Black Fish

[o]

I have actually for a long time considered a "black" fish, which like this deck originally had blue in it as well.  Overtime, I found the blue component quite unecessary though.  The latest decklist I had was something along the lines of:

        4 Night's Whisper
        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Necropotence
        4 Chalice of the Void
        3 Umezawa's Jitte
        2 Phyrexian Negator
        4 Nezumi Graverobber
        4 Withered Wretch
        4 Mesmeric Fiend
        4 Cabal Therapy
        4 Duress
        4 Dark Ritual
        4 AEther Vial
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Strip Mine
        4 Wasteland
        10 Swamp

If there is one thing I've learned from this deck it's that while Wretch on his own is great, Wretch + Graverobber is insane.  Really it is.  Oh, and I know it's very likely that I'll be flamed for posting a "Sui-Black"-esque deck.

EDIT:

Card Choices:

Mana:
By running only one color, the mana base of this deck is incredibly strengthened.  You can run 5 strips and have absolutely no fear of getting color-screwed, and you have all other basics, so wastes do nothing against you.  Black Mox and Lotus are obvious.  Dark Ritual offers this deck a lot of explosiveness.  First turns like land, ritual, duress, and finally wretch happen all the time and are quite strong in the current format, really.  Let's not kid ourselves; Aether Vials are absolutely part of the mana base.  They essentially mean that your creatures are uncounterable and can be played at instant speed, and that you can drop twice as many per turn.

Draw:
Night's Whisper is currently the strongest black card-drawing engine available, and is quite powerful in all honesty.  Demonic Tutor and Necropotence should be obvious.  Note that Umezawa's Jitte has excellent synergy with whispers and Necropotence.

Disruption:
The Chalice/Vial suite is just so strong in the format that every aggro/control deck is almost obligated to run them and Null Rod-based decks are almost strictly inferior to the new breeds.  Duress is just an incredible bomb right now.  It's hard to even describe how awesome it is.  Even just looking at your opponent's hand can be great.  Since we're running 8 cards that look at your opponent's hand (Duress, Mesmeric Fiend), Cabal Therapy is very attractive and has a high likelihood of hitting.  And purely coincidentally, it is super-excellent against Oath because they'll often end up giving you little 1/1's who just love to be sacrificed.  Jitte is one of the truly key cards in the deck.  It speeds up your kill almost exponentially and gives you just so many options to handle creatures.

Creatures:
Negators are the biggest and best fat that you have available in black.  A first turn Negator can put a lot of pressure against almost any control deck in the field, and when you put a Jitte on him, he's nigh unstoppable.  It's quite possible that you may wish to run more main; I haven't decided on the perfect number. The Wretches are the core of the deck.  As an excellent body attached to just a backbreaking ability, they are THE aggro-control creature of the present game.  Along that line of thinking, Graverobbers are almost as good as Wretches in that they have a decent-body and can remove cards in the opponent's graveyard, but if you're lucky you can flip him into a house.  He has almost the power of a Negator when flipped, and his ability is sometimes shatteringly powerful.  Mesmeric Fiend is not the strongest creature, but his CIPT duress more than makes up for that.  Also note that vialing out him allows for instant-speed discard if necessary.  And even he becomes a house with a pretty-little Jitte.

I'll try and write up some match-notes, but unfortunately this deck is severly undertested and I don't have numbers to back things up.

[Astro]

I have actually for a long time considered a "black" fish, which like this deck originally had blue in it as well.  Overtime, I found the blue component quite unecessary though.  The latest decklist I had was something along the lines of:

        4 Night's Whisper
        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Necropotence
        4 Chalice of the Void
        3 Umezawa's Jitte
        2 Phyrexian Negator
        4 Nezumi Graverobber
        4 Withered Wretch
        4 Mesmeric Fiend
        4 Cabal Therapy
        4 Duress
        4 Dark Ritual
        4 AEther Vial
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Strip Mine
        4 Wasteland
        10 Swamp

If there is one thing I've learned from this deck it's that while Wretch on his own is great, Wretch + Graverobber is insane.  Really it is.  Oh, and I know it's very likely that I'll be flamed for posting a "Sui-Black"-esque deck.

This deck actually looks pretty good.  I just proxied it up on Apprentice and did a few goldfish draws and it felt really strong.  I'll have to do some testing.

Jitte is awesome with Nights Whisper and Necropotence as you can draw more cards and gain life.  Chalice is a tight substitute for Null Rod as it doesn't affect Vial.  Vial is nice with the draw aspects Nights Whisper ect...  The only change I made was Sinkholes in place of the Cabal Therapies.  However Therapies are nice with the Nezumi Graverobber as you can grab your sacked critter with them.  You could test Skeletal Scrying in place of Nights Whisper, I'm not sure which would be better for this list.  A color splash might not be too shabs so as to deal with Artifacts which seem to be the only glaring problem. 

EDIT:  You should really start your own thread on this deck and so as to not clutter up this one with deck lists.  If you do make a thread, I really see it not being moved to the newbie forum as long as you make good card descriptions and its tested a bit more with match up analysis.  Anyway, nice deck!

[Luiggi]

Unmask is a card that has a lot of potential in here, I think. It might be overkill, since you already have Duress, Therapy, and Fiends, but I think they'd give the deck nice little boost, much like they do in Doomsday or did in MaskNaught.

Also, upping the Negator count to 3 seems correct to me, maybe cutting one of the Graverobbers, since Wretches are more efficient at emptying your opponent's graveyard.

Luiggi

[Disburden]

I have actually for a long time considered a "black" fish, which like this deck originally had blue in it as well.  Overtime, I found the blue component quite unecessary though.  The latest decklist I had was something along the lines of:

        4 Night's Whisper
        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Necropotence
        4 Chalice of the Void
        3 Umezawa's Jitte
        2 Phyrexian Negator
        4 Nezumi Graverobber
        4 Withered Wretch
        4 Mesmeric Fiend
        4 Cabal Therapy
        4 Duress
        4 Dark Ritual
        4 AEther Vial
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Strip Mine
        4 Wasteland
        10 Swamp

If there is one thing I've learned from this deck it's that while Wretch on his own is great, Wretch + Graverobber is insane.  Really it is.  Oh, and I know it's very likely that I'll be flamed for posting a "Sui-Black"-esque deck.

I was thinking if you added bayou into the SB then you could use oxidize/natrualize and a few Choke for island hating.
Also why aren't you running fetches? Do you lose that much life with this deck?

[Luiggi]

Do you lose that much life with this deck?

Between Night's Whispers and Necro I would imagine that those extra life points might make a difference... If Bayous are added, though, then some fetches become a necessity, I reckon. The Green Splash idea isn't bad...

Luiggi

[Meanee]

I've tried splashing red for md blood moons and sb hate of all sorts.
I cut some of the creatures, and that could be a problem...

- meanee

[edit]Also why not use nantuko shade? The negater hurts if it gets hit by anything...[/edit]

[Disburden]

Once you Vial out the Negator, have it armed with a Jitte and swinging for +5 damage with trample every turn the set back of losing one permanent per damage point really doesn't seem like a drawback.

I was goldfishing this Mono Black version just now actually, and the results were quite impressive. The clock puts the pressure on fast. I was able to swing for almost 10 with the negator turn three thanks to the opening hand of: black lotus, a mox, and swamp+jitte. That was without a Vial , btw.

That's a clock I've never seen on fish in my life, and I've played fish for awhile now.
Maybe we're onto something 

EDIT: I should mention that the list I'm using has three Negators, and three Graverobbers instead of the four listed on here. I prefered having Negator come into my hand more often since he's such a beater. I also put in a few fetchlands and so far the life loss hasn't been that big of a deal, usually killing before it becomes an issue. You can also sacc the fetch when negator gets damaged.
       

[Disburden]

Unmask is a card that has a lot of potential in here, I think. It might be overkill, since you already have Duress, Therapy, and Fiends, but I think they'd give the deck nice little boost, much like they do in Doomsday or did in MaskNaught.

The problem with Unmask is, well, I just can't find room for any of them. Cutting the creature count would be a huge mistake, since this is aggro after all, and then all the spells left just seem uncuttable, unless we somehow cut 1 ofs in certain spells and then run some weird number of unmask, like three, which to me seems bad.

where would you put them?

[shade88]

Have you done any testing with vampiric tutor, crucible of worlds, and mind twist? It seems adding these 3 cards could greatly benefit the deck, giving it much more power, but not sacrificing too much consistency at the same time.

[Jacob Orlove]

Topic split, because it's detracting from the original thread. If o could go back and edit in more content (card choices, matchups, etc) to the original post, that would be good--otherwise, I may have to close this.

Edit: if I do close this, feel free to start a new thread with more content.

[Luiggi]

where would you put them?

That, my friend, is the questions. You've already cut a Graverobber for a Negator, so at most I can see you cutting one Graverobber for an Unmask. That would leave you with 13 creatures for your 3 Jittes, which isn't that bad, given the Night's Whispers. Other than that I really don't know, and you might be better off just leaving in the 3rd Graverobber if you'd only be running 1 Unmask. With Duress and Fiends your Therapies get much better, so the Unmasks might be completely unnecessary.

shade88: while I can see running Vamp, I'm not sold on Crucible or Mind Twist. I'd rather have more Duresses, Therapies and Fiends than Mind Twist, because without something like Mana Drain to make your Twist really big it's not that hot, at least IMHO. Crucible is nice, but while the deck has a good mana-denial component with 5 Strip effects, I'm not sure that it wants to make that a more important theme, cutting some cards and either losing agressiveness with its dudes or cutting back on its discard, since those are more important themes in the deck. The Vamp, however, I think can fit, possibly instead of 1 Graverobber.

I really hope O goes back and edits the initial post, so we can continue this discussion, .

Luiggi

[silvernail]

Here is what I would do with the deck and why:

 Â       4 Night's Whisper
 Â       1 Demonic Tutor
 Â       1 Necropotence
 Â       4 Chalice of the Void
 Â       3 Umezawa's Jitte
 Â       4 Phyrexian Negator (+1 negator)
 Â       3 Nezumi Graverobber
 Â       4 Withered Wretch
 Â       4 Mesmeric Fiend
 Â       -4 Cabal Therapy
 Â       4 Duress
 Â       4 Dark Ritual
 Â       4 AEther Vial
 Â       1 Black Lotus
 Â       1 Mox Jet
 Â       +1 sol ring
 Â       1 Strip Mine
 Â       4 Wasteland
 Â       12 Swamp(+2 swamp)

The cabal therapies hurt your creature light threat base so you really dont want to be using the flashback, also you have still 8 duress effects with duress itself and the fiends. I added in their place, 2 swamps and a sol ring to help your mana because with 5 strip lands and only 10 more basic lands you might not have mana and threats both avalible as often as you would like. The 4th spot is given to an additional Negator as he is your beat stick and you want to see him early in any game where he would be good.

Other than the therapy weakening your offense or underpreforming ( meaning it usually isnt helping you enough ) you could consider adding flesh reavers and hypnotic specters to the deck in more combo based metas as both would improve your clock speed one way or another. In a more aggro meta i would play nantuko shades over negators and hymn to tourach over fiends since both of the current card choices arent going to help much vs a deck with creatures as their plan of beating you.

[49 Cents]

Unmask is a card that has a lot of potential in here, I think. It might be overkill, since you already have Duress, Therapy, and Fiends, but I think they'd give the deck nice little boost, much like they do in Doomsday or did in MaskNaught.

Also, upping the Negator count to 3 seems correct to me, maybe cutting one of the Graverobbers, since Wretches are more efficient at emptying your opponent's graveyard.

Luiggi

As much as I like Unmask, I wouldn't play it in here. You allready have enough discard effect, and You almost never want to remove an additional card..

I do really like the deck. Has anyone tested it against the top decks? What would you put in your board? Why don't you play Vampiric?

I like the 3 Negators, also because I think 4 Graverobber is one more then needed..

Good look with the deck! I'll actually test it this week, during testings Only, I don't have crappy cards like Fiends

Greetz,

Hugo

[o]

Unmask is a card that has a lot of potential in here, I think. It might be overkill, since you already have Duress, Therapy, and Fiends, but I think they'd give the deck nice little boost, much like they do in Doomsday or did in MaskNaught.

Also, upping the Negator count to 3 seems correct to me, maybe cutting one of the Graverobbers, since Wretches are more efficient at emptying your opponent's graveyard.

Luiggi

As much as I like Unmask, I wouldn't play it in here. You allready have enough discard effect, and You almost never want to remove an additional card..

I do really like the deck. Has anyone tested it against the top decks? What would you put in your board? Why don't you play Vampiric?

I like the 3 Negators, also because I think 4 Graverobber is one more then needed..

Good look with the deck! I'll actually test it this week, during testings Only, I don't have crappy cards like Fiends

Greetz,

Hugo

I've come around to believing that, yes, 3 Neg/3 Robbers is right because Negator is just so huge and you only really want to see one graverobber the whole game.

It's really hard to find a slot for Vampiric honestly.  Cutting down to 13 creatures is not the best idea when you run 3 Jittes.

SB has a lot of options:
Obviously you need to run that last Negator and Jitte SB.
Diabloic Edicts are nice against oath.
Pithing Needle has potential against a lot of decks.
Cuombajj Witches can handle Welders, though they have bad synergy with fiends and are probably overkill with the Jittes as well.
Cranial Extraction is a possibility against some decks, though I have no idea how good they would be.

The one thing you're sorely missing is some artifact kill, and I actually really like the aformentioned idea of a green splash for oxidizes.  I'll have to try it out.

EDIT: Also, this deck needs a name. Any suggestions?

[Luiggi]

Given the Wretches and Graverobbers, how about "Children of the Grave"? Can you tell I'm a Sabbath fan, !

Luiggi

[49 Cents]

Nah, that just won't hang..

Mellow-B.dec sounds gangsta 

Greetz,

Hugo

[silvernail]

On the green splash: Currently most decks running green are using these cards:Root Maze, Rancor,Wild Mongrel,Basking rootwalla,Ground Seal, Hidden Gibbons,Hidden Herd,Oxidise,Naturalize.

If you want to maintain the theme of your deck adding green would not be advised because the hate cards you seemingly want to have green for can be covered one way or another.

Choke is to shutdown blue decks (which is the strongest reason to run green and even then i think carpet of flowers may be better for you) and you can run defense grids to augment your main deck vials and discard.

Naturalize and Oxidize deal with cards that generally black cant handle: oath of druids,future sight,Platinum Angel,Pentevus,Mindslaver,Tangle Wire,Smokestack....many of these cards are creatures themsleves or are some how rely on creatures and there for are best handled by dealing with the creature instead and probably via diabolic edict (welders,angels akroma), but these can also warrent the green splash due to cards like pentevus that usuallyl wont die to an edict or vs stax where you really need an artifact off the table.

Rootmaze is conficting with chalice in functionality and would need testing but could be good especially in a blue heavy meta with carpet of flowers SB ( not choke becasue you want to take as much advantage of them as quick as you can and a Mana Drained carpet isnt as scarry as a drained choke)

Rancor could be ok in Jitte's place but you sacrifice Jitte's utility which woould hurt you more than adding Rancors would help you.

The creatures are a hard call because your men in this deck are all meant to have secondary functions where as the green men are best at simply beating down. That being said soem green creatures could be really good in particular metas ( RE the hidden creatures or creatures that sac to destroy cards)

Most generally speaking, unless green would net you a real edge in a given metagame that you whole heartedly expect to be at least 90% accurate, mono black really seems like it would do better through consistency and resilency to random things like non basic hate(wastelands, sundering titans) and color/mana screw.

[Astro]

I have some suggestions.

While play testing the deck I feel it needs a stronger mana base.  12 Swamps seems to be correct as I was have a few mana problems at 10 swamps.  Also, I feel Vial can be bumped down to 3 in which case gives you room to add an additional swamp.  The other swamp can come from cutting 1 Chalice as running into multiples of Chalice can sometimes be a dead draw. 

My other suggestion is to swap Cabal Therapy with Sinkhole.  So far in my goldfishing it has been awesome.  First of all I feel the deck is already has enough discard disruption with Mesmeric Fiend and Duress.  However Chalice combined with Strip effects plus Sinkhole is really strong.  Crippling their mana base lets Negator swing an extra turn.

Also you might want to try Gate to Phyrexia in the side board to solve the artifact hate problem as you can make every creature in your deck a shatter. 

My list looks like this:

4x Phyrexian Negator
4x Withered Wretch
4x Mesmeric Fiend
2x Nezumi Graverobber

3x Chalice of the Void
4x Sinkhole
4x Duress

4x Nights Whisper
1x Necropotence
1x Demonic Tutor
3x Umezawa's Jitte

3x Aether Vial
4x Dark Ritual
1x Black Lotus
1x Mox Jet
4x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine
12x Swamp

I also feel Sol Ring deserves a place however I can't seem to find room for it.  Anyway, these are my thoughts on the deck. 

[shade88]

Astro: 4x chalice of the void is really, really necessary. chalice of the void is a card that's value exponentially decreases when it isn't played for 0 on the first turn. It's the reason why every other chalice fish build runs 4 chalice.
You said you had trouble with the mana base, which does look somewhat shaky, but isn't a 4 vial going to help the mana base? Also, maybe running something other than sinkhole would help to solve some of the mana issues.
Perhaps: -4 sinkhole, -1 swamp for + 1 vial, +1 chalice, +3 ??? Maybe a vamipric tutor, yawgmoth's will, and something along those lines.
On the subject of sinkhole, I wonder if theres a better card to be played, like hymn to tourach.

[silvernail]

the list i posted above is what you're looking for shade, it has those 3 slots covered by adding the sol ring and two more creatures.

[Astro]

Astro: 4x chalice of the void is really, really necessary. chalice of the void is a card that's value exponentially decreases when it isn't played for 0 on the first turn. It's the reason why every other chalice fish build runs 4 chalice.
You said you had trouble with the mana base, which does look somewhat shaky, but isn't a 4 vial going to help the mana base? Also, maybe running something other than sinkhole would help to solve some of the mana issues.
Perhaps: -4 sinkhole, -1 swamp for + 1 vial, +1 chalice, +3 ??? Maybe a vamipric tutor, yawgmoth's will, and something along those lines.
On the subject of sinkhole, I wonder if theres a better card to be played, like hymn to tourach.

I can definately see bumping up Chalice to 4.  I don't have any problems with that, however I really feel Vial is better placed at three and having a swamp in place of its 4th.  On Hymn to Tourach I really feel either Cabal Therapy or Sinkhole is better.  Therapy is much more selective and Sinkhole lets you swing an extra turn.

Vampiric Tutor or Demonic Consultation are definately worth a slot.  Helps your grab swamps in poor draws plus other nice conditional cards such as Jitte ect...  Yawgmoth's Will definately deserves a slot too, however I wouldn't know what to cut.  Any other suggestions?

[shade88]

at Astro:
a few.
first off, i'm not a huge fan of graverobber, but probably haven't tested enought to surely say it should be in the sideboard. For a deck that plays a great deal like u/g vial fish, just in different colors, something like nantuko shade seems it could be much stronger. I guess it has to be a metagame call, but 4 wretch is already a good start. Here's the list im testing:

4x nantuko shade
4x mesmeric fiend
3x negator
4x withered wretch

4x aether vial
4x chalice of the void
4x duress
4x night's whisper
3x umezawa's jitte
1 x vampiric tutor
1x demonic tutor
1x yawgmoth's will
1x necropotence
1x ??? Crucible of Worlds/Mind twist??

4x dark ritual
10x swamp
4x wasteland
1x strip mine

The hardest part about tinkering with the deck is that it's extremely tight. The creatures have to stay around 15, and a lot of the maindeck spells can't really be tinkerked with.

however, I'm starting to like sink hole because of it's synergy. A turn 1 vial followed by turn 2 sink hole with more disruption along the way is really strong. Especially with shades and negators chipping away at the life total. Also, there are essentially 3 CoW to add to that disruption.

At this point, it's really hard to cut something. Because a chain reaction starts. Probably the 2x tutors/3x silver bullets would be the things to start (not demonic or necropotence tho). After that, It really depends on the metagame.

Basically, it comes down to running something of what I have, or running somethign more towards the original builds, taking  out a creature and the vamp, mind twist/ crucible, and yawgwill, leaving a 4x like unmask/therapy/hymn/ sink hole to be played. However, yawgmoth's will should have been in the initial list to begin with, simply being too good not to play, it's back to having 3x a card or the tutors/bullets. Personally, the list I have up there runs pretty smoothly.

[Das_Boot]

I have been doing some mild testing and, honestly, the deck feels great.  There are a couple of things that I would like to propose.  Firstly, how do people feel about a splash of blue?  It allows you to play with Ancestral and Time Walk and hugely strengthens your board with Arcane Lab and Energy Flux.  Secondly, why Night's Whisper over Chains of Mephistopheles?  Night's Whisper by itself is almost sure to be worse than whatever draw your opponent is playing, so why not level the field?  It almost always takes out 4 Brainstorms plus whatever other engine your opponent is running.  Shops and random aggro are the things it doesn't affect, but Night's Whisper isn't great there either.  Also, with the printing of Dark Confidant, there will finally be a top-quality "draw" card that works with Chains.

[Outlaw]

I wasnt able to look at this fully, but my suggestion is to test out Skullsnatcher, it seems quite interesting.  its a 2/1 black rat for 1B and you can ninjutsu him in for B.  When he deals damage you can remove 2 cards from a graveyard from the game.  Just some I thought I would chime in with.

[Disburden]

Good call, OUTLAW! The main problem I had with this deck was the lack of Ninja of the deep hours. But with Skullsnatcher we can now double attack with a Negator, which sounds VERY strong indeed!

I don't know if adding all these things like Sinkhole would make the list better. It would make it packed more with powerful cards, but it may dilute the game plan somehow. I would rather concentrate on vialing out beaters and killing quick than sinkholing, crucible locking, etc. Of course there isn't anyway to tell for real unless we do tons of testing, but this is just my opinion. Plus double black for sinkhole even in a Mono Black deck may be too much, since there will be times you only have swamp and wasteland/strip mine for lands.

Also the last list didn't have Black Lotus or Mox jet. This is bad..there's no way this deck would be good enough without the lotus and mox jet, I think those slots are mandatory and if you don't own them then just proxy them.

Has anyone been able to full utilize Yawgmoth's Will yet? Just curious to see how many games it came in handy to how many games it set in hand waiting for three mana.

Finally, Cabal Therapy has been great to me. Casting it, missing a named card, and then sacking a wretch due to Negator damage and getting to replay the Therapy and know what to name has been exceptional.

[everythingitouchdies]

I am impressed at the amount of positive input this deck has received. I am preparing to test it out because it gives me so much of that nostalgic sui black feel and I cant resist.

How does this deck perform against the scope of decks in the field? How does it handle Oath and Stax? Is the aggro damage enough to race combo?

EITD

[shade88]

The deck does have a decent fight against oath. 4x duress, 5x strip effects, 4x mesmeric fiend all help against oath. Also, if the jitte gets active before oath does, they've lost too. Another neat thing about the deck is that it plays like fish, ut with negators and such u can race before the oath comes down.

the stax matchup I haven't tested. I would imagine it would really depend on chalice and what kind of hand stax got, but it probably isn't too bad.

The aggro damage alone isn't enough to race combo, however, 4x duress, 4x mesmeric fiends, and 4x chalice all help out greatly against combo, along with shades, negators, etc.

[Andreas]

Just an idea off the top of my head that sounds sacrilegious but may or may not have merit:

Has anyone thought about cutting Dark Ritual?

In regular Suicide Black Dark Ritual was a must include. However if this deck is supposed to play more like Fish then maybe permanent mana sources and/or business spells are preferable. After all the deck does not have such a high mana curve.

After all at the height of U/r Fish Marc Perez did not even play Black Lotus in his deck.

[Dralock]

The accel of ritual makes this deck's manabase superior to U/r fish. The ability to chalice for 2 or 3 quickly gives you the advantage and you will be able to shut down many decks with that setting.

What about plaguespitter instead of fiend? It takes care of many blue/white/red annoyances. Possibly sideboard fodder, but in testing with any blackish aggro or aggro/control deck it seems to shine through.

It also works well with cabal therapy to take out mages, ninjas etc.

[Disburden]

Taking out Ritual would be nothing but a huge mistake. It helps you get out every spell in the deck first turn, especially cards like necropotence and Phyrexian Negator. I Don't see any down side to running Rituals, this is one of the reasons why the deck has such a good clock built into it.

Plague spitter honestly seems like just a narrow Sideboard card in this deck. It would kill welders sure, but all the creatures that are in this deck can do that just in plain combat with Jitte equipped.

It's a shame this thread has gotten so many responses and still no one has heard from o. I'd love to hear some testing reports and match up analysis.

EDIT: I've always said U/R fish needed Black Lotus. Now look at all the new fish builds, they run it.

DOUBLE EDIT: If only Gate to Phyrexia didn't require you to sacrifice a creature during your upkeep, it would have such great senergy with cabal therapy.