Yes, Prohibit is the bee's knees.
Disrupting Shoal has a CMC of 2 when it is not on the stack.
Right, I forgot to put it under the spells you can remove to Shoal as 2 CC. That gives even more options at the 2 slot.
BtB is really only necessary for Workshops and Bazaars, but there the full complement of Strips might be sufficient if backed up by stronger defensive measures (and maybe Crucible, which is otoh even more vulnerable).
In a lot of matchups you do end up siding out the B2B, but for the most part its still strong against Workshop stuff, the occasional Bazarr, etc. Even when you toss one down that shuts off two of their lands, you get a huge boost in tempo.
In short, while the inclusion of Shoals to Mono-U makes a lot of sense, the slots for it are open for debate - for me, it comes down to Chalice vs. BtB.
It took me a while to come to the same conclusion, and when you consider that Chalice:
-Isn't Blue to ditch to Shoals
-Keeps B2B out of the deck, leaving only Ophidian for 3 CC Shoal removal
-Locks you out of a certain casting cost (usually 1), keeping you from playing varied costing stuff to ditch to Shoal
It became apparent that B2B was the right choice, at least for now.
My point is this--while it would seem that B2B might in fact be the weakest link right now (i.e. possibly to cut for Shoals)
I think fundamentally speaking that if you are running Shoal, you have to run 4 Ophid/3 Back to Basics to get the most out of it. I can see not running B2B at all, but not cutting it for Disrupting Shoal.
On a side note, I feel that you need to run brainstorm to run tinker/colossus, but brainstorm isn't good in this deck. Thus, IMHO, Tinker/Colossus is not the right win condition for this deck. Has anyone tried MD (Razormane) Masticore in this deck as a win condition? It has the same CMC as a Morphling, has the same power, has first strike and can kill things. Its vulnerability to artifact hate makes it less than optimal as the only kill condition, but maybe you would run a combination of morphling and razormane, especially if you decide to actually run Tinker.
First, I find Brainstorm to be very, very strong with the Fetch setup. It lets you keep a strong one land hand, lets you put away useless stuff lategame like B2B, and has random utility like hiding from a Duress. When you factor in the necessity of a 1 CC spell for the Shoal, it becomes a necessity.
Next, Tinker Colossus over Morphling x2 seems way too risky. If the Tinker doesn't resolve you automatically lose, if you draw the Colossus you also have to resolve a Brainstorm, etc. etc.
While Razormane Masticore has the same converted mana cost and some other cool abilities, Morphling is in the deck for a reason. It seems like for quite some time Morphling has gone down in the eyes of almost everyone and doesn't seem like what it once was. However, in lots of testing with this deck, Morphling has proven to still be Superman. The sheer fact that Morphling can make itself untargetable makes it more valuable than Masticore. Since you're playing a deck that only has a little space for a victory condition , you have to be able to protect the hell out of it, and Morphling can do that. For the 2 slots devoted to a win condition, I can't think of anything other than Morphling giving you more bang for the buck.
