Fish is a deck that I have been tinkering with for some time now. I became interested in it following my friend's Waterbury performance a long, long time ago. Recently, though, and before its high-profile debut as "WU Tang Fish" ("
[Report] 4/30/5 WU TANG Fish Wins Waterbury VI"), I had engineered a similar (but far inferior) version, beginning as UWr Fish (with Grim Lavamancer, Lava Dart, Swords to Plowshares, etc.). This design moved through the "Cunning Wizard" phase ("
Cunning Wizard - testing a new deck"), ran Swords of Fire and Ice, and attempted a green splash, a la J||<3's WTF ("
Worse Than Fish - Star City "Power Nine": Richmond *Top 8*").
In the past week, I had an inspiration. Looking at Ben Kowal's NINJA SWORD ("
Short Bus NINJA SWORD"), I wondered if I could steal what useful creatures he ran and include a few pieces of my own to make a viable deck. Rotten Fish:
// Lands
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
4 Underground Sea
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Island
3 Swamp
// Creatures
2 Withered Wretch
3 Spiketail Hatchling
1 Seasinger
3 Phyrexian Negator
3 Cuombajj Witches
// Spells
4 Force of Will
3 Pithing Needle
3 Daze
2 Stifle
1 Demonic Tutor
4 AEther Vial
4 Standstill
1 Time Walk
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Ancestral Recall
// Sideboard
SB: 2 Withered Wretch
SB: 2 Seasinger
SB: 4 Arcane Laboratory
SB: 4 Dandan
SB: 3 Diabolic Edict
Card-by-card:
The Mana Base.The following should be common sense:
4 Mishra's Factory
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
2 Island
3 Swamp
4 Underground Sea
4 Bloodstained Mire - This card, run over Polluted Delta, allows Pithing Needle to name the latter. I have never been hurt by the inability to search for basic Island, because of the concentration of BB spells and Underground Sea.
Men. 2 Withered Wretch - This card has many uses. Among them are fizzling Goblin Welder, removing cards prior to Gaea�s Blessing, stopping Dragon cold, slowly beating out Tog, fighting Gifts Ungiven, fizzling Recoup, weakening Yawgmoth�s Will� the list goes on. It functions under Standstill and can be Vialed out. The only reason I did not include four was because of the low amount of Blue cards to pitch to FoW.
3 Spiketail Hatchling - Because of Aether Vial, Wasteland, and other small mana denial effects, this earns a place. This *needs* to be a blue two-drop for Vial and FoW to be efficient, and this does the job. However, any improvement would be helpful.
1 Seasinger - Without this, Oath and randomblue.dec become much more difficult matchups. It pitches to FoW, and steals Akroma (and occasionally DSC, SotN, or Goblin Welder) in a way much more efficient than Old Man of the Sea.
3 Phyrexian Negator - Because Rotten Fish can only delay the opponent from winning so long, the Negator is required as a beatstick. This card has been gold for me.
3 Cuombajj Witches - The card Icatian Javelineers wishes it was. Bad synergy with Seasinger and Phyrexian Negator, but if one of those cards is active you should be winning anyway. Contrary to intuition, it is not inefficient with the high concentration of x/1's because the Hatchlings will either be dead or useless if you are using this ability. This kills Welder and singlehandedly destroys FCG, and gives Rotten Fish the ability to defeat Random Aggro.
Broken. 1 Demonic Tutor - It's anything.
1 Time Walk - This gives you the turn you need to activate Seasinger or kill with Negator.
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Ancestral Recall
Counterspells. 4 Force of Will
3 Daze
2 Stifle - Stops fetchlands, welder activations, etc.
Denial and Engine. 3 Pithing Needle - SOK's chase rare, this has replaced Null Rod (bad with Vial) and CotV (need to run four, loses usefulness after turn one). This has been good, but not great, shutting down Welder, Bazaar, Mindslaver, and so on.
4 AEther Vial
4 Standstill
Matchups.This deck has essentially similar matchups to other versions of Fish, so I will only enumerate the visible differences:
Dragon-� Pithing Needle and Wretch are your key cards; the only difficult part of this matchup is getting them into play. Not unwinnable by any means, although difficult; Arcane Lab helps vs. some versions, and will slow many of them down to a beatable point.
Oath - The deck's most improved matchup, due to Seasinger and Diabolic Edict. Either of these, or a well-timed Stifle, will pave your path to victory. Dandan is a key beater here; if they are playing Auriok Salvagers, then Arcane Lab is obviously stronger. Either way, it is important to win before they Oath up the win or be able to take control afterwards.
Stax - If they are running any sort of Island at all, the game becomes much easier with Seasinger and the possibility of Dandan. Pithing Needle (naming Welder) and Diabolic Edict are important, as you can keep most of their threats off the board to begin with.
CSlaver, Gifts [Belcher] - These decks are beatable due to Pithing Needles and Withered Wretch. Stifle is less powerful, but still important card, and these decks can still simply go broken before you can do anything. You have to outplay your opponent here especially rather than relying on hosers.
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