Gay/r/g Anaylsis: Standstill vs Brainstorm vs Mask of Memory

[Tempo]

Since more than a few people suggested removing Standstill from Fish for Brainstorm or possibly Mask of Memory, I began testing both cards in Standstill's spot.

I was somewhat surprised by my own conclusions...

Standstill

Pro: Gives a two card advantage for only two mana. When the card works as intended, and it often does, it rivals ancestral recall!

Con: Can only be played when you have control of the board or are at the very least in a better board position. While Fish is designed to achieve this, fast aggro decks can make gaining board advantage next to impossible. Thus this card can sit as dead weight in the player's hand precisely against the decks they need to find answers against the most often. Against every match up from madness and goblins to scrubby beats decks and mirror matches, standstill can be a liability.

Neutral: Some players nullify any card advantage by waiting until you already have 7 cards in hand. But even then you get to keep your best cards and have likely dealt significant damage to them.

Brainstorm

Pro: While the card offers no real card advantage, if you can break a fetchland immediately after casting it, you get three random cards while shuffling away your two worst. Can also be used to hide critical cards from discard effects (not very common any more).

Neutral: The card offers no actual card advantage. Thus while it is useful in a deck packing plenty of bombs, it's nearly as useful in decks that pack few if any real bombs like Gay/r and WTF/r.

Con: If you fail to shuffle your library after you play brainstorm (this happens more often than not even though I specifically adapted my test deck to make room for 7 fetchlands!!), then you get crap cards for the next two turns. So unless the card helps you get out of mana screw or cast a curiosity a turn earlier, it's pretty worthless.

Mask of Memory

Pros:

While more expensive than both curiosity and standstill, it's impact is also more extensive. You get to draw two random cards and dump the worst card in your hand. Assuming that you have a card that's worthless in your current situation, it has the same impact as two curiosities!!

It often gives you cards the same turn you cast it and in a mere two turns usually does more good than standstill. In addition, it doesn't require you to have board advantage to play the card and can thus often get you out of a tight situation where a standstill would be sitting in your hand as dead weight.

Unlike curiosity, it doesn't die when the creature is killed. Thus you needn't hesistate to play it on a soon to sack spiketail hatchling or voidmage prodigy. And don't need to worry about your opponent getting a two for one trade off it.

It also feeds grim lavamancer beautifully and usually enables a  lavamancer activation every turn.

Cons:

It costs three mana to initially cast and equip. Thus you can usually cast it turn three when you can theoretically use curiosity or standstill on turn two. But to be able to get a card off curiosity your second turn, you either need to be playing a playset of Flying Men or you need to make a turn one lavamancer curious. This is something you rarely want to do as lavamancer rarely goes active every turn and when it does, it should be picking off creatures, not hitting the player on the dome. Standstill does give you cards earlier but only if you can get some beats down fast enough, and your opponent fails to. The rest of the time, it sits in your hand as dead weight. And the first time curiosity nets you a card, its not actually card advantage. But the turn you cast Mask, you do get card advantage assuming you have a worthless card sitting in your hand already.

The second con is that the card is indeed very mana hungry. Three mana turn three means you really can't do much else that turn (except for Daze and FoW). But after using the card and seeing how quickly the card lets me accumilate free counters, beats and card advantage. After playing with it first hand and seeing how quickly it turns a hopeless situation into a winnable one, I think the cost is well worth it.

Edit:

In addition, it can't pitch to FoW. But this rarely comes up as there are usually better alternatives to pitch any ways.

Most importantly, Null Rod makes it impossible to equip. In a meta where almost no one including me starts out with their null rods maindecked, this hardly matters, but in most metas, this alone makes standstill the superior choice.

End Edit

In summary...

Standstill is very strong against many archeatypes but a dead weight against many of the ones that fish has the hardest time with (good fast aggro decks). Thus I would only play it over Mask in metas where good fast aggro isn't too common.

Brainstorm, while a very strong card in many decks, just isn't as effective in fish or any of it's variants. It's doesn't provide card advantage and only provides tempo advantage if you are mana screwed or have a shuffle effect. While it works well, both Standstill and Mask beat it out in the end.

Mask of Memory is very underrated. It has so many advantages over the alternatives that I would almost certainly play it over Standstill in any meta with even a hint of fast aggro. And I'm having a blast playing it against control and combo decks as well since Mask will accumilate a massive amount of card advantage in just a few turns. I highly encourage you to test it out yourself. It's more reliable than standstill, helps you a lot more than brainstorm and has a lot of internal synergy with lavamancer. Edit: But as already mentioned, it's lack of synergy with null rod is enough to place it below standstill in terms of playability. End Edit

For reference, this was my test deck...

1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
4 Curiosity
4 Test Slots (Brainstorm, Standstill, or Mask of Memory)

3 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Misdirection

3 Null Rod

4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Cloud of Fairies
4 Spiketail Hatchling
4 River Boa

1 Mox Sapphire
1 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
3 Mishra's Factory
4 Polluted Delta*
4 Flooded Strand*
2 Volcanic Island*
2 Tropical Island*

Sideboard:
3 Rack and Ruin
2 Oxidize
2 Artifact Mutation
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Fire/Ice
2 Maze of Ith
1 Null Rod
1 Gorilla Shaman

The mana base varied in each test build.

The 4/4/2/2 configuration listed above is the one I used when I was testing brainstorm. I upped the fetchland count to take more advantage of brainstorm.

In the test deck using Mask of Memory, I initially played a 3/3/3/3 configuration but missed the ability to be able to fetch for exactly the land I needed and thus went back to a 4/4/2/2 configuration.

While testing Standstill, I ran a 3/3/2/2 configuration replacing one of each of two fetchlands with an additional Mishra's Factory and a Fairie Conclave respectively. But I found the fairie conclave to be slowing me down too often (comes into play tapped sucks). Plus it ate up too much mana to activate and I rarely had the mana to do so as there was always something to play with all this card drawing. So I wound up taking out a conclave to get a 4/3/2/2 configuration for the standstill version.

The main deck started as PTW's list.

I replaced his stifle with a daze when I realized that the stifle was too conditional too often while the daze always managed to find a target and was free. The extra daze also proved invaluable against combo matchups.

I also splashed green and made room for 4 river boa when I realized that the boa was easier to cast, was more evasive, shored up for any weaknesses fish had against aggro, a better target for curiosity and was an all around a better creature than Voidmage Prodigy could ever be.

I saw no reason to cut cloud of faries as they always served as a nice evasive body for curiosity and mask of memory and were synergetic with standstill, library and all the decks other two drops. The only situation in which flying men are better is when they are in your opening hand and you have nothing better to do first turn (like drop a lavamancer, or an ancestral, or a sapphire, or a library of alexandria)

I tested call of the herd in place of river boa and found it to be amazing. But I simply couldn't find the room for both and the boa won out in the end. Between the Daze (great against aggro's natural inclination to tap out), Boa and the lavamancer, aggro goes from a difficult match up to a favorable one.

My testing led me to conclude that Mask of Memory is the best card for the slot in any fish variant with standstill only matching it in aggro light metas.

[Phele]

There are some disadvantages about Mask of Memor, you forgot. First: It doesn't work under a Null Rod. Second: It isn't blue. In summary: Standstill is clearly better than the mask and even brainstorm, which I don't like at all in Fish for reasons you have mentioned.

[Tempo]

Can't believe I forgot to mention the null rod issue.

There is a good amount of aggro in my meta, hence the splash for river boa etc.

So I always started with all the null rods in the sideboard with the sideboard fire/ice and shaman maindeck. Almost no one here starts out with null rods maindecked. I've been siding out the masks whenever I sided in the Null Rods and thus never had a problem with the conflict.

That is a very significant point though. If you play null rod maindeck or play in an environment where many people play null rod maindeck, standstill is definately the better option.

I've never found the fact that Mask wasn't blue to be too big of an issue though. There were plenty of other cards to discard and after a turn or two, I got so many cards off the mask that it hardly mattered.

[Brutha]

But you have posted a decklist with Null Rod Maindeck
You should write the deck with you have used to test in the thread. Against what you have tested would be also interessting.

[Nantuko Rice]

i use to play mask of memory in a fish build which people laughed at. in place of the null rods i can gorilla shamans. the main purpose of the null rods is to shut off moxen so you can gain tempo advantage but gorilla shamana essentially does the same thing.

personally, i am in favor of playing 3 standstill, 3 brainstorm. but i use to play 4 standstill, 2 mask of memory.

i played mask of memory for the very same reasons you said: it digs deeper, food for lavamancer, no 2-for-1. The deck has enough blue to support force of wills anyway so that wasn't an issue, and I played shamans to deal with moxes.

Out of Curiosity: Has anyone tried playing Sword of Fire and Ice maindeck? It beats more and also draws a card. 5 to use though. ouch.

[Tempo]

The list I posted was the deck I tested. But like I said, there aren't too many fully powered players here. So I started with the null rods in the sideboard and the 2 fire/ice and 1 gorilla shaman maindeck. The majority of decks pack little or no power. They're still mostly very well tuned decks though. There is dragon decks, sligh, food chains goblins, madness, oshawa stompy, r/g beats, something kind of similar to WTF but with bigger creatures, and a couple of partially powered hulk decks as well as a fully power keeper deck or two. There is also a very modern drain slaver deck that a few weeks ago was a stax deck. But he doesn't play here much. There are also a decent number of scrubby decks that usually manage to do decent, elves with land destruction, sui black etc.

I know that this wasn't the ideal meta for fish. But it does cover many of fish's worst match ups. And with the red and green splashes, the deck manages to do very well. The Daze really pull their weight against aggro decks that like to tap out often.

Any reason you prefer the brainstorm Nantuko. It was the worst of all three when I tried it.

I actually tried out sword of fire and ice for a while in a different version of the same deck.

While it was a great card, it was too slow. It eats up 5 mana to draw you a card and deal  essentially 4 more damage a turn. But by the time you can cast it, it's sometimes too late into the game for the card to help you much, especially against aggro.

Mask of Memory essentially lets you dig one card deeper and lets you do this two turns earlier. This is like seeing 4 extra cards by the time you can even cast Swords. Those four cards can usually translate to on average three points of damage (through creatures you drew) any ways as well as a couple more points of damage from lavamancer. Swords only lets you see one card a turn. The difference is huge.

Mask of Memory was a faster, better way to recover from an aggro hoard, for me atleast.

But I will add that I never tried swords for nearly as long as I tried the other three cards mentioned. And I didn't have enough of a chance to truly abuse it.

[Godot]

Under your Pros for Standstill I think you've missed the most important point, it generates TEMPO while the card advantage is merely a secondary bonus.  Hence the reason you found BS to be complete ass in Gay/r -- it has nothing to do with somehow generating tempo for you.

Additionally, the point you labeled as Neutral(for standstill) is an advantage.  Very rarely do I have a full grip after casting Standstill so if my opponent wants to wait until I drawn up to a full hand then great!  Standstill has done its job.

As for Mask of Memory, this card is just too exspensive.  It effectively costs 3 mana cause you dont want to cast this and just leave it there doing nothing.  I dont want to take an entire turn to just drop this thing.  Not to mention the biggest point-the anti-synergy witth Null Rod.  If you're in a meta where mask of memory is good in fish due to all the scrub aggro decks, then you shouldnt be playing fish.  


This is a tempo deck and of those cards only standstill generates tempo.  The choice is clear Standstill for Gay/r in 2004!

[HuntedWumpus]

First off, it's a silly proposition to run an artifact drawer in a deck that really really likes to have a null rod on the board. With that in mind I would would rule out the mask here, but I will give that card credit that it is slightly underrated and deserves some play testing.

Standstill Vs Brainstorm:

Generally in this deck its pretty much a no brainer, standstill generates tempo that this deck loves to abuse, and is the key to winning the more difficult match's. Standstill of course has great synergy with the man-lands that this deck often uses. Tempo is key in this style of play and hence standstill is probably your best choice here.

Thirst For Knowledge, since its addition to the card poo,l has also become a good choice and a serious contender in the fish builds. It goes fairly deep and helps feed the lavamancer. I've seen 3:2 Standstill, Thirst configurations respectively and players of these builds seem fairly content with the TFK.

Thats my comments on your draw, however I would like to add that I am very scared that there are No stifles, Anywhere. Two MD stifles is pretty strong and standard now. Just something to think about, I won't go any further since its not the topic of the thread.

[Moxlotus]

In what sense do people mean that Standstill generates tempo?

Please let me know if I am misusing the concepts here.  I would say that the only time Standstill generates tempo is when your opponent intentionally delays playing a spell to avoid breaking it.  In that situation your opponent must think he is getting something more valuable than the tempo he loses delaying the spell.  Most often what he hopes to gain is more land in play and a period where you aren't casting spells yourself.  That is tempo.  So if an opponent delays casting a spell because of Standstill (losing tempo) in order to gain more tempo (by laying a land or delaying your deck's development) can you really say that Standstill generates tempo?

There are some situations where the above reasoning doesn't apply, like when you are playing against a bad player who doesn't know when to break Standstill (and therefore gives up tempo without ensuring that he is gaining more than he lost) or when you play some important land that changes the calculation of tempo gain and loss (manlands, basically), but most of the time if a player is delaying breaking a Standstill correctly it is costing you tempo.  If a player is delaying breaking Standstill incorrectly it may be getting you tempo, but in that case I would say bad player generate tempo, not Standstill.
quote]

If you play Standstill when you don't have manlands or a few men (preferably a Curious one) then you are a horrible player.  The only time you lay Standstill down is when you have some kind of board superiority.

[PucktheCat]

In that case the opponent will simply break it the next time they would cast a spell anyway, right?  No tempo.  The only time a Standstill will delay a spell is when an opponent wants to delay to get something he considers to be of greater value.

Leo

[Moxlotus]

In that case the opponent will simply break it the next time they would cast a spell anyway, right?  No tempo.  The only time a Standstill will delay a spell is when an opponent wants to delay to get something he considers to be of greater value.

Leo

Then instead of giving you tempo he is giving you 3 cards.  Either way works.  Its a win/win situation.

[PucktheCat]

Well, that's true.  It does give you cards.  That's why I play the card.  Saying it gives tempo simply didn't make sense to me.

Leo

[dicemanx]

If you play Standstill when you don't have manlands or a few men (preferably a Curious one) then you are a horrible player. The only time you lay Standstill down is when you have some kind of board superiority.

Which is what Fish is going to have, because it's designed that way.

I'd stay away from the word "tempo". The relevant words here are quality (BS) vs quantity (Standstill).

[yodoblec]

Standstill is a much better card in Fish than Brainstorm. It gives you 2 more cards than BS does and thats better than quality in Fish. Fish doesn't run the best cards, but the ones that work best with each other.

[Negator]

You forgot to said that Cotv is a really nuisance to the deck. With Standstill, you don't improve this weakness.

[goober]

Best conclusion to an argument ever.

I don't understand why people don't like Standstill.  Dump your hand with beats, then play it.  If they don't break it, then it acts like 1U deal shit-tons damage, if they do, its Ancestral.  The only time it isn't good is when your hand is full, but who the hell plays a Standstill when you have a full grip.  Even then it isn't bad, and better than Brainstorm, because your hand's quality goes up, and you next 2 draws are random not crappy.  I have yet to not groan when my opponent lays one down against me.  This debate really should have been over once PTW started winning everything anyways.

[yodoblec]

No, seriously, I want an answer. Smile

Here's an answer. It'll probably take forever even though it shoulda happened awhile ago.

The deck is designed around Standstill. All the cards work best with it. Faeries let you get a 1/1 flier the same turn and the manlands let you put more pressure without any spells thus making the opponent brake it and giving you a huge advantage.

[yodoblec]

The instant you take out the standstills you just end up playing a watered down version of countersliver.

Bam, excactly Standstill is crazy in this deck. If you ever see a hand with landstill in it and enough mana how many times will you throw it back?

[Thissa2]

A note of introduction. This is Thissa, I was a member for a while till the AOL ban… I’ve put in a false email address and ive figured out how to use internet explorer… if this isn’t allowed, you can reban me till I convince my mom to get hotmail. With that said, I will begin my post/rant.


Well. I believe we (by we I mean PTW) have already established in this thread that for UR Fish, Standstill > Brainstorm.

Orlove:

Ok. So… what you’re suggesting, is that you no longer play anything even close to Fish.

You suggest doing this by taking out the abusiveness of Standstill and replacing it with more abusive creatures… that still attempt to have synergy with Curiosity. Which, in the end, may not be the best choice for draw in your URG beats deck. The evasion/curiosity synergy is quite formidable, but all it does is make that deck Zoo with counters and draw. That’s completely different, therefore please don’t even compare Fish and Blue Zoo (I will be using that name for the rest of my disgruntled rant).

Something tells me Blue Zoo is going in the same direction UG Madness did. I seem to recall jpmeyer saying something about UG madness originating as a Curiosity deck without the Standstills, to allow better creatures (sound familiar?), but eventually it turned into UG madness because the creature quality was just better. UG madness is a very respectable deck, and I believe that Blue Zoo may eventually turn into a respectable deck too, although GREATLY different and probably without Curiosity. However, it will be completely different, and will therefore be uncomparable with Fish because it will look nothing like it. Running slightly better Fishesque creatures with a few Curiosities and Force of Wills thrown in doesn’t really make a good deck in my opinion, due to a huge lack of synergy. Therefore, when Blue Zoo finds some underlying synergy like UG madness and Fish have, it will no longer be comparable with Fish.

Seriously, I believe that for anything even resembling aggro to be successful in Type 1, it has to have a CRAPLOAD of synergy. Oshawa Stompy did. UG madness does. Old Madness did. Ravager Affinity does. Food Chain Goblins does. Fish does. Sligh? Suiblack? Old Zoo? 10land Stompy? Those are all terrible decks lacking synergy. I think we should try and face it. Aggro and Aggro-Control need synergy like Fish needs Standstill, like America needs someone besides bush, like magic players need pr0n.

VIVE LA STANDSTILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(edit: hmm... i sound like an arrogant asshole, naming your deck and all, trashing it, etc... my appologies in advance if this is the case)

[yodoblec]

VIVE LA STANDSTILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

<kool-aid guy voice>Oh Yeah!!!!</kool-aid guy voice>

Please restrain the totally insubstantial posts. -Dr. Sylvan

[Cross]

I like standstill.
On a totally diffrent tangent I also ran 1 sword of fire and ice in a playtested version and found that the card was awseome when it came up. I never really ran into a lot of null rods during testing but I could see it being easily sided out. It was like curiosity on crack.  Being just a one of meant that it never came up so often that it wrecked the mana base.

I would like to test the mask cause it seems to have a lot of potential.

[twn_domn]

You know why some people suggest brainstorm?  Because they kept a bad hand!  Hence, they want to put in brainstorm for better dig.

If you have a crappy hand, throw it back.  Putting brainstorm in the deck doesn't solve the problem.  Learn to become a better player, so you can abuse standstill.

[kill doug]

yes mask is better than curiosit almost because when a creature dies you can just re equip it which it also gives fodder to lavamaner

I'm pretty sure this is not a complete sentence. Please post more legibly. -Dr. Sylvan

It's totally my job to make remarks about the terrible sentence structure of some of our basic users.  Shame on you, Pip.  -Kowal

But
1. its not pitchable to force
2. null rod main decked
3. leaves less mana open for counters
4. main decked null rod
5. this isn't really fish if has river boa
6. MAIN DECKED NULL ROD

enough said

[TheIneffable]

1. Really?
2. See 6.
3. You mean Stifle.
4. See 6.
5. ... I thought ignorance was a blessing, for you it seems like you've been cursed.
6. Didn't your first sentence support playing Mask over Curiosity, yet you now yell its cons? (Obviously you need to choose which one you support because your wording is confusing.)

Enough wasn't said. Many of your sentences are missing key words and punctuation.



Types 1, 1.x, and 2  are quite uncomparable IMO. It is not fair to compare most cards in one environment type to its success in another environment. Some decks are able to transcend this barrier through sheer power and consistency such as UG Madness. Standstill for example in UG Madness for T2 was not as effective because of 1 key factor that completely separates T2 at this time, the abundance of mass removal in control decks.

Most control decks need it to survive and Standstill actually works against the UG player. The whole point of Standstill is to gain board control and then force your opponent to give you card advantage. In practice with T2, the card is forcing you to not play more threats while they search for their Wrath or Mutilate. This temporary respite can give them the ability to survive. The counter argument to this for T2 is that Standstill makes it so you don't have to overcommit and lets you refuel after a board sweeper. But aggro decks of T2 just try and force through as much damage before the sweeper hits and make sure its lethal. In UG why would you lay Standstill when you are just going to lay threats on turns 1-4 and then keep Circular Logic mana open on turn 4. Why would you play Standstill when you want to counter the Wrath, not just try and recover from it?

Basically control decks of T2 want to Wrath away the early threats and then use spot removal to finally pick off any of the stragglers that your opponents might top deck. This is because it usually takes an aggro deck all of its card to threaten you into Wrathing, if they don't use as many as possible the Wrath gets saved and spot removal starts taking care of what is on the board. In T1 however, mass removal is not nearly as present. They are Pernicious Deed and Balance, but these are not focal cards of a deck that need to be cast to win the aggro match. They help, yes, but they are not the be all end all of the matchup like Wrath of God is in T2. This is what makes Standstill evaluated differently in both formats



In regards to Vintage players vs Constructed players, I think that they are quite different. I think one of the keys to Vintage is knowing your deck well and how it faces against other matchups. I think this is quite different from T2 where your play is usually very obvious. In T1 most decks have quite a range of plays on any given turn and knowing what to play is quite key.

Basically if your deck is good in T1 for the meta you have and you know it well, you should do fine. T2 is quite different because metas in most areas are usually quite similar whereas T1 is very different in many respects for different metagames in areas. I think that for T1 your deck doesn't have to be the best for you to do well, it just has to be good and if you know it you can do fine. I think if your deck isn't optimized in T2 you will have a very hard time.



Anyways, I am pro Standstill.

[Jacob Orlove]

This thread has degenerated so badly. Closed.

[Kowal]

I moved a lot of good posts from the full members to the closed type one forum, as a good debate was developing until the quality started to go downhill.  I'm reopening this thread now because I don't think it's fair that a good discussion should be going on that you guys can't voice your opinions on.  Try to keep your quality level high.

Unlocked and split.[/color]