have no good 1-mana or 3-mana slivers. Finally, slivers are only worth playing if you have out at least two, and you need 3 to make them good. That's serious over-extension; you'll just lose to balance/deed/etc.

[TheIneffable]

I will try and expand on Jacob a bit and help with a little understanding of this deck. Countersliver doesn't have the same synergistic and tempo element that is so strong in Fish as well as Fish's mana denial. It also has to play three colors, the thing that makes prefer to play Gay/r rather than WTF/r, therefore destabilizing its mana base when the environment is full of strips and Crucibles.

Spiketail and Daze can be played around, but in doing so, you force yourself to slow down, exactly what the fish player wants. And then, Daze isn't even a 4 of. If you play around it you have to end up playing around Stifle and sometimes Misdirection. These cards aren't major forerunners in the deck, it is not as though you expect them to have them in their hand. Yes they run them, but no they are not there in serious enough numbers to play around when it is unnecessary. If your play can wait until you have another land and are under not enough pressure to make it now, then by all means wait. But if you just play around Daze the entire match, you will probably lose.

Fish's plan is essentially mana denial and then clean up with cheap creatures and uncounterable threats. The deck likes to put you in an uncomfortable position and then beat you while you are down with cheap creatures.

This deck, Gay/r, WTF/r, etc, just don't do broken things. Their entire plan is to stop the opponent from doing broken things and then mopping up with a motley crew of men that have great synergy with the rest of the deck.  Lavamancers being fed by fetches and strips, Clouds not tying up mana, Spiketails helping the mana denial, and manalands working under Standstill.

It has lost the edge, IMO, it used to have, it being a high tier'ed deck taken into consideration by everyone. You are seeing hate for the deck pop up in SB's and MD's that it has a hard time dealing with. It has a great game versus Tog, which clogged up the meta for quite some time.

But with the environment shifting to decks such as Stax and Workshop decks in general, Fish has been having trouble dealing. With the addition of Crucible of Worlds, Fish variants have been struggling to live at the top of attention, similar to the metagame shift that happened to Tog when it was popular.

Hope this little overview helps you.